Welcome To Spirituality

Beyond all pretenses, a straight forward exploration into the nature and invitation of spirituality. Recorded live, from the first session of a 5-day retreat in Sweden, Tiger Singleton takes you on a journey of connecting with your sacred nature.

Transcript

I'm going to call this first session,

Welcome to Spirituality.

And when I look at my own journey in life,

And I investigate what I might call a spiritual path,

It's always fun to reflect back and see what has been the point of this spiritual exercise,

This spiritual unfolding.

And what I find to be the most profound thing is that my discovery in the spirituality is that it has nothing to do with who I think I am and everything to do with life as a whole.

And this very directly isn't what I was looking for when I first started what might be called a spiritual path.

What's been discovered is that life is attempting to open my eyes to what is real,

What is true about everything.

And the great hindrance I've had in my experience as a human being is that question that says,

But what about me?

What about what I want?

What about where I'm going?

What about my future?

And more and more,

However sincere those questions might be,

I've found them to be a great distraction,

A great distraction that prevents me from seeing what's actually happening.

We can see how obvious this is in our relationships with other people.

Have you noticed when you're so concerned about what you want,

You're not very available to listen to another person?

When we're so afraid of not getting where we want to be in the future,

It's like we're not available to listen to someone sincerely.

And have you noticed that in those moments of truly listening to another human being,

You don't really want anything from them?

You're just kind of holding a space for them to be them,

Kind of honoring the sincerity of their being.

And I find that this creates a beautiful illustration in how we might approach spirituality.

And that approach is one of deep listening.

And retreat is such a great time for that because we can kind of check out of the normalcy of our lives,

The busyness of our lives,

And really devote ourselves to a new depth of listening.

And so I invite you to investigate in openness within you that not only acknowledges that yes,

Maybe you have a bunch of questions.

Maybe it seems like there's a lot of things that you might want.

Maybe there's a lot of things you're afraid won't happen or will happen.

But I'm going to invite a space of trust that even if it's just for these few days,

We might be able to do that.

Spirituality in some way or another,

It's been around as long as human beings have been breathing.

As long as human beings have been alive,

There's been a recognition within ourselves that feels drawn to what we might call the sacred,

Feels drawn to what we might call truth.

It's almost like a question I often hear inside of myself is a soft yet aggressive whisper that says,

What's really going on here?

Have you ever experienced that?

You start notice commotion inside of yourself.

Maybe there's conflict with another human being.

Maybe you feel lost and confused and foggy.

And there's a depth of sincerity that says,

What's really going on?

What's true?

And you see we're led to that question because we are alerted by some sense of disharmony,

Where something within ourselves feels out of alignment,

Where we feel distant or separate from a sense of wholeness that we crave.

And this longing to maybe free ourselves from such commotion is a longing that can be found in every single human being.

And to me,

That's just the sweetest thing,

That every human being has this longing that says I want to go home.

And spirituality,

In all of its different ways that it's presented,

Attempts to draw a path that points one home.

And so our time together is going to be gently examining this path in our lives.

And in the most beautiful way,

See what it's been pointing to the whole damn time.

See what it will only point to for the rest of your life.

And the foundation of spirituality in some way or another is an invitation to be still.

And regardless of the spiritual tradition,

Whatever the spiritual practice,

Whatever the insight or wisdom,

All of it in some way or another is an invitation to be still.

And why do you think that is?

Why would every spiritual practice,

Its focus be to bring you back to the present moment?

To be still.

The comedy of which,

I see this in my experience and I'm sure in some way you see it in yours.

Have you noticed that when you're in commotion,

When you're with conflict or disharmony,

The last thing you want to do is be still?

It's like you have to run around and fix something.

Just notice that.

The mind says be still.

That's the worst advice I've ever heard.

But yet that's the primary invitation from spirituality.

And additionally,

Don't we always find ourselves ending up in stillness after we've exhausted ourselves,

Running around?

And again,

These things to be recognized and seen,

It's not an invitation to judge yourself for say you're doing it wrong,

But I just invite us to see this in a very gentle and self-forgiving way.

Just yeah,

I see that.

That when I'm with commotion,

When I'm hurting,

When there's pain,

The last thing I want to do is be still.

Or something inside of me believes I can't be still.

But yet that's always where I end up.

And it seems like in my journey over the years,

I seem to be going to stillness more quickly.

Still doing my running around.

But it would seem like I'm getting the message faster.

The invitation of spirituality to be still is attempting to get your attention so that you notice something that's already here.

That you notice something that's already true.

And I understand that in so many ways this can sound like it's the beginning stages are not very exciting.

But I just invite you to see that this is what we always come back to.

Whether it's when we collapse in our heartache.

Whether it's we just want to give up.

At some point or another,

We kind of find ourselves in some way bowing to life.

Surrendering to life.

And for me it's such a sweet visualization to see the broken hearted one give up and see that they can't do it.

During this retreat you'll have lots of moments to be by yourself or surrounded by an absolutely gorgeous forest.

You can take some walks,

Be alone.

And in those moments,

In a very playful but devotional way,

I just invite you to recognize the profound difference between what's happening in your mind and what's happening in life.

And just see that.

Get in contact with the reality of nature.

The reality of life.

And notice that if you ever feel tension in your body,

If you ever feel any sort of emotional pain in those moments,

Recognize that you've gone back into the mind.

And again,

Not as you're doing it wrong.

Just see that.

Because for human beings,

This is the beautiful dilemma.

And it's a quite simple dilemma.

And the dilemma could be said,

We're not even living in life,

We're living mental commentary,

Mental content.

And naturally,

The gift of spirituality or the gift of this discovery is simply an invitation to live life.

To see what's actually happening.

And this is where life becomes,

Or at least it's recognized,

That life is a magical playground.

Life is a beautiful forest.

Waiting for your recognition.

I get the imagery in my mind of walking through the forest and being lost in an argument.

And then you look to your left and you see these beautiful flowers.

It's almost as if they smile at you.

They say,

We've just been waiting for you to see us.

And you see,

That makes a great point.

This miracle,

This beauty,

This love,

This everything that you crave,

It's already here just waiting to be seen.

Waiting to be seen.

And if you can recognize that,

What we will also explore this week is the question of why don't you allow yourself to see it?

It's almost like you're walking in the forest and you're not seeing the magic because something else is so important.

Do you see that?

It's like you could see it,

But you don't.

Clearly,

There's something else in here that's really important.

And this isn't always the most pleasant thing to investigate.

Quite honestly,

Spirituality in its charade,

When it becomes something that it's not,

Can often just become a distraction rather than connecting with its real intent,

Which is to look at the real issue,

Which is also a great opportunity to be on retreat,

To check out from the normalcy of our lives and say,

Okay,

I can take these moments to really look at something.

Because do you ever notice when you're living your everyday life and you're going to work,

You start recognizing the conflict,

The pain,

And you're like,

No,

No,

No,

I don't have time for that right now.

I got to go back to my life.

I got to do my things.

I can't give that attention right now.

So this is the beauty of retreat.

I'm sure in some ways you've told yourself that you were just going to put it off.

Someday I'll look.

Someday we'll figure out what's going on.

And we can recognize that in our everyday lives,

The reason we don't want to look at those things is because it's scary.

In the most adorably human way,

It's scary.

And so as a warning,

This retreat might be a little bit scary.

It might be time for that.

And it might not be.

Either way,

It'll just be whatever it's going to be.

And you get to be sincere and honest within yourself.

Quite honestly,

One of the ways that spirituality expresses itself is through what we might call self-love.

That's a really popular phrase,

To love yourself.

It also points to what we crave as a human being.

We crave some sort of love for what we are.

It's very,

Very important to recognize because imagine,

And we will imagine this way to expose insight,

Not imagine as something to capture.

Imagine you're in the most profoundly loving and secure relationship where this person loves you unconditionally.

There's no chance in hell they will ever leave and they're going to die after you.

So you don't have to worry about them dying,

Right?

Just completely secure.

The love's not going anywhere.

Do you see that if you had such a security of love,

You would finally take a deep breath and just be honest?

And find it to be the most incredibly safe space where you can just be honest.

And I paint that picture so that we might recognize that to allow yourself to be honest to yourself is one of the greatest acts of self-love.

And likewise,

Even though it doesn't seem like it,

But one of the biggest challenges for the human being is to be honest with themselves.

It's scary.

It's scary in the same way that it's scary to be honest to another person that you love.

Surely you've experienced this in some way or another.

That fear says,

If I'm honest,

I don't know what's going to happen.

They might leave,

Might hurt their feelings.

Do you see in some way it says,

If I'm honest,

I lose all control.

And so again,

Very gently,

This space is an opportunity for you to explore this hesitation within yourself that might not want to be totally open to yourself.

And if you don't think it's there,

It's there because you're a human being.

Welcome to the club.

In such a way that if it wasn't there,

There'd be nowhere for love to flow.

There'd be no more expansion.

Have you noticed whatever progress you've made in your life that has been profoundly meaningful in some way,

It's an expression of a courage to be honest,

To be yourself,

To be you and to let go of what other people might think.

It's been some movement of this,

That your increased experience of freedom has been in direct response of you setting yourself free,

Allowing you to be you,

Which is no different than saying,

Allowing you to be honest.

And there's a beautiful dance between what we might call our humanness and what we might call spirituality.

And oftentimes we want to get away from our humanness and just have the spirituality,

But there is actually a very beautiful dance between the two,

Almost as if they were designed to be together.

You see spirituality,

Its conclusion in some way or another says all is well.

Surely you've heard that before.

All is well.

And if you've had any sort of profound experiences,

You've seen beyond the veil and saw how everything is connected.

It's all one,

Which is like saying there's nothing to worry about at all.

There's nothing to fear at all.

That's that love.

That's that love.

And if there is nothing to fear at all,

There's nothing to worry about.

What would you do?

You'd be you.

Completely,

Totally.

And not some grandiose idea of you,

But you'd be the human you.

The you that you are now.

The one that's afraid to relax in their humanness.

You would just relax.

Maybe stop striving to get to that better image of yourself.

Maybe you just relax.

Maybe you'd see that all other human beings are right where they're supposed to be.

Maybe all is well.

And you know,

For me,

My goodness,

That's the real beauty in life is the naturalness of our humanness.

The rawness of being human.

That's the real beautiful.

And I say this because we've mistakenly been conditioned that says the beautiful version of being human is a Photoshop version in some way or another.

And just like the illustration of a Photoshop person,

You know,

That's not a real thing.

That's not real.

But in the same way that to truly love another human being,

And I mean truly love another human being,

Not in the way that you want something from them,

Not in the way that you've captured them,

But to be fascinated with their aliveness.

What you recognize is a love for all parts of them,

However they show up.

Maybe they get angry and you say,

God,

That's amazing.

You're so beautiful.

Or they get sad and you're like,

Oh,

That's so cute.

So beautiful.

It's like looking at all the different seasons in life.

Sometimes there's a raging storm.

Sometimes there's a freeze of winter.

Sometimes it's just too hot.

But you see all of it is life in its glory.

All of it is magic and aliveness.

All of it is beautiful and all of it is profoundly allowed,

Profoundly allowed to be what it is.

How absurd that God would say to the storm,

Calm down.

No,

God says,

Range on.

Bring it.

Be you.

It's needed.

Life gives full permission for everything that is to fully be what it is in such a way that life is saying,

Please be what you are.

Be as I've made you.

Thank you.

I see your beauty.

And even if it's just for these five days and maybe you forget it when you leave,

But maybe during these days you'll see it.

You'll see how beautiful not only you are,

But everything.

You'll see how beautiful everything is and you'll go home and tell people and they'll think you're fucking crazy.

But in this we find that ultimately spirituality is the celebration of the beautiful.

And though in appearances it can be dark and scary,

Which is part of it,

It's a necessary doorway so that love can expand.

But ultimately it's exposing the celebration.

A celebration of what you are.

What life is.

What other people are.

Your family,

Your friends,

Everything and everyone.

The doorway to this is being honest with yourself.

No longer running,

No longer hiding.

But saying yes,

Let's look.

Reviews

I love this so much. And, I’m sad that I’m not on the 5 day retreat during which he recorded this intro. I guess I’ll have to make my own little retreat as best I can. But I think I will keep an eye out for a Tiger retreat near me…

Profound, so comforting a message in this talk!

Thank you for helping it be so simply said in such a way that I could hear it. I will come back to this often. I need more retreats. The honesty piece with ourselves is what I was searching for. 🙏

Thank you Tiger to share your wisdom, for your authenticity and humility. Love and big hugs 🤗 💗

Sometimes there is no where to run and no where to hide...
At that moment you realize there is beauty in everything...
Beauty in everything is what I have found, and the beauty within myself.
Thank you for this gentle reminder...
B♥️E♥️A♥️U♥️T♥️Y

Beautiful words and very thought provoking. Thank you 🙏

♥️🧡💛💚💙💜 thank you so much.

Amazing! Love this so much. Namaste 🙏 ❤️🌈🇨🇦

Oh wow! No more running. No more hiding. Embracing life in all its complex bliss.🙏 Thank you so much💕💕

I could listen to this all day.

You'll go home and tell everyone how beautiful everything is and they'll think
you are fucking crazy. Story of my life in sobriety. But my friends understand. Apparently so do you, my friend. Thank you, thank you, thank you. DOS 10.2.88. Love always whether you like it or not. Scott