Yes, I’m going to give this journey a name, but more of that later. For now lets just say this blog is a different take on modern spirituality, its for the driven, ambitious, bad ass folks of the world who want to ‘feel’ it, rather than just ‘think’ about it, for the ‘doers’… Indeed, its for the people who are not really very ‘spiritual’ at all.. its for ‘you’.
Yes, I’m going to give this journey a name, but more of that later. For now lets just say this blog is a different take on modern spirituality, its for the driven, ambitious, bad ass folks of the world who want to ‘feel’ it, rather than just ‘think’ about it, for the ‘doers’… Indeed, its for the people who are not really very ‘spiritual’ at all.. its for ‘you’.
But for now, just consider this – all basic spiritual teaching can actually be expressed as follows:
- Love yourself,
- Don’t give a fuck
- and Look good
Yep, sound fun? Off course its requires explanation, all such teachings do, but maybe even now it resonates a little, you intuitively understand ‘something”.. See, that’s all you have to do, ALL THE TIME to develop a spiritual character. I’ve given this advice to countless people over the years and they have all been ‘improved’ by it, some dramatically so, some less so.
There is no need to ‘practice’, no meditation, no yoga sessions, just follow this basic model. Of course, you can practice if you want to… if you want this to go a wee bit quicker… but then you’ll need to be ‘motivated’, and your not, are you.. So if you want you can skip right to the bottom of this post and read up on what its specifically means before taking your leave please do – bon voyage to you all. However, that will be it, cause you are not ‘motivated’ to go any further. And that would be a real shame…
And that ladies and gentlemen is the job I’m trying to do here, the mission that I have, and according to my like minded associates, foolishly, agreed to accept.. To motivate otherwise non-spiritual people to engage in some form of ‘practice’… See, as you are about to discover, this Blog is not about your ‘normal’ spirituality, hell no..
In our western world mainstream, ‘normal’ spirituality is for the sick, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy, the mentally ill. Its become a form of medicine, mainly because it offers hope, it offers comfort, its offers a sense of belonging, its offers release from anxiety. Its become a club, a badge of belonging for the struggling, the broken, the unhappy, the desperate, the people seeking peace, seeking refuge from their every day lives. To degree that’s what organised religion has always been, but never more so than right now..
And that’s fine, if it helps do it, but it effectively closes off real spiritual engagement from the vast majority of people in the western world. See, if your spiritual these days, their is something wrong with you, otherwise why are you doing this..
But spirituality as I know it to be is anything but normal, its the fundamental basis of life and death itself. Everything is spiritual, every act, every thought, every thing you do.. Its the same for everyone, for everything. There are no different versions of it, just different perspectives, different entry points, different experiences written down and lionized through the ages by different types of people. There are no clubs to join, no denominations to debate, its one system that it exists in nature, and you are currently ‘living’ in it, you depend on it, whether you like it or not, believe or not, understand it or not.
See, normal mainstream spirituality has lost its way, and lost most of its audience a long the way, but you can’t blame Buddhism, Christianity for this. The simple truth is that the ready market for mainstream spirituality, both now and thousands of years ago, is the poor, sick, disaffected – they are the ones out shopping for a solution to their problems, they are the customers. Therefore the organised religions that cater to this need have grown accordingly, to dominate the space to such an extent that the very meaning of spirituality has been completely distorted by this process.
Crucially, these people, the customers of modern religion were ‘motivated’ enough by their desperation to TRY, push through all the negative perceptions and personal resistance that everyone initially has to spiritual practice, and I mean ‘everyone’ has, and do whatever it took to get ‘something’ out of it. Remember this, its important – your motivation at the beginning is crucial to progress, so much so that your motivation actually IS your spiritual practice.