This Week’s Quotation:
This world needs a practical spirituality—one that is relevant to the individual challenges that people meet every day and to the larger issues facing humanity. Doesn’t it seem to you that many of the religions and spiritual paths offered in the world today rely on a belief in the fantastic? Fantastic ideas about other dimensions, other galaxies, or what happens after you die. If what appears to be fantastic opens the mind to real awareness and experience, it might serve a purpose. I’m not interested in an endless quest for the spiritual experience promoted by someone, but unavailable to be experienced here and now. The world needs a practical spirituality, and so do you and I.
~ Becoming a Sun p. 109
Practical Spirituality
Fantastic comes from the word fantasy. With other dimensions, galaxies, and what happens after the body dies, unless a person has direct experience with any of these realms, then it is mostly a fantasy in their own imagination. Even if you do have a direct experience with a reality other than this world, most will relate to your experience as a fantasy. So, how do we keep spirituality practical, relating to the world we all live in and share?
Practical comes from the word practice. Believe it or not, there is an already established relationship with you as a being and the Prime Creator of all Creation. And, like all relationships, it increases as you invest in it. Spending time together, being honest, and listening with an open mind and heart deepens a relationship.
Our inherent inner connection can be cultivated into an intimate relationship if we practice it. The Kingdom of Heaven is “at hand,” available to us here and now. It’s not something we perceive with our physical senses but with our inner senses, as we practice using them.
And then there are our relationships with others. Every person in our life can be a practice partner. We engage in the practice of expressing spirit as we give our gifts of love and service to others, and are willing to receive the gifts of love and service from others. Every moment and every interaction is an opportunity to practice.
May your spirituality be practical because you consciously choose to engage in its practice.
What does it mean to become a sun?
Every human being is already a sun on the inside—a being of intense love and light. The difference is that some people have the vision and courage to become a sun on the outside. This difference is our human destiny.
6 Responses
“Every person in our life can be a practice partner. We engage in the practice of expressing spirit as we give our gifts of love and service to others, and are willing to receive the gifts of love and service from others. Every moment and every interaction is an opportunity to practice.”
Yes!!! How Blessed we all are!!!!
Well put, Gary. We hear sayings like “Save the planet” and “regeneration of humanity”. Yet how can we do that if we are impractically among the polluters ourselves or if we imagine that staring at our navel for decades – and doing absolutely nothing else — will make the difference. I appreciate your thought and word. Thank you. Tom
In practical spirituality meditation is not just a technique used to provide a temporary experience of Spirit. Meditation becomes a way of life. Work, play, rest, everything becomes an opportunity to express and experience Spirit. Thanks, Gary, for making this abundantly clear.
True and beautiful, Gary. Thank you for your expansive words of living practical spirituality. Our understanding deepens, with an open heart, as we practice monetarily with each one that comes into our worlds. This is real awareness, NOW, of the “Kingdom at Hand”.
What joy we are given and, in turn, receive and give.
Appreciate your words here Gary. I have to admit I do enjoy the supernatural fantastic stuff if it has a positive twist to it But What could be more Practical then Cultivating a really good inner space from which to engage circumstance and relationships. Kind of surprised some times we don’t teach some kind of practical inner space practice in more of our primary educational systems, a Non religious form. Well I guess that might actually be a fantasy thought hum.
Thank you for such a clear and light invitation to practice and mature our primal spirituality with our thinking, our practice partners in life and all that has abundantly been given to us, I loved your ‘blog’.