Spiritual Well-being

WEAKER SELF: “I am too young to think about spiritual things. I am too busy and there is no value in learning about spirituality. I don’t like to mediate. I am very successful and I don’t think there is any higher power or divine energy. Life is too short and I want to enjoy it. If I become spiritual then I will have to give away all my money. Spiritual people are boring and they are from a cult. Spiritual people take drugs and are not responsible towards society. Why do I have to care about the whole world? I have money problems so I cannot go to any of these spiritual courses. I don’t have time for this. Most spiritual leaders and so-called gurus are fake. Spiritual Well-being? What does that mean?”

Our spiritual life comprises of our deep inner core values, our belief systems, our views of life, our inner knowingness, our connection with others, our inner contentment, our willingness to let go and surrender, our awareness of our states of being, our compassion towards others, our desire to create peace and harmony, our willingness to accept things as they are, our ability to be at peace, our ability to forgive others, our time we spend in meditation and prayer, our dedication to our inner calling, our ability to listen to our inner voice, our commitment towards the survival of the human race, our ability to grow and learn new philosophies about life, our desire to contribute to the great good of humanity, our desire to spend time with mother nature, our innate nature to be carefree and relaxed and our connection with divine energy. In order to live a fulfilling life, our spiritual life must be balanced and we must work on our Spiritual Well-being. So what does it mean to work on our Spiritual Well-being and how to create a practical routine that is easy to follow, that is fun to do, that is inspiring and that does not involve hours of pains taking effort and complicated steps and processes?

HIGHER SELF: “I strive to continuously eliminate all my spiritual weakness and focus on my Spiritual Well-being. I mediate regularly and feel a deep connection with everyone around me. Each day is a new beginning and I embrace all that life offers me with an open heart.”

There are six steps towards creating our Spiritual Well-being:

  (1) To figure out what Spiritual Well-being is NOT

  (2) To understand why we must work on our Spiritual Well-being everyday 

  (3) To eliminate negative habits from our lives

  (4) To figuring out what spiritual processes works for us

  (5) To create a daily spiritual practice routine specifically for ourselves

  (6) To implement our spiritual routine, it into our lives seamlessly

These six steps done on a regular basis will ensure our Spiritual Well-being and take us one step closer towards living a fulfilling life. Before we start to create our plan on how to work on our Spiritual Well-being, it is very critical to know what Spiritual Well-being is NOT. Understanding this is very important because if we are misinformed or have misconceptions then it is very difficult and next to impossible to take effective actions because of confusion and misguidance. 

• It is not visiting places of worship

• It is not practicing religious rituals

• It is not having blind faith

• It is not believing in old doctrines or old philosophies

• It is not feeling superior to others because we help them

• It is not feeling significant

• It is not reading books of faith

• It is not remotely adopting a child from an underdeveloped nation and feeling good about it

• It is not merely listening to the word of god and being entertained by the religious speaker

• It is not hoping that god will solve all our problems for us

• It is not wishful thinking

• It is not being part of a religious group

• It is not being part of a consciousness movement

• It is not trying to coach others

• It is not trying to fix things

• It is not attending a spiritual retreat

• It is not joining a study group

• It is not creating concepts and theories in our minds

• It is not being isolated and unaccommodating

• It is not being closed minded

Basically, anything that demands too much out of us, or has too many rules and restrictions, or tries to control us, or expects us to control others, or does not create inner bliss, or is not real and present in front of us, or seems too difficult or complicated is NOT spiritual in nature.

The next step is to understand why working on our Spiritual Well-being is critical for us to living a fulfilling life. This is very important because unless we have not 100% realized that Spiritual Well-being is super important for us to living a fulfilling life, even if we have all the steps and daily practice routine available to us, we will simply not follow it and procrastinate or be lazy. So, let’s try to figure out why our Spiritual Well-being is so important, why just not focus on our Financial Well-being, make sure we have plenty of wealth and simply enjoy our life, why just not only focus on being healthy and physically fit and be done with it, why not just get married and live out a blissful life.

The reason we need to focus on our Spiritual Well-being is because no matter how much we achieve our goals, no matter how healthy we are, no matter how secure we feel in our family, all that is external to us, focusing on our inner self is the essence of our Spiritual Well-being and only when our inner selves are strong and balanced it is then that our outer reality becomes stable and protected.

Basically, our lives are a reflection of our deep inner core beliefs. If we ever wondered why something in our life was not working, then it is not because of any outer circumstances or events, it is because our inner self in that area of life was misfiring and misaligned. Feeding the inner self with the right and positive information and protecting it from the wrong and negative energy is very critical for maintaining our Spiritual Well-being. Along with figuring out what Spiritual Well-being is NOT let us continue to keep focusing on WHY we must continue working on our Spiritual Well-being everyday of our lives.

Let us recap our steps...

  (1) To figure out what Spiritual Well-being is NOT

  (2) To understand WHY we must work on our Spiritual Well-being everyday

  (3) To eliminate negative things from our lives

  (4) To figuring out what spiritual processes works for us

  (5) To create a daily spiritual practice routine specifically for our self

  (6) To implement our spiritual routine, it into our lives seamlessly

These six steps done on a regular basis will ensure our Spiritual Well-being and take us one step closer towards living a fulfilling life. There are several spiritual processes that we have at our disposal to learn and practice. Next what are the negative habits we must eliminate from our lives to ensure our Spiritual Well-being and how to go about removing these habits permanently from our lives.

During the third step we have to always be very cautious as to what we are consuming and how to evaluate if the process is working for us or not. The best way is to take a few minutes and focus on how we feel about a specific process and only if we really enjoy it we must continue. If we have any doubts or we feel uneasy then we move on and find something new and different. As we explore different spiritual processes we must keep a log or maintain a way to track our progress. Sometimes we may like something very much but since we have not yet developed our strong habits we may let it slip by. It’s fine at this stage, however, if we have all the information handy then it will make things easier as we go to the next phase. Even after we have developed and implemented our spiritual practice we must on-goingly keep experimenting with new techniques, we never know we might find something truly amazing, something we had not even imagined was possible. Once we have sufficient experiences with different spiritual processes we must select those we want to be committed to by developing a plan of action to make it into a daily regular habit for ourselves.

For step five, now we need all the help we can get here, we must ask our friends, family members and whoever is willing to support us to keep us on track. Set 30 min every day to focus on our Spiritual Well-being by doing the Top 3 Spiritual Milestones that we choose to be committed to for the month.

Let’s say our Top 3 items we chose are

  (1) 10 min Start Meditation

  (2) Quit Coffee

  (3) 10 min Start Spiritual Reading.

Let’s pick a time, Every day at 7 pm. So, we must now clear out our calendar for 7 pm for 30 min till 7:30 pm for the next one month. At this point if we feel overwhelmed that we cannot set-up our time in our calendar, then we should not attempt to start training for our daily spiritual practice because most likely it will be ineffective and demotivate us. We have to first address time management. Making time is easy if we plan in advance. First call up all our friends and family members and tell them that for next two-three months 7 pm are scheduled for our spiritual practice. Then set-up our daily alarms for 7 pm. Then avoid making plans for 7 pm. After a few days automatically 7 pm will be available for us. This way we are guaranteed not to miss our daily practice. At this point once we feel that we can confidently do our daily practice without interruption we can start with our Top 3 Spiritual Milestones.

So being with 10 min Start Meditation and then 10 min Start Spiritual Reading. Then for the next 10 min think of ways to Quit Coffee. Do this every day for the next one month. The first week will be tough, the second week will get easier, the third week will get much easier. Now, you will find that some items are easy and some items are difficult. In the beginning simply focus on just the easy items. Park the difficult items for later. Once we feel that out of the Top 3 Spiritual Milestones we are comfortable with 2 then we can replace the 2 items with new 2 items and focus on the 1 difficult item now.

Let’s say 10 min Start Spiritual Reading and Quit Coffee was easy, but 10 min Start Meditation was difficult. After a month we now have a new set of Top 3 Spiritual Milestones

  (1) 10 min Start Meditation

  (2) Quit TV

  (3) 10 min Start Yoga

Now everyday practice these Top 3 Spiritual Milestones. Step five is the foundation of taking action and getting the results, we want. We have to be very patient and have small milestones in the beginning. Pick Top 3 Spiritual Milestones that we like the most and make it into a habit. Each month adjust the Top 3 Spiritual Milestones accordingly. During a given month only focus on the Top 3 Spiritual Milestones. This way we are conserving our energy and making steady progress in our Spiritual Well-being. Whenever we hit a wall or results are not as expected we simply change the Top 3 Spiritual Milestones to easier ones and continue to build our Spiritual Skills. Remember the key to success is to make things simple. If something is complicated then break it down into simple steps and smaller milestones. As long as we are doing our daily practice we are making progress. This is the beginning of step six where we are integrating our daily habits into our lifestyle. As we do this regularly we are working on our Spiritual Well-being and learning how to live a fulfilling life. Similarly, we will create the list of Quit items and Start items for the other areas of our live namely Physical Well-being, Emotional Well-being and Financial Well-being and slowly incorporate them into our daily practice. Remember, slow change is permanent change and creating a balanced harmonious healthy lifestyle will take time, effort and practice. We have to find what works for our individual needs, we have to find what techniques are effective for us, we have to find what is easy for us to do and then we have to keep doing things that work and stop doing things that don’t work.

We Love Meditation... :-)