Whenever we get ourselves tired with our routine life – like getting up in the morning, taking bed-tea, some exercise, some break-fast, going to our workplace, doing assigned jobs, taking mid-time meals/snacks, again resuming work, coming back to home, taking dinner and going to bed to take rest for next day working, we feel to question ourselves what the purpose of life is. If we loose our job, we feel deserted, depressed and out of distress, these questions become more important, more disturbing and more difficult. What is of real value in our lives? If there truly is a God who loves us, how could there be so much suffering and unfairness in the world?
In such circumstances, we tend to get answers through our religious channels. They try to lead us to some destination but not the eternal peace as still our mind rests within the material world around us. This material world creates a lot of problems due to our insecurity, due to our financial problems, due to our emotional attachments and many other things. Religion serves us best as a vehicle to nourish our mind-set, but not for everyone. Every one has different bringing-up, different cultural values and some time, some of us may like to reject religion in order to escape what they consider to be oppressive rules and regulations. In the process, they may lose the great gifts of joy and compassion. When they witness the grief of being ill, grief of being old, grief of being poor, grief of being deserted and/or other pains, they go in depth to know what is the ultimate as such sufferings can come to any one whether he/she is a celebrity or a rich person. They get isolated and try to get answer of their problems.
As deeper they go in search of answer, they would conclude that it is a mortal world around them. Factually when we keep ourselves too busy to consider the purpose of our existence, our lives cease to have meaning. Part of our addiction to our superfluous busyness is an attempt to prevent ourselves from thinking about our mortality, the inevitable fact of our own death. But this is the point at which we begin to enter into and learn about the spiritual dimension of our humanity. Strangely, it is only when we fully accept the reality of our mortality that we truly begin to live. And we begin to feel the sense of spirituality.
Spirituality lies beyond the material world, beyond what can be measured or counted. It is made up of the inner life, the realm of belief, mystery and faith. And yet for all the mystery that surrounds it, spirituality is vital to our well-being. It is the foundation of our most closely held values, the seat of our trust and hope. Spirituality brings purpose and meaning to life, and as we develop it we grow in wisdom and love. We begin to experience a sense of awe, a sense of connection to all of life and a deep reverence for the Divine. We find ourselves moved to prayers of gratitude and moments of spontaneous worship. Spirituality calls a human being to a life of trust and service. When our spirituality is nurtured and vibrant, we are connected. This connection is both a sense of relationship to the Creator, Great Spirit, or God (Divine Force), as well as a relationship to all people and to Earth giving environment to our life. Spirituality takes us beyond our ego-centered lives by expanding our hearts with compassion towards all.
Spirituality forms the framework of life; it does not dwell in a realm apart. It is not an extracurricular activity. Spirituality involves a reverent attitude towards all things because it awakens us to a divine presence in all things. In this way of seeing and being, all things and persons are interconnected and interdependent. For this you need not to strict to a particular religion. A person may experience spirituality without being a member of any specific religious affiliation, and even the most religious person may feel spiritually bereft. The true purpose of religion is to enhance spirituality through ritual practices. This is accomplished when a person approaches his or her religion as a way to enter the great mystery, to become aware of the sacredness of all life. Religion can become a barrier to spirituality when it insists on narrow, judgmental dogma, and estranges its followers from a sense of connection with the Divine.
It is possible, however, to get too caught up in the religious practices, while losing sight of the destination, humanity which is communion with the Divine and compassion for all. For modern, academically oriented professionals, like physicians and health care workers, spirituality is often a difficult subject. Our mind-set is framed by science. We depend on logical, analytical, and rational approaches, and for good reason. These approaches have successfully ushered in a host of life-changing improvements in health care and technology. While honouring science and the mind, our cultural tendency urges us to devalue belief and mystery, but the result is costly: we are left spiritually starved and out of balance.
Believe me, we are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience. Our spirituality is our true essence. It is that part of our life which relates to our soul, which from a spiritual perspective is connected to the divine and is infinite.
We must recognize the fact that we are mortal and one day, we will have to leave behind whatever we are amassing, whatever we are trying to gather whether that is genuine or not genuine, lawful or unlawful. But what would remain there left after we expire, that would be our good work, our sense of social welfare and our acts to have done that welfare for common cause. It is prudent to live comfortably but not on the other’s cost. We must earn ourselves genuinely and God will bless us with all the pleasures what we actually deserve. If we observe that some one has committed some wrong with us, we need to go through the reasons why that happened with us – may be that wrong is due to our own fault. If we were not on fault, law is there, God is there to reprimand the wrong. God will bless him accordingly. God seeks us also not to let wrong be committed with us without our fault. We must do our best to keep ourselves right for the sake of humanity. We must feel that if we inflict any grief to any other one, what we would feel if that happens with us. We take an oath that we won’t do any wrong. We must love those who love us. We must hate the wrongs but not the wrong-doers. We must find out why the wrongs are being committed and how they must be improved not to do again and others may not copy them. For that we can join hands with those who are already in the field. If we do not find any one, we can lead ourselves. If each of us corrects ourselves, the earth would become heaven and the society will improve itself. We would be happy for ever. It would be real spirituality.
Be happy – adopt spirituality in your acts.
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