Spiritual Union With God
Spirituality is often associated with religious relics, specific practices, or dogmatic beliefs. But to make real progress in the spirit, we must reach beyond superstitious tokens, meaningless ritual, and fixed points of view. You don’t need any of this to make personal contact with the Divine Spirit within you. All you need to do is openly accept the love of God with a humble mind—all you need to do is believe that this Spirit does exist, that it is with you now, and that it is trying to help you. Take your mind to a higher level of consciousness—that of divine spirituality.
Divine spirituality is a personal spiritual experience and a consciousness of divinity. And all things divine are either closely related to God or proceed directly from God.
Achieving consciousness of the presence of divinity within you takes time, but it’s a sure and steady process of becoming more spiritual—it’s your ongoing path of positive and progressive growth. Much of your spiritual growth depends on your ability and your willingness to receive the spiritual guidance so freely given to you. It depends not only on your acceptance of the truth of God but also on your willingness to adopt spiritual values—it requires that you make a concerted effort to live the Spirit Way in every moment of your life—to do the right thing—God’s Way.
God, by any name or conception, is the Primal Source of all divinity, and you begin to understand the nature and character of this divine Source by recognizing the qualities of divinity in your daily life—the qualities of love, truth, goodness, wisdom, and compassion—not just in yourself, but in everyone else too. And you personally convey these divine qualities to others with loving kindness, good deeds, and social service. To become divine is to become increasingly Godlike.
Regardless of the name applied to this ideal of spirit reality, it is God. 160.5.4
– The Urantia Book
Divine spirituality is not only recognizing the qualities of divinity, but it is also your growing comprehension of the divine nature of the grand universe and all the celestial beings in it. Eastern religions share a belief in the unity of the cosmos and the oneness of all things, and this is true. But some of them claim there can be no such thing as an individual self—that our individual personalities are an illusion.
From another perspective, even though we accept that the cosmos is a functioning whole, we can also recognize that individual parts exist within that whole. The physical universe is one functional system, but it has individual planets, suns, and galaxies, as well as individual personalities—from mere mortals to celestial beings.
A divine experience is a matter of achieving spiritual union with God through communion—communication and personal interaction—not by merging or dissolving your unique self in an infinite ocean of impersonal existence. You achieve unity with divinity by your freewill choice to live a spiritual life, to follow the lead of your inner Spirit as God wants you to. It’s a unity of purpose.
In this purposeful unity of self and spirit, we realize that spirituality is not a thing we exclusively possess. Instead, it’s a dynamic experience in which we become a living conduit for spiritual energy, love, and wisdom. We receive and we transmit spiritual qualities and forces.
To complete our God experience, we must be willing to live a life in the spirit. Until we can reach a point in our lives where we can love others freely and with sincere affection, we will find ourselves confined to a religion of the mind rather than being liberated in a religion of the spirit.
Freely you have received, freely give.
– Jesus of Nazareth
Divine spirituality is an interactive and eager state of mind in which you are a happy, receptive, and willing participant who freely chooses, consciously and assertively, to embrace the spirit way. It’s the delightful result of your overwhelming desire to be pure of heart—sincere, loving, and faithful.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
– Jesus of Nazareth
Balanced Spirituality
A divine spiritual experience is a fully conscious, happy, sane, and sober experience. It’s a balanced approach to your ongoing and devoted practice of living in the presence of God and actively engaging in a spiritual life, an experience you can easily cultivate and express as you go about your daily routine. It’s alive and spontaneous—an authentic experience.
Get the most from your spiritual experiences by taking a balanced approach. The God experience doesn’t need to be overly emotional or exuberant, although it’s always good to be invigorated by the Spirit.
Strongly felt emotions, physical rites, or self-inflicted pain are not necessary conditions for a spiritual life. Nor should your honest and transformative experiences be confused with any kind of fanaticism, religious intolerance, or narcissistic tendency. A divine experience is a rational, level-headed, personal approach to God.
Take a balanced approach by making the necessary adjustments and improvements in body, mind, and soul. Your objective is to stimulate the growth of all three but not to overemphasize either one. It is your balanced, integrated, and harmonious development of all your personality endowments.
The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.
– Euripides
Your body works best as a temple of God when all electrochemical functions are working normally. Your mind works best when it is free of all vices, fears, and detrimental emotions. And your Spirit thrives in an atmosphere of dedication, contemplation, and worship. For more on this topic, see Balance Your Self.
The Spirit Within
Spiritual maturity results from your individual efforts to better yourself. It demonstrates your intimate connection with a real, living, and active spirit entity, one that thrives within each of us. As you learn to cooperate with your divine Guide, you not only tap into its spiritual energy and wisdom, you also begin to identify with its divine nature—you become that nature.
To find God, there is no need to travel to distant lands, exotic places, or sacred sites. God doesn’t live in Rome, Amritsar, or Mecca any more than anywhere else. The presence of God is all around you and a spark of this Creator Spirit lives within you. You carry this gift of God wherever you go.
For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.
– Jesus of Nazareth
Your Spirit Guide is a powerful source and there are several ways to draw on its rejuvenating, spiritual energy. But more so, it’s a conscious living entity that always endeavors to convey to you divine values, ideals, and goals. It is literally the gentle whisper of God.
The Spirits within all of us are identical in nature; they are equal fragments of God and yet they retain all elements of God, much as a drop of ocean water retains all elements of the ocean. This is not to say that God will eventually dissolve our identities in a great universe ocean. We will forever retain our unique identities because we also enjoy the divine gift of a unique personality endowed with the freewill power of moral choice (See Your Self as a Spiritual Child).
If you can bring yourself to wholeheartedly trust and accept the love and goodness of this divine Spirit, it will lead you through every difficulty and challenge in your life. It will not necessarily exempt you from all tragedies and tribulations, but it will help you to solve or rectify your difficult problems—to face your challenges with an indomitable spirit, one guided by love, tact, wisdom, and reason.
Without the Spirit of God, we can do nothing. We are as ships without wind.
– Charles Spurgeon
Increasing contact with your inner Spirit brings you happiness, strength, courage, and peace but it will not endow you with a life of ease. Being spiritual does not mean living a passive life of indifference wherein you can forever avoid your duties, obligations, and responsibilities by hiding away from the world.
The Spirit is forever attempting to guide you through the maze of life’s problems by adjusting your thoughts in a way that enhances your spiritual perceptions and cosmic perspectives. In effect, it is transforming you into a new, spiritual creature. You can think of this spirit as a Much Higher Self while keeping in mind that you are not that Self as yet—it is a divine goal, a destiny to be attained.
True power is within, and it is available to you now.
– Eckhart Tolle
Your inner Spirit works day and night to reach you, and you can assist it by learning to recognize spiritual realities, by accepting the truth of those realities, and by opening your heart to receive them.
