Being Spiritual

Written by Mathew Naismith

There can be quite a big difference to what is perceived to be spiritual between the eastern and western mind. To the eastern mind, spirituality isn't primarily based on love, harmony and being positive where the western mind often bases New Age spirituality on love, harmony and being positive. Often in this case the perception of God doesn't figure for a lot of people, even though the perception of God is of a pure state of oneness. Love and harmony are simply a derivative of being spiritually connected. This love and harmony is also embraced by easterners but knowing that spirituality is not limited to just a few aspects as love and harmony.   

To the eastern spiritualist, spirituality isn't limited to certain aspects but is of all aspects, even of the aspects we don't desire to include in spirituality. Hinduism and Taoism are prime examples of this where the balance of negative and positive are apart of being spiritual, leading to a more aware and wiser state of being. It is not a separation of negative and positive, unlike in western spirituality, it is the culmination of negative and positive. To understand this, a truly connected spiritually aware person does not desire being positive over being negative for positive and negative work in unison as one. What does the western mind do instead? Separates the negatives from the positives and calls this spiritual!!    

I once came across a person who was crippled up, they were experiencing extreme discomfort and pain. I have never come across anyone so spiritually connected. Look at it this way, how many people experience their most enlightening moments in life while experience trauma, a so-called negative to the western mind? Trauma and pain can either be learnt from or suffered from, very much like humans learning from history rather than suffering from history. Of course this does take wisdom to do this which we have, in the modern age, replaced wisdom with what we desire.    

Try to remember, the western mind in all of us can be excessively critical, this includes critically judging what is and isn't spiritual to the western mind.

When you get to a state where you can ask any question and get an immediate correct answer, you know you are on your way to being spiritually connected. When you no longer need to ask questions to get an answer, you are spiritually connected. Only in this state do you then realise that the questions we asked were not formulating the answer to the questions, for the answers to what ever questions we asked always existed!!