It was a casual remark, ‘How goes your spiritual life?’ It quickly opened for me a whole boulevard of reflection and window shopping on just what having a spiritual life means to me.
I think that, for me, spiritual means the awareness that things are not what they seem. Being spiritual means being able to allow my awareness to depart from a conventional way of seeing things and seeing them with eyes that belong to me alone. It is my nature to be a spiritual being, and I am able to remove the barriers that keep me from experiencing my spiritual nature.
Being spiritual means putting aside all convention. It means seeing the world in a way unlike a common, daily experience that is conditioned by the culture I’ve grown older in.
My spiritual world is without form or shape, and is a portal into vast emptiness. It is my way of being aware of what exists beyond my perception and thoughts. It is my unique experience that sets me apart from my peers, but it is without a sense of self. It is my unique absorption in what lies beyond what otherwise appears to be real.
Spiritual is a surrender to what lies beyond concept and it reminds me that there is much more to reality than the shapes I touch or the concepts I hold.
My spiritual experience is in the realm of awareness, a place I have entry only because I have learned to surrender my conventional way of experiencing the world. It is my becoming aware in a manner that is beyond ordinary perceptions and no longer depends on time or space to give meaning. The awareness is beyond my senses and is capable of leaving my senses aside so that I can absorb what is real. The awareness is also beyond concepts, and relies on my quieting my mind and putting thoughts aside.
I think that art is by its nature spiritual. Art attempts to bring to viewers a view previously had only by the artist. Art is a non-conventional way of experiencing what had previously seemed commonplace. Art is a sharing of experience that reaches beyond the ordinary and is unique. It is personal, even separate, until shared by another aware individual.
I think I am by nature spiritual. I share in a consciousness that lurks behind all common experience. Becoming more spiritual-focused in my unique and personal way is actually an experience of dissolving my sense of self which otherwise makes me distinct. By becoming more spiritual-focused, I allow my awareness to be absorbed in an awareness that flows behind, beyond my individual self-focused experience.
Being spiritual, for me, places me in a sea of awareness that is without limit or distinctions.