Structure Your Spiritual Life

29 Mar Structure Your Spiritual Life

Structure your Spiritual Life: watch this highlights video & read this post!

“Structure Your Spiritual Life”?

Does it sound like a contradiction? Only if you misunderstand your spiritual life.

Your spiritual life is where you really live. It powers and keeps you juicy and alive. It’s vital.

So is structuring it. I offered an event live and recorded it, helping people do this. Click here to access the highlights video.

What Is My Spiritual Life?

Your spiritual life is whatever you say it is. (Even if it isn’t, yet.) Your spiritual life may be

• • meditation
  • yoga
  • prayer
  • art-making
  • priestessing
  • ministering to others (as long as you are also juicing yourself with this same energy)
  • conscious bathing
  • sex
  • forest bathing, walking in nature
  • gardening, farming, tending to plants and animals (as long as this feels like it is also tending to you)
  • “just” sitting and doing “nothing” (because you are doing much when you do that)
  • listening, including but not limited to
    • your calling
    • your selves, your inner dialogue–not to solve a problem but because you love yourself/ves
  • many more things.

How Can I Structure My Spiritual Life?

Here’s my best information on how to begin–and sustain your beginning:

1. Do not worry about your spiritual life.

I’m not trying to be “nice.” This is strategic: worry is energy mischannelled. You know the saying? “If you worry, don’t pray; and if you pray, don’t worry.” They occupy the same channel. So put your energy into your spiritual life now, in a positive, active direction. (Even if “active” is “just” listening. That is totally part of my spiritual life.) Whatever your spiritual life is made of, it will grow if you structure it. 

2. Think of structuring it as creating a container for it.

Set aside time for it. (See #3). Anything we don’t structure has to fight through the many, many structures we already live within in order to poke its head through and be heard and seen. Don’t make your spiritual life work that hard!

3. Make it manageable:

• • If you already have a spiritual life, keep it up–and appreciate yourself. What you focus on, you receive more of. You can structure what you already do and enjoy more firmly and clearly. Hint: Structure in more of what you love. Give yourself to this love more fully. “Structuring” for you means giving yourself permission to have more time for it (use my permission implicit in this post and now explicit if it helps)–and protecting it. Protecting your time is what keeps the container strong. Enjoy watching it grow. It will guide you if you let it develop in this way.  (If you run into problems, see #4.)
  • If you don’t already have a spiritual life, this is your chance. Start small. Like: 15 minutes five days out of seven, or an hour a week.  Regularly. Please protect your container. Keep your agreements with yourself. Protecting your time is what keeps the container strong. (If you run into problems, see #4.)

4. Troubleshooting: if you run into problems

Guess what? It’s normal for this to take time and experimentation. You live in a world that says you can’t structure something spiritual or you shouldn’t. You’ve simply bumped into the world. But what does the world know? You know better. Let’s honor your knowing and help you get a life–a spiritual life.

Here is what to try if you are running into problems:

• • Remind yourself this is your life-force: your spiritual life. This is nourishment for your entire life. You eat, and you sleep. This is that important.
  • Use self-discipline to keep your agreements with yourself and protect your times. This is actually the most important thing you do each week. This is what grows you into the person you want to be.
  • Self-discipline will only take you so far. If you keep having to force yourself to keep your spiritual-life agreements: tune in! Are you sure you know what your spiritual life is? Explore, reflect, set aside a time for journalling. Listen to your inner dialogue about it. Yes, you can try a Council of Selves. Maybe your spiritual life isn’t what you thought it was, and it involves doing something completely different. Maybe it is doing “nothing” at all. You have permission. I encourage you to try this. “Nothing” is a lot of what I personally do; it balances out all my doing. I find it essential. But maybe your spiritual life grows from something you just haven’t thought of yet.
  • When you love your spiritual life, you will find yourself drawn to doing a lot of it. As much as possible, give in. Set aside times and protect them. Watch your spiritual life guide you, and grow you. It will do so much better than anyone can, including me.
  • Trust yourself.

What are your questions? Send them! I’d like to answer them the best I am able. Love!