Finding Your Way: Spiritual Enlightenment

How does one attain spiritual enlightenment? By reading holy scriptures and books? By serving his/her fellow humans? By renouncing all things material and adopting a Spartan way of life? By seeking knowledge and wisdom? There are perhaps no right answers. After all, spiritual enlightenment is an intriguing concept, and it’s hard to understand it with a simple this or that answer.

Before being able to comprehend the concept or possibility of spiritual enlightenment, we first need to understand the concept of the spirit. The spirit is our soul; it’s eternal and lives on even after we cease to exist in the physical world. The spirit’s journey is far longer and more complex than the age-restrained, relatively simpler journey of our bodies. The spirit moves on to the next plane of existence after it has learned its lessons in the physical world, and the ultimate goal of the spirit are what we know as absolution.

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Faith and Spiritual Journeys

How would you define your faith? Is it unshakable, or is it driven by your circumstances? Do you trust God or believe in the existence of a universal power—but only as long as life favors you? Or do you find yourself questioning your faith the moment you feel your good karma, prayers or positive attitude weren’t rewarded? Your answers to these questions will help you understand yourself and the path of your spiritual journey.

From the moment we are born we start receiving messages about the two-way relationship between effort and reward. The conditioning starts with a baby’s first steps and generally continues until the time an adult reaches the end of his life cycle, with everything in life governed by rewards whether they be material or emotional.

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