Meaningful Spiritual Experience

It seems that spirituality becomes important to a human being at some point in their life.  Even if someone decides that there is no God, it seems they have to go through some deep thinking on the issues of life to come to that decision.  At least all the people that I have met so far seem to go through this.  Maybe it is just the crowd I hang out with.

One thing that I often encounter is that most spiritual practice lacks a physical component, and I don’t mean rituals. 

This beckons the question, can you have a spiritual experience without the body?  Even if you had an intellectual epiphany, don’t you still need the body to have the ‘Ah-Ha’ experience?  All that spine tingly sensation and the pleasurable joy you feel is a physical reality.  When we are seeking a spiritual experience, it’s not possible is it?   

We’ve all had spiritual experiences by accident in some point in our lives.  We were either in nature and were captured by its grandness and its beauty, or experienced the genuine love and kindness in our own lives that we so often read and hear about people such as Mother Teresa.  Some of us have life-altering realizations that change the course of our lives, a pivotal moment in our lives, where we become sure of what our life purpose is.  It seems like for most of us, we just feel lucky to stumble upon it. 

I think that having these accidents is good sign.  It means that we are all able to experience it.  So, is there a way to get there consistently?

It seems like there are few things that trigger these experiences.  When we connect with something that is grand and vast, something that is beyond us, we seem to have a spiritual experience.  When we come into contact with something that is extremely beautiful, we are captured by it and that also gives us a spiritual experience.  We are also relaxed and our mind is free of thought when these things happen.  These experiences also happen when we make deep meaningful connections with others, or when we accomplish something that was either meaningful or very challenging.  We have spiritual moments when we come across concepts (truths) that are deeply profound and bring about a paradigm shift in our own lives. 

So to summarize:
1.    Grand
2.    Beautiful
3.    Deep relationship with another
4.    Relaxed
5.    In the moment (mind free of thought)
6.    Meaningful work
7.    Overcoming challenge
8.    Knowledge that brings paradigm shift     

I am sure there is more of than this, but for the purpose of what I am writing, I think this will make the point.  I think one of the reasons why we have such a limited spiritual experience is because most of us focus only on trying to practice our spirituality through one or two of these ways.  A lot of us take the intellectual route where we are trying to get the knowledge.  This makes sense because knowledge can lead to wisdom. 

For example, in a book I read, there was this lady who was tasked to create a Sex Ed curriculum.  As she was creating this, she realized that knowledge by itself wasn’t going to do anything.  She had been reading a lot of books on how to lose weight.  At that point in time she knew enough to be able to create an entire curriculum on how to lose weight but she realized that reading all those books hadn’t helped her lose any of her weight.

It is interesting that in the entire list above, only one is truly intellectual.  The other has more to do with interaction, being plugged in.  Plugged in to what?  Into nature, into an environment that is beautiful, being plugged into people, being plugged into yourself, being plugged into work, … being plugged into reality. 

When God refers to himself in the bible, He refers to Himself as “I AM’.  I have also read that there is a thought that the name of God ‘YHVH’ (Tetragrammaton) means, ‘that which was, that which is, and that which is to come’.  In short, it describes the ultimate reality.

Whether a person believes in God or not, it seems like life is not in the logic of things.  It seems like life is in the rich experience of reality.  We live in a society where we live in our thoughts.  So much of our lives are consumed and caught up in media.  We interact with the computer, we watch TV, movies, play games.  We live in a world of signals.  Most of us have lost the activities that ground us to our bodies, where we get to soak up hammering a nail into a project, or we get to wrestle with our friends, where the physical reality soaks are minds with sensations that are pleasurable and rewarding.             

I think it is no accident why Jesus gave the following answer when a lawyer asked him “Which commandment is the most important of all?”  He answered:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

I think our lives are deprived with the nutrition of spiritual foods of good relationship, things that feed our soul such as beauty and grandness, and things we get to do with our bodies that bring us physical joy.  It seems we try to compensate this through more knowledge in a world inundated with knowledge already.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love knowledge.  But even for those of us who are addicted to knowledge, and yes, I am a knowledge addict, this line comes to mind “Wisdom is practicing what you know.”       

I just think we are aching for more than intellectual knowledge.  I think we are looking for a real interaction, where we get to do full contact spirituality.  We are unable to lose our unhealthy spiritual weight even though we have a lot of spiritual knowledge.