The way we look at our bodies is how we look at the world, is how we look at the universe. Deep down, that programming that connects us to our bodies, the relationship that we have established between us and our bodies – it’s important, it’s physical, it’s living, it’s regenerating itself, it’s growing old, and eventually it’s going to die. We connect with our bodies at a very physical level, because the pain of the body is real, the pleasures of the body are real, and the experiences of the body are spectacularly real. Now, we extrapolate this over the world, and we look at people, we look at experiences, and we completely assume that that is how everybody is experiencing life. Of course, that is how they’re experiencing it. The primary knowledge of physicality comes from the relationship that we have established between ourselves and our bodies.

Spirituality is a way of revisiting that relationship. It is a way of questioning that relationship. It is not to accept the obvious. Yes, the physicality of the body is obvious – it’s tremendously obvious. The pain and pleasure; there’s no escape from them. We look at them as absolute realities, absolute truths, etched on the walls. How real are they? Is there a way to understand this relationship? More importantly, is there a way to redefine this relationship? Can we have a more spiritual relationship with our bodies and minds and thereby establish that most important spiritual connection that we are missing between ourselves and the world around us? Spirituality is about getting to the fundamentals of life, the core philosophies of life, and try to really understand.

Re-Discovering Spirituality:

We all have a desire to change the world. There’s a child inside us that wants to make a difference, and the child never dies. We look at pain, suffering, injustice, and poverty; we look at all kinds of nonsense happening in the world, and there is a part of us that screams: “Can you do something about it? Can you contribute to this in a positive way?” People have thought about this for a very long time. As long as humanity has existed, we’ve always been sensitive to our environment, but we have never been given the actual keys for transforming our own lives and the lives around us. We are only given the atmosphere, the environment, but never the path to explore it. Rarely do individuals discover spirituality through a process of trial and error, through a process of reading, or through a process of self-inquiry. Eventually, they get to this understanding that the source of pain and pleasure is in that relationship between me and my body and me and my mind: By revisiting it through the process of meditation, through the process of mindfulness, by bringing silence into my being, by bringing stillness into my being, by doing not the obvious things that the whole world is running behind, but by doing something totally different. By yearning for a deeper connection with ourselves, we can establish a completely different connection. In fact, more than establishing it, we can rediscover that lost connection.

Physical or Spiritual?

We realize that physicality is just a flimsy concept in our minds. We are spiritual beings. Every part of us is spiritual. We see in that spiritual realm. What we see is spiritual. What we experience is spiritual. The water we drink is spiritual. The air we breathe is spiritual. We are celestial beings, but with a physical concept of life. Think about it: There is nothing that is absolute to our physicality. For example, if you say that the weight of the body, the heaviness, makes me feel like my body is real and there’s no way to get rid of it, just go to space and you will not feel any weight; you’ll be weightless. Now, what does that mean? That means that the very thing that I’m assuming that is coming from my body – the weight of my body – is simply the gravity of the earth if you look at it in one sense. So if you escape gravity there’s no weight to the body.

Something as fundamental as how I feel can be changed so easily. Imagine all the other things that we have assumed that this is how life functions, there’s no way to change it. Yes, you cannot change it on the outside, but on the inside, we can definitely change it. By bringing the light of awareness, by bringing the light of consciousness, we can start looking in the nooks and crannies of our being, start clearing out unwanted things, and illuminate ourselves from inside. That is what spirituality is. Spirituality is not about expecting people to be nice to us. It’s not about morality, it’s not about seeing a just, peaceful, and beautiful world and being frustrated that people are not like that – the world is not like that.

Spirituality is to understand the fundamental relationship between the being and the body, and then coming to a full reconciliation with the fact that this is life. The moment we understand that relationship, it becomes easier to understand nature. Why is there violence in nature? Why are animals cruel? Why is there so much beauty in existence and at the same time why is there so much pain and suffering? Everything becomes clear once we understand the relationship with ourselves.

Look at life through Your “I”:

Spirituality is a totally inward journey. It’s not creating spiritual concepts out there in the world, just like we have created material concepts. Spirituality is not about imposing our spiritual way of life on others and the world. It’s about putting ourselves at the center of everything and looking at life for the first time through the prism of our experiences, not from borrowed experiences. As children, we grow up simply accumulating borrowed knowledge. We read information digested by somebody else. We experience things through our parents’ eyes, friends’ eyes, family – everything is coming from outside because we have not yet discovered how to look at things without bringing in this artificial filter that has become our lives.

Over a period of time, we discover that it is possible to look at life purely from our perspective; not from the perspective of people we are surrounded with. That is spirituality. To be able to see through the “I” which is the self, not the physical eyes but the “I” of the self –  the capital “I” which is the most important thing. The whole experience of the universe is being filtered through our “I”. Without that “I”, there is no seeing, there is no perception, there is no experience. We talk so much about the planets, the environment, people, and so many other things, but we forget the fundamental reality of life. The fundamental reality is us. Life makes no sense without us. To revisit the “I”, to understand its importance in our lives, to give it its rightful presence within us is spirituality. It takes a different approach. In fact, it takes a diametrically opposite approach to that of the worldly pursuits that we are normally chasing.

You cannot be aggressive, you cannot be in a hurry, you cannot be forceful, you cannot be goal-oriented. The internal realm can be explored best when we drop all these physical concepts and look at it as a process of surrendering to what already is: A process of acceptance, openness, receptivity, and the ability to become a receiver of life. We keep on transmitting all the time in the hopes of somebody picking up the transmission and saying, “Wow what an amazing transmission.” That is our greatest desire. We want people to accept what we are transmitting, but we are closed to what’s coming from outside. We block it out because we’re trying to protect our self-image. Meditation is such a difficult proposition because you have to let go of that guard, you have to bring down the facade of protection that you have created for yourself and almost sit naked in that experience. That is what spirituality is. Internally to become completely naked and open to the experience of life, to look at thoughts without interpretation, to look at your own life as if it is just a happening. You aren’t the doer; we are never the doers, we are only the watchers. We are only the observers. Life is happening, and to be able to observe that process dispassionately from a distance is to be spiritual. To eventually make it a habit to look at everything – to look at existence – with that little bit of distance, that I am something different, my experiences are something different, and there comes the absolute separation that I am a spiritual being and the experiences that are happening around me might be physical. You know, people might be experiencing life in a very physical way, I do agree. But for me, life is a spiritual journey and that is what it’s going to be, and I will stay with that spiritual understanding of life. I’ll live through that, I’ll experience through that, and eventually move on. That is spirituality.

Spirituality is a higher way of looking at things. It is to realize that we are not just bodies and minds. We are something spectacularly different. Our consciousness extends to the farthest corners of the universe. There’s a part of us that is not limited by time, space, nothing. There’s a part of us that is totally transcendent. To discover that part is to become spiritual.