Spirituality is the broad concept of a belief in something beyond the self. It may involve religious traditions centring on the belief in a higher power, but it can also involve a holistic belief in an individual connection to others and to the world as a whole.

So how can we be spiritual and why is it important?

Thanks to the following guests for participating:

Natalie Farrell, writer, podcaster, radio presenter, intuitive coach, and author of Light The Way:

Britta Hochkeppel, Intuitive Healer, Author of ‘Healing Symbols From a Higher Dimension’ and Founder of Vita Serena

Alison Callan, international award-winning Business, Clarity and Success Coach and Best Selling Author of ‘The Conscious You: Breaking Down The Barriers To Consciously Create Your Best Life’

Here are some of the resources from the show:

Author Deepak Chopra on the laws of success and the benefits if companies focus on the wellness of their employees.

Books looked at this week:

Natalie Farrell: Light The Way

Deepak Chopra: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams

PS. I do not receive commission for reviewing books and talks.

Transcription

Exploring how we can master ourselves by looking at how experts say it is possible with your host Suswati Basu.

Intro music

Welcome to episode 41 of How To Be…with me Suswati as your timid presenter, guiding you through life’s tricky skills by taking this learning journey with you.

Having read about living intentionally and healing, we come naturally to the topic of spirituality. But what is it? A definition online says a spiritual person is synonymous with being a person whose highest priority is to be loving to yourself and others. So how can we be spiritual and why is it important?

Here is Britta Hochkeppel, Intuitive Healer, Author of ‘Healing Symbols From a Higher Dimension’ and Founder of Vita Serena on being spiritual.

BRITTA HOCHKEPPEL

On to our first book by Natalie Farrell, writer, podcaster, radio presenter, intuitive coach, and author of Light The Way. We had a great chat earlier this week, which you can find on www.howtobe247.com or on the YouTube channel. But here’s a snippet:

NATALIE FARRELL

Farrell says whatever type of soul you are, your intuition has brought you to this stage and to remind you that you are not alone. Beginning with unlocking your intuition, Farrell moves through seven stages of wake-up calls including getting rid of the pedestal.

She says if we were to look at spirituality in the year 2020, it is obvious there was much collective change on a conscious level. It was a fortuitous time for so many people to reassess what they wanted from life and for people to lead and light the way. She says it is the time to truly realise that materialistic wealth and money can no longer rule our actions as it is exhausting, debilitating and unhealthy.

In order to unlock intuition, Farrell believes in sitting in silence so we can offer ourselves space and time to settle. When we settle, we begin to feel more at ease with the idea of stillness and the more we choose to spend time sitting in silence, the more we allow ourselves to settle. It is here in this silence that our intuition is given space to speak. We begin to feel in our element.

According to the dictionary, an element is a substance that cannot be broken down into any other substance. Every element is made up of its own type of atom. Everything in the universe contains atoms of at least one or more elements.When we decipher this saying of “being in our element” in a conscious way, it means we are totally at one with our elementary makeup.

Therefore, being in one’s element means that in that precise moment, you are totally, abundantly connected to YOU. A higher consciousness, which is present at all times.

Farrell says it’s important to identify the beliefs and stories which have been limiting you from becoming limitless. It will help you become more alert and switch on to Stop, Feel and Reflect on the situations life delivers to you. The wake-up calls you receive are supposed to help you assess if the situations being presented are right for you:

The idea is to:

• Highlight your avoidance strategies when it comes to listening to your instinct
• Help you to find ways to become more aware of the situations, people and circumstances which are no longer healthy in your life
• Give you time to heal from any unwanted hurt clinging around from past experiences
• Identify out-of-date emotions and reactions which get triggered from external situations
• Reframe how you internalise and store information from your external eyes to build inner confidence and awaken your expert with ease

From an early age, we learn to achieve a goal by a mixture of innate knowing and mimicking through observation. Mimicking is a vital part of rapport building and creates a framework for us to communicate with others. Our belief and value systems become formed from these environments and influencers and begin to shape our perspectives, behaviours and decisions.

There are two main aspects that attribute to what Farrell calls soul distortion:
• Environment: Daily observations from the spaces where we congregate and spend time in.
• Influencers: Conscious and unconscious programming from people and information we are subjected to from parents, guardians, teachers, family members, friends, media, literature.

However, there is a level of danger that mimicking can stunt our soul’s evolutionary growth. The misconception of mimicking others to fit in and be liked so not to be judged and called out of the ordinary.

Hence the main issues that stunt your soul’s growth within society are:
• Greed: The need for constant wealth to fulfil the pockets of our greedy consumerist ways, keeping us believing that more is better
• Idealistic ideologies for humanity to conform to one person’s rulings stunts the growth of individuality. Perfectionism driven by scarcity and fear, prevents growth
• Comparisons: Living our lives, dreams, goal setting by comparison to others as driven by wealth positioning, hierarchical systems and love.

Wake-up calls include:
– not holding your former role models including parents on a pedestal
– Detaching the parts of you which are clinging on to the pain triggered by the sad parts of your story, as well as dissolving and detaching you from your unhealthy relationships
– Facing the truth speeds up the healing process, so you may need to seek help from a professional, or join a support group specific to the problem at hand.
– letting go and allowing the fragmented parts of ourselves to integrate back together, by unearthing our darker side
– Remembering you do not belong to anyone and no one belongs to you. You are free to make choices. Free to make mistakes. Free to change and evolve.
– Turn around negatively framed beliefs by taking out the “not” and rewriting them out again and looking at it through a new lens
– People are understanding the importance of being in community and feeling the benefits of accepting support from one another no matter who they are.

Next Farrell invites us to undo some of the barriers that stop us from spiritual growth including:
-Realising that we have a choice after living with our experiences, by rescripting our own interpretation of the world.
-Stop comparing, and start being comfortable with who you are
-Learning To Say No because saying yes to everything slowly wears away your soul
– Learning to accept change, because patterns of behaviour can be an armour of resistance that stops us from exploring new possibilities.
– Allow intuition to be your guide by tuning in to what your body truly needs.
– Learning to integrate the dualistic nature of ourselves which creates balance. Some may refer to this as the male and female energies, or yin and yang.
– When we sit in silence, that’s when we truly get to meet ourselves.

The last stage of this process looks at the following:
– Embracing your imperfections by de-controlling it, to agree to let it take its course.
-Allowing yourself to let go equates to allowing yourself to live within the freedom of flow and let go of expectations.
– begin to identify the noise and then begin to slowly eradicate what we: no longer need; what no longer belongs to us; and shift and shake out what belongs to others
– Reclaiming the belief that the knowledge we have to express has a right to be heard.
– Visualise yourself in past times of trouble and offer yourself love, understanding and the tools required to heal the situation as part of reprogramming neural pathways
– By the time we’ve reached this point, we learn to build trust with the process and others
– Once you begin to reconnect to trust, you begin to open up in a conscious and unconscious way and invite the right people into your life.
– Understanding it’s how we choose to react to change and adversity and take action that matters.

The next book is by leading spiritual advocate Deepak Chopra, who studied medicine in India before moving to the US where he focuses on meditation. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success is about the forces of the universe that can lead you to enjoy what you have this moment. Here he is

DEEPAK CHOPRA

Dr Chopra says success can be summed up in seven spiritual laws. These seven laws have to do with how you connect with your true self and how you interact with others. They are about the flow of energy in the world, about being in the here and now without struggling against change.

He says sitting in silence can give you a sense of peacefulness and connectedness with the universe, as well as awareness of self. When you feel connected to your environment and the people within it, you realize you are not a separate entity that is cut off from the rest of the world. Here he believes that there is a connected field of energy, because when you realise you’re not alone, you have no limitations.

But in order to tap into this, he says we must first dissolve the ego. As long as you identify with your ego, you will continue to think of yourself as separate from the rest of the universe. And due to this restricted point of view, you will continue to be fearful, obsessed with survival and focused on external things such as social status and how other people see you.

Fortunately Dr Chopra says, you can always reconnect with your true Self by practicing silent meditation. To do this, calmly focus your attention on your breathing and observe your thoughts without judgment, allowing you to reconnect with your true Self.

Another aspect is that people spend a lot of time and energy worrying about the circumstances they find themselves in. Thankfully, he believes there is a solution to the problem of chronic fretting. You can simply accept your current situation.

There is always a lesson to be learned from difficult situations, and the people or circumstances that make life difficult are usually there to teach you something.

He says you can take this acceptance a step further and save energy by practicing defencelessness. Practicing defencelessness essentially means getting rid of the need and desire to convince others that your opinion is right or that theirs is wrong in a world of polarisation.

Not only is this a waste of energy; it will inevitably end with both parties more entrenched in their own positions than before. Defencelessness, in contrast, erases the need to convince others of your viewpoint. It allows for a true exchange of ideas about a topic, without anger or dogmatism getting in the way.

Dr Chopra also says attachment to material things implies distrust of the universe – and this inevitably leads to anxiety. After all, a life spent amassing wealth and material goods as a means to security will end in a disheartening realization: material possessions can never truly provide safety or security. The 2008 financial crash was definitely a stark reminder of this. Real security can be achieved in only one way – by recognizing your true Self.

In a more wishy washy way, he adds that you’ll also find that your desires can only become reality when you detach yourself from them and trust that the universe will deliver.

Hoarding money also apparently interrupts the universe’s natural flow of give and take. In fact, the Latin root of the word “currency” literally means “to circulate or flow.” This shows that even ancient Greek and Roman civilizations understood that money must flow for a society and its people to flourish. This is why investments are often more profitable than savings.

This spiritual law of giving and receiving doesn’t only apply to money, either. It applies to love, friendship, support and all the things we exchange socially. If you use this social currency to give others what you hope to receive, you’ll be amply rewarded. The more love people give within a society, the more that love will be shared with others and will continue to grow. But, naturally, this only works if everyone is prepared to give as well as receive.

To truly get the most out of life (rather than just doing something), it is important to consider what the most beneficial choice is when making a decision. This is what it means to be conscious of your choice making.

After all, we make choices all the time, sometimes without even knowing we’re doing it. In fact, most of our choices are unconscious. To continue making good choices in your everyday life, simply choose the actions that will bring the most joy and goodwill to others.

Finally Dr Chopra recommends you can improve your quality of life by simply introducing positive intentions into your thinking. While I’m less inclined to this viewpoint, he believes the positivity that goes into these thoughts is all part of the infinite field of potential energy that governs the universe. So, by introducing an intention or wish into this field of energy, you affect the universe around you. A bit like spiritual currency. But this requires intense focus.

So to sum up:

Farrell says in Light the Way that the soul is a higher consciousness, which is present at all times. She says however there are barriers that we have created as a result of society, media, and our relationships that stop us reaching this higher level. By putting yourself first using various tools such as journalling, affirmations, grounding, and reprogramming found in the book, we can reach our full intuitive potential.

Dr Chopra says in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success that human beings are not separate, powerless egos that are lost and alone in a harsh physical world. Every one of us is part of the infinite field of potential energy that gives birth to and governs everything in the universe. When you recognize this, you can use this energy to fulfill your personal and professional dreams. One way of carrying this out is to give to everyone you meet including compassion and gratitude.

I tend to struggle with some aspects of spirituality because my mind has a habit of wandering towards the scientific and logical. So it’s limited to the idea that nature is grounding because we have no control over it, we are connected somehow because humans are naturally social creatures, and that I am an infinitesimal speck in the universe as is everyone else. What is it for you?

To end the show, here is Alison Callan who is an International Award-winning Business, Clarity and Success Coach and Best Selling Author of ‘The Conscious You: Breaking Down The Barriers To Consciously Create Your Best Life’. And if you enjoyed this please hit subscribe!

ALISON CALLAN