## Spirituality ## ![[spirit_of_being_alive_color.png]] This word could mean different things to different people. I wish to share what I mean when I use the word Spirit or Spirituality. When I refer to Spirituality I am mostly talking about mental wellbeing. The phrase "being high in spirits" portrays an accurate representation about what I mean. It is an inquiry on how we can be enthusiastic, joyful and confident showing up to what's happening in our lives now. How can we show up to our partners full of energy and confidence to play with them? How can we show up to our job full of enthusiasm and with a sense of contribution and belonging? Can we say to ourselves: "This is what I am meant to do!" and "I belong here" and "I am really making a difference here" and "I love what I do!" How could we look at our responsibilities, perhaps people that are dependent on us, and say "I am so blessed that life has given me this wonderful challenge of doing this or that." We could keep going on with such questions, but the point is that when I speak about spirituality in a general sense, I am interested in learning what get a person engaged with life. This is in contrast to social media's idea of what spirituality is about, which is actually more of the opposite notion: "How can I leave this plane of existence so that I may find a more blissful life elsewhere, somewhere in some dimension that I don't know much about but which has a lot of mysterious allure and sense of adventure." So to put it bluntly, the talk of spirituality is more about pragmatic ways of living and engaging with life itself. It is getting closer to life itself, rather than wanting to leave it. I am not as interested in others dimensions, higher frequencies, ghosts, or spirits, or any of those kinds of things as I am interested in finding out what makes a person happy to be alive. Not to imply that those things do or do not exist. These beliefs are certainly a part of a person's life. However, I'm not concerned with those questions. The fact of life that we can all agree upon is that we are here on this planet, and we are living, and we are moving and motivated in ways that keep us not just alive, but happy in what we do. However, I notice that most people I come across are not high in spirits. They are low in spirits. They are depressed, overworked, stressed, angry, worried, anxious, traumatised... you name it. Our heads our down, and we work and work until one day we get fed up with how our lives are going. It is not just me that wanders everyday into the city and thinks: "There's something off about the way we live... I don't know what this is, but somethings off". I see my good friends and family come home after a long day of working, and they sit on the couch, and they browse their phones in order to numb themselves from the pain of having to have worked and earned money. This kind of existence is, to me, being low in Spirit. It is being unenthusiastic for being alive. Yet, there is an aliveness for this kind of behavior, an ability to dream big and other-worldly. Perhaps a reason we are so keen on escaping our lives is that we have a remarkable ability to create a vision, and we have the ability to empower that vision with hope, which then drives us into a pursuit to find better circumstances. Not to imply any of this is wrong or right, or that it is illusory or not. Again, much of my aspiration relates to protecting others from "The Poverty of the Human Spirit". Each and every human being has a unique way of taking care of themselves in that regard. What brings me great satisfaction is partnering with people to tap into that spiritual resource, whatever that is for them.