What is Spirituality? My Thoughts…
The etymology of the word spirituality is the latin word spiritus. Spiritus means breath or breathing. Similar to the Sanskrit word prana, breath is synonymous with life force and vitality. It's not just the life-giving physical aspect of breathing, but also the animating and inspiring aspect of what it means to be alive. That which feeds our spirit, connects us to our inspiration, is spirituality.
Spirituality is the personal exploration and unique path of discovering what makes us feel truly alive and present in the moment. This is a process of finding for ourselves meaning, connection, and inspiration.
How do we know when what we have experienced is meaningful and how do we know the connection is real? How do we know we are inspired?
It is worthwhile to remember that it is not necessary to label your experience or try to fit it in a box. Even more worthy of reminder is the trap of thinking that what was meaningful for one person will be just as meaningful for another. We want to be able to distinguish for ourselves the difference between the authentically meaningful experience we have and the ones that feel meaningless. While this may seem obvious, in a culture that is primarily focused on external gratification and material results, it's not surprising that we can lose our sense of self and feel disconnected or out of touch with our own passions for life.
First we want to get in touch with our experience of what is happening, develop our sensing abilities and our conscious awareness. Observe our physical body and the space in and around us, observe our thoughts and emotions, our actions and reactions, observe our breath and our sense of connection to life and the universe. As much as possible, be with your direct experience. Observe the impact of the experience, the qualities and characteristics, as well as the effect.
What brings lightness of heart, what brings heaviness of heart… when do we feel a genuine smile realign the features of our face or the feeling of joy lifting up all the cells in our body?
There will be moments that bring tears to our eyes. There will be moments that remind us of our greatest traumas and greatest joys. There will be moments that fill us with creativity. Moments that fill us with love. Moments that fill us with understanding and compassion. Moments that fill us with openness, possibility, transformation.
When we are aware of the experiences that we experience as life-giving or heart-opening, we can observe the environments from which they arise. The work becomes creating the physical, mental, energetic environment or state to experience the full capacity of wholeness and spanda, Sanskrit word for vibration, divine pulsation, heart harmonization. And then when these life-giving experiences do arise, it is our opportunity to be available for them to move us, heal us, and transform us.
“More than all else do I cherish at heart that love which makes me to live a limitless life in this world.”
- Kabir translated by Rabindranath Tagore
Images:
Venetian woodcut
Egyptian Heart amulet with human head
Buttonbush in Chicago