Reading about the evolution of best-sellers over the past three decades in USA today, I learned that the spirituality and self-help genres have been replaced by youth fiction (think Harry Potter), creatures (vampires and zombies) and erotica (50 Shades) in the modern era. What is that about?
While interest in spirituality may wax and wane over time, it is nonetheless a perennial subject and returns as every generation asks the great questions it addresses: Why are we here? What is the meaning and purpose of life? What is God? What happens at death and beyond? But I think there is something even more important than these questions or even the answers. That something is the experience of divinity - the merging of consciousness and being that restores unity, stirs ecstasy, and opens us to the absolute miracle of existance - which we are!
We are talking now about the mystical experience, which comes in three forms: little moments of wonder and awe, life-changing big mystical experiences, and mystical consciousness. The first two forms are mostly beyond our control but he third can be learned and reveals all the features of the others. Each form, however, brings us back into the direct experience of divinity, reminding us who and where we really are. And any thing that brings us into this state of unity consciousness constitutes a springboard for awakening - for the awakened state is mystical in nature (to learn more about these forms of mystical experience and how to experience mystical consciousness, see Ordinary Enlightenment).
The most important purpose of pursuing spiritual life is to find your way back into this mystery awareness, where thought is silenced and consciousness opens to the divine as the world itself. We knew this consciousness as young children and lost it to the world of adult rules, beliefs, worries and distractions. Interestingly, the escape fantasies that are selling books and movies actually hold the same secrets but in cryptic ways - they, too, are a reminder of our true nature and home, though we usually just enjoy the escape, and a vision of the spiritual path we could follow if we took the time. In fact, everything deeply understood secretly describes the human condition of separation and points the way home to unity consciousness - if we know how to look.
So why spirituality? Because when we realize that it's all spiritual, then we see through the clutter of human thought to the light hidden beyond the words and the joy of existence-as-ecstasy returns as one of the peak experiences of life.
While interest in spirituality may wax and wane over time, it is nonetheless a perennial subject and returns as every generation asks the great questions it addresses: Why are we here? What is the meaning and purpose of life? What is God? What happens at death and beyond? But I think there is something even more important than these questions or even the answers. That something is the experience of divinity - the merging of consciousness and being that restores unity, stirs ecstasy, and opens us to the absolute miracle of existance - which we are!
We are talking now about the mystical experience, which comes in three forms: little moments of wonder and awe, life-changing big mystical experiences, and mystical consciousness. The first two forms are mostly beyond our control but he third can be learned and reveals all the features of the others. Each form, however, brings us back into the direct experience of divinity, reminding us who and where we really are. And any thing that brings us into this state of unity consciousness constitutes a springboard for awakening - for the awakened state is mystical in nature (to learn more about these forms of mystical experience and how to experience mystical consciousness, see Ordinary Enlightenment).
The most important purpose of pursuing spiritual life is to find your way back into this mystery awareness, where thought is silenced and consciousness opens to the divine as the world itself. We knew this consciousness as young children and lost it to the world of adult rules, beliefs, worries and distractions. Interestingly, the escape fantasies that are selling books and movies actually hold the same secrets but in cryptic ways - they, too, are a reminder of our true nature and home, though we usually just enjoy the escape, and a vision of the spiritual path we could follow if we took the time. In fact, everything deeply understood secretly describes the human condition of separation and points the way home to unity consciousness - if we know how to look.
So why spirituality? Because when we realize that it's all spiritual, then we see through the clutter of human thought to the light hidden beyond the words and the joy of existence-as-ecstasy returns as one of the peak experiences of life.