Spirituality – Three Requirements

Spirituality is an innate quality we all have in various degrees. For that spiritual quality to move from an innate to an active mode, however, depends upon three things. If any of the three are missing, spiritual tendencies could be smothered by our instinctive reactions of greed, hatred, and delusion.

Every day, we are caught up in the struggles of life. Making a living and providing for our loved ones is becoming increasingly difficult in a shrinking world, and when things don't go our way, we fall back on our inherent instincts. Whether those instincts are primal, survival reactions, or whether they are advanced, spiritual reactions, depend upon three elements.

The First is broadmindedness and a neutral view of things. If we are set in our ways and want to hold on to what we have, we won't have the capacity to look beyond that. Since it is true that everything changes, we limit ourselves severely if we fail to look beyond what has happened in the past. Creativity involves letting go of the past so that we can see with new eyes as situations change.

The second element is intellect. Without a certain amount of intelligence, which promotes discrimination between what is true and what is false, what is helpful and what is harmful, a spiritual quest may quickly turn into simply following along with a group that is picked either by random or tradition.

The third element is sincere interest and passion regarding life's deeper meanings. A passing interest, or an interest based upon merely fending off boredom with a new hobby or activity, will only touch the surface of spirituality. This means that it will not penetrate into our heart. When spirituality is only an intellectual pursuit, we tend to revert to our primal and survival modes when the going get rough.

These three elements are necessary for any serious foray into the spiritual life. Of the three, I would say that the third is most important. There is an outside chance that a person without the first two elements of broadmindedness and intelligence could get lucky and fall unwittingly into a practice that would develop true spirituality. If one has interest and passion, as well as intelligence and equanimity or no favoritism regarding the various paths and religions, then there is less of a chance of falling for paths that lead nowhere regarding the deeper aspects of spirituality.

To monitor whether we are on a path that leads to fundamental changes within ourselves, or on a path that merely entertains us and provides no deep-seated changes, we must objectively observe how we react to our everyday life situations. Not, how we should react, but how the mind actually reacts initially to situations when we find ourselves in conflict with our desires. If we react with anger and try to hold on to what we have, we are still reacting from a primal mode. Even though we might espouse the opposite reaction, that of love and understanding, we must be true to ourselves regarding what we actually feel, otherwise no progress will ever be made in the spiritual life and we will remain caught within the denial of shallow pretenses.

The difference between an effective spiritual quest and an ineffectual pursuit is our determination to find the underlying cause of our problems. If we see that we are not making progress personally, in other words, if we talk about spirituality but can't live it comfortably in our deepest reactions to life, then our intelligence, our open-mindedness, and our passion to find the truth hasn't kicked in.

These three things are what lead us to actively investigate the fundamental problems that cause our unrest and keep us from experiencing true spirituality. These are not connected to beliefs or dogma; these are working, proactive tools for us to become literally free from our ignorance of how things actually are. When we employ these three elements of broadmindedness, intelligence, and passion, we begin to get to the nitty-gritty of our problems.

By employing these three elements, we can get a glimpse of the fundamental desire in all of our interactions, and how that desire builds a "self" that must be protected and propped up. We begin to understand that unless our mind is made calm by practicing going deep inside, we will be unable to transcend the busy thoughts that have ruled our lives so far. And we will come to understand that our mind can be altered regarding its consciousness, and subsequently how our mind reacts to the outside world.

In other words, we begin to move our spirituality from an innate mode to an active one through our own efforts. Nothing can be accomplished without effort; and how we employ that effort will affect our quality of life. More importantly, our effort will affect the quality of the afterlife as well.