Everyday Spirituality Is A Practice Worth Doing

Becoming spiritual is an everyday task. It's not meant for special times in your life when everything is weighing you down and suddenly you feel the need to talk to your God. Including activities and habits in your daily life that reconnect you to your Inner Being is the best gift you could give yourself.

I discovered a post by Wayne Dyer that covers this very subject - five ways to practise Being spiritual every day - get quiet, re-energize your surroundings, get back to nature, practice yoga, and practice mindfulness.  Here's my take on what he proposes:

1. Be quiet and Be. Stop talking. Turn off the radio when you're in the car driving and put the phone on silent for the duration. Turn off the television at home. Silence that infernal mental chatter. Become aware of where you are and feel yourself physically present. Be a well of stillness. A few minutes a day as often as you can works wonders. 
   
2. Try meditation. And no, it's nothing like sitting there and trying not to think while breathing. Take five or fifteen minutes alone for yourself each day to relax and breathe. Turn off your colleagues, the customers, children, dogs, phones, ipods, radios, televisions and so on.  Get comfy and relax somewhere. Feel your breath moving comfortably in and out of your body and sink into it.  Reconnect with your Inner Being! 
   
3. Fix what's not working for you and re-energize your space.  If something's out of place and it's bugging you, move it, shift it, fix it or get rid of it. That includes furniture, clutter, a gift you hate and people. Disharmony is what you're feeling and only you can fix it.  I'm not suggesting that you can "fix" anyone because you can't. However, you should ask yourself "do I want this person in my life and why?", "do the ups outweigh the downs?", and "does this person bring out the best in me?" Then make your decision and act immediately.
   
4. Reconnect with nature. The natural world is there for us to enjoy, do so. Go outside and walk in the grass, take a walk to the park, hop on a bike or in your car and go to the closest green spot or a place of natural beauty that you can find. Nature calms, re-energizes and decompresses. Thinking is not necessary!

5. Practise yoga. Wayne Dyer says that yoga is really for the mind. That makes sense to me. While you're busy getting fit and toned and younger and stronger, the mind is
   freed of thoughts. Yoga doesn't have to be those excruciating looking postures or standing on your head stuff that practitioners and adepts propose. There are simpler movements to stretch and tone which do the job just as well.  The right teacher is out there waiting for you. Start looking.
6. Be mindful. When you're washing the car, the dog, the dishes or your child, pay attention to what you're doing. We have the habit of mentally wandering off while our hands are occupied. Stay in the present moment. When you mindlessly go through the everyday motions of life, you forget to live and enjoy and delect the moments as they happen. Even when it's unpleasant, your intuitive insight will always guide you if you remain in the now.

We all need to practise being spiritual every day as it's not easy in this world of noise, distraction and incessant movement. However, it is worth doing. It requires commitment and persistence in the face of our own resistance. We can't run away from ourselves so we might as well make our peace with who we are and embrace our divinity.


---Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river; each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged. Rumi ---



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