What is Spirituality?
San Francisco 06-18-2021 4:44pm
Spirituality is the study of self, and the study of what is real and what is not…
Who am I meant to be? What do I want?
Why are we here? Is reality just everything we see, sense, or feel? Or are there more to it?
These wonderings started my journey into spirituality; as I delved deeper and deeper into this subject, I have been more and more aware of my internal world. Though I have only started looking into this subject since Summer 2021, and would still not consider myself as an expert in spirituality, I am already far more aware than most people. Thus, I feel called to spread the awareness into the world, especially among the scientific community as members in this community are meant to lead us into a more knowledgable and aware world.
If you do a quick 2 min google search on spirituality, you will soon see keywords such as meditation, mindfulness, healing, and etc. But they all point to one thing — the journey inward. People often find themselves thinking about questions pertaining to the tangible reality, but very rarely do they find themselves thinking about questions pertaining to one’s actual self, away from the ego. For example, have you ever taken time to contemplate, what kind of life you would want to live, if money and outside pressure (e.g. pressure from your loved ones who have always had faith in your huge success, but by doing that, they are indirectly causing you stress as you are afraid to disappoint them) were not an issue? Questions such as “what kind of life would I want to live?” “What kind of impact do I want to bring to this world?” “What would make me happy?”
These questions should not be answered quickly, or in an “once and for all” manner; your answers to these questions should be something that you know you will not regret when you are 90 years old, about to die, and looking back in life. You should also be constantly re-evaluating your answers to these questions throughout your life, as it is almost inevitable that you will change your response with more information you gather along the journey in life. Then, you will soon realize that, in order to reach your fullest potential, you need to work through self-limiting beliefs and negative emotions that are holding you back from becoming your better self. Hence, the healing journey.
Since everyone’s healing journey is different, some struggle with self-worth issues, some struggle with anger or jealousy issues, meditation is perhaps the most efficient way to call people’s attention inward. Most people would think of meditation as an activity where one sits in stillness and focusing on one’s breaths; this is indeed a good way to meditate and elevate your consciousness (and some people use imagination and visualization to “see” their ideal self, and thus manifesting it into reality; If you are interested, I have a separate blog post on manifestation), but it is certainly not the only form of meditation, and it certainly did not work well for me when I first started spiritual practices as I would always end up falling asleep (lol).
In fact, meditation can take many different forms. I see meditation as anything that can help you fully relax and clear your mind, so that you mind is not being filled with your worldly worries. I find myself meditating a lot in the shower. As I fully embrace the warmth and comfort, I tend to find my mind very quiet at first, then it would naturally wonder to places, and often, it would land on thoughts or ideas that provide me with great insights into solving my worldly worries. That is to say, if you regularly allow yourself to be fully relaxed, and quiet your logical mind, you will gain many insights in solving the problems that you worry about (but don’t go into the relaxation/meditation session stressing about reaching solutions, because that defies the purpose of them in the first place).
Scientifically speaking, great insights, or “Eureka moments,” are simply neurons that don’t usually fire together start to fire together (connecting the dots and synthesizing information that already exist within you), and our neurons won’t attempt to form new connections if we are under a lot of stress, or under a “survival” mode of operation.
As Albert Einstein once said, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” No matter what is bugging you, as long as you are feeling stuck, whether it’d be a general dissatisfaction with your current life (and you can’t pinpoint why), or a seemingly externally-incurred obstacle (that you don’t know how to overcome), you can always always find the path to solutions within yourself, as long as you allow your consciousness to expand.
I don’t attempt to argue that there is a higher level intelligence at work, but I do believe that, by understanding our internal world, we understand more of who we are and what we want; we get more in touch with the divinity and greatness within us; we unlock more and more of our unlimited potential as we work through the self-limiting beliefs and negative emotions we hold, through spiritual practices such as meditation, mindfulness, and contemplation. Since meditation and mindfulness can take so many different forms, the best way to start is to try them out yourself, no matter how many blog posts you read or videos you watch, you will never fully understand its mechanisms and effects until you actually try it out yourself. If you are one of my classmates reading this, I would really urge you to try it out today; sit and contemplate on what makes you happy. Be open-minded enough to be willing to try it out first, before dismissing it as some spiritual nonsense, because what can you lose from thinking about what you want and from getting to know yourself better?
So start today, how can you find true happiness, if you don’t even know yourself inside and out?
