WE ARE SPIRITUAL BEINGS

We are spiritual beings. Depending on the choices we have made in the past, and the choices we are making in the present, our experience of life unfolds, giving us both pleasure and pain, joy and suffering. Ultimately, all of us want to experience more joy and love in our life. To become more spiritual to simply go back to our true nature, which is joy, and to claim back our capability of experiencing unconditional love.

The process of experiencing life itself has an effect of growing spiritually, as life teaches us well, by repeating the lessons we have not learned yet. Thus, life on earth itself is a spiritual journey and everyone is on a spiritual path by default, whether he considers himself a spiritual student or not. However, the process of learning only through life experience can be very slow and on an average, very little spiritual progress is made in a lifetime. And then, based on the choices we make, an individual may even regress instead of growing spiritually!

More formally, when one says he is on the spiritual path, it means the individual has started to realize the futility of only running after things in the material world. He has begun to suspect that his happiness is not so much dependent on the things outside, as much as it is located inside of him. He has started to take more responsibility for this life. He has started to detach from his mind, he has started to let go of his attachments, resentments, expectations and judgements. Overall, the spiritual student has realized the value of self-development and increased awareness. After undergoing evolution for thousands of years, the soul is now more interested in involution, to get back to source, to its original nature.

Progressively, the spiritual student becomes motivated to spend more effort on self-development through a variety of avenues - books, meditation, seminars, retreats, satsangs, counseling, personal coaching etc. Then, at more advanced stages, the spiritual pursuit becomes the more dominant force. The perspective of life as you knew it earlier completely changes, and your entire life undergoes a transformation.

The way you know that you are progressing on the path is that the amount of love and joy in your life will generally increases, and you begin to feel more and more oneness with everyone. And yes, along the way you will have spiritual experiences that will both motivate you to stay on the path, and at the same time can be painful when it goes away after you experience a high.