Spiritual seekers often say they long to feel a sense of unity with all consciousness and life and to connect with unseen forces that can help them in some way. That desire can inspire people to meditate, pray, perform ceremonies or rituals, connect deeply with nature, and visit sacred places said to have the power to shift someone into an awareness of their eternal, spiritual nature.
But after an initial feeling of awe created by a mystical experience fades, then what? Can the experience transform them in some way, setting them on a new course? Or is it of little or no consequence?
Spiritual practices don’t automatically generate a sense of wonder and harmony every time you use them. However, from what I’ve seen, even a short time spent in a state of awe and awareness using a spiritual practice can change your life in ways you might not have considered.
1. Easing Anxiety
Spiritual practices can help you feel calmer, more centered, and better able to handle your life’s challenges both in the moment and over time. When you quiet the feverish activity of a highly active mind, which can easily talk itself into fear, a shift occurs. Your parasympathetic nervous system activates, triggering physiological changes such as a slower heart rate and the release of feel-good hormones. This shift eases anxiety and helps you relativize your problems. Somehow, life seems more manageable than it did before you used the spiritual practice.
Some people consider spending time in nature, simply observing the experience as it unfolds and connecting with their surroundings, to be a spiritual practice. According to Attention Restoration Theory, natural surroundings free us from feeling the need to focus on anything specific: Nothing demands your attention. When we feel that way, it’s easier to let go of any stress. Also, because the natural world was humans’ home for millennia, we often feel a sense of unity with something larger than ourselves when we’re meandering through a park or standing on a shoreline looking outward. That sense of belonging can help us feel supported when worries weigh on us.
Reducing stress not only helps our mood but also contributes to better health, boosting our immunity and reducing our stress hormones that, over time, lead to disease. Research shows that other spiritual practices that calm our systems can do the same. Those goosebump-inducing experiences many seek clearly have effects that can linger long after the initial sense of calm and wonder fades.
2. Goosebumps Can Lead to Goals
A spiritual experience that you found deeply meaningful might so powerfully influence you that you notice the contrast to your everyday life, making you feel highly motivated to make changes. Setting and working toward new goals can take you off autopilot and help you live more authentically — truer to your values and priorities. While you might lose your inspiration and momentum over time, you could find yourself undergoing significant changes after a spiritual experience.
Once, I felt a profound sense of harmony with nature and all life while I was simply walking on a beautiful beach and observing the ocean sparkling in the sun. My senses were heightened, and I felt more alive than ever. A deep sense of peace enveloped and infused me. I had walked beaches like this before, but the intensity of my feeling of oneness with everything around me seemed to call me to move in a new direction. I was nearing retirement age and had started winding down my business, but that experience by the ocean jump-started my search for my next chapter.
I’d been reading a book about shamanism in the days preceding this experience. Had that set me up for some sort of awakening? I don’t know, but I suspected that was the case. Afterward, determined to once again feel like I did on the beach, I signed up for a multi-day shamanic workshop. I’m not sure I would have walked that path were it not for that day on the beach.
Maybe reading and talking about spiritual matters can be enough to flip a switch inside us, allowing us to recognize our spiritual nature and develop a new desire to pursue a life of greater meaning and purpose. When you use spiritual practices, you can more easily feel supported, making it easier to let go of fear and take a leap into the unknown. Spiritual practices help us believe we may have more power to change our lives than it appears on the surface.
3. Ritual For Renewed Optimism
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can reset your perspective through spiritual practice. It may help you recharge your commitment to living with purpose and meaning regardless of the pressures on you. A meditation session, a guided visualization, or a ritual or ceremony might bring back a sense of awe and hope after becoming worn down by everyday worries, bad news, or a loss.
A ritual I recommend is to sit on the banks of a river or creek with a pile of sticks next to you that you’ll use to release energies and emotions that are no longer serving you, and bring in new ones. As you sit, imagine releasing a situation, and the anger and frustration it’s causing you, as you hold a stick in front of your face and blow your feelings about the situation into it. Then drop the stick into the water and watch it float away.
Repeat this action to release other energies and emotions until you feel a sense of having purged yourself of whatever is stale and holding you back. Then create an intention to experience something new. Pick up a stick, and blow into it the energy of what you would like to feel or make manifest. Drop the stick into the water, and as you watch it float downstream, imagine that you are setting into motion energies that can fuel the change you seek.
You could also perform this ritual using sticks and a fire in a wood burner in your yard — or figure out a variation that involves nature taking the energy of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences away from you to help you feel comforted and supported by forces larger than yourself. The ritual can also help you believe you’re supported in bringing in something new — a fresh outlook, perhaps, or a greater trust that new opportunities will arise.
Other rituals could provide comfort through familiarity if you grew up with them and they connect you to other times when you were troubled and found peace through performing the ritual. You might want to think about what those rituals could be — a prayer from childhood, for example, or singing a song about your belief that your life can get better, whether it’s a hymn or even a pop song. A simple ritual might be just what you need to let go of frustration, sadness, or anger and reset your outlook.
4. Lightening Up Fosters Harmony and Better Relationships
Spiritual practice has also helped me lighten up and not take life so seriously. Once, I was on the banks of the Amazon, participating in a ceremony to experience a sense of oneness with all and shed any aspects of my life that were holding me back. The mundane interrupted my focus on the mystical — I felt the need to urinate — so I stood up, walked over toward some brush, and began to relieve myself. Suddenly, a wild pig waddled up next to me. I marveled at his lack of fear, but before I could contemplate the meaning of this experience, he decided to harmonize with me by raising a leg and peeing on my shoe!
I believe that my relationships with my friends, relatives, and neighbors have improved as a result of my spiritual work. For example, over time, my practices have helped me become far more patient and flexible with people. I’m able to be more accepting of them and see that just like everyone, I can frustrate others. I’m less likely to ignore when I’m being stubborn or difficult. And I’m more likely to recognize when I have to put more effort into listening and showing people how much I value them. I’ve become more curious, too, asking myself, “Where is this person coming from?” when someone’s actions would otherwise upset me.
Even if you don’t find yourself having a mystical experience that gives you goosebumps and sends you on a completely different path from the one you’re on, you might want to keep using spiritual practices to connect to something larger than yourself and to energies that can help you change your persona — the face you show to the world to protect yourself from feeling vulnerable. You may discover you’re capable of tremendous growth, healing, and happiness despite life’s challenges. Connecting with your unconscious through spiritual practices may be just what you need to get past obstacles to making changes you seek.
Carl Greer, PhD, PsyD, is a retired clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst, a businessman, and a shamanic practitioner, author, and philanthropist, funding over 60 charities and more than 2,000 past and current Greer scholars. He has taught at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and been on staff at the Replogle Center for Counseling and Well-Being. His new book is Go Within to Change Your Life: A Hidden Wisdom Workbook for Personal Transformation. Learn more at CarlGreer.com
Find holistic Spiritual Practices in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.
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