Topics

Making Your Life Your Practice

Living Your Spiritual Integrity

Identifying Your Spiritual Values

Observation

Making Your Life Your Practice

Making your life your practice is you being your divinity, living every moment from your divine essence–not simply accessing your holiness through occasional meditation, yoga or visits to a healer or teacher. This is total life. All moments linked and inseparable.

Living your divinity every moment is a commitment to developing spiritual goals, ideals that guide your interactions with the world, rules of spiritual conduct that you choose to direct your relationships and actions. Living by holy laws that help you choose thoughts to keep and thoughts to let go. Yes, you can indeed choose to hold onto your thoughts or not. Every action you choose to take or not contribute to the overall fabric of your life here on earth. Choosing to live in the state of being awake, aware and conscious of each word, thought and deed you create is truly making your life your practice. Living this way is what builds spiritual integrity and light.

The first step towards this new way of being is to understand the experience of living in your Spiritual Integrity.


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Living Your Spiritual Integrity

Spiritual Relating to the soul or spirit usually in contrast to the material world.

Integrity The state of being complete or undivided.

Living in Spiritual Integrity means that you have values that you have chosen to live by and that you are committed to regardless of the conduct of others.

Make no mistake, this is a huge undertaking.

Living in the physical world in your Spiritual Integrity is the goal that each of has been asked to take on as we incarnated in physical life. "Be in the world, but not of it" Jesus proclaimed. Though you may have made great attempts to be this way, I would lovingly challenge you to look and see how, when and where you are and are not in your life's integrity. Being aware of your state at all times is one of the most important spiritual practices to master.

As a teacher, Jesus knew how hard it was for energy beings to be in their divinity, in their physical life and he knew that this was the work that we are here to do.

Being in this physical reality is most difficult. A place where you can most assuredly loose your values is indeed THE place to practice retaining them. This is one of the many paradoxes that the Universe offers us.

Many talk about being spiritual, leading a life of spirit, but in reality while scores have spiritual thoughts, attend workshops and read books about spiritual beliefs, rarely do their daily actions consistently represent these values. This disconnect between who you deeply know you are and the actions you choose, (often unknowingly) is what contributes to feelings of unhappiness and the lack of fulfillment and disconnection that you may experience.

Certainly living in disharmony with your beliefs puts you out of alignment with your true self and does not serve you or others well. Most beings live this way, unaware that they control the power to bring happiness into their lives.

Living your Spiritual Integrity begins by identifying your spiritual values.


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Identifying Your Spiritual Values

In order to live in your Spiritual Integrity you need to be clear on which values you choose to own and where you currently stand with each of them.

Saying that you are of love, peace and compassion is different then living a life that reflects these values. Being able to hold on to these values in your daily life whether you are driving, waiting in line or in a challenging conversation, is an ongoing process. The goal is to live in harmony with the energies of the values that you choose to build your life upon. For many these values include: kindness, wisdom, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, integrity, endurance, honesty and sound judgment.

Begin by defining the values you hold most dear.

For many working from love, being kind, being in service to others, holding a place of calm, sitting in honesty, speaking your truths and walking your talk are key spiritual values. There are many others to consider, however being able to master one of these in your daily life continuously is an enormous effort and a huge gift to all.

Once you have defined an initial list of values, begin one by one to assess your current ability to stay in these energies. Consider a list, as it will help you to clearly see your work ahead. For instance if kindness is a value that resonates with you, begin to thoroughly examine your kindness quotient.

When is it easy for you to be kind? When is it difficult?

Do you have trouble being kind when you are hungry, tired or stressed?

Are there certain people who you find it difficult to be kind too? Are there others who are easy to be kind to?

You will need to watch carefully your reactions and it is helpful to build the ability to watch your responses to situations and people while events are taking place. This does not happen all at once and the power of observation is one of your most helpful tools.


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Observation

Watching yourself.
Let's be clear. This is not about you watching others.

Observation in this realm is about you watching yourself without judgment. Observing how you are in your world. Noticing which values you honor by living them and which you need to work a bit harder on in order for you to truly live in their energy.

This exercise of observation will enable you to begin to accept full responsibility for your life.

One of the truths held by spiritual students and teachers is that they are responsible for everything that happens in their lives.

They know that all people, circumstances and events have been generated by their soul in order for them to learn, grow and become everything they need to be. This is a huge truth. This is the big one.

If you can look at this and get your hands around it, if this rings true to you then you know that in order to own this responsibility you will need to accept responsibility for all of your thoughts, actions and deeds. In order to accept this job you will need a process that enables you to observe yourself as you move forward.

For as you live in the world of physicality, it will be easy to forget to be who you are. There will be many opportunities for you to react rather than respond, to be "of the world" and act from fear and anger rather than to be "in the world but not of it" and be your soul self, which is always, love and kindness. It is the act of observation that will enable you to truly see how you are, as you are in the process of your life.

The goal of this practice is to be able to see your actions and responses to any person or given situation as they happen, and most importantly to simply look and observe without any judgment.

Staying in non-judgment is initially as difficult as being aware in the moment. But this discipline can be achieved with consistent effort and is well worth the effort involved.

Practice observation daily choosing one value to focus on.

I started with patience. I found that patience was extremely difficult for me to have. I have lots of energy and being patient felt like being confined. I started here and was extremely surprised at what I found. As I began my journey to observe myself around patience, I began to note all of the times that the need for patience showed up. That was it. I just started noticing when I was asked to be patient. Suddenly (or so it seemed) the need to be patient was everywhere. It was almost as if the world was nothing but situations and people that demanded my patience.

That's how the Universe works. You choose a course of study; to put your attention on, an area to improve upon and suddenly the Universe give you lots of practice.

After noticing all of the opportunities to be patient, I realized it was time to look at my responses to each person and situation.

I knew I had to view without judgment and this was particularly hard for me.

I kept finding myself not in patience with my first reaction being anger with myself. But then suddenly I saw that my anger was directly tied to my impatience.

I knew that the cycle of impatience and anger would continue if I did not stop my judgment then and there. I had the true experience of how my impatience was not of love and how it continued a cycle that did not serve me. Forgiving myself, being in non-judgment with myself was needed in order for me to be in non-judgment and to have patience with others.

This is just one of the many ways and benefits that observation brings. As you develop this one way of utilizing observation, you will be inspired to bring this tool into your life in many ways--you will find a wonderful lifelong partner in the power of observation.


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