Defining Spirituality

Written by Mathew Naismith

The picture above is of me and one of my aunts on her 60th birthday. I have aged somewhat since then. I have a lot of grey hairs to start with as life has caught up with me.

Life isn't always what you make of it, it is what life period makes of it. Your life isn't just about you, but about all that is around you. Your life isn't even your own; your life belongs and is a part of a much larger life force. So if the #environment around you determines a certain outcome, that is what your life will become. Yes, we can sit within our own environment and ignore the rest of the environment around us to stay in a desired perfect environment, but #spirituality is of all of what is, not what we only desire it to just be of.

Mahatma #Gandhi was a great spiritual leader that went way outside his own desired state of pleasure to help his country. As of many great spiritual leaders do, they put themselves through a life of hardship and peril. In the west, we often mistakenly think that spirituality is all about just sitting within one's own harmonious state, certainly away from any physical and mental peril. Imagine for one moment if Jesus did the same!!

As a collective, what are we presently doing spiritually? Collectively, we are not of a Gandhi or Jesus or even a Confucius consciousness. Yes, even Confucius didn't just sit within his own blissful desired state, but he could have. What occurs in this state is that you become aware you are the environment around you, no matter how much you try to separate yourself from this environment. No true spiritual/wise person just sits within their own blissful state of consciousness while separating themselves from all else around them, but they all could have.

You get to the point of spiritual awareness where the material, the physical, becomes immaterial to one degree or another. In this case immaterial means of no importance or relevance, where the immaterial, the non-physical, becomes a primary focus, but not always at the expense of the material. Yes, the English language can be confusing. A great spiritual leader will make material and immaterial sacrifices, which by the way isn't a sacrifice at all. It is not a sacrifice to forgo a period of bliss or to forgo your own life and/or comfort for the good of the collective.

I think it is about time we all became some kind of an example of a spiritual leader, but the opposite seems to be occurring. When it gets to a point when you can be arrested for simply wearing a t-shirt that expresses honest truth, we have simply let ourselves down. It is as if we don't want to make any effort helping ourselves as a collective, instead, we desire to help ourselves in separation to all else around us. Imagine if Gandhi, Jesus or Confucius did this!!

Make no mistake, we have manifested the environment we live in today, by trying to obtain and retain some kind of personal spiritual and material bliss. It is going to get to a stage where people like me will leave the collective to its own devices; actually, many of the wise have done just this already. If this is what the collective desires to manifest, no matter what the wise of the past tried to do, so be it and yes, it is like this. If the collective still desires to manifests what the wise taught against, so be it, it is the way of the wind......

I already know the title of my next post, "Be a Mahatma Gandhi." I should also say or a like.

Four cousins.