Spiritual Forum

Written by Wes Annac, The Culture of Awareness

I wrote the following for the “reader’s question” section of The Culture of Awareness Weekly Newsletter.

In place of a reader’s question, I’d like to give my perspective on how we can best define ourselves and the movement we’re contributing to. I recently had a conversation with my wife about exactly how people who are generally spiritual can define their beliefs, and she expressed frustration over her inability to convey her spirituality to others.

We’ve all had the conversation with friends or relatives about our respective beliefs, and for some seekers, it can be difficult to explain their spirituality or the concepts they’ve come to discover and empower.

We aren’t all meant to believe the same things, and even the conscious public seems more or less divided between different camps of thought. The conscious public is just as capable of fighting amongst each other as anyone, but it generally seems as if our beliefs cut us off from the rest of the world.

We strive to see a future where humanity can work together in peace and harmony, which entails respecting each other’s philosophical differences, but it seems like we have a wall to break through in regards to presenting our alternative beliefs to others who, again, don’t seem comfortable opening up to them.

Like I told my wife, I honestly don’t think we need to label or explain our spirituality to anyone. We can do our best to help them understand the things we believe, but we don’t have to present our beliefs as if they’re the only correct ones. Most conscious seekers obviously don’t do this, but there are some out there who do.

I know I have on one occasion or another, but these days, I see the importance of remaining balanced enough not to present my beliefs as if I have the full picture when, in reality, I’ve only illuminated it somewhat. Nobody has all of the answers, and we won’t until we’re back in a much, much purer and currently unperceivable state of consciousness.

When it comes to presenting our beliefs to others, all we really need to do is share a few basic things that constitute them, and if the person we’re talking with seems interested, we can take it further. If not, we can simply share what we have to share and go no further than that, respecting that what we have to say might make them uncomfortable.

In time, nobody will be so set in their beliefs that they’re uncomfortable hearing others’, but for now, we’ll have to be as balanced and respectful as possible.

Those of you out there who are worried about how to define your beliefs are encouraged not to define them if it seems too hard. Who says we have to put all of our time and energy into defining the things we believe instead of acting on them by living in love?

We have the choice as to how we want to express our spirituality, and instead of trying to form a belief system around it, we can simply embody it and express the accompanying beliefs in a small and balanced manner to anyone who’s interested in learning a little bit about who we are and what we choose to empower.

I don’t think we should put too much focus on labeling or defining what we believe, for in doing so, we fall into the trap of looking outward for something we can only find within. In this case, we look outward by trying to physically define our beliefs instead of simply existing with/acting on them.

I’ll give an example, which is the same example I gave my wife. Once, back in Jr. High, I decided I was going to try to write a song. I didn’t play any instruments at the time, so all I could write was lyrics. I sat down to write, and before the pen hit the paper, I realized that I didn’t have a title for the song I wanted to create.

What’s a song without a title, right? I thought and thought about it, and finally, I asked one of my friends for help.

“Hey, I want to write a song but I don’t have a title for it”, I told my friend. “Do you know what a good title might be?”

“I don’t”, she responded, “but I usually write the song itself before I worry about a title.”

I hadn’t thought about it, but it obviously made sense. Why worry so much about the title of a song I haven’t even written yet?

I think we can apply this lesson to the expression of our beliefs. Some of us are at the very beginning of our work for humanity’s evolution, which is obviously driven by our beliefs, and to worry about how we’ll define these beliefs before we act on them is to keep ourselves from the action they’re intended to inspire.

Some of us haven’t written our song yet, and we still have a lot of divinely inspired work to do before we can be in the spiritual/creative place we want to be in. Given that we’re at the very beginning of our journey, we really don’t need to focus all of our attention on labeling or representing our beliefs.

We might want to think about this in the future, especially if we end up showing the way for the rest of humanity, but for now, let’s simply embody our beliefs and the set of morals that comes with them. I don’t know about any of you, but I still have some work to do before I can fully act on my beliefs, and it’d be silly to worry about defining something that most of us haven’t yet acted on in the greatest sense.

If you’re worried about explaining what you feel inside to others, remember that the love energy we carry within is unexplainable and inexpressible with human words. Even my words, ‘the love energy we carry within’ don’t do justice to the description of this energy, and feeling/acting on it is the absolute best thing we can do.

As long as we can live a balanced, loving life, acting on the teachings we choose to empower and helping others in the process, it doesn’t matter what we believe or how we choose to express it. We could empower the toughest, most suppressive religions out there and still be great people if we orient to love and service.

How we feel within and what we do with our beliefs are more important than anything else, and if the worst case scenario happens and you find that you’re being judged by others for your beliefs, remember that being a good person and helping your fellow man is the best thing you can do, regardless of the concepts you do and don’t empower.

We’re all beings of pure love, and the sooner we realize this, the sooner we can cease physically labeling and defining our beliefs just to make others happy. Eventually, we’ll all live a loving lifestyle and happily serve our communities, and no matter how we get there, it will happen.

This concludes this week’s reader’s question.

Photo Credit