Spiritual Journey

If you are just starting out on a spiritual journey of your own or if you have been living a spiritual life for some time you will appreciate this book, Tantalus and the Pelican.

It was written by Nicholas Buxton, one of the participants in the BBC’s acclaimed television programme and tells the story of his search for meaning through meditation and prayer. He begins the story of his spiritual journey with the exploration of Eastern religions and ends it with the decision to train for the Christian priesthood, having realised that what he was searching for had been right there in front of him all along.

And he manages to tell the story of his spiritual awakening with simplicity and insight in a way that anyone of almost any Faith can relate to and draw inspiration from.

One Man's Spiritual Journey

In today’s world the path of life, rather than being a spiritual journey, has become a rat race. Concerns about money, health, and social standing tend to pre-occupy the mind. The stresses at work combine with the demands of family and friends. There are deadlines to meet, appointments to keep, and deals to land. Sometimes, the gentle voice of the soul becomes lost in the chatter of the mind.

It is no wonder therefore, that with this kind of hectic lifestyle many find themselves struggling with depression, dissatisfaction, and a feeling of being lost. One of the most common reasons for this is a lack of meaning or spiritual guidance in one’s life. When that happens, it’s time to remind yourself that you really are on a journey of self discovery and reading about someone else’s experiences can often help.

A spiritual journey is part of your life

The act of living is a spiritual experience. Every moment from birth to death is part of your journey of discovery. Simple understanding and awareness of this fact can work wonders at easing the stresses of daily life. And what will work even better than just awareness?

It’s this – don’t just know it. Feel it and act it – every minute of every day. When you wake in the morning, do you take a moment to appreciate the coming day? Possibly you aren’t too happy with your present circumstances but don’t spend every second focusing on that negative fact; rather concentrate on your spiritual growth.

Think of the gift that is the rising Sun, the oxygen in your lungs, the blood in your veins and your spiritual heart. Remind yourself each day that life is sacred, and you are blessed to be experiencing it. At the end of the day, try not to relive every unpleasant experience. Instead, try a little harder to remember the pleasant ones.

Instead of focusing on every mistake you made, think of something you did that you are proud of. Remember how blessed you are, wiser and stronger, for the gift that was today – and the gift that is tomorrow and take them with you on your spiritual journey through life.

Spiritual Journey Meditation

When beginning a Spiritual Journey, it is normal to have many questions and little real information. However, the best source of information often lies within your heart and your inner self and deep introspection is required to find the answers. Meditation holds the key to unlocking this.

Many people do not meditate on regular basis although they feel that they should. They then start to feel guilty about their commitment to their spiritual path and sometimes give up. But it is quite normal to make a few attempts at the beginning of a meditation journey and it can be a positive thing.

Spiritual Journey

You can start by taking few minutes every day during which you think about the process that your spiritual development path will take and visualize the eventual outcome. The daily thought will help you and it will get easier until one day you will find that it has become a habit.

Once you have developed visualization through daily meditation, the next thing you have to do is to check your day and decide on a time when you will not be disturbed. You will eventually need about ten minutes a day which you can use for meditation. In the early stages you have to be realistic about the time you can spend on meditation and introspection. Realistically speaking meditation does not need a specific amount of time to be successful but it might take longer before the pattern is well established.

Once you have developed this habit, you will find that it makes a big difference to your life. If you do not yet know anything about meditation you will have to understand what to do and how you should feel. Your focus and goal is to quiet your mind and you can do this by concentrating on something visual, your breathing or a sound.

Meditation is part of your Spiritual Journey

You can get guided meditation for beginners CD`s from online or in shops which specialize in spiritual development and spiritual journey books. Visual choices are much easier, a favorite picture, a candle, or something from nature will be fine. You have to start by taking three to four deep breaths during visualizing. While breathing, you have to count one, two, three and exhale over a similar count. When you first start to practice this technique thoughts may sometimes disturb you. You have to acknowledge them and allow them to flow out of your body.

Spiritual Journey Facts

Sprituality vs Religion

Each generation contains people who yearn to find their own answers by means of a personal Spiritual Journey and who do not accept the spiritual teachings of their time.

In the days of the ancient Greeks, the hot new tool of ‘logic’ was used to investigate the ideas of the gods, leading to the subversive idea that the gods may be only metaphorical rather than literal.

In the 19th Century in America, ‘spiritualism’ was all the rage: the democratic idea that one could contact the dead directly without the intervention of a religious authority was indulged in by many. The 1960′s raised the possibility that the ingestion of certain chemicals might lead to a cosmic shortcut; Hindu and Buddhist ideas of one’s personal responsibility for one’s spiritual journey also gained traction.

Spiritual Journey

Since then a more materialistic world view has become the default lens through which we are encouraged to view the world. This has lead to the theory that it is the brain itself that causes the sensation of spirituality; thus some feel that various forms of brain stimulation or intervention will lead directly to spiritual experience.

One version of this is a technique called ‘trans cranial magnetic stimulation’. By sending a brief electromagnetic pulse to a specific location in the right temporal cortex, researchers hope to cause people to have a sense that ‘someone is there’; they believe that religion originally arose so as to be able to supply a logically consistent explanation for this otherwise uncanny feeling.

Is a Spiritual Journey pointless?

They believe that the concept of a ‘spiritual journey’ is pointless, since, being self-generated, spiritual feelings are ultimately illusions. On the other hand, this tendency to move toward a more materialistic worldview has led others to adopt a more mystical way of looking at things. Many people have turned to traditional Native American teachings such as sweat lodges and vision quests to help them on their personal journey of discovery.

In addition, traditional teachings from the east such as meditation – divorced from its traditional interweaving with Hinduism and Buddhism – have been used to create a sense of inner peace: a necessity for any spiritual journey. The old ways are still around as well: Protestant evangelicalism continues to grow worldwide, especially in Africa; Islam also continues to expand beyond its traditional Arab base.

Only Catholicism appears in trouble in some places as its priesthood continues to shrink; in a materialistic, hedonistic world the idea of celibacy can seem rather unappealing and the highly structured hierarchy of obedience keeps people from adopting its credo.

People continue to hope for a spiritual path that is both easy and satisfying. We are in a time where people are looking for spiritual guidance at the very time when the idea of a single all-powerful deity is falling out favor. As it has always been, however, there is no one answer for everyone and people are willing to try various techniques along the path of their own spiritual journey.