How does a person’s spirituality manifest itself?

Philosophy defines the term “Spirituality” as the internal awareness of a person , his ability to self-determination among other people with whom he communicates and lives. And also as a desire for an ideal state in personal development.

Interesting! The essence of spirituality has been the subject of debate among many philosophers, but they have never come to a consensus.

For example, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, a follower of Socrates, considered spirituality to be a special property in a person, not related to his bodily shell. According to the philosopher, it is no coincidence that the word has the root “spirit” (Spirit - lat.). Spirit is something intangible that signifies an individual's ability to self-determination.

How is it expressed in humans?

The issue of spirituality is inseparable from the psychological aspect. Ever since school days, everyone remembers that “psycho” means nothing more than a soul that exists separately from a person’s bodily shell.

At the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, domestic psychologists began to pay increased attention to the topic of spirituality. It was treated as a result of the work of the internal mechanisms of the human psyche.

Thus, the term “spirituality” is understood as a system of psychological processes that occur within the human consciousness, taking into account his personal qualities.

Spiritual development of man

We can highlight certain qualities characteristic of a developing personality:

creativity in any of its manifestations;
desire to help people and share your experience with others;
high level of morality;
a feeling of love for oneself and other people;
a kind, sympathetic attitude towards all living beings.

There are two types of spirituality: social and religious.

In such a pedagogical subject as social studies, spirituality is understood as the will and mind of a person, which are focused on moral social values, with the desire for high ideals and thoughts.

Important! It cannot be said that spirituality is a belief in the Divine principle or a certain degree of religiosity. This word is understood as a state of a person’s soul when he strives for continuous development and self-improvement.

What factors make a person human?

Humanity and behavior patterns are not passed on to us genetically. Children who grew up among animals never became human from a psychological point of view. A person is shaped by the environment in which he lives.

People differ from animals:

abstract thinking;
developed spiritual world;
restraint.

These factors are formed gradually over the years. Compassion, mercy, understanding and kindness make a person human.

Modern society is chasing material wealth, which is accompanied by aggression and greed. Having forgotten about spiritual morality, people become akin to predators looking for their prey.

The soul is one of the factors influencing human behavior. This is matter that cannot be seen or felt physically.

The study of personality, its actions and feelings has always been of interest to society. Throughout history, the soul has been viewed as a separate entity - something separate from the body and at the same time connected with it. There are numerous interpretations of the concept of “soul”, different points of view on this matter. One thing is clear: the soul is something incomprehensible to science and human consciousness. One can only guess about its essence and purpose.

What does the inner world of an individual consist of?

Every personality has its own spiritual world. He has:

a value system that determines a person’s worldview and gives meaning to his existence;
goals necessary to implement the mission on Earth;
the needs of the soul, manifested through knowledge of the surrounding reality, expression of oneself through art, scientific and cultural activities, as well as other forms;
the desire for self-knowledge and self-realization in society;
understanding the significance of one’s actions for other people, formed views on the world around them;
emotional and sensory support for one’s own vision and actions from society.

All of the above is based on people’s knowledge of the surrounding reality and belief in a fair outcome.

A person's worldview can be divided into:

Everyday, based on life experience. It is formed as a result of various circumstances.
Religious, in accordance with the religious ideas of the individual.
Scientific, with an emphasis exclusively on scientific knowledge.
Humanistic, based on ideas about scientific views: how fair and highly moral they are for society, as well as the degree of their environmental friendliness.

The system of human values, which is the basis of any worldview, contains a guideline for the aspirations of the individual and the meaning of his life. The ideals of an individual act as a standard of behavior in society and become the motivation for the behavior itself.

But it is important to note that a person’s spiritual values cannot be eternal . They are directly dependent on living conditions and change taking into account the influence of circumstances. But the social values that have evolved over centuries represent the spiritual practice of all generations of the human race and contain the universal needs of any individual, regardless of who he is. Race, nationality, class, religion, age - all this becomes unimportant.

It is clear that universal human values rise above individual ones, therefore a person must form his inner world taking into account these frameworks. The life of an individual is intertwined with social life and gradually assimilates the rules formed by time and which are part of the moral foundation.

In Western psychology

In Western psychology, which received the greatest recognition in the post-war years of the 20th century, there are a number of areas:

transpersonal - does not deny the religious influence on the consciousness of the individual;
humanistic - the emphasis is on the individual as the only integral system;
existential - refers to humanistic psychology, affects several aspects of an individual’s life: his inner world, personal experiences, etc.

According to Maslow's system, if a person has spirituality, then he is at a high stage of evolution. Such people lack primitive desires, dirty thoughts and misdeeds. They are filled with kindness and are condescending even to those who are not worthy according to society. At the beginning of the 20th century, psychologists and psychotherapists were of the prevailing opinion that a low level of morality was nothing more than a disease that needed to be gotten rid of. But the paradox is that many undeveloped cultures practiced healing the soul, with the help of shamanic rituals, sacrifices and other things.

Spirituality

In this dark world, consider only spiritual wealth as true, for it will never depreciate.

Omar Khayyam

We live in a very complex world, in which there is both material and non-material, there are laws according to which both exist, and there is a person who can interact with both in a certain way.
There are people who are more occupied with the material world, they want to succeed in material affairs, and there are those who are interested in the immaterial world and all of its known and mysterious laws. And although the material is in a certain way connected with the immaterial and vice versa, because people will not be able to live by one thing, nevertheless, in order to properly comprehend this or that direction, you need to devote yourself to only that one. A person can succeed either in the matter of material well-being or in spiritual development. If you combine these things, you can achieve harmonious personal development, but not absolute success in any of these areas. In this article we will talk about spirituality, what it is, what benefits it has and how to get there. And at the same time, we’ll find out whether everyone needs to become spiritually developed people or whether it may be enough for many just not to forget about the spiritual while living with material values. I decided to pay attention to this topic for the reason that, both from my own observations and from examples with other people who have embraced spirituality, I saw and understood how this direction can change a person’s life for the better and even save it. When the usual way of life brings nothing but pain and suffering to a person, spirituality can become his only salvation, both for the soul and mind, and for the body. Most modern people are individualists obsessed with the idea of material success, or better said, people with high egoistic principles who are convinced that only material well-being and great influence in society, a high position in it will allow them to find full happiness in this world. I won’t say that this approach to life is wrong, but it is not as reasonable as many people think and certainly not complete. People want to get the maximum benefit in the form of simple and understandable things, preferably quickly. This is understandable, a world where there is a lot of bustle and little time, especially to think, where you constantly need to earn a living and often there is no opportunity to properly study all the latest news, let alone read a whole book, requires maximum practicality in everything. People do everything quickly, focusing on the simplest and most understandable things. Otherwise, you will not survive in such a highly competitive environment, or at least not succeed.

Therefore, such topics that do not have obvious benefits in the form of success in the material world and do not allow solving everyday problems of a material nature seem to people, if not completely useless, then in any case not paramount to pay enough attention to them. Why waste energy and time on something that you cannot touch, taste, that you cannot admire while looking at it, that you cannot show off to those who are able to appreciate only visible things. So people don’t go beyond material wealth and don’t even want to learn to go beyond them. But this is all until this game of material success, the desire for it, or some undesirable events for a person lead him to a state of complete despair, in which he will no longer want anything and may stop seeing the meaning in everything that he did and what surrounds him when he stops appreciating everything he lived for. And the fear of uncertainty, the unknown, and uncertainty can also bring a person to his knees, from which he will not be able to get up, guided by ideas that reflect the importance only of material values. That’s when he turns his attention to the other side of life – the spiritual.

And spirituality can help many people get through difficult times, survive physically and mentally, and find peace of mind. Many people return to life after heavy blows of fate and regain self-confidence thanks to spirituality. And for some, it even becomes the only meaning of life. Spirituality can also help those who have achieved a certain material success, but are still not satisfied with their lives, because, as we know, man does not live by bread alone; people can have everything except a feeling of happiness. It also helps those who have nothing, or very little, and therefore do not see any joy in life, but only problems and difficulties, and the suffering associated with them. Interest in the spiritual takes people to a different level of awareness of reality, at which many things are perceived differently. Material well-being did not always help everyone. No matter how many people you feed, both literally and figuratively, you won’t teach them to enjoy higher values.

As I always say: does a modern person, living, even in a very prosperous country, even in a very backward one, live worse than people lived in the same countries a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago? Is the problem of hunger as acute in the modern world as it was in the past? Can’t people who have a roof over their heads, clothes, food, and the opportunity to receive high-quality information, including absolutely free information, enjoy life, because they have everything they need for it? So why are there so many dissatisfied people, why is there no less violence, aggression, hostility in the world, why do people commit suicide, as if they have no other way out of the situations in which they find themselves? Why, despite the full stomachs and the freedom that many people have, albeit relative in each specific case, but still quite noticeable, are they nevertheless dissatisfied with many people and suffer? And it’s all about values and a person’s understanding of this world. If you live only by material values and do not perceive spiritual ones, then everything will always be not enough for a person, because he lives a limited life, perceiving only one of its sides. And with this approach to life, he will never be so satisfied with it that he no longer worries about his material condition and in general about how he lives. Because material enrichment is only a part of life, but there are other parts of it that also need a person to comprehend them and live by them. One such part is spirituality, which allows a person to serve higher goals and adhere to higher values. Why higher? Therefore, in order to perceive and use them, we need to develop, without this they will not be available to us, because natural instincts alone are not enough to follow such values and enjoy them. And thus, the more we know this world and the better we understand it, the more of what is in it we become able to enjoy. In particular, spiritual values become available to us, living by which we receive complete satisfaction from life.

What is spirituality

I will give my own definition of spirituality as I understand it. It may not coincide with what other people think about this phenomenon. Spirituality is a state of mind that helps a person understand that he is part of a single whole, in such a state he rises above his personal interests and begins to think in the interests of this whole, which are higher and more significant than his own interests. A person’s spirituality is expressed in serving those values that stand above his personal values. That is, he no longer thinks about his own interests and desires, but about the interests and goals of the whole of which he is a part. And we can also say that spirituality is a phenomenon that reflects the interests of the whole through the interests of each of us. To be a spiritually developed person means to rise above your animal essence and begin to serve higher values and pursue more significant goals. These goals are creative and developmental in nature.

Spiritually developed people

Now let's look at who spiritually evolved people are and why we should value and learn from these people, unless we ourselves are one of them. Spiritually developed people are people who adhere to and disseminate ideas in society based on intangible higher values, on spiritual values that are creative in nature. That is, such people call for goodness, mercy, love, freedom, justice, mutual respect, development, patience and the like. The value of these values becomes more obvious the more a person suffers from their absence in his life. For example, people sometimes need to compare a life in which there is mercy with a life in which there is none, in order to understand how important this is, which is worth promoting and which is worth adhering to for the sake of the common good.

Spiritual people are not selfish or materialistic; they do not need wealth and luxury, because such things distract them from the spiritual, and therefore the highest good. For them, such things as love, freedom, justice, kindness, truth, knowledge are important, in a word, everything that has value for a person, but does not have direct material embodiment. You can’t touch such things with your hands, you can’t stuff them into your stomach, you can’t weigh them on a scale, but they exist and give us a lot. Spiritual people serve such values because they believe that this corresponds to the plans of higher powers, the plans of the whole of which they are a part. They themselves adhere to these values, and they teach other people to value them. This is the benefit of spiritually developed people, they teach society to live according to new, more humane laws, and not according to bestial ones, not according to the laws of nature, which are quite harsh and merciless to any weakness. Take, for example, the same mercy that makes people’s lives much more comfortable, because thanks to it we can always count on the help of others when we have any difficulties, and we ourselves can provide such help when we have such an opportunity. If we had not done this, then many of us might not have survived if something bad happened to us. But mercy must be taught; even if it is given to us from birth, it is in a completely undeveloped form, and if a person is not taught to help other people, if it is not explained to him why this is necessary, what such help gives to society and why it is important, he will not be able to won't want to help anyone. Spiritual values need to be instilled in people; one might say that sometimes they need to be implanted, long and diligently, until people realize their importance and begin to live by new rules that call on them to rise above their nature. Only spiritually developed people can do this, who themselves have perfectly comprehended the value of higher ideas and can convey important thoughts to most other people. The same religion is a vivid example of this. Once upon a time, she really helped make people more humane, teaching them to help each other and be more tolerant of each other. Although, of course, she always had and still has dark sides, but without this nothing can exist. Every medal has two sides.

Spiritual development

But why should each of us develop spiritually, why move in this direction if, for example, we recognize the importance of spiritual values, partly adhere to them, but are not going to serve them? This is necessary in order to discover new horizons of this world for yourself, to learn things that are simply incomprehensible in ordinary life, and thus come to peace and harmony, and perhaps to a new meaning in life, giving up everything that we are all lived this time. How do any of us know that the life we are living is right or that it is the best option for us? Well, yes, there is some kind of satisfaction that we can experience from our deeds, from various achievements, from the joys that are available to us, from the pleasure that we know about. But why not learn something new that can add new joys, new pleasure to life, make it more interesting, show us new goals that we can strive for in order to live life with meaning? If you are well-fed, clothed, shod, you have a roof over your head, some kind of stability in business and confidence in the future, and you also have free time from all the fuss that allowed you to achieve all of the above, then There is nothing stopping you from trying to learn something new, from discovering other aspects of life that may turn out to be more interesting and meaningful than what you currently know. Otherwise, are you going to live your whole life according to just one scenario, are you going to work, accumulate material wealth, and then pass them on to inheritance? Or how? And if the heirs turn out to be unlucky, if, due to their lack of the necessary ideas about life, they will not see any point in continuing your business and will simply squander everything that you have created and saved all your life, then is it worth it to do everything just like that? do? Yes, even if you live only for yourself, how long can you do this and what is the point? There may be many questions here that encourage a person to think about the need to somehow change something in his life or add something to it, so that it becomes more meaningful, so that there is a new interest in something, in some idea, some significant goal has appeared. You can also delve into spirituality, which we are talking about here. People turn to spirituality for various reasons, and one of them is the desire to live a more interesting, rich and full life.

How to develop spiritually

To develop spiritually, a person needs to abandon the way of life that is familiar to most people. And the more perfection he wants to achieve in this, the more he will have to give up. If he simply wants to supplement his life with spiritual values, then he must first show interest in spirituality, communicate with spiritually developed people, understand what values they profess, what goals they pursue, what ideas they offer. Spirituality can take many forms, depending on who spreads it in society and what teaching he offers. The main sign of spirituality is the common good, and not the interests of an individual person or group of people. In order to take the path of spiritual development, you also need to begin to observe certain restrictions, be moderate in many things, do good deeds, help people and thus become involved in spiritual life. I repeat, it is not necessary to completely abandon your lifestyle, in which material values and selfish interests predominate. You can complement your life with spirituality, but it does not have to replace your life. It is clear that less conventionally bad and evil deeds need to be done, otherwise there will be no talk of any spiritual development. While serving the highest ideals, one cannot harm society and specific people, who are the embodiment of the whole of which we are all a part. It is better to abandon bad deeds altogether, replacing them with deeds that should be based on love for one’s neighbor and care for him. Not in all cases it is possible to solve problems with the help of kindness and love, then a spiritual person gives way to those who know how to speak the language of power. His mission is to awaken the humanity in every person, and talking to people in the language of violence is not his task. There are other people for this.

Those who want to achieve a high level of spirituality must renounce worldly goods and begin to be content with only the most necessary, delving into the comprehension of spiritual values, without being distracted by material values. And, of course, such a person needs to follow his chosen spiritual ideals, and not just learn and talk about them. And only then, when he rises above his nature, when he learns to live a very simple life, without any luxury and abundance, doing things useful to society, can he begin to spread high ideals in the form of practical ideas in society, showing other people how they can live by adhering to the highest values. In other words, you need to start moving away from your natural nature, from your animal psyche, from your instinctive urges in order to make decisions based on high ideals and common sense, and show everyone by personal example how to live such a reasonable and moderate life. Personal example is very important here, because in our society there are a lot of people who call themselves spiritual, but at the same time live by worldly values, chase material success, do not observe any, including their own rules of spiritual behavior, which imply human limitations in his desires caused by natural instincts. Such people call for higher values, but they themselves live in lower joys. They can call for good, but at the same time they themselves do evil from time to time. They promote non-violence, but at the same time allow themselves to commit it against those who are defenseless in front of them. Then this is either hypocrisy on their part, or simply a lack of understanding of what true spirituality is and what it is needed for.

You cannot be an avid materialist and at the same time a spiritually developed person; you need to choose one thing if you want to achieve really high results in this. More precisely, you can combine both values; you can complement your life with spiritual values, thus expanding your understanding of the world. But if you want to achieve high spirituality, then you will have to give up material wealth that clogs your mind. It is not necessary to profess asceticism for this; this is an extreme measure, as I believe, one can do without it. But you definitely need to become a minimalist in order to have only everything you need for life, without any excesses. Otherwise, you will not be able to appreciate the spiritual in order to understand all its beauty, if at the same time you enjoy your existing comfort and material well-being. It is impossible to realize higher values while enjoying lower values, at least in their entirety. For spiritual development, you need to begin to move away from your animal essence, from all those urges that are inherent in us by nature. And this means that there should be no desire for wealth, in which a person turns into an automaton for extracting money and other material values and has no time to think about lofty things. You cannot follow your instincts, you cannot be what nature made us, you need to become someone who rises above your nature, thanks to high ideals and the voice of reason. It is impossible to get rid of innate qualities, but you can take control of them. Only in this case will a new understanding of life open to a person, when he moves from the direct perception of reality to a perception of it in which his consciousness will guide him, and not his instincts. This is difficult, which is why there are so few spiritually developed people in our society. Some people give up spirituality because of all sorts of temptations, some because of fear of restrictions, and some simply think that they are a spiritual person, but at the same time they want everything that ordinary people want and are drawn to it. Therefore, this path is not for everyone.

The ideal option for the existence of a spiritually developed person is to live at the expense of gifts and donations, thanks to which he will have the minimum necessary for life and will be able to study higher values, reflect on them, indulge in them, in order to then give society new ideas that will help people build a more perfect humane and humane world. Such a person should not earn in the usual way, especially a lot, since ordinary work and a lot of money will change his mind, returning him from the spiritual world to the material one, in which he must constantly spin around, count money, solve everyday issues, compete with people, and so on. . Such a life can completely absorb a person and he simply will not have the strength and time left for spiritual development. If consciousness is distracted by such things as everyday life, then a person simply will not be able to study anything more that exists in this world. Therefore, spiritual development requires, if not absolute asceticism, then at least a very modest life, for which small donations and gifts from grateful people who understand the importance of spiritual development are quite enough. People give a spiritual person the material resources necessary for life, and in return he enlightens them on the issue of higher values and gives this world new ideas that will help change it for the better. Therefore, a truly spiritual person cannot have any wealth and luxury, because he shouldn’t. Even if people shower him with material values, including donations in the form of money, he must refuse the excess. Such a person can donate everything unnecessary to those who need it, especially children.

Truly spiritual people should have a simple life from a material point of view. Just as one cannot think purely and sharply with a full stomach, it is impossible to comprehend and carry spiritual values while living in luxury and abundance. This is very important to understand. You also cannot constantly think about how to earn money for living; a spiritually developed person should be helped with money and other resources, thus allowing him to do his work, which not everyone is ready to do and not everyone is able to do. The mind must be in one state, either worldly or spiritual, for a person to succeed in one or the other activity. I repeat, these things can be combined to make life complete, but in order to greatly succeed in this matter, you only need to devote yourself to it.

Spiritual people need to be helped and supported. Society and every single member of it needs this. Just as society supports science, art, and philosophy, it should also support spirituality. Giving gifts to spiritually developed people means serving God, society, the world and, ultimately, oneself. After all, each of us wants to live in a society in which everyone will be happy, because in such a society there will be many times more good than evil, from which everyone can suffer. And who, if not spiritually developed people, can teach people to live in peace and harmony, to be satisfied with life and enjoy it, regardless of whether they have enough material wealth or not. It turns out that you feed the body of such people so that it lives, and in return they will feed your soul and mind so that you live well and happily. A completely normal, reasonable, necessary division of labor, in which everyone does what is closest to him.

Spirituality is the future

To think about the highest, about the eternal, about the bright, and therefore about the spiritual - think about the future. And for his sake we do a lot in the present. Our children will live in the future that we are building today. The spiritual exists for a reason, but as a reward to people for comprehending the highest values. All these values require sacrifice from a person in the form of renunciation of available worldly goods, for the sake of which we are ready to destroy a lot here and now. But if we move away from our selfishness, we can build a simply fabulous future for our children. Today people lie, steal, kill, rob, use each other, manipulate each other, and tomorrow some spiritual person may appear who has nothing but his teaching and will change society with the help of this teaching so that all these vile things causing pain and suffering will be many times less. And each of us will be able to live in a world in which you can trust other people, in which no one will steal anything from you, in which you will not be subjected to violence just because someone has the opportunity to use it on you, in which you they will extend their hand if you stumble, and will not finish you off for selfish purposes, believing that this is how it should be. Well, maybe it’s not we who will live in such a world, but our children, but it’s possible. Would you say this is a utopia? But hasn’t the same religion made people kinder and more tolerant of each other, haven’t the spiritual values it promotes made many of us more humane? And even though no religious teaching is ideal, we still received something good from each of these teachings, thanks to which life in society became better and people became kinder. Right? Well, here's a manifestation of spiritual values. And there may be a lot more of them, such manifestations, because there can be a great many ideas based on high spiritual ideals. The world will never become ideal, perfect, flawless in every sense, but it can become better. It is already better here, compared to the wild world in which people once lived who had no idea about some kind of intangible spiritual values. The one who survived was simply stronger, more cunning, faster, more dexterous than others. But then people, with the help of ideas preaching good deeds, made the world a little better.

Everything that we have achieved in spiritual, moral, cultural development is not the limit. There are many ideas, concepts, teachings aimed at helping a person rise above his natural essence and live not according to the laws of the jungle, but according to the laws of the highest ideals, according to the laws of justice, freedom, love, respect and other values that are great in their meaning. Let us still live in not the best society, from the point of view of people’s attitude towards each other. Even though the problem of wars has not been solved, the problem of social inequality has not been solved, in which people suppress and use each other, having such opportunities, there are many things that are still not arranged in our society so that we can be completely satisfied with it. But our children can live in a better world than ours, they can achieve great success in this matter if we today make our contribution to the development of spirituality, both our own and public. We invest in material well-being, both for ourselves and for our children; we want to pass on some material assets by inheritance, so that the life of our descendants will be at least as good as ours. Well, what will all these values mean in a world where man is a wolf to man, where everyone is ready to deceive, betray, kill for the sake of some things, resources? All this can be lost by some due to the aggression of others. But if everyone is happy with everything, then people will have nothing to worry about, they will live in peace and harmony with each other. If we think about the future of our children, passing on our material values to them, we must also think about the shell in which all these values will exist and bring them joy. And this is an ideological shell based on spiritual values.

Ultimately, all people want to be happy. That is, constantly experience joy, satisfaction and peace. We just need to create conditions so that such a state arises and does not disappear. For example, one of these conditions is freedom, or more precisely, a person’s feeling of his freedom, without which true happiness is impossible. And freedom is a spiritual value that needs to be disseminated in society in the form of a reasonable and implementable idea that will allow people to feel free and at the same time not slide into permissiveness and anarchy, which will no longer be good for people. And spiritually developed people come up with ideas that help to correctly instill such values in people, creating an important condition for happiness and eliminating the possibility of abuse of such values.

Both a materialist and a spiritually developed person can be happy. But everyone will have their own happiness. Everyone will experience it differently. As I believe, given my life experience, in which there was a place for material success, and then there were certain achievements in spiritual development, spirituality gives a more lasting feeling of happiness than material success. Because in this case, happiness depends on much fewer conditions. I will not call such happiness unconditional, because, nevertheless, some conditions must be met for spirituality to bring satisfaction. Let's say that everyone needs the same opportunity to feed themselves; a person lives in the physical world and you will not be satisfied with spirituality alone. But still, such happiness requires much less from people for its existence; it is, let’s say, less demanding of a person than the happiness experienced by a person who has achieved material success. A person only needs to think about the highest values, realize them, adhere to these values, serve them, and he will have a great meaning in life, thanks to which he will feel his importance, regardless of how much material wealth he has.

Spirituality and spiritual development are not entertainment, not a game, not some activity for those who are bored - this is service to higher values, this is work for the benefit of all humanity, this is an investment in the future of our children, this is, in some cases, salvation for a person who is confused in life and does not know what to live for. Spirituality invites us all to live for the sake of the interests of the whole, for the sake of the interests of being, and not just for the sake of our personal interests. Whether to devote oneself to this activity or not, and how to devote oneself, completely surrendering to spirituality or partially devoting one’s attention to it, each person decides for himself. In this matter, people should have complete freedom of choice. You can adhere to spiritual values, or you can serve them. In both cases, a person will gain a lot. But in the second case, he will have to give up much that is valuable to most people. Only then will he be able to achieve the highest results in spiritual development.

How to determine in a person

Is it worth thinking that spirituality comes to a person along with maturity, when he becomes an adult, gradually accumulating rich life experience? One thing is clear: it does not come from birth. It takes a certain amount of time to develop spirituality. A person acquires the necessary moral and ethical qualities by going through the school of life and gaining a wealth of knowledge.

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Spirituality manifests itself when a person:

strives to understand the eternal questions of existence: what is the difference between good and evil, what is truth, how to feel love, what is true beauty;
avoids bad society, does not allow self-affirmation at the expense of others;
helps those in need;
open to society and socially active;
does not focus only on financial well-being;
calm and balanced.

In ordinary life conditions, spirituality is visible in the little things. For example, this is a conscious choice of religion. By establishing oneself in one's faith, a person begins to change positively from within. Another important point is participation in charity: helping the homeless, donating things to an orphanage, donating blood, etc. Treating close relatives and spouses with respect is also one of the aspects of spirituality. This also includes showing interest in art and observing moral and ethical standards.

At the same time, it is important to understand that there is no superman who combines all of the above advantages. You should ask yourself the question: how can an ordinary person become a highly moral hero? What will serve as a magic elixir? Psychoanalysts believe that such a reboot begins in a person after the difficulties and sorrows he has experienced. If you haven’t broken down and persevered, then all problems begin to seem like unnecessary vanity.

A highly developed personality is in constant spiritual search and self-improvement. He explores himself from different sides, both strong and weak. Strives to know himself from the point of view of something more. Mastering meditative techniques helps you understand and find your purpose in this world.

What does it mean to be a spiritually developed person?

Anyone who devotes himself to something for the benefit of his life will certainly develop and improve in this.

If we want to develop spiritually, we need to understand three golden rules:

value your life as a great gift;
do not encroach on someone else’s life, as well as on someone else’s experience;
be grateful.

Through them, our three teachers teach us by creating certain life circumstances, leading us along the path of personal and spiritual growth. Development consists precisely in following these instructions to come to your original spiritual nature.

A person may become a person, or he may not. Is a person capable of following the path of spiritual growth or is the state of social realization in the awareness of what material wealth and volitional qualities she still lacks sufficient?

Society is the best platform for testing a person’s degree of spirituality.

There is a place for everyone:

morally flawed and astray;
advancing in development and degrading;
simply living and socially realized;
those beginning their first steps on a long ascent to the heights of the spirit and the spiritually enlightened.

However, no matter what stage of social or spiritual development you are at, life will always push you towards development - often with difficulties and problems. She will mirror people, their attitude towards you, and will also show something that is not at all easy to discern in yourself - the degree of your selfishness.

Hard work on yourself is precisely the most valuable because, having taken control of your egoism, curbing the beast in yourself with its passions and belligerence, you begin to develop faster in the spiritual direction.

Improving spiritually means being attentive to the world, listening to what it wants to tell you: be it the actions of people, their attitude towards you, other phenomena and events. However, it is not only your observation, but also your attitude shown in action.

To be spiritually developed means to work on character qualities that correspond to the characteristics discussed above. It is also the ability to stay at the newly discovered stage of development in yourself, becoming a wise explorer of a new ocean unknown to you.

A person has seven main energy centers, seven internal oceans of energy, located from bottom to top - from the tailbone to the crown. Each of them is responsible for the vital activity of certain organs, body systems, and the work of subtle mechanisms of consciousness and subconsciousness.

By exploring these centers, turning to certain practices, and improving in this, we move along the path of knowing not only ourselves, but also something more in ourselves. Gradually we begin to understand that there is no limit to improvement, that it has a beginning, but no end. Consequently, to be developed in this direction means to continuously improve oneself, focusing on inner harmony.

What is the basis of spiritual life?

Among the basic elements that determine the structure of a person’s spiritual aspirations are the following:

morality;
religion;
education;
the science;
art;
culture.

All of the above elements are interconnected. It is this connection that influences the harmonious development of the individual and his interaction with the surrounding reality.

Goals in the spiritual sphere

What goals help the development of the spiritual sphere?

The desire to study and understand the original nature of one's soul.
Gaining the skill of living in the current moment.
Improving your inner qualities, such as patience, nobility, etc.
The desire to eradicate selfishness, selfishness, pride, lust, and the desire for glory within oneself.
Gaining independence from other people and external factors.
The desire for inner harmony and peace.
Maintaining cheerfulness and calm.
A conscientious approach to life.
The desire to move to a new level of development.

All these points are an order of magnitude higher than those listed earlier, since they are directly related to our soul. They should be given attention and developed throughout life. Studying Jama and Niyama can help with this

The right to choose

All people have the right to choose how to live, how to act. What moral values should you have? A person who strives to get what he wants cares only about himself. Having received what he wants, he does not find satisfaction. A spiritual person thinks not only about himself. He sees his place in society, his role in it. And he correlates his own desires with what is higher and more significant than himself.

For some it is serving God, for others it is serving science. Such people are happy in what they can give—“it is more blessed to give than to receive,” as Acts 20:35 states. This is how spiritual people are.

Lack of spirituality is...

To begin with, it is important to understand the meaning of this word. If you look at it from the side of secular life, and not religion, it becomes clear that lack of spirituality is the devaluation of spiritual life, abandonment of it, loss of morality, leading to inhumanity.

Causes of loss of spirituality

At a time when new media appeared en masse, it became much easier to influence people. Mass consciousness is constantly being formed through television, radio, magazines and the Internet. People begin to live according to a certain scenario. They are given instructions about what they need to do to become successful and happy: what job to choose, what brand of clothing to wear, how to look, what house to live in and what to eat for breakfast.

The purpose of modern media has become to force the population to make more and more purchases. At the same time, imaginary values are presented as real - this becomes the reason for the growth of lack of spirituality in society. Hence the conclusion - lack of spirituality appears when a person becomes fixated on the material aspect and loses moral guidelines.

What does it mean to be decent?

Decency implies doing good deeds, the ability to follow divine commandments. Decent people act honestly and fairly in any situation, even unfavorable ones. They help others, but do not expect gratitude in return.

Signs of decent people:

Politeness with others. They show respect to everyone, regardless of age, social status and wealth. This is not an attempt to appear perfect, but a sincere desire to be polite.
Kindness and responsiveness. Decent people do selfless things.
Caring for others. It's easy to be selfish and do everything only for yourself. Good citizens care about others. They think about the consequences of their actions and how they will affect others.
Compliance with ethical and moral standards. From decent people you will not hear swear words, insults towards others or gossip. They hide irritation, suppress aggression and resolve conflicts peacefully.
Sincerity. Having integrity means expressing your thoughts sincerely, being open and honest.
Admitting your mistakes. Such people do not look for excuses for mistakes; they admit they are wrong.

Become a better person, enrich your inner world, strive to be highly moral with the help of the guidelines reflected in the article.

Criteria of spiritual wealth

What is spiritual wealth? He is truly rich in whom much of God is present. This means that after physical departure from this world, his soul remains filled with:

humanity;
education;
history of a kind;
love for the Motherland;
faith;
awareness;
unconditional acceptance;
inner peace.

Education and sophistication

An educated person already has spiritual qualities, such as: love of work, responsibility for committed deeds, broadened horizons - all this helps not to be a slave to the system and not to become a slave owner. A person strives to constantly improve, become better personally and acquire new knowledge that strengthens his life and makes it better.

Vera

Faith should not be confused with the concept of religiosity. In this case, what is meant is not a set of specific rituals or techniques, but the truth inside the heart of every person. It is important to realize that there is something more than the surrounding reality. This is an all-wise, all-loving, containing one and all, comforting, warming, instructing power for good. In this case, it does not matter at all what church a person belongs to and what worldview he adheres to.

The main thing is to understand that you can resort to this power for help. She has the power to lead a person out of a dead end and show him the right path. It is important to trust this power completely. And trust itself will appear on the basis of personal experience of relationship with such a force that will be tested by time.

Mindfulness

Understanding the importance of your actions throughout life leads to regular monitoring of your actions. This includes monitoring your behavior, emotional mood, reaction to external factors, irritability, and comparing your present self with your past self. From this follows a deep awareness of belonging to spiritual beings, a desire to change for the better.

Unconditional love

Unconditional is love that does not require anything in return, that gives and does not take away. She's sincere. It cannot be called affection or love. Its power penetrates the human soul with the bright rays of the Sun and absolutely unselfishly warms it.

And what's the end result?

What can happen to us if we are diligent in mastering the lessons of our three teachers and develop ourselves comprehensively?

This should lead us to the following results:

health promotion;
personal growth;
happiness;
the emergence of meaning in life;
reconciliation;
self-realization.

Health promotion

Naturally, we will gain good health by learning to put ourselves in excellent physical condition, thanks to the practices and exercises that the teacher-body will tell us. He will help us learn to enjoy our body without any damage to it.

Personal growth

The second teacher will reveal to us the real wealth of the soul, the true diamonds of the inner world, and will teach us to feel more subtly about ourselves and our surroundings. After some time, we will suddenly notice obvious changes in ourselves, thanks to which our personal growth has occurred.

We, figuratively speaking, have become head and shoulders above our former selves. We learn about this from the mirror. It is our immediate environment. It will also be revealed that these changes in ourselves are important not only for us, but also for our neighbors, because their lives have also become better. This may mean that we are learning lessons.

Happiness

When we finally learn to understand our third teacher, turning to him every day - with prayer or just a word, having clearly felt the feedback, we will learn that there is always a place for happiness in this world. We are deeply aware that it can be real, independent of material enrichment: the thickness of a wallet and the brand of a car, the presence of real estate and connections in the government. That it also does not depend on our social status or ideological predisposition. After all, in reality, it is a subtle spiritual state of the presence of inner light.

Meaning of life

Our life will open up to us with other amazing meanings, and our word will become truly alive. In life, a deep understanding of its essence will appear for us, perhaps even our spiritual program of the earthly path will be revealed to us.

Reconciliation

Our heart will become open to the world, there will be no place in it for war and aggressiveness, hatred and malice in any form. We accept him as he is and find our true location with him, in other words: “we reconcile.”

Self-realization

Now we understand what we are truly capable of. The most rational and competent application of our physical and spiritual forces is revealed to us. Our self-realization is the result of painstaking hard work on ourselves. We realize ourselves not so much for our own sake, but for something greater and joyful for everyone.

A conscientious student of the school of life will be able to find his inner balance, without highlighting any of his deepest natures, finding reconciliation with everything and humility in everything. New paths of creation and co-creation will open up for him with those who walk alongside, filling the space with a single rhythm of joy, bringing joy to the One who looks at the world he created from the unknown, as well as from every awakened heart.

Personal qualities

In pedagogy, qualities are distinguished that are cultivated for the formation of a spiritual personality. This is the ability to take responsibility for one’s actions, understanding their impact on others. A spiritual person is, first of all, a moral person. He is characterized by honesty, decency, inner purity, nobility. He despises lies and theft. He is characterized by tolerance towards everyone, respect for people of the opposite sex, mutual assistance, caring for those in need, and self-control.

The behavior of such a person is not limited to the above qualities. He constantly works on himself to achieve even higher ideals. This is ensured by internal freedom - personal autonomy. He does not violate the laws of society not because of fear of punishment, but because they are the laws of his personality.