Personal Self-Evolvement Enroute by Spending Time across Spiritual Learning

Across my first 25 years of life, I have been blessed to receive immense love and support from my Parents, Grandparents, teachers and experience larger than life friendships. 

Hailing from a family having its roots in Education, I consider it as a privilege and blessing to have stupendous guidance, love and mentorship from my close family members. 

My late grandmother whose birthday just passed a few days back, gave us time-less lessons on self-love, being in the state of happiness and adopting spiritual principles in day to day lives. I remember learning one of the most difficult verses “Yamunastakam” from her when I was just in 2nd grade. To maintain one’s mindset along with holistic wellness was one of her core ways of maintaining her lifestyle. Hailing from a very educated family where her father served majority of his life as the Head of a reputed High School of a district laid the mark of decency, importance of discipline and education. Undoubtedly, with her presence and unconditional love - I have had some of the best childhood memories full of happiness. 

If you are in your 20’s and are questioning where you must invest your time apart from professional career in terms of priority order, whether it should be Fitness ( developing 6 pack abs or strong fitness persona ) , Learning Music or Dance ( an instrument or practice at an advance level ), or developing strong spiritual muscle - I would strongly suggest keeping strong spiritual muscle at forefront of everything and giving it a priority. The earlier you develop the same, earlier you will be on the course of holistic upliftment. 

It took me a long time to realise the essence of her spiritual persona and the soul strength that she possessed post she gracefully witnessed a peaceful departure at the age of 89 years. Being a staunch reader of spiritual scriptures, she not only showcased complete detachment from material affairs at the later stage of her life but also had remembrance of higher power during the last few months. Few years after that, after spending time across learning and deep diving into spirituality for a few months, I had been able to understand how she embodied spirituality in her daily life till last months. 

Contrary, I consider it a blessing to be born, brought up and loved in a family who have supported me throughout this course for a very good education and mindset. The magnitude of self-belief and few academic ups that I possess are their hard-core investments in me. Needless to say, observing instances of kindness, empathy, understanding and an attitude of service of all the family members have been a great enabler of development of sympathy and love. From managing to be decently good during the schooling phase to cracking one of the toughest Indian Mba entrances - I consider the entire course of education upliftment as not only my investment but also that of the elders.

Few months back, when I deep dived on spirituality - I got an opportunity to capture a brief overview from various different practices, by a mix of talking with spiritual leaders, visiting a few prominent places as well as reading & practising a few of the practices. 

Entering the spiritual world gave me the realisation that this has been one of the best long-term investments for spiritual self as well as long term evolution at a soul level. The amount of knowledge and stories of leaders, scriptures and rich wisdom is too large to capture - however few core spiritual learning can surely be traced by overviewing the majority of the learning given by the leaders over the course of global history. 

Adding a dimension of spiritual self provides a new essence to our own self, the way we grace every situation that we encounter in our lives is stupendously improved for our own selves as well as others. While it takes time to bring them into practice in our daily thoughts, behaviour and actions - it is very profound to make it an integral part of life as early as possible since every evolution takes gradual course. 

Just as it takes 12 grades to reach university level education, spiritual education also develops gradually. I aim to capture my own personal learning and core points that are important for implementation with their benefits at an individual level as well as community level. 

1. Whether you are a spiritual learner, practitioner, mentor, coach or leader - the essence of all spiritual development is developing “Self-Love” as well “Inner-Love” along with Harmony. 

Self Love is belief and love for your own self. Inner Love is experiencing love in all experiences and living entities. When you merge Self Love & Inner Love with a blissful state of developing Harmony, you channel holistic growth for your own self as well as the community around you. 

All spiritual essence boils down to developing more Harmony. It is the responsibility of spiritual enablers to develop harmony across communities or groups. 

Harmony is one of the core aspects of a peaceful, sustainable and blissful world. Spiritual leaders are at the fore-front of developing the same. All traits of unity, acceptance, forgiveness, love and strength reside in harmony. A drop of harmony is powerful to create vast circles of peace and happiness across communities for a prolonged period of time. Harmony hence is not just an attitude, but a state of mind at individual level and community level -and spiritual leaders are at the forefront of developing drops of harmony. Be it at individual level, group level, state of national level - a good spiritual person strives to give more power to harmony than elements that are conflicting, complex and chaotic

2. Spirituality is rooted in the acceptance and equality of all. Spirituality never discriminates and brings forth judgement based on race, caste, nationality, religion, gender, age, profession or experiences. It is rooted in considering everyone equal and forging respect, love as well as a good state of being for everyone

3. All spiritual practices talk about unconditional love and preach everyone to imbibe it in their own selves. Love is a broad state of being and comprises various traits from Peace, Tolerance, Unity, Kindness, Patience, Forgiveness, and others. When we understand that we are spiritual beings having human experiences - we completely embody unconditional love as a core part of our holistic self and make it at a forefront of our own self. 

Can we have an essence of love for a stranger whom you are meeting for the first time as well wish him all happiness, peace, blessings and love in their journey ? 

Can we have an essence of love for someone with whom we have encountered conflicting events or loss and at the same time wish them all happiness, peace, blessings and love in their journey ?

Can we have an essence of love for everyone irrespective of their past experiences, race, colour, profession, nationality, religion, gender, and meet them with love in our eyes and holistic well-being in the longer run ?

We can develop and practise it in our daily lives, once we develop unconditional love in our own selves and aim to practise it in our daily lives. 

The elements of sacrifice, kindness and empathy, service are rooted in unconditional love

4. Seeing everyone at a soul level and not at a human level

One of the greatest spiritual leaders of our times says, “We are spiritual beings with human experiences and not vice-versa”. Seeing everyone at a soul level helps us develop an immense level of love alongwith detachment and respect for individual journey. Then, we are not in constant comparison with each other, rather we are in a constant state of creating harmonious situations for each other. We are not operating from lack in our hearts, rather we are operating from love in our souls. 

5. Ability to develop magnanimous vision and having faith to make it a reality

The core of spiritual power is having a soul that aims for betterment of the world at large. It is rooted with a strong essence of strength that can have traits of resilience, grit, harmony and optimism to take action for bringing forth a magnanimous vision for betterment of the world. 

All visionaries deep down are spiritual powerhouses and have abilities to practise soul-traits to bring forth their magnanimous visions into reality. Time and again, the world has become a peaceful, better and contended place owing to increased fortitude of spiritual leaders

6. There is a very deep quote by Steve Jobs on work related aspects, 

If it had been the last day of my life, what would I like to work upon ? 

However, if we switch it on spiritual realm - we get a very profound question to ask ourselves

         If it had been my last day on this earth - how would I like to be in the state of mind and  heart. 

      The answer would be in the state of love and bliss, I would rather say, a state of    unconditional love and bliss. 

In your last moments, you would not like to argue or remember a state of hatred for anyone, neither would you like to have a revenge mindset or non-forgiving attitude with a heavy burden on mind, nor any action plan to bring anyone down in their journey or regarding your business or monetary possessions a lot. You would not like to remember someone who talked ill about you or your quarrel with anyone in your past. Rather you would develop forgiveness for all of them, see all those encounters with utmost fun and love as well as have no hard feelings for any person. You would like to be in the state of love, service, bliss and harmony. Perhaps it is one of the most beautiful states of selves to be in. It just takes us to ask this one question to get that beautiful state of being in our present lives. 

7. Spirituality makes you embrace responsibility with FLOW rather than a BURDEN

In our professional and personal lives, we are having varied responsibilities at various levels - be it personal and professional lives. 

Spirituality helps us take all these responsibilities and not dodge them or fulfil them with half-heartedness. Rather we would be in the state of complete flow with light-heartedness for everyone around us

8. Having a mindset of service and bliss

It is in human nature to serve, give, support, help, nurture. Genetically, our DNA is rooted to help everyone around us, to coach and mentor young individuals as well as be in the state of service for people around us. 

Spending a few hours a week in service helps in getting in that state of service and bliss. The more we develop an attitude of service, the more we channel our state of spiritual flow

9. Giving Miniscule Importance to Negative Encounters compared to Positive Harmonious Encounters

Spirituality weathers away lack in our hearts. It gives profound power to love, peace, wellbeing, kindness and growth. 

Lack in our heart leads to moments of hurt, resentment, hatred and negativity. Focusing on them leads to increased growth of such events. 

Giving negligible importance to such events help us in creating a broad gateway for love in our hearts. 

When we develop an inner calculator and keep on subtracting negative encounters, emotions, actions and behaviours and keep on adding positive encounters, emotions, actions, behaviour - we develop an immense state of love and flow for everyone around us

10. Letting go of all EGO 

Over the course of lives, we develop various egos based on our financial, academic or spiritual achievements. EGO is a heavy burden and never lets us be in the state of open-ness and flow. EGO constricts us from experiencing events that are free-flowing and serving in nature. 

Spirituality helps in a great way to let go of this EGO developed over the number of years. 

It is humbling to capture some of the broader level understanding of spiritual learning. Needless to say, it is hard to imbibe them in our day to day lives - however with effort and awareness - we can surely develop the same and have a blissful state of being.