Paul Brian
Are you a spiritual person?
If you said yes, or maybe, the list below will be of interest to you.
This is an honest look at what makes you a highly spiritual person (without being dogmatic).
1) You’re sensitive and attuned to the spiritual world
First up in the signs you’re a highly spiritual person (without being dogmatic) is that you’re emotionally and spiritually sensitive.
The spiritual world is a place you go to and connect with regularly.
What does this mean?
Every person will have a different experience of the spiritual dimension and what that is for them.
The common thread is that it is everything which is not physically visible with our eyes:
It can be as simple as an overwhelming emotion or realization while reading a poem or watching a waterfall, or as complex as a connection with a spiritual force, communication with spiritual beings or guidance or warnings from beyond the physical life.
It can be as simple as feeling a deep sense of inner peace come over you on a forest walk or as intense as realizing that your identity is partly a fiction of your ego and life is not what you always thought it was.
The spiritual world can also be found and experienced deeply in nature, by sinking into the rhythms and truth of the cycles of the natural world.
However you experience the spiritual dimension, it’s a constant factor in your life and just as real to you as your morning coffee.
2) You have intense visions, dreams and epiphanies
Next up in the signs you’re a highly spiritual person (without being dogmatic) is that you have intense spiritual experiences.
These could be visions, dreams or epiphanies. It could be transcendent states that you reach in which you realize key things about life, love and time.
Your visions and experiences impact you strongly:
You may express them in art and song or through journaling or writing.
You may keep them to yourself and reflect on them, or talk to close family and friends about what you’ve experienced.
This goes far beyond the merely aesthetic or personal emotional experiences:
The fact of the matter is that your experiences guide and shape you in life, and the visions, dreams and breakthroughs you have directly impact what decisions and steps you take in life.
3) You’re open to learning and experiencing more
The next of the signs you’re a highly spiritual person (without being dogmatic) is that you’re open to learning.
No matter how defined you are in your path and how sure you are, meeting new people and having new experiences is something you’re open to.
While taking care not to just recklessly wander down any spiritual alley that opens up, you maintain at least an initial openness to hearing of new ideas, trying new paths and considering the differences and contradictions of other people’s spiritual experiences.
In other words, no matter how strong your own spiritual experiences and realizations have been, you remain non-dogmatic.
You’re able to hear what others say and the things they’ve experienced with fascination and humility even if you don’t resonate personally with what they’ve experienced in your own journey.
“Not knowing everything humbles and motivates you. You are humble in receiving the lessons.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are gaining it from a child or an animal or a plant.”
4) You treat others with kindness and compassion
When you’re a highly spiritual person, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re well balanced or saintly.
You may be struggling inside or having all sorts of challenges in your external life.
However if you’re a highly spiritual person there will be a noticeable trend of you treating others with kindness and compassion.
That’s because being very spiritual brings you into contact with many eternal truths about life and human nature.
First and foremost it reminds you that we’re all temporary travelers here on this planet, and one day we won’t be here.
Why not treat each other with some respect and love as much as possible?
5) You’re humbled by the moral complexity of life
The next of the signs you’re a highly spiritual person (without being dogmatic) is that you see your commonality.
We live in a world where everyone wants to be special and get the most likes and the most admiration.
But reaching a point of true spiritual growth is often about the opposite:
You realize you’re not that special.
And it comes as a relief and a feeling of peace washing over you to know that your struggles and joys are those of everyone.
Instead of feeling separate and remote or “better” or “different” than others, true spiritual growth makes you feel connected to those around you and their experiences and struggles in life.
What you once may have judged in terms of harmful behaviors of others, you now look on with a kind of sympathy and empathy, as you recognize your own compulsions in some of that behavior.
What you once saw as out of reach selflessness or kindness strikes you more as common sense and the natural way to live, rather than some high ideal far from removed from you.
The fact of the matter is that true spirituality connects you more to others instead of removing you.
“You recognize yourself in the world around you,” explains Luminita Saviuc.
“You see yourself in those who are good, but also in those who are bad; in those who are kind, but also in those who are cruel, and this humbles you a great deal.”
This leads to the next point about spiritual growth and authenticity…
6) You accept the transience of life
Many religious and spiritual paths emphasize the transience and temporary nature of mortal life.
In Hinduism, mortal life is more like a temporary phase where you work through your way to moksha or ultimate reality after you one day overcome the cycle of endless lives and being deluded into your temporary identity in each life.
In Christianity, life is a mortal struggle that has been redeemed with eternal life in paradise through the death and resurrection of Christ.
In Islam, life is important to live as best you can and submit to God, but is still ultimately the dunya or temporary and transient world. One of the worst mistakes people make, according to Islam, is to worship the creation instead of the Creator, mistaking temporary things for the eternal.
Whatever spiritual path you are on, or however far from the doctrine of any religion, you will have this sense that the temporary things of this world are never worth worshiping or hating with all your being.
You experience the full range of emotions and you get caught up in the moment like all the rest of us.
But you ultimately maintain that small part of yourself that knows that this physical world will one day fade away and that your happiness and source of stability and hope has to come from beyond temporary, earthly things.
“She is connected to the inner divine (or inner spring of wellness or a secret happy place – the label does not matter) and knows that material or worldly things are by nature temporary or transient,” notes Revathi Krishna.
Finding joy or sadness or meaning in the temporary is profound and true.
But clinging to it for validation or meaning is something else entirely, something the highly spiritual person no longer engages in.
7) You’re fine with having more questions than answers
Being a highly spiritual person doesn’t mean that you know everything.
In fact, most mystics and spiritual masters describe the process of spiritual growth as unlearning things which are false or unnecessary and stripping back down to essence.
Becoming more spiritual and embracing that side of you is often more about the questions than the answers.
It’s about living in the question and leaving aside that ego compulsion for answers, results, payoff, pay dirt…
The fact of the matter is that being highly spiritual means you stop craving things to go your way or to get everything you want.
You begin to recognize the opportunities that are contained in life’s boring and seemingly empty times…
You’re fine with having some questions remain unanswered and breathing into them and living them instead of always knowing what to do.
8) You’re always realizing new things about life and yourself
The best thing about being a highly spiritual person is that you’re always realizing new things about life and yourself.
Your self-awareness increases and you find that you feel linked even more to a source of life and energy, call it God the Universe or whatever you choose.
You still care about life, but you don’t depend on its outcomes to satisfy your soul anymore.
It matters to you, as do your problems and those of others, but they’re no longer the all-consuming struggle they once were.
You come to see that your desire to get what you want is often shallow and doesn’t satisfy your deeper spiritual needs.
When you’re highly spiritual and on an authentic spiritual journey, you no longer do things to “get” something in a spiritual sense.
For example, if you meditate you don’t do it in order to “get” the outcome of feeling more inner peace or stability…
You do it because it’s true to you and your experience and because it’s worth it for its own sake.
9) You help and guide others but never force them onto your path
When you’re a highly spiritual person, you have a desire to share your knowledge and experiences with others.
Those who come to you with struggles or anxieties, especially of the kind you yourself have wrestled with, elicit your empathy.
You try your best to share for them what’s worked for you and what’s spoken to you.
But you never force them onto the same path or to mimic your experiences and insights.
You share, but you don’t pressure.
This is a sign of being truly spiritual, because when you’re secure in yourself you don’t seek to impose it on somebody else.
10) Your spiritual growth makes you want to serve others more instead of dominate them
When you’re authentically spiritual, you know that there is no real meaning in “measuring” spiritual growth.
While there may indeed be different levels of consciousness and spiritual awareness or ascendance, you understand that we are all in the same boat.
Our experiences and mortal consciousness is temporary, and any “ranks” we’re in spiritually don’t make us “better” or “worse.”
We’re all different, and that’s a good thing.
The more you grow and the more you become close to your spiritual path, the more you desire to serve others rather than dominate them.
There’s a type of spiritual person for whom this is the inverse: he or she wishes to mislead others, or decides to become a sleazy guru and get sex and money as a reward for their wisdom and assumed superiority.
But one of the signs that you’re truly progressing in a spiritual path is that you genuinely want to help others and the need or desire to feel better or above others has truly disappeared from your life, both materially and spiritually.
The true meaning of being spiritual
The true meaning of being spiritual is about lifelong learning and sharing.
You can sit and read books about deep spiritual concepts or go to seminars every week on hidden esoteric knowledge, but if you’re not applying spirituality to your life then it remains purely abstract and intellectual.
Spirituality is about lived experience and about making a difference in your own life and the lives of others.
It’s about reaching a state of self-awareness and global awareness where you no longer cling to being a victim or being special and can see how we’re all interrelated in the dance of life.
Indeed the true point of being spiritual isn’t to get or achieve anything, it’s to be a certain way and experience life a certain way to get the most out of it and find fulfillment in the now.
The true meaning of being spiritual is not to remove yourself from life or trying to be successful, it’s to live with maximum impact and minimum ego.
