Experiencing spirituality

Above everything else, I have learned that spirituality is a way of life. It's not something I think about or something I can affect with my thinking. Rather it is something I live - when I'm living live properly, that is.


Spirituality is the core of what I am. It affects how I perceive the world and how I feel about the world. And it affects the choices I make and how I live my life. So I identify fully with those who describe a spiritual malady as an inability to live life and find it acceptable. When I am not living in the world of the spirit, my life is difficult and makes me unhappy - restless and discontented. When I live in the world of the spirit my life becomes easy and I find happiness and contentment.


William James pointed out: "My experience is what I attend to." So unless we are paying attention we have no real experience.


I tend not, then to think of my life as a spiritual journey - that seems to imply a destination. Nor do I concentrate so much now on spiritual growth. Today, I think more of a spiritual search, much like the character in one of my favourite Sufi stories.


Our man is the servant of a powerful individual and one days his friends see him on his hands and knees in the middle of a hot and dusty market square. They cross to him and one asks what he is doing. He explains that his master has lost a valuable ring and has ordered his servant to search for it and not to rest until he has found it. His friends volunteer to help the servant and soon they are all on their hands and knees scouring the dust. After a while one pipes up "We don't have a plan. It would help to know where your master was when he lost his ring." The servant replied that his master was dressing in his bedroom. "Then why are you looking here, in the market place?" one friend asked. "Because the light is better here." replied the servant.


So my spiritual search is undertaken where the light aids my seeing.


In love and light, M