Are you asking yourself how to begin your spiritual journey, and that is why you are here?
It is because, most probably, your spiritual journey has already started. Your awareness has already shifted, and you have entered from the first gate.
When you look back, you have lived one of those significant moments or ordinary times that you will mark as the start of your spiritual journey.
But you are like the fish inside the water, not realizing it. Or the human inside the air, not recognizing.
This is what the spiritual journey is all about! A bit of the light of the awareness, and most of the time, the darkness of unconsciousness.
You know what, that is all fine.
Slowly, we will also remember that we are not here to become anything.
Ok, one step at a time. Let’s start slow. Shall we?
What exactly is a spiritual journey?
We are spirit beings living a human experience in this world right here and now.
The spiritual journey is being aware of a journey. Knowing deep inside that we are coming from one place and going to another.
You knew that those who came passed away
Those who landed moved back
Drank the wine of love
Whoever senses the meaning
Yunus Emre
As the great 13th-century Sufi poet from Anatolia said, it is about feeling that there is something else. So those who are on the journey are sensing meaning.
A spiritual journey is about knowing and being aware of another reality, which is always inside, just there.
Realizing that we are one, there is no such thing as duality.
It is about being in deep connection with the universe and the Divine.
Knowing that we are all the time loved and supported as we are.
A spiritual journey is not a thing as its name implies. Instead, it is a process, with its ups and downs, with times when you feel at home and lost.
How is this life a spiritual journey?
Once you begin to look inside, once you start to sense the meaning, you become aware.
Each time your awareness increases, and you become more conscious.
You feel the web of life. Everything around you, nature, the interaction between people, and life events, are all there, reminding you of our connectedness.
That we are one, and we are connected. Life itself is a journey, a spiritual one.
How long is a spiritual journey?
If life is a spiritual journey, and maybe many lives, how can one say that a spiritual journey takes this much time?
Many of us enter this trap of expectations of being something in this journey. First, I will do something, then I will be something, and then I will arrive at that stage of God knows what.
Better not to enter this trap. Leave your expectations of arriving somewhere at the gate, enjoy your journey, wander around and do your best always with humbleness.
How do I find my spiritual journey?
Your spiritual journey finds you though. When it’s correct time for you, you are given permission to see beyond.
The spiritual journey is about being aware. And that awareness comes by holding space for yourself.
Creating your sacred space can always help you to find those moments to look inside and to hold space for your being.
You will find your spiritual journey by trusting your inner voice.
If you are here, reading this, it is for a reason.
Trust those things you interpreted as signals but just after you doubted your being.
Remember, you are the one who is guiding, and you are the one who can recognize that doubt and say thank you and send it away.
How I started my spiritual journey?
A little workshop invitation came to my company email. I still needed to learn what it was about. With my boyfriend, who is my husband now, we decided to go. I am trying to remember our decision process, as we were not interested in spirituality. My husband still is a prominent skeptic.
We went to the workshop, and it was about Enneagram, and the facilitator was Borja Vilaseca.
He was talking about his book called Nice to meet me!
It was a 2-day workshop during the weekend.
I remember the first day being so amused with all these new topics and that specific night, reading the book with my boyfriend, sitting on our living room couch, looking at each other, quite confused.
According to Wikipedia, the Enneagram is a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types.
So there we were, trying to understand which number each was.
On the morning of the second day, most of the other participants were aware of their personality number in Enneagram, except two of us!
At the end of the second day, I was shocked that I had the least expected number. This showed me how less I knew about myself. That feeling was there to digest.
This workshop was the gate of my spiritual journey.
Just after reading the book, again and again, I discovered my envy feeling for the first time, waking my boyfriend in the middle of the night, crying to him and explaining my discovery, so frightened that he would not like me the same anymore.
Good old days! How lovely and innocent I was.
Since that day, I have been learning how to surf in this life journey, which is a spiritual one! I still do…
How do you start a spiritual journey?
You start when you focus the light of your consciousness and awareness on your inner self instead of the outer world.
When you realize that you have an ocean inside, you listen to your inner voice and see around the signals.
When you sense that you have darkness and let you feel.
Join that event that interests you. Let you feel. Create a sacred space for yourself and hold space for you.
Conclusion
I will repeat. If you are here, it is for a reason.
Life is a spiritual journey, and be aware.
I will leave you with a poem that I love from Niyazi Mısri for your inspiration about the spiritual journey from the master.
I searched for a remedy
My suffering was a remedy for me
I asked for proof to my essence
My essence was proof to me.
I was observing to the right and left
To see the Friend’s face
While I was searching out there
Said to be is a soul within a soul
—
I thought that I was separate
The Friend is distinct, and I am
Since I see and hear from me
I knew that be was the soul
—
With fasting, praying, and pilgrimage
Do not think that your work will end, ascetic
To be a human being (insan-ı kamil)
What is needed said to be is lore
—
From where are you coming
Where are you leading
That does not understand from where comes and where leads
Said to be an animal
—
A guide is needed to tell you
The Divine (Hakk) by inner sense (hakka’l-yakîn)
Those who do not have a guide
What they know is doubt
—
Whenever you hear something
Do not think it is a slope, but it is a flat
All in the universe is just One
Those who see the Moment is an admirers
—
Here is Niyazi’s word
Nothing covers Divine’s face
There is nothing other than the Divine
This is a secret for those without eyes
—
Niyazi Misri
Below is a Pinterest friendly photo…. so, you can pin it to your Spirituality Board!
