March 19, 2024
Ask Astrology

To have Spirituality in your live means choosing to live aware and with an acknowledged sense of purpose. The more the sense of purpose transcends the mundane, the stronger the feeling of spiritual connection, both to other people and the planet everyone lives on.

Consider an everyday and very useful job, like driving a cab or for Uber or Lift. These drivers get people from one place to another and get paid for the service.

Functionally people need to get from one place to another and cannot always use their own vehicle, especially if they are traveling by plane from destination to destination and then need to go somewhere in the location where they have landed.

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This work has a spiritual value, not just a functional one. The spiritual value is not always addressed; in fact, in modern history, it is rarely, if ever, addressed. In spiritual terms, these people are Guardians. 

They pick people up from a place of safety and deliver them to a place of safety; doing so is actually sacred work. Too often people focus on big events or big personalities to find examples of or talk about transcending energy (Tiger Woods as the youngest winner of the Masters in a blowout or Abraham Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation).

 But spirituality is the understanding that transcendent energy is all around and happening in people’s daily lives if people pay attention and choose to think “spiritually”.

Spiritual Words of the Spirit in the Words

Many words in the lexicon capture the spirituality values that help people sustain and improve mind and body health. Here are a few examples:

Mindfulness

mindfulness and spirituality, woman praying

Mindfulness is a term to describe intentional awareness of experiences while experiencing them. Human beings can do something no other creature on the planet can do; they can reflect on their circumstances, even while having an experience. If you have ever been in an argument or discussion and suddenly “saw yourself” and thought, “what am I doing arguing this way?” or “people would think I am crazy if they saw me right now!” If you have, you entered a state of mindfulness. You were just not “in” the argument, but you became “aware” of the argument. Through practices, such as meditation, yoga, or martial arts, a person can increase his or her mindfulness intentionally, which helps with both mental and physical health.

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Gratefulness

gratefulness and spirituality, a woman in a  country field

As mentioned above, gratefulness is a transcendent idea, which is the intent of spiritual concepts. Just so, the concept is neutral, meaning someone can be grateful they won a competition and grateful that someone lost. Such is the real-life manifestation of spirituality energy; it moves through individuals who process it in very different and personal ways. And often one spiritual concept will connect with another. And so, when people feel grateful, in many circumstances people will also feel “relief”. That word can also be understood in spiritual terms.


Relief

relief

Building on the previous example, spiritual relief is much more than being relieved that one’s car starts when it’s cold after it would not crank immediately the first time you tried. Spiritual relief occurs when a person realizes that a long-held relationship is finally ending, s/he is frustrated, angry, scared, or confused, but when s/he pauses and digs deeper, they realize they are actually relieved!

 

Spiritual Tools

Spiritual work can be done personally and professionally in a wide variety of ways, using a vast array of tools. Many of the tools and practices you will find written about throughout this website, especially the tools of astrology and tarot/oracle cards.

Other tools include but are limited to numerology, crystals/gemstones/stones, runes, essential oils, one’s palm, I-Ching coins/yarrow sticks, singing bowls/tuning forks, and on and on.

Even mundane objects, devices, and machinery can be understood spiritually. The electric mixer in a kitchen is a tool “in the spirit” of making food preparation easier, more enjoyable, or even faster.

The car was created “in the spirit” of exploration, travel over great distances, and as a solution to the hardships of travel by horse and buggy or horse and wagon. In some way, if people shift their lens, they can see the spiritual in every day, and hopefully, be more appreciative of life for “seeing” this way.

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Serious study of any of the traditional spiritual tools, like astrology or Tarot cards, can help people navigate life when they are faced with difficult decisions or challenging circumstances.

Unlike a thermometer, which simply measures temperature, or a car jack for lifting a car off the ground, spiritual tools engage the imagination, as well as offer practical results.

Consider the 78 cards of a Tarot deck and a person’s desire to have a focus for each day of life. By pulling a card every morning, that person gets the practical result of seeing the image on the card and the creative result of figuring out how to meditate and integrate its meaning into their lives that day.

 Spiritually Life and living it

To live spiritually, people have to work to attune themselves to pay attention to how the world works and how people interact in some measure beyond what is readily apparent and easily identifiable.

There is so much in the modern world that people take for granted until something breaks or gets disrupted and they find themselves thrown deep into turmoil when they should realize that life’s ebb and flow means flat tires and stopped up toilets as much as getting a promotion or spending time with good friends. Spiritually speaking, everything is equal, and a lesson.

spiritual life

From the spiritual perspective, erosion is just as valuable as growth, decay matters as much as regeneration. Being spiritual or living a spiritual life does not translate into “life is easy” or “only good things will happen”.

Loss, sadness, regret, embarrassment, and all the negative experiences of life will cross a person’s path; there is nothing new under the sun. Living spiritually can help most when times are deeply trying; in other words, “no one gets their character tested when things are going their way”. Expect plenty of character tests throughout the life journey.

Visit the blog section of Ask Astrology to read thoughtful articles by Ask Astrology contributors addressing topics in Mind & Body, as well as all the other categories found on the site.

 The blog articles will explore the nature of spirituality as a paradigm of paradigms, as the meta of the metamessage, as Neptune of the astrology chart instead of Venus. What is beyond, but also ever-present. Here is a parable that nicely sums up the meaning of spirituality:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to pass an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, you two. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

As you can surmise, the water is spirituality.