5 Ways to Lead a More Spiritual Life

How can you bring together these two seemingly divergent parts of your life?

Is it possible to merge the contemplative side of your life with the active, materialistic side of your life?

The answer is a resounding YES!

Joan Sutherland says that "enlightenment is everywhere we look", and Pema Chodron says "whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment."

The takeaway here is that enlightenment isn't just happening high up on the Hindu Kush or in a Buddhist Monastery, but it's happening all around you every day. You just need to open your eyes to see it and experience it. Most importantly, you need to WORK with it to expand it in your life. 

Below are 5 ways you can lead a more spiritual life:

1. Focus on the Positive in Life

With all the stressors in your life, it's easy to get trapped in a pattern of negative thinking. You worry about bills. You worry about sickness. You get upset when someone cuts you off in traffic. 

Turn on the news and all you hear are negative developments. There are endless things to get you angry, worried, fearful, and stressed. 

But the antidote to all this is to focus on what's positive in your life. Similar to focusing on what you're grateful for, if you focus on the positive things in your life you begin to feel more positive. 

Even if you only think about tiny things that make you feel positive, then that sends you in the right direction for the day.

No situation is too negative to begin feeling positive. It's the mindset that is most important. 

What you think about you bring about.

2. Be Mindful and More Aware--Live in the Now

Mindfulness is a word that is often bantered about, especially in meditation circles. However, what does it really mean?

When you are fully aware of your surroundings and thinking about the present, then you are in a state of mindfulness. 

This allows you to live "in the now." You no longer have to worry about things that went wrong in the past, since you can't change them, nor do you have to concern yourself with trying to control the future, because you can't. 

The only thing you can control is the present. 

When you live in the present you are more aware of everything that goes on around you and appreciate everything more. No longer are you racing through your day without paying attention to what's actually occurring. 

For example, most people eat lunch while multitasking and try to get through it as fast as possible. Few actually slowdown to enjoy the flavors and textures of the food they're eating or how satisfied the food is making them. Few people get outside, take a walk and literally stop and smell the roses. They're in a rush to the future.

When you're rushing to get to the future you can't enjoy the present. So live in the now.

3. Live Your Life to the Fullest

Part of enjoying the present includes activities that bring you immense joy and happiness. How do you bring joy and happiness into your life? 

Live your life to the fullest and conduct every day as if it were the best and most exciting day in your life.

Many people enjoy experiencing wondrous adventures or taking beautiful trips to exotic lands or doing things that bring excitement into their life. Whether these adventures are far away or are close to home, the effect is the same. The purpose is to make your life full of zest, enjoyment, happiness, joy and pleasure.

Life is meant to be lived every day as if it were your last--in happiness and joy.

Without this zest and joy, life would have no meaning, so it's imperative that we seek out this joy by living our lives to the fullest.

So many times during mediumship readings, beloved family or friends in spirit come through to implore the recipient to seek a fuller life and live life to the fullest. They sometimes offer regrets that they didn't live their lives this way and encourage their charges in the physical to learn from their mistakes.

If you had a choice, wouldn't you prefer to seek out joy and fulfillment and live your life to the fullest...whatever that means to you?

4. Learn to Forgive

During your daily life, you may often encounter situations and people that cause you hurt or pain. Sometimes this can be subtle, other times it can be quite harsh.

Forgiving others is an essential part of your spiritual growth.

It's important to realize the feelings you carry around of resentment, anger and hatred are negative emotions that weigh you down, inhibit your spiritual growth and prevent you from achieving higher vibrations of love and positivity. They dis-empower you.

Remember that those who hurt us have often been hurt themselves and still carry negative emotions with them. Consequently, the phrase, "Hurt people, hurt people" becomes quite relevant when you try to understand experiencing pain at the hands of someone else. 

See things from their viewpoint. What unique pain might they be carrying that they haven't released yet and are therefore causing you pain?

Furthermore, by forgiving someone who has hurt you, you begin to forgive yourself. As you send forgiveness out into the world, you are sending love and healing out from you to someone else. This love, healing and forgiveness comes from you, surrounds you and then moves on to its intended recipient. As a result, you too are healed and forgiven. 

By sending forgiveness out to the world, you are creating a closer connection to Universal Energy and become more aware of its unconditional love for you. So learning to forgive enhances your connection to all that is Divine. 

As 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope said, "To Err is Human; to Forgive [is] Divine."

5. Practice Loving Kindness

Perhaps one of the most powerful things you can do to increase your spiritual growth is to send loving kindness to others, even if you feel they might not deserve it. 

A wonderful way to improve this effort is to practice at least one act of generosity every day. That can be as small as giving a smile to a stranger to helping a person without a home something to eat. It can be as simple as picking up your neighbor's paper to paying for a cup of coffee for the person behind you in the line. 

Any act of generosity, regardless of whether it's material or in spirit, is an act of loving kindness that carries meaning.

Buddha has taught (in Karaniya Metta Sutta) that even in the darkest times our heart-mind has the capacity to be free of hatred. Metta is often translated as loving-kindness. Metta is an equalizer and antidote to hatred and aversion. In the current times we all live in, this is an important concept. 

The more you send love out to the world, the more you are growing love energy in your being. The greater love you have in your being, the closer to spirit and Source Energy you become. 

So seek to send love to the world and all those around you. Practice loving kindness. 

P.S. If you think your friends would benefit from this article, please share it with them.

Tags: meditation, living spiritually, spiritual life, spiritual reading, focus on positive, mindfulness, loving kindness, forgiveness, live life to the fullest