Hi,
This is Brooks and it's good to be here with you.
Today I would like to talk about what spirituality means to me.
And I've thought a lot about this over the years.
For me,
Being spiritual is being alive.
Plain and simply,
If you're alive you're spiritual.
And I think of it that way because for me,
Spirit means life.
Life force.
So if you're alive,
There's the life force.
It's present in you.
It's like the electricity in the light bulb,
You know.
And so that's spirituality.
And the nice thing I like about it is that you don't have to be anything different than what you are.
You don't have to become something or,
You know,
Maintain a certain perspective or have particular behaviors.
As you are,
You're alive.
That's life.
And life itself is profound.
It moves planets.
It rotates the earth around the Sun.
It creates stars.
It creates our thoughts and it beats our heart and breathes us.
So it's not anything that's separate from us.
It's here because we're alive and we're experiencing.
And so that's my simple definition of spirituality.
And the interesting thing it is is the things that are most spiritual are often the things that are most unnoticed.
And we don't notice it.
We notice the things that are more flashy or more exciting.
You know,
Our attention goes to those things and often misses the simpler things.
And that doesn't mean to avoid things that are exciting.
You know,
If you're spiritual,
Avoid things that are exciting,
You know.
Exciting things are there to be experienced.
But I think coming back,
Remembering I'm alive,
I'm breathing.
I'm not even doing the breathing.
Life is breathing me.
The lungs take in air,
Take in oxygen.
The heart beats.
I don't have to do any of that.
Life does that.
And noticing that is spiritual.
Noticing the flow of life in me.
Noticing the flow of life in yourself.
And not having to notice it or always thinking about it.
You know,
It's the spontaneous remembrance.
Oh,
I'm alive.
There's life in me.
I was thinking about this because I was working with a client last week and she said that she wanted to be more spiritual.
And I asked her,
I said,
What do you mean by that?
And she said that she didn't want to get angry anymore.
She wanted to be equal-minded,
You know,
All the time.
And I said that it's her nature to get angry at times.
That's how she is.
It's the feeling bad about it.
Oh,
I shouldn't be feeling this way.
It's not spiritual that causes her to suffer.
And she thought about that.
And it was nice for her to think about that,
You know.
It was calming for her to think about it that way.
That's how she was made.
We're all different.
Our qualities are different.
One person to the next.
We're made in different ways.
From our genes and our conditioning.
We're different in our own unique ways.
But we're the same in that we're alive.
That we're experiencing that current,
That life force is the same in everyone.
And again,
That's that simplicity,
That recognition of that spiritual,
That spirituality within us of that,
Of being alive with our differences.
And suddenly our differences become okay,
You know.
This is how I am.
Life has made me this way,
You know.
Genes and conditioning are powerful.
And we don't have any choice of our genes,
You know.
That was determined before we were born.
And where we lived as we were growing up,
The people that we met,
Being around our parents,
The things that we learned in school,
That conditioning we don't have any control over either.
And these things created us.
And here we are.
And there's something wonderful about that.
There's something incredible about being alive,
About remembering that,
You know.
You could be in the midst of doing something,
All of a sudden you notice your breath,
Or you notice a sound,
Or you can feel something against your skin.
Or you,
Your hands on your heart,
You can feel your heartbeat.
And you remember,
Oh I exist,
I'm alive.
Everything becomes easier and simpler.
It's like coming back home.
And that's our greatest possession is being alive.
Without being alive,
We don't experience anything.
It's the most profound part of us.
And it's inherent.
And it's not anything that we have to attain or become.
I'm alive.
And because I'm alive,
I'm enough.
As I am,
I'm enough.
Because I have life.
And we'll still have pains and pleasures.
We'll have things in our lives that we enjoy and sometimes that we don't enjoy.
Things come and go in our lives.
People come and go.
The things that we do come and go.
New things come,
Old things go.
But the one thing that remains is that we're here and we exist and we're alive.
And again,
That's my definition of spirituality.
And again,
I love it because it's here and it's inherent and I don't have to become something that I'm not.
It's present in me and it's present in my life regardless of what's happening.
And that's happened to me at times.
I feel overwhelmed.
Everything feels like it's too much and then I notice my breath.
And I'm alive.
And then remembering,
Okay this hurts right now,
Whatever it is that's happening.
But other things I've heard in the past and they've gone away.
Hanes come and go.
But I remain.
I like to talk about it like this because it reminds me,
You know,
It reminds me of how lucky I am.
This whole world out there telling us what we need in order to become better,
In order to become more,
In order to be okay.
Once you do this,
Once you have this,
Once you become this,
Once you become enlightened,
Once you become whatever,
Fill in the blank.
And as long as we believe that then we'll never be okay.
Because if we believe that we're not okay now and we need something that we don't have,
Then basically we're telling ourselves we're not okay.
We're not enough.
We come back to our breath.
We come back to noticing our heartbeat.
Or that,
You know,
I'm experiencing things.
And that means I'm alive.
I'd have to be alive to experience stuff.
And then that ease comes back.
And then you're enough.
So as you are right now,
You're alive because you're hearing me talk.
And because you're alive,
You're enough.
And that's wonderful.
It's beautiful.
And I can sense it,
You know.
There's something about it.
Being able to sense people's aliveness,
Their existence.
And that's how we connect.
That's true connection.
So thank you for spending time with me today.
And thank you for being alive and connecting in this way.
And I wish you the best.
Take care.
