Being Spiritual

I found an interesting question being discussed and thought I would share my thoughts on it.

“What does it mean to ‘Be Spiritual’, and do you have to act a certain way to be a Spiritual Person?” as quoted from @eco-alex in the ecoTrain Question Of The Week”

---

In the picture above, I hold in my left hand a Shaman Stone. I’ve only recently learned something about what it is although it has been in my possession almost all my life. The statue of the Buddha holds in his left hand a round circular stone. The Bali goddess hangs suspended in the air causally looking out the window.

There is certainly an answer to share on a personal level about the things that hold meaning for me in my life, however, some things are best discovered on your own.

I think being spiritual is somewhat related to being mystical, but spiritual practices aren’t geared towards any particular result.

I think being spiritual leads people to the same kind of place. All of us have some fundamental qualities that we could consider to be universal. Just as there are laws of physics that apply to everyone there are also things that are substantially the same within the fabrics of many belief systems.

None of us are any more special than any other and we are all deeply loved when you peal away the world of forms.

Being Spiritual or being Religious

Many religious people are spiritual and many spiritual people are religious. There is a slight difference. Perhaps a story of what happened with my dad and I can help illustrate.

I spent many months being the caretaker for my dad as he was struggling with cancer.

One morning we were running late and we arrived at breakfast just after it had closed. We started talking about where else we might go and figured we had missed out on the free bouffant. As I started to push my dad away in the wheelchair there was a man that came up to us. He explained to us he was a fellow cancer patient that had survived his first bout with cancer but it had come back. He offered to get them to open the doors up for us. Apparently his brother was still eating inside and could talk to them.

At first we didn’t want anyone to go to all the trouble to do this and generally don’t arrive right when places are closing but we didn’t know their hours yet. We explained we would be fine with going elsewhere but the man insisted on trying. He called his brother on the cell phone and they opened the doors up for us to come in and eat. We were very happy.

The man asked us to remember him and pray for him. This happened many years ago but I still remember him and pray for him from time to time and I pray for others that remind me of him.

---

After shuffling around many high priced hotels an opening had opened up at lower price accommodations run by a religious organization. The room was on the second floor with no elevator. I went in and talked to everyone and got the key. They seemed friendly enough but I could feel a sense of reservation about them. They said that their leader would come by soon and welcome us.

My dad managed to get up the stairs with a herculean effort. It was painful to watch and hard to render any assistance.

When we settled into the room my dad took one look out the window at they way they were dressed and said, “They will never come and see us.”

I thought for sure someone would come by but they never did.

Types of Spiritual Practice

Each moment and individual is completely unique. There are so many ways of finding out things and forming beliefs. There are so many wonderful ways of doing spiritual practice you could go on for a long time describing them all.

A brief metaphor. When building a cabinet you might have several different books describing the process as it was done before by others. Each person has many different tools that they enjoy working with and are skilled with. Several different people may band together and make cabinets in the same way.

The point is not really in what tools you use, how much you learn about it, or the end result. Or that you make some ramshackle cabinets but consider yourself a most enlightened cabinet maker, LOL.

The mind has a terrible time trying to figure it out. Cabinet making is bad enough but explaining what is a spiritual practice is difficult. Especially with such varied opinions between different groups of people.

Qualities of Being Spiritual

There are certain qualities of being spiritual that seem to go hand in hand. This picture by @dswigle She smiles captures the feeling for me.

The mind likes to make things into goals and measure progress yet these qualities ebb and flow and it is really hard on yourself and others to get to hung up on anything.

After a time of spiritual practice these things tend to show up in various degrees in peoples lives:

• Presence
• Humility
• Gratitude
• Loving Kindness
• Compassion
• Generosity
• Blessings
• Sensitivity
• Toleration
• Inclusiveness
• Mysticism

I think there are many more. All of this too is not the point but a byproduct of something else imho.

---

Thanks for reading! I probably spent so long writing this that it is no longer the ‘question of the week’ but please enjoy. The picture was taken by me with my Galaxy S7 and processed by many CPU cycles of esoteric software and hand tweaking, lol.