When we travel the road of life, we all likely go off course due to the myriad of disturbing and disturbing things in the world we live in. For worries and stress related, for example, with gaining social esteem, earning a living, keeping friends or finding a partner. Therefore, you may be thinking that you need a regular spiritual practice of some kind to calm your mind and discipline your life.
A spiritual practice is a repeated activity or exercise that reawakens a deeper experience and provides a connection to the energy of the universe, the higher power that revitalizes us and sustains our journey.
Range of spiritual practice available
There are many types of spiritual practice available, each of which offers a sense of well-being and inner growth. For example, there are several types of complementary medicine, meditation, and yoga that can incorporate a spiritual dimension. You could also mention the spiritual disciplines taught by each of the world’s religions.
Whatever beliefs are associated with them, each spiritual practice aims to help us get in touch with who we are: spiritual beings. Behind what appear to be differences, for example in meditation schools, there is a unique goal: the realization of a higher consciousness: one that results from the withdrawal of attention from matters that distract the mind. This is consistent with our deepest need to find a shift in attention away from the mundane and ordinary side of life towards a focus on a source of energy that is timeless and deeply satisfying.
“Once experienced, it flows through our lives to heal, empower, and inspire creativity and wisdom. It gives us well-being and allows us to be truly alive.“(Paul Heelas, British sociologist and anthropologist).
But given all the demands of our time, we must make a choice. What activity will help the most?
Pragmatic choice of a spiritual practice
Each spiritual practice is related to a certain secular or religious belief. Ideas you may not be sure of. Roger Walsh (Australian scholar in psychiatry, philosophy and anthropology) has pointed out that religions contain an enormous amount of popular nonsense, but they also contain a core of wisdom and spiritual practice of remarkable transformative power.
You can choose an activity based on the spiritual teaching associated with it. But on the other hand, you can pragmatically opt for a regular practice that bears more fruit regardless of the tradition you come from.
Individual suitability of a spiritual practice
What helps one person the most may not be what helps another. The question is what spiritual practice would work best for you? Although they all have a common goal, each of them can be thought of as helping spiritual development in a specific way.
What follows are some of the particular ways in which our spirituality can be fostered. I suggest examples of an applicable spiritual exercise or practice for each.
Of course, this short list only scratches the surface of this fascinating field. However, whatever distance traveled so far in one’s passage through life, one can find the best spiritual practice. A common activity that will attract attention because it is of special personal relevance at this time.
Balance body energy
Controlling the breath as in Pranyama. Encounter and redirect force gently as in Tai Chi.
Acquire self-awareness and self-knowledge
Keep a personal self-reflection journal. Attend a silent retreat. Following a course in spiritual counseling.
Remembering one’s ideals
Make a weekly written reminder of life’s principles, highest values, and goals.
Disengage from useless ‘mind talk’
Empty the mind of its clutter through a form of concentration meditation. Practice mindfulness through MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) meditation.
Recognizing the sacred in all things
Recite daily affirmations about the good of nature or of people. Religious believers can recite devotional prayers centered on their faith in creation and divine providence.
Embracing generosity
Making regular charitable donations. Commit to working a few hours a week by volunteering.
Develop wisdom and understanding of life
Read and reflect on sacred writing daily. Concentrate your mind and explore a deep idea.
Accept the need for personal change
Conduct a self-examination and say a confessional prayer regularly.
Practice specific changes in behavior
Each week trying a different spiritual characteristic (such as gratitude, patience, forgiveness, or joy)
Cooperating with a higher power
Repetition of a divine name. Praying daily to God for help
Extreme practices
Ascetic practices involve giving up material possessions, bodily pleasures, and fame. Fasting, sexual abstinence, and living in lean conditions come to mind. I would challenge the extreme aspects of body denial of ascetic practices. Surely meeting our natural needs is good as long as you do. no it means overcoming the spiritual side of life. If so, moderation in all things seems like a good motto to me.
An example of simple spiritual practice
The way you eat your food can be seen as a spiritual practice. There is an opportunity to pause before eating to say thank you, acknowledge those who grew and prepared the food, and invite friends to share the meal with you. This is in contrast to our current culture, with its fast-paced lifestyle that encourages driving through fast food outlets, greeting a cashier as a clerk, and gobbling food in isolation while driving to the next appointment.
Cheap grace
Dietrich Bonhoffer (German pastor and anti-Nazi dissident) criticized “cheap grace,” that is, grace and forgiveness without repentance and discipleship. In other words, lip recognition of one of the flaws without any sincere desire to change one’s behavior or the effort to do so is not good. It is mere hypocrisy.
conclusion
By cultivating deeper experiences and spiritual growth, the best practice is what is best for each of us. It depends on what each of us needs at any time in terms of developing inner peace, enlightenment of ideas, liberation or salvation from all the evil that holds us captive or communion with our Divine Source.