My Spiritual Journey

April 5, 2006

Maybe it was because the stars were sitting pretty on a good astrological angle this winter, or because I gave up drinking booze last year -- whatever the reason, I found myself on a more  spiritual path as 2006 dawned.
I’m not fond of the word, “spiritual” as it applies to holistic health.   “Spiritual” is the feeling I get going to church on Christmas Eve.  But in our market-driven world,  “spirituality” has become a grab bag for all things holistic -- a garbage dump of ideas and techniques that often don’t have much to do with the soul.
At times something purporting to be spiritual can be nothing more than a New Age marketing ploy.  A wolf in a bad wig, shepherding gullible lambs off to the fleecing station to pay dearly for dubious “ayurvedic” medicine, or whatever.  Is drinking fish oil spiritual?  What about a nasal saline douche (salt water squirted up your nose)? Not in my book.  
I much prefer the holistic philosophy that, “the body is the mind,” as a gateway to spirituality. A healthy body blossoms into an exuberant spirit. If your body is strong and pure, your spirit is likely to ring with the same vigor. 

ON THE WAY
For me, setting off down a more spiritual path meant getting involved in uplifting activities, literally.
I joined a yoga class, reconnecting with a form of exercise I enjoyed years ago in college. At times it feels like you‘re beating yourself up in class, which is literally true: you wring your muscles, tendons and spine like a dishrag and then let them relax into a better posture.
I joined a drum circle. Is beating on an African skin drum any more spiritual than doing laundry?  Yes it is, because it helps you to understand that all things in life are interconnected by shared rhythms. It‘s a group prayer offered through a drumbeat. My heartbeat is expressed through my hands and shared by others, just as I share their’s.  A drum circle is a communion of souls.  It provides an example of how the body really is the mind.
I joined a cardio-kickboxing class. This isn’t any more spiritual than getting your nose pierced, but it made me feel better, and no one got hurt but the punching bag.
Sugary, fattening food went out the window and stayed there as my spouse and I went down the South Beach path.  Again, I don’t know if this is “spiritual,” per se, but you’d probably find testimony as such in any holistic magazine, so there you go.
   There was other stuff I did to get deeper into holistic health and the spiritual zone, but I see that this story is far too self-indulgent already to warrant going on. That‘s one of the side effects of the spiritual quest: it tends to be rather self-centered, but in a good sort of way.  Maybe it‘s no accident that the flowering of the so-called Human Potential Movement began in the ‘80s,
also known as the
“Me Decade.”

RESULTS
Will these positive holistic health changes  take hold?  I hope so, even though I’m only four months along the path to the new me.
But, like any spiritual pilgrim, I have to ask myself, what do I hope to achieve?  
Fortunately, those answers are clear. 
I don’t want “enlightenment.” From what I’ve read of Buddhism, enlightenment is just a step away from being dead -- a perfect state of non-being that Buddha aspired to. I suppose it runs along the lines of being able to walk on water -- not a necessary skill in 21st century America.
I just want to feel good and make other people feel good being around me.  I’d like my sense of spirituality to be a warm, welcoming fire. Often, that‘s easier said than done.
  I want to be what the gurus call “living in the moment”-- turned on and tuned in, right here, right now.  With it.
   Pass the spirit, please.