How do you take spirituality to the next level?

[Destine4destiny]

I am aware that I am both a spirit and a human being all wrapped up in one, but how do I keep growing spiritually?Where do I go from here and how do I keep feeding my spirit?

[Anagogy]

Follow your bliss...

[JanT]

Keep reading, seeking, asking questions, learning, and begin finding what metaphysically/spiritually fits with you.

It's a wondrous journey!

[nicholaspowiull]

There is only one level of Spirituality that people are trying to seek, yet once you reach that one level; there are infinite Spiritual levels beyond that.

If you want to rise to the 'next level' (the only level), you must perceive what it is we are all doing here.

The Spiritual Level of Love
Love heals, opens up, expands, sends out, reveals, shares, stays, creates, and lets go.
Fear harms, closes down, contracts, draws in, hides, hoards, runs, destroys, and grasps.

If your child is running towards a busy highway chasing a ball, what motivates you to run after the child and save them? Was it fear or love that caused that action to happen? It was the love for your child that stimulated the fear within you. Can you see how even fear (the complete opposite of love) is a twist of love? Love is all there is, love is the only answer to every question.

Everyone seeks to accomplish love in many different ways. For most it's in subconscious ways. I observe that sometimes people will seek to know themselves as love by being unloving. Be being unloving they project and create what they do not desire in their lives, in order to know what they do desire. Alternatively some people will banish love, destroy love, and reject love because they do not feel they deserve to be loved. They feel worthless and choose to hurt themselves because in this manner they are asking for love.

Give someone love when they least deserve it because in those times is when they need love the most.

Moving into the Spiritual Level of Love
Life is about perspective. Everything in life is a matter of perspective. Einstein would put it this way, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.” or "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." Here is another one: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." If your current reality matches the first paragraph of this article, then chances are you don't experience miracles. Are you beginning to understand why? If you wanted to experience a miracle, do you see what you would have to do? Once you change your perspective, you also change your experience.

Love May (or May Not) Be the Objective Reality but Once it Becomes You Subjective Perspective, then the Objective is Experienced From that Subjective Perspective
In other words, perhaps there is an objective reality outside your own perspective, but you would never know it (or experience it) because your subjective perspective will not allow you to see the objective perspective.

The perspective that will invite you to heaven on Earth is the perspective that: Love is everywhere, Love is everything, Love is the only answer, always being in a place of Love, constantly choosing Love, and seeing Love in every situation/experience.

Love experiences growth in EVERY experience because love is everything, so it experiences a part of itself in every experience. In fact underneath all the conditions, programs, and limited mental perspectives (to core of spirit), our natural State of Being is love. Love is that which Love is.

Love is Infinite
Have you ever noticed that you can never love one human being the same way you love another? For example, you love your mother in a different way than you love your child. In fact, if you have more than one child, you will noticed that you love them all differently. You respond to them differently, they respond to you different, you say things to one child differently than you would express things to other child. They have different needs, different ways about them, so naturally you respond to them differently, but they are the same because they are your family. The same can be said about the romantic partners in your life, you can say you're not 'in love' with your ex-partners anymore, but you will always hold a place of love for them and it will be in a different way than you are loving your current partner. Even if you admit you're 'in love' with your ex and your current partner as well, you can still not be in love with them both the same-way.

The reason for this is because love is infinite and has infinite ways of loving. As a result, you are free to express your love to everyone, since you are not taking your love away from one person and giving it to another. You can love all 6 billion people on the face of this Earth and you will see that you can achieve 6 billion different expressions of love.

When you are standing in love, there is no judgment of anything. Everything is perfectly love. There is no such thing as past, good, or bad. Love only sees love. If you said to love, "past, good, or bad", love would only hear "love, love, or love". It's the only choice to choose.

Love sees itself in everything. If you asked love, "should I learn to be whole like you, or should I learn to change my perspective to be like you?"... love wouldn't even hear a question. In love there is no question. Love simply just chooses itself every time.

As simple as it sounds, the reality of love is this: Love is everywhere, simply choose love in everything. It isn't about learning anything, or shifting anything, or being anything certain. It is just about choosing love in every situation because love is all there really is, everything else is a twist of love in order to help you choose love.

However I will say this: once you fully merge with this concept, you will know exactly what to do because love is naturally within you. At first, the more you remember love (who you really are), the more you will remember to choose love.

This than becomes not something you learn, but something you remember. Every-time past/ego/fear shows up, you will remember to choose love instead.

Therefore, if you must have a first step, remembering is that step. Remember to choose love, remember to choose Love, remember to choose LOVE. Eventually you will not have to remember anymore.

Fear
You will find that the more you choose love, the more past/fear/ego will show up in order to help you choose more love. As a result, do not get frustrated by this, accept it as an opportunity to choose even more love and remember to choose love. Love is helping you reach the point where you do not have to remember anymore, so welcome it, LOVE IT.

Fear is the experience of protecting yourself from harm. Fear is your ego trying to save you from a painful experience. Fear remembers the past and tries to protect you from experiencing the pain you experienced in the past. Fear never lives in the moment, it's always reminding you of a scary past of pain. Anger, jealousy, and revenge are twists of fear trying to protect you from feeling pain.

However, fear is just an illusion. No fear is ever justified when truly faced.

Stand in Love & Choose Love
The ultimate real is reaching a point where not choosing love, is not an option anymore. Imagine merging with love, be the love you are, and only experience love. No other experiences can exist. Truly heaven on Earth.

...Extracted From Conscious Flex: Nobody Understands Me...

[Destine4destiny]

I know what you are saying makes so much sense Nicholaspowiull but I'm wondering if keeping my distance from people that say and do things just so that I can feel the same pain is the same thing you are saying. If I choose love, does that mean I have to deal with these individuals or the situation, or can I let it go and still love the people and the experiences I guess I am a little confused because I have told myself that if a person or a situation is not enhancing my energy but draining it than I don't have to tolerate it I can simply leave it alone and throw it back to the universe . But if I choose love ,do I have to bother with the people that hurt me and try their best to make me feel less than what I should feel?

[nicholaspowiull]

When I was in school, there was this bully that would always pick on me. One day I was sick and tired of it and I was done with being scared all the time, I decided I was going to stand-up to him. I thought to myself, "It is better to get the crap beat-out of me, then to feel scared all the time. I might as well get it over with, I will know what to expect next time instead of expecting to feel scared." Seemed logical to me at the time.

When I arrived at school, I was walking down the hall and I saw him by his locker. I knew if he seen me that he would start something and I already decided I was going to do something about it, so my heart was pounding out of my chest as I tried to hurry past him. He noticed me, he started walking down the hall beside me, nudging me with his elbow and taunting me. I stopped walking and faced him. Face to face, eyes to eyes, and I said "You got something to say to me!" with the most stern and assertive voice I could muster. I remember standing there, looking slightly up as I tried to keep my face aligned with his, and thinking to myself "Get ready for it, he is going to cause you a world of hurt!". Yet that never happened, instead, using a voice that expressed attitude and cockiness, he said: "So what if I did, not like you would care what I had to say anyways." As he walked away.

He never harassed me again and that was the last thing he ever said to me. However I felt disturbed by his statement. In fact, I felt more disturbed by that statement then I did the whole time he was bullying me. I could not make logical sense of why he would say that. Eventually it angered me. Of course! I don't care what he had to say! Why would I after he has been mistreating me all this time?! What part of that doesn't he understand!?

Consequentially though, it was me that didn't understand. I didn't understand that he was using fear (intimidating me) because he felt the fear that nobody cared what he had to say. He acted out in fear because fear was his perspective. I also didn't understand that he was seeking to be heard (to be loved). If I knew what I knew now, I would have approached him while standing in love and listened to him. I could see that we perhaps would have became really good friends, which is all he wanted in the first place. A friend that would listen. How sad that he was not taught about the perspective of love, he would have found what he was seeking.

My fear of him was unfounded. Every-time I faced fear head-on without backing away, this has always been my experience. Fear (F.E.A.R.) stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Can you see how the bully was in a perspective of fear, causing him to act out in fear, and instilling fear within me, all in the name of love? Can you see how even fear (the complete opposite of love) is a twist of love? Love is all there is, love is the only answer to every question. Albert Einstein put it this way: "Where there is love there is no question."

The One Perspective
"The perspective that will invite you to heaven on Earth is the perspective that: Love is everywhere, Love is everything, Love is the only answer, always being in a place of Love, constantly choosing Love, and seeing Love in every situation/experience."

This is the part I have had trouble with my whole life (until recently), this is the part that I failed at. I could logically see and belief that love is the answer, but I could not ignore the pain in order to choose love. It did not feel right to ignore my experience of pain, for my belief in love because that was not my experience, no matter how aligned my belief about choosing love felt.

I reached an awareness level where I could see the logic in choosing to love a person even when I am being victimized by them (or at least I could understand the concept of the idea in the mists of pain). What I had trouble with, was how can I love the situation/experience? The person was crying out for love, that was obvious, it's easy to see and accept the solution. The experience however is just a consequence of the person needing love. How do I accept the experience as love?

It Is What It Is
"I Am That I Am."... What does that saying mean to you?
To me it means that everything is what it is and can be nothing else. Every experience you have, is what it is. It's your perspective about the experience that gives the experience meaning to you. When you judge a experience, now you are labeling it as something certain. When you say an experience is painful, you are using fear to describe it. Fear judges and in it's judging it CAUSES pain. Fear creates pain and fear is an illusion appearing real. Therefore pain is not anymore real than fear. If you were to face pain head-on and never giving-in to it, you would find that the pain was not as painful as you thought is was. Especially when you can logically see that the pain was created out of a cry for love. Pain can be healed by choosing love.

Likewise physical pain can be dissolved by being in a place of love. You can heal yourself from sickness by realizing that you and everything that exists is love. It is all the same-thing, therefore how can anything really effect anything else? You created the sickness out of the illusion that there is something else besides love existing. Remember it's all perspective! When you stop judging certain experiences as painful, you cause it to become a new perspective, the perspective of natural. It is not one thing or another, it is what it is. And once you look deeply you will see that it is what everything is: love. Consciously change your perspective and you will change your experience. "A problem can not be solved with the same consciousness that created it" ~Albert Einstein

"One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is Love."
~Sophocles

[Normal/ Natural
To reach different levels of experiences (on any level, even spirituality), you must reach outside your 'normal' comfort zone. At first this is not going to feel 'normal' because you are not used to responding to life in this manner, but once you learn to stand in a place of love for quite sometime; it begins to feel natural and very 'normal'.

Distance Yourself From People = Fear
"Love heals, opens up, expands, sends out, reveals, shares, stays, creates, and lets go.
Fear harms, closes down, contracts, draws in, hides, hoards, runs, destroys, and grasps."
Can you see that running away, closing down, and distancing yourself from people (based on your perspective about them) is caused from the perspective of fear? Love would welcome all people, open itself up to everyone, and stay with them.

The Energy of Love
When you are standing in the energy of love and choosing only love, you will perceive only love in everyone and everything. The energy will be as different and as infinite as the energy of love is but you will still only see it as the same love.

How Do People Make You Feel?
If everything is perspective, then you always have a choice in what you will feel. Based on the choice in perspective you choose to take. If I were to have been in the position of love when that bully was bullying me, I would have never felt fear, I would see right away that you was looking for love. I would have saw the 'fear' as not fear (because my perspective *perspective of love being everywhere* would have not allowed fear, but only love). I would have seen that love was creating a perfect opportunity for me to express love and expand love more. I would have not felt threaded by him, I would have felt honored that he chose me to expand love. I would have accepted it as an opportunity to choose even more love and remember to choose love.

[Wombels]

To grow upon a spiritual level will strongly depend upon your actual location, if you are dwelling in a (so called rich) environment within the western world, it will be hard to gain any.

The best way to feed the spirit is to take it upon a journey, to travel to destinations which are not consumed by tourism and filled with natural beauty which will eventually trigger spirituality to manifest itself.

Actually one can chose to cut loose from the system which controls one’s mind, but most are not willing to go this far, simply because it’s not socially accepted. We are trained to remain inside the herd.

From the moment we are born in this world, we are all molded to become slaves, to cut loose from slavery will bring all answers needed to gain spiritual levels which surpass all.

Greetings Wombels,

[lifetimelearner]

I say you can take your spritual journey every day

find what matters to you and repeat it -
it might be as simple as showing compassion everyday


you don't have to travel from home to find what is already within you -

I recommned this book -
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

[fellowtraveler]

Levels? There are levels? No one told me there would be levels! Egad... ! What level am I??!!

[fellowtraveler]

Originally Posted by nicholaspowiull

When I was in school, there was this bully that would always pick on me...

Nick, I am truly enjoying your perspective, really I am. A lot of insight there.

I suggest you keep your posts about half as long at most, and then direct readers to your blog or wherever. You will give and get more benefit that way. And forcing one's self to be as concise as possible helps focus one's ideas.

Not a criticism, just a pointer to perhaps a more effective strategy. There are a number of long-posters who I've simply stopped reading a'tall.

[nicholaspowiull]

Originally Posted by fellowtraveler

Nick, I am truly enjoying your perspective, really I am.

Thank you for your perspective too It is indeed noted.

[kayumochi]

Ken Wilber has spent 30+ years on that very question. No need to re-invent the wheel. It is called Integral Theory. And even better, an Integral Life Practice has been developed. Look for the book by the same name.

[Wombels]

Originally Posted by fellowtraveler

Levels? There are levels? No one told me there would be levels! Egad... ! What level am I??!!

Read this (your) comment again in a few years, you might find out and realize without asking, if not, don’t worry most remain and get stuck somewhere along the way, try to see it as an understanding you (might) have gathered upon a personal level.

Levels of spiritual growth are that reality hardly ever noticed…

Greets Wombels

[Wombels]

The reason why I brought this up is because it is important to remain true to yourself, reading books might be fine, but they can easily push you further away from the truth you might seek.

To find, it’s important to get yourself to go through an experience when coming across new truths, one can read a book explaining this and that while you might perfectly grasp and understand what is being said or explained, still, you will be lacking the experience, meaning your knowledge might grow, but you will remain and gain none upon a personal level.

Spirituality is best and easiest to be found within your own process of thought, only when venturing inside your own, you will be able to trigger what is needed to gain which many amongst will never find.

If you carry hateful feelings towards whatever in your surroundings, try to brake this down, hate is by far the most underestimated issue which keeps many inside that limitation that they are and represent.

To travel, allows one to tap into truths which are not accessible in one’s own familiar surroundings.

Greetings Wombels,

[Ontowhere]

Stop trying. I swear sometimes things happen out of the blue.
A few years ago, I had a stage when I read a lot, about everything. I had this crazy need to read. It was a time when I realized the cruelty of this, World.
I went really depressed, for a long time. It was more of a feeling, like I don't want to belong. Then I met a few people in a matter of months, who introduced me to Spirituality. Each one, of them had a different, aproach to what it should be. I took what felt right.
I learned a lot and had a real experience of peace, that lasted for like fourteen days. I am not trying to say, that I experienced enlightenment, lol. But it was a diferent experience, from what I had known. Things were just happening at the time. I had no need to think, I was just doing things as they came and had everything done, with no effort. Than it went away. I couldn't get back to it, no matter how I tried.
Later I have decided, that I have had enough of this spirituality business. I felt is keeping me away, from acomplishing anything, it was almost like it made me feel guilty for being human. And I was just getting more depressed, again.
I only managed to keet away for like a week, when a new girl, started to work at our job. She said a few words, that I needed to hear and a lot of things started to make sense. It was like looking from a different angle. Now I am still not living at the kind of peace, I experienced than. But, over all my life is calmer. I stoped obsessing a while ago. I can catch myself thinking and let, go. People's opinions don't bother me, anymore. I can express, myself, if I feel like. I understand more, than I did than. Over all I am in better shape, for everyone around me. So I am trying to have faith.