Finding the Spiritual Path

It is very common to hear people say they want to find their spiritual way or that they are on their spiritual path.  Some see this as becoming Buddhists or perhaps going to India and sitting at the feet of some very learned master. The ways people have devised to help themselves become better people and closer to a spiritual way of living are endless.   

But choosing a life style that is foreign to your basic nature is not going to help. The early years of your life become your emotional profile and changing to live another culture or belief system can cause more emotional problems then it solves.

If you were brought up in a religious system that says you must conform to certain rites to be free of illness these same rites will still be working through you in your adult years, even if you no longer believe what you were taught as a child. I remember the lady who came to see me with a terrible illness which was caused by guilt. For 10 years she had suffered and the conventional medical professions could find no cure. I asked her what her religion was, she said she had no religion so I asked what she had been taught as a child and she said she was brought up as a strict catholic. I asked what she was taught to do when she had done something bad. She replied that she was sent to her room to pray on her knees to Jesus asking for forgiveness. I told her to go home and do exactly the same as she had done as a little girl.  Within a month her symptoms had gone. It was not Jesus Who had cured her but an inner need to satisfy what she had been trained to do as a child.

Those of us who were brought up in a Western culture will not find answers to our problems in the religious, spiritual or cultural practices of distant and exotic countries. People who were born and brought up in these countries will certainly benefit from their belief systems but you cannot displace from your mind the beliefs you were brought up to believe as true.  Only when these new beliefs systems are introduced into a country with a western understanding and ideology will they work. As I said in my last newsletter, becoming the word does not work, the word had to change to become you and for that to happen it has to satisfy your deeper childhood belief and cultural training.

There is no system that puts you onto a spiritual path, you are born onto a spiritual path. There is no need to look for new and exotic belief systems and practices to begin a spiritual journey. All you need to do is take a very good look at how you live and what you think and then change what is not right in your thinking and doing. Do you lie, think bad thoughts about people, steal things from work such as pencils, not return money if you are given too much in your change? You don’t need to be a Buddhist, read spiritual literature or meditate for hours to know this is wrong. Before you protest that you would never do anything like this ask yourself. Have you ever said you were too ill to go to work because you had a need to stay at home? Have you ever said someone looks pretty believing they look terrible? Have you ever told your children you don’t know where their favorite toy is when you have hidden it, even in a game? These are all lies and we are taught to lie from a very early age. Mother does something and says ‘don’t tell father’, parents tell children Father Christmas brings the toys when everyone knows it’s a lie. I’m not saying Children should not live in a world of wonder but where are the boundaries?  You meet someone at a party, fall in love but then deny it to the family making yourself sick because your mind believes one thing and you are acting out some other intention. Much of the illness today is because we say one thing and do another. People who are truly of good character become ill when body and mind are in conflict. One of the reasons for the battle fatigue in soldiers returning from Iraq is because they were doing things which their minds said were wrong. In modern times men join the army for job security, an education or glamour but then they find themselves killing innocent people, they are living a lie trying to justify to themselves that what they are doing is right and honorable. Lies eventually destroy, if not physically then emotionally.  Living in conflict between what you think and what you do can cause a breakdown in the emotional or physical aspects of your life. Action is a product of thinking and when the body and mind are in conflict about which thought to action somewhere the system has to break down. If you are really intent on becoming spiritual then look at how you live, what you say, do you exaggerate your children’s potential to make them appear better than they are and so improve your own status image or worse do you exaggerate your own powers to impress the boss, the family, the congregation or your followers.

Entering onto a spiritual path means being honest with yourself. Try writing down all the good points about your character and then on the other side of the paper all that is wrong in your thinking and living, it is not always easy to face your darker side. No need to learn and practice some strange belief system to improve who you are.  There is no point in learning new practices until you have perfected the ones you are currently living through.

Spirituality means learning how you live right not learning how the next world works or how we can manipulate it to benefit ourselves. A spiritual life is so easy, just use your spiritually inherited life as it was given without trying to become something or someone different.  Your spiritual path is the life you were given. It has enough problems already designed into it to teach you how to live. Trying to avoid life’s lessons by changing to some other system of life won’t help you to grow and become a better person. This just masks the real spiritual lessons to be learned.