Spiritual Enlightenment

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Spiritual Enlightenment You

long to live a more spiritual life and be a source of love, hope and

healing energy to every soul you encounter. You yearn to quiet the

negative chatter inside your mind, to tame the chaotic rumblings on the

edge of your consciousness and discover a clear sense of meaning and

purpose. Whether

you're just starting out on your journey or are already deeply devoted

to a particular path, these twelve steps can bring your understanding

of basic universal principles into sharper focus, reenergize your

pursuit of spiritual enlightenment, and strengthen your connection to

the deep love. STEP ONE: RETHINK YOUR WORLDVIEW The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. -- Eden Phillpotts Do

you view the universe as a friendly realm and God as a benevolent,

loving being? Or do you see the world as a harsh, unforgiving place and

God as a judgmental, punishing force? The way you look at the world, of course, influences your thoughts that, in turn, influence your actions. Following

that logic, it's easy to see that shifting from a negative

conceptualization of God to the realization that God is synonymous with

love, truth, joy and beauty will, like dominoes falling, create more

positive thoughts and actions. In

other words, if your daily existence is chaotic and stressful and your

self-image is in the dumps, the first step to take in transforming your

life is to examine your core beliefs about God and the universe.

Drilling down to the essence of what you believe, with all the honesty

and courage you can muster, and then beginning the process of

reinventing your relationship with God, is the key to unlocking the front door to your spiritual mansion. The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes. -- Anonymous As you start your journey, it's important to remember that there are no shortcuts.

You will not become a master overnight. The path to enlightenment

begins by exposing yourself to new concepts that may challenge your

entire belief system and leave you reeling from information overload.

As soon as you force your eyes to open, to really open, you begin

noticing evidence of spiritual principles at work that eventually lead

you to believe that there may be something to these radical new ideas.

Then, in time, as your awareness expands, all doubt is removed and the

ideas you once ridiculed you now know to be true. Finally, as you live your life in complete harmony with universal laws, you become one with them. The path to enlightenment, then, consists of four steps: learning, believing, knowing, being.

For a dramatic portrayal of one character's step-by-step transformation

from ignorance to cosmic consciousness, see the movie, "The Matrix." STEP TWO: KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT SEPARATE FROM GOD You are literally a drop of God in a sea of God. -- Schnell (Prema Baba Swamiji) The

very life force within you is a divine spark, an extension of God.

Though you cannot claim to be God, His divine essence is your

birthright. And, just as a drop of water is not the ocean itself, still

it is of the ocean and has all the characteristics of the ocean. But

God is not just present in every human being. There is no thing and no

place where God is not. If nothing is separate from God, it follows

then that, at the deepest level, we are all connected to each other and

to every atom of creation. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity. -- Edwin Hubbel Chapin This complex web of divine energy that we call the universe is referred to in quantum physics as the unified field. Deepak Chopra describes this conscious energy field as "literally an expression of the mind of God." A

wonderfully succinct definition of God was taught to Paramahansa

Yogananda by his beloved guru. In six simple words, Yogananda, author

of the spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi, beautifully

expressed the ubiquity of God and the reason why all of life unfolds so

perfectly and purposefully. God, he wrote, is "that supreme

intelligence which governs everything."