Q. What is spirituality, and how does one move into it?
A. Here is a 12-step program to help anyone move into conscious spirituality.
1. Man is more than his physical awareness, sensory experiences, mental concepts, finite beliefs, ego-consciousness, and sense of separateness.
2. The senses of man are the means by which the Self can experience the world of sensation to gain insight, knowledge, and wisdom abort the world. The body is the vehicle that allows the Self to connect with this physical dimension and enjoy the phenomenal world. Senses also are instruments for transmitting impulses from the domain beyond the senses.
The mind is also an instrument that allows man to process, analyze, evaluate the value of human experiences and to develop discernment regarding what creates pleasure and pain, likes and dislike, joy and sorrow, and the whole spectrum of emotions, from the most limiting to the most sublime. The mind also serves the purpose of receiving impulses from the greater dimension of life that is hidden from the world of the senses. In other words, mind is the link between the physical and nonphysical dimension.
3. Another faculty available to man for spiritual growth, or growth in self-awareness and understanding, is discernment. Inner discernment transcends judgment, Pure discernment is innocent discernment, that is, it is without judgment. It does not label any experience or event as good or bad (evil) but discerns every experience to be a means for developing greater discernment as to what is essential and nonessential to our well-being.
4. Ego, or the id, is the amount of consciousness we use to maintain a sense of self-separateness and differentiation from others. It allows us to enjoy our illusions by identifying with a self-limited idea that to whatever I attach myself identifies who I am.
5. Identification with "I am happy or unhappy, rich or poor, an addict or otherwise, victim or victimizer," is all the ego’s need for self-gratification and being in control…or being controlled.
6. Ignorance is the breeding ground, or spawning bed, of the vermin of negative creations—thought-forms, beliefs, attitudes, and convictions. This, too, is freedom of choice. In the state of ignorance, we are almost totally forgetful of the possibility of illumination, freedom, and the ability to change and be whatever we choose to be.
7. When the burden of ignorance and egotism becomes unbearable, the choice may become death by suicide or developing addictions to suppress or repress the pain of living and the depression of mind.
8. Intense suffering ultimately causes the desire for release, or the desire for love to triumph.
9. Self-surrender comes when one realizes that nothing he or she has done in the state of ego-consciousness, or self-alienation, has succeeded in bringing happiness of heart, peace of mind, or self-acceptance of one’s life. That person is now ready to seek guidance and healing.
10. In the midst of total disillusionment, the spirit of love comes to our rescue. This is the awakening to spirituality.
11. Spirituality is developing the spirit of love—physically, mentally, emotionally—toward all life and in all relationships.
12. Cultivating unconditional love by including more and more of life and all loving beings in the expression of love is cultivating spirituality.
Man is spirit. Therefore, he is a spiritual being. Only when he realizes this does he move beyond the 12th step and thus steps out of the cycle of recurrent misery and bondage into the light of ever more expansive, joyfulness of living, serving, joyful sharing, and being.
Spirit alone proves itself to be benign and infinite power again which all other powers are exposed as powerless. Spirit is fearless, and love is the power that delivers us from all fear, ignorance, and limitation.
