Spirituality — A must-have outlook for youth
Spirituality is often misunderstood by the young generation. Many young people think about it as liberation from all worldly desires. Whenever youth come across such know-how, the first thing that comes to their minds is — they are being taught about leaving this urbane landscape — and start meditating in the Himalayan mountains.
But why should the right sense of spirituality be a must-have outlook for millennials?
The abstract answer lies in the below quote.
“The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That’s where you need to go.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
It is a well-established fact that the lifestyle of young people around the globe is getting degraded day by day. Unhealthy routines, bad eating habits, superficial relationships, and lack of purpose reflect a take-for-granted attitude towards life. We prefer to live the swanky lifestyle and constantly construct life — full of noise versus productive life.
This remains the story for most of the young tribe until something happens which cracks them open. Then one has to take retreat within. And that’s where the journey of spirituality begins.
But why wait for the setback to happen in life… what if we add spirituality as a positive catalyst in our personal growth on this earth school?
The best thing about spirituality is that sometimes you are unknowingly exercising it in your daily life, and getting the sense of it in your subconscious, but you are actually unaware of this fact. This could be explained as the inner guidance to follow the path of spirituality — the soul message to sail the life’s ship in the right direction.
Commonly people write in their social media platform bio — ‘Live in Moments’ or ‘One day at a time’ and most famous — Carpe diem — which is also the Instagram bio-line of the Indian Cricket team’s captain Virat Kohli. Millennials use them as fancy lines for their bio but most of them are unaware of its deep-rooted meaning which is nothing but a perspective of Spirituality. If you genuinely follow this approach then definitely you are touching the layer of spirituality. These powerful one-liners somewhere give the essence of Spiritual guidance.
In simple words, when someone taps the source of inner guidance by following certain rituals — meditation, yoga, chanting techniques, etc. to maintain the life balance, they are eventually on the path of spirituality.
When you embark on the path of spirituality then vocabulary like—Law of attraction, Inner Healing, Physical manifestation, Intuition, Universal guidance starts making sense and can be practically acknowledged by the conscious mind, and works as tools for personal growth and career building.
Generally, spirituality is mostly seen in conjunction with religiousness. We have witnessed enlightened souls like Jesus and Buddha who showed us the path of self-realization and gave sermons to lead this human life most effectively and appropriately, to utilize the universal potential within us. Those teachings are spiritual and are part of our holy books. So the path of spirituality conventionally begins with following the religious rituals. This is the reason why young generations generally consider both as the same practice and keep themselves away from this central idea. They want to be neutral at the religious landscape thus miss out on the most beautiful aspect of life — spirituality — which is the path of Love!
But the time has come when we need to identify the thin line difference between these two and cultivate the path of spiritual knowledge for self-development and lead a purposeful life.
There are many ways and perspectives to define spirituality. According to my experiences and knowledge, I have tried to define it as below.
Spirituality is knowing your inner being with the life process to become aware of natural laws of existence and make every moment of life — a conscious and blissful experience for yourself and others around you.
Here comes the direct benefits of Spirituality — the young people can see in their life by following this practice as they have started building their lives.
- Character Building: This is the very important aspect of life on which all the further progress depends. Right character building leads to the right path of personal development and the core behavior of individual shapes out of this. The below tweet of spiritual leader, Dalai Lama says it all.
2. Health & Fitness: Healthy lifestyle is the most-talked-about topic nowadays and gaining everyone’s attention in this pandemic situation where physical and mental resilience is very important for everyone. We have been taking health and fitness for granted in the name of enjoying life to the fullest. Here spiritual rituals like chanting, meditation, and yoga is playing a crucial role. It is a great time to make them lifelong habits.
3. Relationships: Spirituality is a path of Love. It sprouts the seed of Love within us and makes us aware of self-love. Self-love breeds the other forms of love — romantic love, parental love, siblings' love, etc. Romantic love has become superficial nowadays especially in youth when all they look for is instant gratification and exploits the core values of love unknowingly.
4. Positive outlook and focus: Positive outlook is very much necessary to approach anything in life. Spiritual rituals like mindfulness and practicing daily gratitude helps us to develop a positive attitude and pivot us to set remarkable milestones and render the positive energy to focus on studies and identifying the inner calling in our early years.
5. Self Discovery & purpose: Self-discovery is the most authentic way to lead a life. Once you get aligned with the self and identify your purpose on earth, you will have a lot to do in that direction to fulfill your heart's desires. Most people identify this truth in their mid-age and even after that when no sufficient time is left to work towards the personal legends. If we identify this truth at an early stage of life, we can design our life most authentically.
Spirituality opens the doors for self-discovery to identify the soul purpose of life.
There is a famous quote from George Bernard Shaw, when asked on his deathbed,
“What would you do if you could live your life over again?”
Shaw replied: “I’d like to be the person I could have been but never was.”
Life gives us a chance every day to become what we always want to be or doing something that we always want to do… but the bottom line is that we need to make genuine efforts and show some intention to the universe to get support.
Spirituality is the tool to show that intent. So take a deep breath and close your eyes, make a pledge to lead an authentic life by applying some disciplines like starting meditation for twenty minutes a day initially and observe your thoughts to live in the present moment — because the present moment creates your life.
Remember… Spirituality is not a destination rather it’s a journey of an individual in the process of greater evolution of self.
Hey, you already have that spark. Just be committed to put regular efforts and reclaim your authenticity.
