Notice so often, many assume spiritual growth means achieving some extraordinary, other-worldly, blissed-out state where we are somehow transported out of where we are. This view leads us to constantly reach for the next spiritual high, focus on futures. Or we feel that with all our commitments, responsibilities we have few ways for developing our inner nature. Both of these views reflect an error in perception. Let's step back, take another look. 

In fact, our day-to-day experiences offer raw material for spiritual development. Conflicts that arise in our families and among colleagues, the pain of losing loved ones, or our resistance to paradigms, stories, events, do not prevent inner development. Rather, they point to our ignorance and all else that hinders us from knowing and embodying true nature. We must simply be willing to surrender to the process. We are each invited to meet situations that present with compassion. This is true nature. 

Many of us do not distinguish between true nature and our personality traits, particularly our less desirable traits. Thing is, we are not the body, mind, emotions, but spirit-soul. It is the nature of the untrained mind to want what it perceives as advantageous and resist what seems painful. Discovering how the heart and mind can work together allows us to move beyond resistance and start to know inner freedom. Every situation we create has potential to reveal our true nature.

At different stages, we can feel overwhelmed by life conditions or feel bound by past traumatic events. If and when this happens, we do not see things as they really are. They are just mind-states which can be known, seen as impermanent, do not belong to us. They do not define true nature. A spiritual practice can provide insight and discipline to explore our perceptions. We each must discover what is true for ourselves. Heresay does not cut it. We can each do this right where we are. There is no need to go to a monastery or get our life more together. The intensity of our will and fears is a catalyst that propels us to go down the rabbit hole.  We can choose how to see, reframe, respond to events that will lead us to a deeper relationship with true nature.

For many years, words by Viktor Frankl have inspired me. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

It is crucial to understand, from a spiritual perspective, that the pain and suffering with which we work is no less substantial, or less real or difficult than those others face. The constrictions of the heart and mind cannot be measured like so many pounds of pressure; they are energies we learn to feel, harness and guide us back to true nature. Funny, the quest to reconnect with true nature is often lost in ordinary life. To be wrapped up in the mundane causes us to forget the big picture.

Buddha teaches that true nature is obscured by veils of wanting, fear, and delusion (or ignorance). He urges us to look at nature of our mind systematically and observe how these three mind-states condition what we think and value, and how we behave. He teaches that to identify with these mind-states causes suffering.
If we are not our thoughts, then what is our true nature, how do we find it, and how do we live so that it may flourish?

Well, the true nature of love is not based on ego strategy, but on the sheer openness of one heart to another. This is the kind of heart-opening that provides us with courage to face what arises.

Buddha also echoes our true nature is emptiness- a lack of a permanent Self- and when this true nature is realized, the divine states of the Brahma-viharas – loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity- emerge. There is also a state of mind and heart known as bodhichitta that leads one to completely dedicate oneself to the liberation of all beings from suffering. In the teachings of the great yoga masters, our true nature is Brahman, the universal soul, of which the individual soul is simply a part. When this is realized there is satchidananda, the awareness of bliss, from the knowing that pure awareness is our ultimate nature.

At some stage, it dawns, feelings of true nature are real. What Buddha describes are actual states of mind- body that can be physically and emotionally felt as profound consciousness shifts. For some people, these changes in consciousness have a strong physical component or a marked shift in perception. Some of us experience dramatically altered states of being. Others know subtle shifts in clarity, emotional centeredness, spontaneous acts of kindness. Every moment the body and mind experience true nature may feel transcendent, and manifestation simply occurs without effort. To know a “soft heart” is to act with selfless compassion. This is dwelling in the divine aspect of true nature. The new normal can feel like a transcendent moment.

Recognize value in spirituality

Notice true and real progress in this realm involves recognition of spiritual dimensions. Developing mind-body awareness alone is missing an integral part of the whole. Ego-driven pursuits also tend to overlook value of and influence of the unseen. This is about deepening awareness of what hijacks our attention in physical, energetic and external worlds and learning to use that insight to catapult us inward in new ways. Its about shifting from mind into the heart centre. This is not something new that suddenly comes. The heart centre is eternally-present, but it is covered by so much. It has to be rediscovered. As one grows conscious of the workings of our inner world and perception, one is capable of navigating timelines and versions of ourselves that we prefer. We’re always shifting, whether we’re conscious of it or not. We grow invisible to some people, disappear from certain situations as part of an energetic shift to reappear in other places, relationships and conditions. Self-awareness induces a lot of lucidity and fluidity to help us guide our shifting to the reality we prefer. Some people link Ego and the Law of Attraction. Yet, in Truth, we do not attract anything–we simply shift to the reality compatible with our frequency that contains the fulfilment of what is often goes unrecognized. These realities already exist. How can you create something that already exists? You cannot. All things exist in the eternal Now. All potentials you could experience exist frozen in the fabric of space-time, waiting for your choices to bring them unto life. We must get a handle on our distorted functionning, manipulated energies and what keeps us unconscious before shifts into new realities are conscious and not undermined by our own ignorance or misunderstandings.