The Search for Spiritual Truth begins

This post, will be the first of many, and all are offerings of my personal learnings along the way of spiritual growth, and whilst they stand true for me, they may not resonate for you, and I accept that.  For each of us must find our own path to the Divine and it will be different for each of us, as each of us (8+ billion souls) on this planet is unique and as such we must seek out our own path.  Every soul’s experiences will be unique, so whilst I can offer what appears to have worked for me, it may not be true for you, but there may be something in what I have to say that rings true for you and in that sense the universe has directed you to come into contact with whatever it is that has stirred a resonance within you.

These posts will hopefully be informative and, at best (perhaps) inspirational, to those of you who are rapidly approaching that point in life where we can be considered by today’s society as “aged” or “elderly.”  It may indeed open a whole new area of thought with some of the ideas I will discuss herein.  At the very least, I hope they are received with an open mind as offerings of one person’s thoughts on the purpose of our lives and why we have had the experiences we have endured (good and bad) in our lives.

Something that I have noticed, and witnessed in talking to others, is that as we grow older, particularly after retirement, our thoughts often turn towards the time we have left on this planet.  In our youth and through our middle years, mortality is not something that we dwelt on; rather we developed a sort of indifference to that fact that we have a finite period of time on this earth and that it was not something we needed to worry about as that “event” would likely be far into the future (we hoped).  But as the years pass and we find our bodies becoming less amenable to the strenuous activities we enjoyed in our younger days, we begin to learn that, indeed, “life catches up with us all eventually”.

At some point the thought enters our consciousness, that, based on “established tradition”, we actually don’t have a lot of time left in this life.  Of course, no one knows when the end will come, and probably no one would want to anyway, and whilst a part of us wants to still continue on with not facing the reality of our mortality, these thoughts continue to intrude on our minds more and more so that we are forced to consider the very real fact that, someday, we will actually die.

Upon this realisation, for some, it is a time to do all those things that we have not been able to get done due to our busy working lives, whilst we are still able to enjoy the experience; for others, it can be a concern, particularly with how to spend all the free time we now have available, particularly if we are not in a position to pursue long held dreams, either due to physical or financial constraints.  And then there are those who begin to focus on the inevitability of that which we, as humans, probably fear most in our own death, and that is whether there is a life after the death of our body.

I want to put something on the line at this point, and that is, that it is often said that we have a Soul, which to me indicates that we are a physical body that has a spiritual body, or Soul.  This is not correct – we are fundamentally, a spiritual being manifesting through a Soul that has incarnated into a physical body (or vehicle).  So, to put it succinctly, we are not a body with a soul but a Soul that is functioning through a physical body.

The difference is important, and understanding this concept is critical to how we manage the twilight years of our period here on earth in this current physical body.  For those that have eyes to see, this clearly insinuates the idea of reincarnation, but I will deal with that concept in a later post.

So, back to that period of our existence on this world that we refer to as the twilight years of our life.  There are numerous thoughts that enter our consciousness as we progress towards “the end”:

• What will happen to those we leave behind?

• Have we provided for the well-being (read financial comfort) of our loved pnes post our passing?

• How will we die?

• When will we take our last breath?

• What happens after we die – do we survive in some shape or form?

• Is there life after death?

• Is there a heaven or even hell and if so, which one will I end up in?

And many more that all revolve around what happens during and after the event.

It is the great unknown for nearly all of mankind, and unless we have been fortunate (?) enough to have had a near death experience (NDE), we have absolutely no idea of what is on the other side of the physical death of our body, or even if there is something “over there”.

I will end this post here with the following blessing:

May your spiritual journey be ever inwards towards the light of God; that which is divine and resides in all of us, whether we know it or not.