I used to be an atheist all my life until about a year ago when my perspective regarding god and all things spiritual had a sudden shift. Life hasn’t been the same since. Now, at this point in time, I feel really isolated. Most of the times, I enjoy this solitude but things get really difficult at times. So, I have a few questions to you:
1) How did your spiritual journey start?
2) What do your daily practices look like and how do you find the strength to stay disciplined?
3) What would you suggest to a complete beginner in this path?
4) How does one maintain a balance between spiritual and other material aspects of their life?
5) How to maintain strong faith in face of hardships and generally difficult times?
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My spiritual journey begins with the introduction of Geeta book in my life. Life has improved overall since then . Hare krishna!
Well don’t think spirituality something heavenly that will solve your problem at one shot. It’s a journey , process, you need to constantly work. Stick to one practice and deepen your knowledge and strength with various philosophy.
Your mind will be your greatest enemy at that time. Everytime you feel something wrong in your life you start to look into your practice skeptically.
I got first introduced to meditation and spirituality, from my science teacher. He is used to practice transcendental meditation by maharishi Mahesh yogi. Later I got to know about different philosophies and Srimad Bhagavad Gita. I first read Gita. I felt sleepy and boring 😅 but yeah as time keep going and whenever life hit me hard I turn to Gita and Shree Krishna. I began to understand its message and it keep me humble. And I slowly changed my lifestyle according to Gita being more satwik ( mode of goodness). I i started include god as person in part of my life. And that is what it strengthen my faith
Nowadays I try to read Gita everyday at least 1 shlok. And do chanting of hare Krishna Maha mantra. This two meditation techniques I personally prefer mainly mantra meditation. It’s my daily practice now. The strength to stick to the practice, i get from other people practicing it ( association, it can be online or offline ) and my experiences with hard situation of my life how it has helped me.
Everybody are already on their own spiritual journey they just need clarity. Just remember as a beginner start humbly listen to various personality and practice if it doesn’t help you. Move on to next practice but I prefer you to start with hare Krishna Maha mantra ” Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare rama Hare Rama Rama Rama hare hare ”
You as a life has 3 level of existence spiritual, mental and physical right. So don’t think only one as your whole existence currently we are within this body conditioned. So you need to take every aspect of your life together in Harmony. Just make sure your body and mental existence are temporary and subjected to time. It changes so use this to make you spiritually healthy. Don’t let yourself to be in mental imagery of ecstacy and pain. Be conscious. Divert you material aspect of your life including wealth, relationship, power in spiritual growth
Practical tip : keep check on your mind, sometime mind makes us feel i should avoid material things but try not to keep negative thoughts about it, rather increase positive attitude by your practice and philosophy .
In negation there is no life , life means adding growing keeping positive attitude. Focus mainly on adding positive values in life than reducing faults in own self. for me i add Shree Krishna’s message and his representative message as source of positivity .
As you have asked about maintaining strong faith it will come with time, Gita says we have god himself as paramatma within our heart. If you get sincere he will guide you. You just surrender . Surrender doesn’t mean giving everything up and doing nothing. It means giving up our contaminated perspectives and nature to be aligned with god.
It is said paramatma is with you every moment he knows everything about you even the things you don’t know about yourself. There will be moment of test when you are surrounded with hard situation to see to whom you take shelter. Either take shelter of your paramatma and continue or you take shelter of your mind which itself is conditioned by materialism
All the above-mentioned things are basically what I say to myself I am addressing you as I speak to myself so I apologize if you feel it like some kind of instructions 😅
Thank you writing this much have helped me too. It has got me to basics. I have heard it somewhere “we are not human being having spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having human experience”. So we are already spirit we just need to go unfold us. Our existence as spiritual being never get lost we need to move forward
Meditation bro the first and last freedom
This is such a nice post and the replies are equally genuine. Damn, my heart is full.
So in my case, I dont know if I can call myself spiritual yet, but spirituality has been an anchor that has saved me so I will try to answer this in my opinion.
1 – I would say I had a phase in my childhood when my mom used to explain to me about the universe, the creator and god. She used to counsel me about brahma muhurta and gayatri mantra and durga strotram and I used to believe that god existed. Then came a really traumatic time in my life where I turned atheist, actually. I refused to believe that god existed because if he did he would not let a child suffer this way. Then another twist in the story came which led me to listening to Brahmakumari Sister Shivani and her words really resonated with me. The way she spoke and what she said helped me realize that change is the only constant in the world, and actually assisted me back into believing that a supernatural force exists and it manifests in different forms. She helped instill the concept of detachment within me and when I gave into acceptance, my life has been like a calm ocean (many things happen, but I continue to ebb and flow in my life). Till date, I am not very religious, but with philosophy and religious scriptures like bhagvad geeta, my life feels ‘anchored’.
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2 – Again, I dont find myself as someone with rituals, yet. I just know that attachment is the root of all suffering, detachment is the true essence of love and there exists a higher being and my life isnt purposeless. Anytime I find myself overwhelmed, I talk to the space. I practice mindfullness in daily life. Sorry if this answer isnt helpful.
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The answer is getting too long but my only suggestion to a beginner is learn to differentiate between being spiritual and being superstititos. Question everything so that you can get answers that you will accept rather than blindly following a path because someone said so.
4. And the balance part gets tricky sometimes, but usually if you practise enough, a balance will happen where neither can you completely be pulled by material life nor will you end up on the other end. Mindfullness helps.
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5. Again, this sounds so dumb I know, but once you come to accept the teachings of any of our religious scriptures or people like Osho or BK Shivani or Gaur G Das, you will get to know that the basic fundamental rule of life is ‘This too shall pass.’ It will require a bit of practice. Infact, even I am not perfect and probably never will be but it is being conscious of your thoughts that help the most.
Feels the perfect question so writing them out here as well :
1. I smoked weed when I was 18 for the first time and hooked on it cos It showed me i could actually be happy in life (euphoric first trip also at the time I had suicidal tendencies because of life events so weed helped alot). Soon after that I was smoking too much, didn’t want to depend on it and was looking for a way to stop. That is when I came across vipasanna and did my first retreat when I was about 19 and it changed my time completely. This became the foundation of who I am, my believes and idealogy and how I live my life in the later years.
2. I practice vipasanna meditation and often do solo trekking or traveling minus the vlogger or taking too many pics. I believe doing things in solitude and I have found it to be a bedrock of learning to evolve and grow as a human being. I believe in “karma garnu faal ko aash na garnu”. Since we have so little control over the future it’s pointless to have expectations so I strive to keep them minimal and often contemplate my own death , immortality and fragility of life. However these things don’t upset me instead i try to make the best out of things despite the situation. I also practice “memento mori” you can google it from stocisim.
3. Do not be think wearing white or orange robes and doing mantra jam or going to the temple or putting crystal mala and doing rekhi or doing magic mushrooms and ayuwaska is spiritual. Yes, these things are done for their own purposes and often give a different experience from our daily reality. However the true essence of spirituality is simply being in this current moment. You do not have to change anything simply here. Put effort on the most mundane of things, for example your health, work, finance, exercise, food, sleep, relationships, praying, doing Puja, cleanliness, personal hygiene, meditation. If you work on the basic things and do it without seeking something from it you will like the most spiritual life.
4. Start with the most basic things do what are your responsibilities. Some I have mentioned in point number 3. If you want to read books, read books from bhagavat Geeta, books on stocism, Shiva Puribaba’s long pilgrimage. Read Shiva Puribaba’s Long Pilgrimage he has explained it very well in the book.
5. Life is like a river it is always flowing. You have very little control on it so don’t worry things will change on its own. However always “Start where you are, do what you can and use what you have.” Because without effort in this world you will simply exhaust your breaths and won’t really make any use of it. So use your time wisely in earth. To be born as a human being is a great gift.
Reading ancient books like…. Madhyamikaavatara by chandrakirti , Mulamadhymikakarika by nagarjuna, and Upanishads from the vedas..
It created an interest for me to learn more…i don’t call myself spiritual but the hindu and buddhist phlisophies really resonates with me
Atheism is not the antithesis to sprituality.
Search kashmir shaivism in Google and thank me later!
Well let’s say I had some experiences I had no explanations for.
But still I remained skeptical.
However, as I aged I understood that it isn’t about God. But it’s the values that we’ve inherited.
Although they come from the Hindu religion, I realized our ancestors were far better than the Christians and Islamists.
And I realised all my liberal, live and let values comes from the culture I was raised in.
So, I’m not religious but I abide to the Hindu culture. I am mature enough to separate the worst stuff like caste system, and embrace the good stuff.
And it actually empowers you. That’s what I learnt.
1. Started doing meditations early as my parents did it as well.
2. You really don’t wanna give up the extra amount of sleep for waking up early and doing something like meditation without figuring out what you are getting in return but when I really got in it when I was in my late teen, the meditations helped me get more focused on my works, control my temper and I became a calm person.
3. Its not easy, but nothing is easy. There was this quote that I always go back to,
*“Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard. Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your hard. Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Choose your hard. Communication is hard. Not communicating is hard. Choose your hard. Life will never be easy. It will always be hard. But we can choose our hard. Pick wisely.” — Unknown*
So nothing is easy but you just have to go through it.
4. The more spiritual I became the less materialistic I became. This can affect you and your family members as well. So be with people with similar mindset. As a example, my father is retired, he has build up wealth that would give my parents enough to survive each month without any assistance from my side. So he just does what he loves and meditates everyday. But for younger generation, first you need to build up wealth not only for you but to raise the next gen as well. So always keep this in mind, before going full saint. Read the autobiography of Yogi, Swami Yogananda. You can get good reference from there on how to balance this stuff.
5. I think the faith things happens automatically if you are disciplined about doing meditation. i believe that the higher energy is always there you help you anywhere you are and similar stuff has happened to me. So just believe in the higher energy. Learn about manifestation as well. This can help you in your journey.
1. My journey started at 19.
2. Daily practices include anything from moments alone reflecting on your day, gratitude for your creation, and learning more about the area of spirituality you want to explore. I don’t want to assume you are Hindu, Buddhist, etc
– I find spirituality and religion are two different forms of worship.
3. If you are open to it, I suggest sleeping meditation. YouTube has many videos that you can listen to as you sleep. If you get more comfortable, try 5 minutes and increase while sitting. There are many guided meditation videos on YouTube in English and Nepali.
3.1- once you get comfortable with meditation and want to challenge yourself, I suggest trying Vipassana. There is a center as well as Zoom groups that teach. Since I think religion and spirituality are different, I don’t want to suggest going to a place of faith such as a temple, mosque, or church if you are not comfortable with that. But if you are satisfied, the energy you can receive from those places will be immense. I love to go and sit and listen.
4. I believe that renouncing life is hard. I need my material things. Overconsumption of material items is terrible, and you should not let the material world dictate how you live your life.
5. Time is the most valuable commodity. Time heals everything. With time, I believe in karma. What bad has come has been a direct result of our actions. The good that comes is the same.
Find spaces you feel comfortable in and just be open to learning. There are many spiritual centers in Nepal; try going to one! I hope you grow in your journey!
I started by developing a habit of Meditation. At first it didn’t made sense but the more I became consistent to it, the more the purpose of life started to make sense. I also realized that spirituality is nothing about fancy attainment that people in social media portrays it to be. Its a way of human being. We are totally not what we think of, nor how we look infront of mirror. There is another layer beneath that where we should get identified with. That’s the true you, which you can love, respect and cultivate it to spread love to people around you. Normally people call this as your inner child. The first milestone for anyone interested about spirituality would be to deidentify of what they think and how they look. That takes a lot of practice but once you reach to that mindset, it flows like a river and you don’t even need to separate meditation from your normal living. The meditative state will be blended in all of your day to day activities. You’ll meditate when you talk with people, when eating food, when bathing, when learning something, when teaching something e.t.c.
I learnt this just by staying consistent with my meditation practice and reading book. “The Miracle of Mindfulness” by Thich Nhat Hanh is truly a remarkable book. It’s such a plain simple things written there but so so impactful. Still, to this day my mind pulls out the lines from the book and connects so many emotions that I feel. I also joined Meditation subreddit and got along and stay motivated reading the people experiences. That, really helped.
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Thanks for asking this question. Looking back of those days I really felt I did right thing and cant imagine where would I be with that self-entitled mindset.
Listen to osho!!
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It’s an irony that mine started after i started listening to Osho
It’s an irony that mine started after i started listening to Osho
It’s an irony that mine started after i started listening to Osho
Spirituality and religion are mutually exclusive.
Please be advised
I also sometimes feel like waiting for something. Are things supposed to happen or am I supposed to make things happen. I feel lost at times.
Try reading the Unthered Soul or Power of Now. If you haven’t already.
I feel doors will open once you progress in a direction.
Went through serious depression and anxiety. Doctor suggested to try meditation and Yoga. Started doing those stuffs, watched videos of other people’s stories as well where they suggested reading Geeta. Read Geeta and I’m in better place than the past but still healing!!
It’s an irony that mine started after i started listening to Osho
It’s an irony that mine started after i started listening to Osho
It’s an irony that mine started after i started listening to Osho
Atheism is the first step to cut the crap. Everything then comes clear to your soul. All the best ❤️
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Spiritual means to know the truth
I believe one who believes in god and krishna are also atheist , they dont know god but believe the image of created by mind
I am not saying there is nothing , but it is our responsibility to know the truth to inquire it before u blindly believe or be bhakta or smthg like iskon people do that is call brain washing , real bhakti is to know that their is no self , their is emptiness full of everything
First know what a thought is
And what thinking is and the one who thinks , is it different from thought know this basics , i am not saying read it or believe it i am saying know this as it is a fact
For starting u can read
I am that by sri nisargadatta maharaj
U can read ending of time conversation of krishnamurti and david bohm
U can listen to krishnamurti
U can ready about nagarajuna philosopher