How Naturally Peaceful People Manage The Bad News All Around Them
Find your divine, even if it's your very first time.
zolotarevs / shutterstock.com At a time when chaos in our world has grown to extreme levels, millions are questioning their life’s meaning and sensing that there must be something more. For those who are relying on external influences to give their lives purpose, they find themselves unfulfilled.
But we all have the ability to pave a path beyond the chaos to a place of sacred calm.
It’s accessible through bringing together the practice of mindfulness with the spiritual sense of becoming one with a higher consciousness. With mindfulness as the ever-present guiding escort, we are able to explore the divineness of life beyond the surface.
This needn’t be a religious experience, but rather one that connects us to “sacred truths,” or the universal principles and divine laws that every human being can live with when choosing to be present with the mystery of life.
For example, Evelyn Underhill, known for her numerous works on religion and spiritual practice, describes a mystical experience she had as follows:
“The first thing I found out was exalted and indescribable beauty in the most squalid places. I still remember walking down the Notting Hill main road and observing the landscape (which was completely sordid) with joy and astonishment. Even the movement of traffic had something universal and sublime about it. Of course, that does not last – but the after-flavor of it does, and now and then one catches it again. When one does catch it, it is so real that to look upon it as wrong would be an unthinkable absurdity. At the same time, one sees the world at those moments as “energized by the invisible” that there is no temptation to rest in mere enjoyment of the visible.” (From The Letters of Evelyn Underhill).
Use these stepping stones on the personal journey of awakening to the divineness within and around us.
1. Transcend limited thoughts and beliefs.
Each of us is worthy and deserving of knowing the sacred truths of life, but we must first strip ourselves bare of that which isn’t real. This includes whatever type of escapism we might use to deceive ourselves from the purest essence of our soul, including drugs, alcohol, and ego-driven fantasies of our self-importance. Through gratitude and humility, we can relinquish the self that stands in the way of receiving a greater knowing.
2. Embark upon the path of divine inspiration.
We must work to rein in our busy minds and choose to become quiet within and without. Practicing Mindfulness is extremely helpful and important in resisting our mental wanderings backward into the past or forward into the future. With Mindfulness, we awaken to present-moment awareness and begin to realize that something divine within us is stirring. We are making a conscious decision to be more conscious and allowing ourselves to flow with the light of our existence.
3. Discover a sense of raised consciousness.
Being in the present moment raises our state of consciousness. It gives us an acceptance of who we are and how we’re a part of the divineness of the universe. By being fully present with what we’re not only looking at, but actually seeing, we can go deeper into the experience. This is when we discover a sense of the divine and a feeling of oneness.
4. Become immersed in the divineness within.
If we can think of ourselves as divine beings, which we are, we can experience a feeling of transcendence — even simply walking down the street as Underhill experienced. We find ourselves more aware of or attuned to how nature moves around us and feel a type of bliss and contentment from observing it. The more we find ourselves slipping into a state of heightened awareness, the more receptive we are to divineness around and within us.
Experiencing the divineness within leads us to an awareness that we’re part of the collective, the universe, the cosmos, the oneness, and the supreme consciousness that breathes life into us all.
Ora Nadrich is a certified life coach and mindfulness teacher. She's also the president of the Institute for Transformational Thinking and author of Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity. For more information, visit her website.