Spirituality – Everyday life

11/4/2022

8:06 am

It is another Friday morning.

I woke up really early after sleeping for five hours. I have been trying to get back into my sleep schedule and stick to the six hours that I was getting before. It has been a struggle, mainly because of the seasonal depression. I sleep too long and end up napping during the day. It is a constant cycle.

When I wake up too early to get up, I tend to scroll through social media just to be doing something.

Sometimes, I will find inspiration and repost which normally consists of surfing videos, ocean pics of sea creatures, landscapes, and messages of positivity.

I saw this quote and sought out who it was from, realizing that it actually was only part of the original quote.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

That quote is insightful and I believe it applies to how we think or what we do on a daily basis. How we not only live as human beings but also why we struggle.

I grew up attending a Christian church. The religious information I received was between both a Baptist and a Methodist denomination. I did attend once, as a young adult, a Pentecostal church which was way too archaic in its thinking about the purpose of men and women in the church. This particular church did not allow the women to sit with the men and they were relegated to the back of the church with their children. That was definitely not my cup of tea. I was way too progressive in my thinking at nineteen to believe in that sort of patriarchal behavior.

As I got older, becoming more aware of the role that Christianity played in the decimation of indigenous peoples throughout the world, those teachings were forever marred and distrusted. I know that I am not the only one to realize this but there is a difference in how I view hope, faith, and belief, the cornerstone or foundation of most religions.

I began to realize that our own actions do reverberate and come back to us. That we as human beings have the ability to make changes in our life that has nothing to do with what religious figures or teachers have taught us.

That we are not completely reliant on a “God” to guide us. That as human beings, our “spirit or soul” is what we ultimately want to follow, and is grounded in instinct, experience, and knowledge. This wisdom can be seen in the energy that we put out into the universe or that we receive in return.

Speaking in these terms means it is spirituality that I feel strongly about.

Spirituality – “the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.”

Religious – “relating to or believing in a religion or its teachings”

The reason for pointing out these distinctions is that I believe churches, the place of worship, and the teachers, pastors, priests, or preachers of religion, have become too political, commercial, and rely on capitalism to keep growing.

These institutions no longer seem to be about a belief system, they appear to have become solely about growth. They are hiding behind a mask of spreading the “word of God” to other places through participating in these endeavors. This only makes these entities wealthy while keeping their parishioners poor under the guise of piety, humbleness, and living as God tells them to do so.

They are no longer teaching about growing or strengthening their soul. They are no longer instilling the belief in having faith, being a good neighbor to others, and loving people for who they are. They are no longer talking about morality or values. Those were basic ideals that I received growing up and it has stuck with me my whole life.

Spirituality is about living beyond these ideas that “things or stuff” in life is important. It is about seeing and being a part of the world around us. Understanding how we are connected to not only one another but to everything around us in the natural world. It is also gaining an understanding of how we fit within the universe as a whole. Our actions as human beings, in not taking care of not only each other but the world around us, is making the world out of balance. This is the reason for the lack of harmony and peace.

In my opinion, this is a part of the reason behind the rise of depression and anxiety in most young adults over recent years. The ability to see the goodness in the world has been clouded by wars, mass shootings, poverty, inequality, natural and manmade disasters. The advancement in technology over the last 10 years has been a contributing factor in making the world seem smaller, more disconnected, and chaotic.

Advancements within the human race have not been made to make the lives better for all of mankind. Instead, technology has become about excess and the bottom line for corporations.

This feeling of being “lost” in the world and insignificant, contributed to many of the civil unrests, political activism, and social revolutions over the last decade.

Until we, as human beings, stop seeing or staking importance in “things” as a measure of who we are or our success, there will continue to be these issues. Limited progress is being made for not only humanity’s sake but the world we all share and live on.

There needs to be a revitalization of the human spirit.

There needs to be an emphasis on the people in the world as individuals and not the collective.

Every person has their own unique skills, talents, and creativity that needs to be brought out and celebrated. The hopes and dreams of the individual is important to the world.

People need to be encouraged and find hope again to regain a sense of happiness, belonging, and purpose.

The pandemic is one pivot point in our human history that reflected that need to find balance again.

It made all of us aware of our own mortality and the time we waste on “things” that were not really important to our existence. This awareness is still growing and it is affecting most people, corporations, and governments.

This is what I had already believed about myself, spirituality, and how I fit in this world.

It took many years, before the pandemic, to realize that I can contribute positively back to the world, and that each action I take, every day, can be impactful.

I came to believe that my individuality, creativity, and the way I carry myself was important to what I wanted to accomplish in life. That these traits did not have to be approved by anyone else.

The only issue in believing this about myself, was it caused the relationships with others to be strained, due to their inability to move “out of the box” in their own thinking.

Relationships and friendships ended due to this unwillingness to accept a different point of view. The unwillingness to see the value in who I was as a person.

In the future, there will have to be a revolution of thought, in order to make significant changes to the world we live in.

I still hold on to the hope, faith, and belief in others doing the right thing for everyone.

I can only hope to see these changes within my lifetime.

Thank you so much for stopping by.

Have a wonderful week!

Peace, love, happiness, and good vibes, always.

Suzanne