For me, spiritual living is about consciously and intentionally choosing what we consume and how we spend our time. In this post, I will be sharing some of my reflections on spiritual living and what I think is included within the area of spiritual living. Of course, this will be different for everyone, and I don’t expect anyone to live their life the way I do.
Anyone who has spent any time in the spiritual space knows that spirituality incarnates different worldwide. Here you will get a glimpse of how it comes together for me. And I say a glimpse because it is much more comprehensive and expansive than this.
At the same time, I hope you can draw some inspiration from this text about how you can live your life to thrive and flourish more as a spiritual human being. Because that is my ambition: to help you succeed and prosper whilst you are here on earth this time around.
Reflections on spiritual living
Time is the most precious commodity we have; therefore, reflecting on how we spend our time consuming here on earth is essential.
For our well-being, we have to decide whether we want to consume content and spend our time engaging in activities that keep our consciousness the same, contract it or expands it.
I think that when we engage in pursuits that expand our consciousness:
- our well-being improves
- we become more compassionate, kind, caring, loving, brave, open-minded, and more of that flavour
Whilst when we engage in activities that leave our consciousness the same or decrease it:
- our well-being remains the same, or decrease
- become more fearful, judgemental, hateful, divided and more of those features
I think the former is better the choice.
Spiritual living ventures that expand our consciousness
I think that we have a responsibility to participate in activities that raise our consciousness. Because if we do not, society, the world, our sense of well-being will remain as it is or decreases. And not to sound too doom and gloomy, we are seemingly in a general situation that is pretty bad, and it looks like it is only going to get worse. Only by taking action can we make sure that our well-being improves to be a catalyst for others to do the same.
In my view, a few different behaviours are at the top of my list, so I will not be aiming to start with a priority of most importance.
Reflect and listen to stories. I think the most consciousness-expanding activities out there are reflection and listening to stories about people’s lived experiences. Because when we listen to other people’s stories, we can understand that everyone has a wildly different experience to ourselves. As a result, we enhance our empathy. When we reflect, our perspective can change and include areas of thought that we were previously unaware of.
We must be open to ideas, viewpoints, and ways of being that is starkly different to ourselves to enhance our spiritual living.
Replace judgement with curiosity.
Show up for yourself every day. When you show up for yourself, you are letting your mind know that you matter. The knock-on effect of that is that your self-worth increases, and you will be able to make healthier decisions for yourself. Over time, that will increase your confidence, resilience and inevitably expand your conciseness.
You can show up for yourself in a few different ways:
- Learn to say no when that is what you want to do; in other words, set clear boundaries and honour them.
- Release any forms of FOMO
Trust me; your life will not be more because you do more. If anything, the opposite happens. By taking part in depth over breadth activities, your life will improve in ways you can not even imagine.
- Let go of trivialities
- Set aside time for rest and contemplation
- Do what brings you joy
- Meditate
- Exercise
- Journal
- Read
- Walk
- Have meaningful connections with other people
- Articulate your purpose
- Know your values
- Don’t gossip
- Don’t complain
Activities that leaves your consciousness the same or contracts it
Not everyone will agree with me, but I am sorry to say that Love Island and many other reality shows probably decrease your consciousness, whilst reading or doing something creative expands it. I do not think shows like that represent healthy love or a meaningful lifestyle.
Don’t get me wrong, I also consume ‘trash’, but I consciously decide to balance that with many other things such as meditation, reading, writing and much more.
Choose reading a book over a gossip magazine.
Watch a documentary over The Bachelor.
One controversial opinion: read less of daily news. Daily News is a propaganda machine fine-tuned to hijack the fear centres in our brain most of the time. Therefore, I would recommend listening to podcasts or using websites such a Tortoise News. You can still stay on top of current events in a slow way.
If you decide to watch something trashy, try to reflect on how that made you feel afterwards.
Are you feeling more or less anxious?
How do you feel about your sense of self?
Do you feel like you are enough?
Who is benefiting from you consuming this content?
Here’s a list of questions from Justina Sua that you can ask yourself to help you improve your Spiritual Living:
What do you read?
What do you watch?
What do you listen to?
How do you spend your time?
Who do you spend your time with?
Who do you learn from?
What do you eat?
How do you take care of your body?
If you want to improve your output, improve your input = spiritual living
To bring all of this together, how does this way of being become Spiritual Living? Spirituality, in my opinion, is not necessarily about following a specific cultural, spiritual path. As I understand it, it is more about giving yourself the time to discover who you are as a Spiritual Human Being this time around as you walk your spiritual path.
Inevitably, that begins with reflecting and returning to your authentic self through meditation and journaling. I often work with my clients in the Spiritual Healing session how they can improve their Spiritual Living.
I wish you the best of luck on this quest towards more Spiritual Living.