Making Your Life Your Practice © 2010 by Selina Maitreya
Making your life your practice is being your divinity, living every moment from your divine essence—not simply accessing your holiness through occasional meditation, yoga or visits to a healer or teacher. It involves choosing responses, activities, relationships, and thoughts based on your higher good. This is total life—seeing all moments as linked and inseparable.
Living your divinity every moment is a commitment to developing spiritual goals, ideals that guide your interactions with the world, and rules of spiritual conduct that you choose to direct your relationships and actions. It’s living by holy laws that help you choose which thoughts to keep and which thoughts to let go. Yes, you can indeed choose to hold onto your thoughts or not. Every action you choose to take or not contributes to the overall fabric of your life here on Earth. As we are all connected, your thoughts are ours, meaning that the energy you create with your thoughts affects everyone. Choosing to live in the state of being awake, aware and conscious of each word, thought and deed you create is truly making your life your practice. Living this way is what builds spiritual integrity and light. As you grow in light, we all grow.
This work is not for the weekend spiritual visitor. This is an ongoing discipline and it is the work of the spiritual warrior.
The first step toward this new way of being is to understand the experience of living in your Spiritual Integrity.
Let’s explore these two very important words. Merriam Webster defines spiritual as “of or relating to sacred matters; incorporeal,” and integrity as “the state of being complete or undivided.”
Living in Spiritual Integrity means that you have values that you have chosen to live by regardless of the conduct of others. Despite your physical state, or your financial or emotional state, you choose to sit in your integrity. You are consistent living life with your values intact. Regardless of the chaos around and outside of yourself, you remain grounded in your knowing. There is no blaming others or waffling. You know your truth and you seek to live there constantly.
Make no mistake, this is a huge undertaking.
Living in the physical world in your Spiritual Integrity is the goal that each of us has been asked to take on as we incarnated into physical life. “Be in the world, but not of it,” Jesus proclaimed. Though you may have made great attempts to be this way, I would lovingly challenge you to look and see how, when and where you are and are not in your life’s integrity. Being aware of your state at all times is one of the most important spiritual practices to master. As a teacher, Jesus knew how hard it was for energy beings to be in their divinity in their physical lives and he knew that this was the work that we are here to do.
Being in this physical reality is most difficult. It’s the place where you can most assuredly lose your values and indeed it’s the place to practice retaining them. This is one of the many paradoxes that the Universe offers us.
Many talk about being spiritual, but in reality, while many have spiritual thoughts, attend workshops and read books about spiritual beliefs, their daily actions rarely represent these values with consistency. This disconnect between who you deeply know you are and the actions you choose, (often unknowingly) is what contributes to feelings of unhappiness and the lack of fulfillment and disconnection that you may experience.
Certainly living in disharmony with your beliefs puts you out of alignment with your true self and does not serve you or others well. Most beings live this way, unaware that they control the power to bring happiness into their lives.
So take a look now and determine how often you truly live your spiritual values. How often are you living in spiritual integrity?
Identifying Your Spiritual Values
In order to live in your Spiritual Integrity, you need to be clear on which values you choose to own and where you currently stand with each of them.
Saying that you are of love, peace and compassion is different than living a life that reflects these values. Being able to hold onto these values in your daily life, whether you are driving, waiting in line or in a challenging conversation, is an ongoing process. The goal is to live in harmony with the energies of the values that you choose to build your life upon. For many, these values include kindness, wisdom, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, integrity, endurance, honesty and sound judgment.
Begin by defining the values you hold most dear.
For many, working from love, being kind, being in service to others, holding a place of calm, sitting in honesty, speaking your truth and walking your talk are key spiritual values. There are many others to consider; however being able to master one of these in your daily life is an enormous effort and a huge gift to all.
Once you have defined an initial list of values, begin with one to assess your current ability to stay in these energies. For instance, if kindness is a value that resonates with you, begin to thoroughly examine your kindness quotient.
When is it easy for you to be kind? When is it difficult?
Do you have trouble being kind when you are hungry, tired or stressed?
Are there certain people whom you find it difficult to be kind to? Are there others who are easy to be kind to?
You will need to carefully watch your reactions and it is helpful to build the ability to watch your responses to situations and people while events are taking place. This does not happen all at once and the power of observation is one of your most helpful tools.
Take this one step at a time. For now, begin to list the values you hold dear and choose to honestly review your actions to see which values you are truly using as you seek to make your life your practice.
Selina Maitreya has been a spiritual student for over 30 years. An international lecturer, author, and teacher, Maitreya works with students one-on-one to help them to make their lives their practice. Learn more at selinamaitreya.com