There are countless traditions and tools to use to deepen your spirituality. Journaling, meditation, coming back to awareness, pilgrimages, breathwork, and so many more can be deeply helpful and healthful to you.
In truth, just about any tool can be a path to the WAY. So long as your tools keep you in integrity and treating you with love and kindness (even when life is hard), you’ll be okay. Let me outline a variety of spiritual tools that have helped me and others that I’ve heard about.
There Is No One Way…And There Is Only The WAY
The here now is always here now, and the WAY is an acronym for the question:
Who are you?
That question is an ego onion peeler.
But how you peel your ego will be unique to you and to others. In this way, there is no one way to peel an ego.
Building a Spiritual Foundation
I’ll get right to some spiritual tools that you can do today to build a solid spiritual foundation:
- From time to time during your day, breathe and come back to awareness.
- Read Breath : The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (re-read if you have already done so; you’ll find something else to try)
- Do the 7-day breakfast challenge linked here.
- Continue/start to meditate daily (seated and silent) for at least 30 minutes
The spiritual path brings us back to reality. The body is our foundation in reality. These four foundational things are part of pointing back to reality.
Down below are more granular discussions of different spiritual tools.
Journaling!
I hear from more of my friends after I’ve made the recommendation that this is super helpful for them. I know it’s huge for me. It’s huge for other people I’ve met on the path. It helps to continue your growth by giving all the experiences some kind of framework. Journaling uses the power of your mind in the way it’s supposed to be used–in service of spirit. My methodology of journaling changes. Sometimes I’m just writing about the experience. This is simply recording the experience. This methodology is good for dreams especially when they don’t make much sense. The next step is to start to write about what an experience means to you. The step after that is to take apart why you reacted and what you felt. If you held back, why did you hold back? If you opened way into an experience, what was that like?
As you go, you’ll learn how to daisy-chain an issue. For instance, if you didn’t buy a candy bar at a store, but there was an issue behind it, then you start to dissect that to release the issue into your deeper awareness. For instance, you didn’t buy the candy bar because you didn’t want to spend the money. Sounds practical, right? Then you dig a little deeper. You actually have plenty of money. Well, then you realize this is a pattern you do with rewarding yourself. You dig deeper. You figure out that whenever you get close to something you want that you pull away. You keep going. You remember when you were a child always having something you wanted held in front of you only to be taken away by your older brothers.
You see how this works now. You just journaled out that you’re continuing a behavior from childhood all around a decision about a candy bar in a store. Undoubtedly, you’re doing this behavior in many other instances of your life. Pretty soon you start making other connections with your past and current relationships in romance, work, and other areas. It gets deep fast. Be sure to bring your life preserver as you get out into deep waters.
Meditation
You knew this one was coming, right? Okay, there are a variety of ways of doing this. To get started just sit for 10 minutes and focus on breathing slowly, but work your way to 30 minutes.
The body needs time to transition into relaxation.
Search for meditation groups in your area to find some community support–which is great for starting out. You can also find books on meditation. Some meditations involving chants. Others don’t. You just have to find what works for you, and every group is different.
Prayer
I don’t hear enough people talk about the importance of prayer these days. I think I’m around too many meditators. Prayer is huge. It helps you to put out your intentions to the universe. In a way, you can give yourself up to God for help and guidance in your prayers.
This isn’t the wishing-well approach to prayer, by-the-way. This is about genuinely asking for guidance and setting the intentions that you want to manifest in your life. Don’t just whine to God that life is hard.
Life IS hard.
Welcome to life.
But it can also be beautiful, and you can find a deeper grace and peace with it as you deepen your experience of prayer. The step after that is when you start to join groups of people to send communal prayers to others.
Spiritual Friends
Community support is so important. You are not doing this alone, and you don’t have to be even when your entire world is crumbling…especially when your entire world is crumbling. You’ll find them at meditation groups; spiritual communities like mine and many others; kirtan chants, and else where.
As you become more attuned, you’ll start to be able to find these people anywhere. But start with some of these mentioned groups so that you start to understand what spiritual people are and how they act. If you’ve been surrounding yourself with draining people (angry, depressed, fearful, etc.), you may not know what a healthy person is like or how to be with someone spiritually aware (and yes I equate spiritually aware with being healthy).
Countless Spiritual Tools
I’m not even scratching the surface. I’m offering you the door. You need to take it, and then you’ll find all kinds of tools. Find the ones that work for YOU! Everyone has there favorite forms. I’m a writer; of course, journaling is a huge tool for me. But if fasting helps (and it’s really an important tool), do it.
Breathwork is huge. You can go to this link to learn more:
Adding Breathwork to the Spiritual Toolkit
What’s key is that you start to build a toolkit and learn how to build that toolkit by trying out different things and trusting when something does or doesn’t work for you.
One tool will be good for one situation, and another tool will be good for yet another. Don’t hold on to these too tightly. You’re going to change. Your needs are going to change. And remember that this is the start. You use the tools to create the scaffolding around this new spiritual being you are re-creating in yourself. They will come and go as you need them and as you find out what your beautiful spiritual being truly desires to manifest into this world.
Next blog: The Purpose of Meditation in a Spiritual Practice
(Edited 12/10/2024)
