How Do I Become Spiritually Strong?

This question is one of the common questions about spirituality. I looked to see what type of answer Google would provide and here are the first 10 suggestions given: 

This answer comes from the website of Vibrant Life, a health magazine that incorporates spirituality as part of a healthy lifestyle. These are nice suggestions in general, and I agree that if we are going to be healthy we must give attention to the spiritual aspect of our lives on a daily basis, just like we must bathe and eat every day.

I’ve read the article, and agree that while these suggestions will do a person good, they fail to explain why these things will help you become spiritually strong. If we want to become spirituality strong shouldn’t we start with an understanding of what that means? What is Spiritual? What is spirituality? If we understand that, then we have a basis for understanding what to do, and how to act, to develop our spiritual strength.

So what does it mean to be spiritual?

For the answer we turn to the Bhagavad-gita, which explains the Supreme Lord has many energies of which there two are major – the material and spiritual energies. We are all familiar with the material energy as it the world that we live in. The material energy is considered inferior since it is not conscious. Our cars, furniture, houses, etc. are all made from unconscious material energy.

The spiritual energy is considered superior because it is conscious. As living conscious beings we are that superior energy of the Lord. Therefore, we are already spiritual.

This world is a combination of both matter and spirit. As spiritual beings, to live in a material world we require bodies made of matter. Our bodies are a vehicle that we use to live in and with which we experience the material energy. In the process however, we identify with the material body, thinking and acting as if we are the body.

Identification with the body conditions us to a materialistic concept of life and covers our consciousness. The example given in the Bhagavad-gita is that just as a fire is covered by smoke, a mirror is covered by dust, or the embryo is covered by the womb, the living being is covered by different degrees of material identification.

The spiritual energy is by nature happy and full of bliss. That means us. Our inherent nature is ananda or bliss. There is nothing outside of ourselves that we need to experience happiness. It just is. Because of this blissful nature we are pleasure-seeking beings, and when placed in a material body we seek happiness. Forgetting our spiritual identity however, we seek happiness through the body – we want to hear nice music, see beautiful things, taste good food, experience the pleasure of sex, and so on. However, all of these pleasures cannot give the happiness we want simply because they are all temporary.

What do you want: happiness for one year or happiness for twenty years? A foolish question, I know. We want to be happy all of the time. But when we chase after happiness from the body we put ourselves on an unending treadmill of looking for the next temporary pleasure. Unrestricted sense gratification causes us to forget that we are spiritual beings and in the process our consciousness becomes covered by a material conception of life. Becoming more spiritual means removing that covering. As we become more spiritual we free ourselves from the bodily conception of life, and identify as a spiritual being.

This understanding provides us with the basis of understanding how to become more spiritual. With this understanding we can discuss what it means to develop spiritual strength.

Just as when we eat a proper diet we nourish the body and feel strength, when we perform genuine spiritual activity we feed and nourish ourselves, the soul, and gain spiritual strength. It happens automatically. But what does that look like? If we don’t know the result of genuine spiritual activity how can we know if we are developing spiritually?

Perhaps from the above you can guess what the symptoms of spiritual progress are. If engaging in unrestricted sense gratification covers our consciousness, then by engaging in genuine spiritual activity we uncover our consciousness. Just as a diseased person understands they are getting well by the decrease of the symptoms of the disease, when we engage in genuine spiritual activity there is a decrease in the symptoms of material consciousness. If material consciousness means that my attraction for sense gratification is increasing, then the development of spiritual strength means that my interest in sense gratification, and material life, in general decreases. The symptom of advancing spiritually is that we lose our attraction for the things of this world due to experiencing increased happiness and satisfaction within.

Developing spiritual strength thus means is developing a lack of interest in the things of this world. As it is said in the Bible, the spiritual adept becomes dead to the world. That doesn’t mean that they have no interest in life. On the contrary, they have increasing interest in spiritual life and experience increasing, and ultimately unlimited, happiness within.

In the next post I’ll explain the easy way to develop such spiritual strength.