Do you want to know how to start a spiritual journey? Whether you are a scientist seeking for the cosmos, or a monk seeking for God. There is something within us all that seeks for higher consciousness, understanding or being. You aren’t a human being having a spiritual experience anyway. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.
There is no better way to expand your consciousness than to go on a spiritual journey. There is no right or wrong way to do it either. Simply pack up your baggage and head forthright into your quest. Be brazen and brave for you know not what riches lie in wait for you beyond your first step.
“The journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step.”
-Lao Tzu
Why Start a Spiritual Journey?
Ask a good spiritual teacher how to start a spiritual journey. I have a feeling you would get an odd look. Your life itself is a spiritual journey. Yes indeed, you are on that path this very instant. However, if you’re feeling lost or out of touch that is totally normal. The spiritual journey we are talking about here is more of an archetypal journey. A quest, if you will.
In order for there to be growth, there must be a sacrifice. A journey falls into the religious behavioral pattern of the modern homo sapien. It’s necessary to mythologize this particular experience. By narrativizing this given experience it helps to make actual gains through metaphorical progression. This is why archetypal patterns have become so important for the symbolic order of society.
The journey acts as a narrative structure. Think of Joseph Campbell’s monomythic journey. Every story follows a system of guidelines. Ultimately at the end of the journey, the hero reaches his/her higher state. You are the hero of this quest. A heroin search of some truth of information is necessary to restore order. The journey comes to represent the trials and tribulations that the hero will come to face in his/her quest. As a result of these trials and tribulations, the hero inevitably gains a type of theological knowledge known as apotheosis.
If you approached a good spiritual teacher and asked him/her how to start a spiritual journey. I have a feeling you would get a weirdly odd look. By all means, a guru is not meant to make you feel insignificant. A guru sees the Godhead within you. Your spiritual journey started the day that you were born.
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is an old-school spiritual journey. Since the beginning of religion, mankind has been making a trek in the name of reaching a higher state. Many spiritual journeys begin as pilgrimages in fact. Let pilgrimage be the metaphoric embodiment of your spiritual journey. In order to do a pilgrimage, you have to actually leave your physical location. Castaway your old identity and adorn a new one. That of the Pilgrim.
Pilgrimage is the perfect metaphorical step for a spiritual journey. We often become so settled in the normal humdrum of daily life. Life begins to lose all meaning. Depression begins to set in. Effectively we are like a reptile. That is we are wearing old scaly armor that we’ve outgrown. Yet we continue to wear it because of different reasons. In order for a snake or lizard to cast off that old garment, however, it must find abrasion. The snake then needs only to rub up against that abrasion to slip out of its old skin to reveal the shiny veneer beneath. Your pilgrimage will be the abrasion to affect transformation.
Transcend your locale in order to induce this new experience. That is what pilgrimage does to you anyway. You’ve become so fed up with the current state of affairs that you literally provoke rapid change. Pilgrimage, the metaphoric journey may be the perfect step to take in your spiritual awakening.
Prayer
Prayer comes under a lot of flack for being sort of a goofy concept. I’m not going to lie, the concept is funny (sit and talk to yourself and hope God is listening.) Amazingly, you’d be surprised to find out that science has shown that prayer and healing come with immense health benefits.
Why not try prayer on for size? In your spiritual journey, you’ll need to employ as many weapons in your arsenal as possible anyway. You definitely want to reach the pinnacle of apotheosis. You’ve got to use all the cards in your hand.
Prayer is fairly easy. It simply involves sitting and communicating with reality. Many people rationalize this concept in different ways. For some prayer is talking to an actual divine entity. For others, it is merely whispering into a void to feel less alone. As to how to rationalize that power is entirely up to you. No two persons have a carbon copy of reality. Subjective consciousness means that each of us must make our own personal peace with the cosmos.
As to what prayer does or how it works is beyond me. Although I know it does work. Science will back me up on this. Yogis and theologians have tried to take a crack at prayer. I think it is the immediacy of reality is always imminent. God is the absolute supreme being that generates being. In this way even just speaking into the void is communication with that divine. Reality is always present anyway. Talk to it, let it know you are listening to everything it has to say to you. You’re never alone because existence is always stalking you.
Psychadelic Drugs
The pilgrimage takes you to a different land, but psychedelic drugs take you to a completely different world. If you’re ready to be completely transported to a different dimension then you’re ready for psychedelics.
Psychedelics are still a mystery, however. How they affect consciousness and why they cause transcendental life experiences is beyond explanation. We do know that it aids in mental health. Psychedelics have been shown to help people overcome the fear of death, PTSD, addiction, relieving anxiety, and many other psychological maladies. These benefits, though, can’t be explained by mind science. So what is going on with psychedelics?
Shamans in the amazon use a special kind of drink called ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a potent drink with the active ingredient DMT. This drink mixes a little bit of art, psychology, spirituality, and medicine to take people onto a journey. This journey takes the user deep inside the mind. This effect is not relegated to ayahuasca in particular. All psychedelic experiences conjure a similar spiritual enhancement.
Some people think that Psychadelics actually altar consciousness itself. The mind is not consciousness. The mind is an ego structure. Many psychic objects can enter into the mind however the mind is subject to change. Consciousness, on the other hand, is…different. Nobody really knows what it is or where it comes from. It might be the soul that religious scholars have been alluding to for millennia. Psychedelics have been proven to profoundly affect users’ consciousness. So with Psychedelics, you’re guaranteed to have a spiritual journey. Be careful though. It’s entirely possible to have a bad trip.
Read Sacred Texts
Concepts of the divine haunted humanity for millennia. Even Atheists have a mystical sort of wonder amongst themselves. It is as if they’ve simply replaced the word “God” with “The Universe.” This is because all knowledge contains a general aspect of the divine. The cosmos is a truly majestic sort of mystery. Believe it or not, the study of this mystery has been an ongoing concern in human affairs. So much so that there are countless documents, texts, books, artworks, reliefs etc. that testify to this strange divine sensation we all have.
Many before us have gone on these spiritual journeys. Upon their travels, they’ve documented their discoveries. Their inward awakenings have all been penned. One will find that to consume this age-old wisdom transmutes the meanings to those who read. In this way the reader reaps the same benefits. Sacred texts are gateways to the spirit. They are the accumulated theological knowledge handed down from generation to generation. Keep in mind. It is not the text itself that is vital, but the spiritual and divine truths that they open up within their readers.
“Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.”
-Lex Luther Superman 1978
It doesn’t matter with what spiritual book you start with. The method for reading these books is quite simple. Simply pick up your given book to any page and begin to read. See if that passage speaks to you. If yes, continue and if not, pick up the next one.
How long will your spiritual journey last?
Your spiritual journey will last as long as it takes. Everyone has a different life lesson to discover. Metamorphosis is the cause of this journey. You must reach to that state of the hero that I previously mentioned.
Why do People start Spiritual Journeys?
There is no simple one-size-fits-all here. Everybody takes on their journey for specific reasons. The Buddha took on his spiritual journey because he wanted to better understand suffering in the world in order to transcend it. Christ took on his journey in order to save humanity from sin. Einstein had to reach a higher state of consciousness through the cosmos to discover his theory of relativity. There are all sorts of reasons why people want to awaken something divine deep within themselves. A spiritual journey helps you to reach deep within your soul to excavate what is within you.
Metamorphasis
The final chapter of your spiritual journey will be the timely day of your awakening. It all started, however, with your first step. Throughout this process, you’ll need to have faith. Jesus talked about having faith the size of a mustard seed. A mustard seed was one of the smallest seeds known at the time. Yet when planted it grew into a rather sizeable tree. The idea of Christ’s parable is this. At the onset of any expedition into the unknown, you’re knowledge, expectations, etc. may be as small as a mustard seed. However, the growth and spiritual attainment that comes from merely taking that first step will be immense in nature.
