Written by: Donna Collins, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
To experience the spiritual essence of who we are is to experience liberation from fear and inner freedom.
The 10 Steps To Spiritual Living is a perfect companion to carry with you each day as a gentle reminder of how to maintain your Spiritual awareness in as many moments of your life as possible.
The guide is based on the book Faith In Everyday Life which elaborates on the 10 steps to Spiritual Living. If you resonate and enjoy using this guide, I would recommend reading the book which will allow you to expand your awareness further, through learning grounding and heart-opening techniques.
To trust that we are spiritual beings in a physical body, here on this planet to shine our light of awareness, through our healing; accepting and loving our own shadow; is the first step to Spiritual Living”
1. REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE MORE THAN YOUR THOUGHTS
Our intellectual minds help us to survive in the world. However, our thoughts also
perpetuate fear if we allow them to continuously imagine scenarios that stem from our limiting beliefs about ourselves.
Trusting that we are more than our thoughts is essential for us to learn to listen to ourselves differently, beyond the constant whirring of our minds.
Implementing practices to help distance ourselves from thoughts and slow them down is essential to Spiritual Living.
Recognising the way you speak to yourself is crucial to slowing thoughts down. If we are speaking harshly to ourselves, inevitably, another voice replies to try to justify our actions and our thoughts.
Practice noticing the words you use that are aimed at yourself and replace any harsh words with understanding and compassion.
This practice can bring profound changes to happiness levels and can help improve any relationship because as we start to speak more kindly to ourselves, we can understand what others need to hear too!
2. DAILY PRACTICE
It is very easy to start with a good intention to live a spiritual life. This is, however, just the
beginning. It is so important to recognise that life gets busy, and for many people, the first thing to stop during busy times is a spiritual practice.
And yet, it is during these times that it is really important to ensure the spiritual practice continues, as this is the time we all need nourishment and nurturing perhaps even more so than when life seems slower and easier.
The key to continuing a spiritual practice daily is to understand and embody the concept that this is not simply something that you do. Daily spiritual practice is an honouring of who and what we are.
Listening to yourself on a deeply profound level means you are more able to meet the demands of daily life without, in effect, keeping yourself quiet; shutting yourself down so that you can get on with things.
So practice listening to yourself every day.
3. GROUND
Listen to your body! When we spend time attending to the sensations in our body, we
automatically use less energy to generate thoughts. This can be such a relief for many people! It does not have to be complicated. The following daily practices will start to shift your attention away from your thoughts.
Daily body scanning. Close your eyes and notice how your toes feel today! Notice the sensation of the floor supporting your feet and the sensation of the floor, cushion, or chair supporting your back or legs.
Next notice where in your body you are holding tension and focus on releasing that tension every time you exhale.
This may sound simple and the good news is, it is! The more you practice, the more you heighten your embodied sense of who you are.
Visualise!
Your imagination is more than a picture in your mind. It is a way of intentionally managing your inner energy.
Imagine you are a tree with roots reaching down into the earth. This practice helps many people feel more connected and centred in themselves.
4. MEDITATE
Meditation can help us to continue to distance ourselves from the experience that we
are solely our thoughts. To begin we can start to learn that we do not have to take action every time our thoughts tell us to.
Meditation can help us to realise that our thoughts often stem from our feelings and our actions are an attempt to fix or change our feeling states. Learning to notice our thoughts without attempting to change our outer world is a big step in shifting our awareness of ourselves and others.
We can learn through meditation that when we stop trying to do this, we can experience inner peace.
A simple meditation is to imagine a clear blue sky with clouds floating across it. Imagine the sky is you and the clouds are your thoughts.
Practice watching them float by.
5. BREATHE
Focusing on your breath is a very powerful way of shifting your attention away from
thoughts. Breathing in the right way can also have huge relaxation benefits and increase energy levels as well as create a sense of stillness and space within.
So how do we breathe?!
Firstly notice how you’re breathing right now. Many people breathe in a very shallow way, breathing in and out of the upper chest.
Now imagine your lungs are more of a barrel shape, your lungs fill outwards and backward. Next, consciously focus your breath down into these places. It can be helpful to place the back of your hands against the sides of your rib cage to feel your lungs inflate.
As this happens, continue to inhale and let your stomach rise also. Apply as much focus to the exhale as the inhale. Breathing out, let your chest deflate and your stomach draw in.
This is one full, diaphragmatic breath. Congratulations! Implementing this breathing technique will help you naturally relax and be more grounded in your body.
Some people also experience a correction in the alignment of the spine when doing this practice. Enjoy!
6. VISUALISE “IMAGINATION IS EVIDENCE OF THE DIVINE”
Once you have quietened the continuous dialogue of your mind. It will be easier for you
to become aware that your thoughts also generate emotions.
This awareness is a gift because you can then choose thoughts or images that help you experience positive emotions like happiness, peace, calm and joy.
Spend time imagining a safe space within you. Imagine a familiar scene. Imagining a natural landscape can help us connect with something greater than ourselves. Imagine for example a meadow with long grass and beautiful flowers.
Whatever you imagine, use all of your senses to take yourself into a fully immersive space.
With practice, it is possible to create an emotional space that you enjoy being in, whenever you choose.
This regular practice can bring an enormous sense of inner freedom and power.
It is also the beginning of realizing that we have within us an infinite, expansive space of creativity, that is our spiritual essence and connects us with something greater than ourselves.
7. HONOUR YOUR FEELINGS
Many people walking a spiritual path hold themselves back as they resist their emotions
for fear that they will make them in some way ‘unspiritual.’
Ultimately, we live in a human body and part of being human is to experience a plethora of different emotions.
Honouring feelings means not attaching labels of good or bad to any emotion but allowing them instead.
Viewing emotions as colors in a spectrum of light can be helpful to understand that each emotion is simply a different frequency that is moving through our body.
The biggest fear that most people have is of the emotion itself rather than whatever is causing it.
So practice allowing all feelings, welcoming them as strangers in our house means we can get to know them and they become less scary.
Emotions are simply energy in motion, part of who you are. They are also the gateway to our infinite creative selves so if we can allow and listen to our emotions, we can move through fear and this gateway to the infinite peace and love beyond.
8. LOVE
Love, Love, Love! Love is the true frequency of the spirit that we are and is often used
interchangeably with the word Light. Many people look to get or find love from someone else. Once we realize that we are in Love, we can feel truly liberated.
Ask yourself how many times a day do I experience Love? That tells you how often you experience yourself and the spirit that you are.
We can access our feelings of Love by using our thoughts to think about someone or something we love and noticing where in our body we feel this.
Then visualise this feeling filling your body and expanding outwards.
Spend time feeling this. You can experience this anytime you choose! Love is an emotion and also your true frequency, beyond any fear, and is infinitely expansive and creative.
The complete visualization to experience Love can be found in Faith In Everyday Life.
9. TRUST
We cannot fake all things spiritual. Our lives do not transform if we purely state we are
living a Spiritual life. We have to feel it through our entire being and we have to trust that no matter what happens in life we are held by a Divine presence that we also feel through our hearts.
We cannot fool ourselves or the Divine about our spiritual beliefs, so honor your doubts if you have them. It can be helpful to question and sometimes part of the spiritual path can be learning knowledge through books.
In my experience, many people start reading books in answer to an inner calling as they are not quite sure how to respond to or express this calling in any other way and this is ok!
Spiritual experience, however, is just that, experience, and from here we learn wisdom, and from this wisdom, we learn to trust that even though we may not always have awareness of something greater, it is still there, just as the sun is always in the sky despite any clouds covering it!
If you find yourself experiencing doubt, look for the beauty in the world. Step outside, look at the stars and look out at a beautiful landscape.
Think about the fact that you exist at this moment, on a planet spinning in space. Know that, you are a miracle and part of something greater.
Use this awareness to remind yourself of all the millions of things that you don’t know but exist outside and within you!
Allow yourself to feel the joy of this. Joy is an expanded state of being and will take you right back to Love if you follow it!
“Faith To go boldly with Trust In Our Hearts”
10. SPIRIT IS ENERGY
Living a spiritual life is living an energetically aware life as we come to know that spirit is
energy. When we live a spiritual life we can open up to new awareness that everything in existence is energy and exists at different frequencies.
Looking after our wellbeing includes looking after and maintaining our energy or spiritual frequency.
Our thoughts and our emotions are energy in motion, which means that each emotion that is either felt consciously or carried unconsciously in the body changes our frequency.
The multiverse is also intelligent and responds to our frequency. We can understand that responding is a means of creating the world we experience.
Our lives change dramatically when we realize that our perceived space around us is energy and our conscious thought and intention can alter the frequency of this energy in alignment with our own.
This also applies to the energy of other people impacting our frequency. More about Living an energetically aware life can be found in Faith In Everyday Life.
LIVE!!!
Spiritual Living is just that. Living life to the full. Being present in each moment.
Experiencing, giving, and receiving Love; accepting and allowing your feelings, and not giving yourself a hard time for not being some ideal perception of perfection.
Being spiritual does not mean being perfect! Being spiritual means loving yourself and others in all our imperfections. Knowing that we are all on a journey of becoming all that we are.
It means giving kindness and compassion as much as you possibly can and not judging others for their imperfections.
It means being the Love that you are beyond fear.
It means trusting that you are never alone and that you are here on this planet for a reason, otherwise you wouldn’t be here!
It means recognizing that Love and Light are your guides within to lead you and draw you to a life that is aligned with that reason.
That reason is often very simple. To remember the Love that you are.
When you practice being this Love, it is possible to experience an expanded state of being, and you start learning how to ENJOY!!
Donna Collins, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Donna Collins is a unique presence in the field of psychotherapy and evolutionary consciousness. She is the author of Faith In Everyday Life; a Psychotherapist, Life Coach, and the Founder of Star Energy Healing.
Bereavement was the catalyst for a significant spiritual awakening, which transformed Donna's life from a corporate environment to psychotherapy and healing. Donna has refined her work and now teaches sensitive people how to overcome their fears and create a life they love.
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