What Is Divinity?
Content
Many of us associate spirituality and religion with sacred artifacts, solemn rituals, holy incantations, or dogmatic beliefs. But the truth is, we don’t need any of this to contact the indwelling Spirit. All we need to do is imagine, accept, and believe that the Spirit is helping us. And then we simply open our hearts and minds to receive its wise counsel and spiritual energy. This is the secret to divine spirituality.
The straightforward answer to a dynamic and progressive spiritual life is our steadfast faith and complete trust in the goodness of the Divine Source. The extraordinary power of faith raises us to higher levels of God consciousness.
Divinity
God, by any name or conception, is the Primal Source of all divinity. Thus, all things divine are either related to God or proceed directly from God. Essentially, divine spirituality is our personal spiritual experience or consciousness of divinity.
Consciousness of divinity is a progressive spiritual experience.
– The Urantia Book
God is not only the source of divinity, but also a divine personality. We comprehend this divine, personal nature by first recognizing and appreciating the qualities of divinity, such as love, truth, goodness, beauty, wisdom, and compassion. We then acquire these qualities as personal possessions by conveying them to others through acts of kindness and social service.
Achieving consciousness of divinity takes time. Our success depends not only on faith but also on our ability and willingness to receive spiritual guidance. And it depends on our willingness to do the right thing in all circumstances—to live God’s Way. To become divine, therefore, is to become increasingly Godlike.
Becoming One With God
Divine spirituality is a matter of achieving spiritual union with God through communion, which is no more than your personal rapport with the Paradise Spirit within you. It is not an attempt to unite with God by dissolving your unique self in an infinite ocean of impersonal existence. Instead, you achieve unity with divinity by your freewill choice to live a spiritual life, to follow the guidance of your Spirit Teacher as God wants you to. It’s a unity of purpose.
In this purposeful unity of self and spirit, we come to realize that spirituality is not a thing we possess. Instead, it’s an ongoing dynamic experience in which we become living conduits for spiritual energy, love, and wisdom. In other words, we fully participate in a spiritual existence by being both a receiver and a transmitter of divine qualities and forces.
Thus, to complete our God experience, we must be willing to live a life in the spirit. Until we 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 energetic, active, and eager enterprise in which we are happy, receptive, and willing participants who freely choose, consciously and assertively, to embrace the Spirit Way. It is the delightful result of our 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
Get the most from your spiritual experiences by taking a balanced approach. Strongly felt emotions, physical rites, and self-inflicted pain are not necessary conditions for a spiritual life. Nor should our honest and transformative experiences be confused with any fanaticism, religious intolerance, or narcissistic tendency.
A divine experience is a rational, level-headed, and personal approach to God. It is the happy, sane, and sober experience of living in the presence of God while actively engaging in a truly spiritual life. It’s alive, spontaneous, and authentic.
See: Live in the Presence of God
Take a balanced approach to spirituality by making the necessary improvements in body, mind, and soul. Our objective is to stimulate the growth of all three without overemphasizing any of them. It is a balanced, integrated, and harmonious development of all 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
The body functions best as a temple of God when all its electrochemical processes are working normally. The mind works best when it is free of all vices, fears, and detrimental emotions. And the Spirit thrives in an atmosphere of dedication, contemplation, and worship.
For more on this, see Balance Your Self.
The Spirit Within You
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 us, and a spark of his Divine Spirit lives within each of us. We carry this gift of God wherever we go.
For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.
– Jesus of Nazareth
The Spirit Guide is a powerful source of wisdom and energy. It is a conscious living entity that always endeavors to convey to us divine values, ideals, and goals. It is literally the gentle whisper of God. Our task is to draw closer to this divine wisdom and rejuvenating energy through meditation, contemplation, prayer, and worship.
See: Spirit Contact Techniques
The Spirit Within is a fragment of God, yet it retains all the elements of God, just as a drop of ocean water retains all the elements of the ocean. This is not to say that God will eventually merge our identities in a great universal ocean. We will always be unique beings because we enjoy the divine gift of a unique personality, endowed with the free will to make moral choices.
Divine spirituality is a wholehearted trust in the love and goodness of God’s Spirit, knowing that it will lead us through every difficulty and challenge in our lives. It will not exempt us from tragedy and tribulation, but it will help us to solve our problems—to face our difficulties with an indomitable spirit guided by love, tact, wisdom, and reason.
Without the Spirit of God, we can do nothing. We are as ships without wind.
– Charles Spurgeon
Communion, or fellowship, with God brings happiness, strength, courage, and peace, but it will not endow us with a life of ease. Being spiritual does not entail living a passive life of indifference wherein we can forever avoid our duties, obligations, and responsibilities by hiding away from the world.
The Spirit is forever attempting to guide us through the maze of life’s problems by adjusting our thoughts to enhance our spiritual insights and cosmic perspectives. In effect, it is transforming us into new, spiritual creatures. We can think of this Spirit as our Much Higher Self while keeping in mind that we are not that Self as yet—it’s a divine goal, a destiny to be achieved.
True power is within, and it is available to you now.
– Eckhart Tolle
The inner Spirit is a divine gift of God that works day and night to reach you. 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.
