Re: My spirituality in three stories In reply to: My spirituality in three stories — Sylvia As the title suggests, Sylvia shared three beautiful stories that illustrate her spiritual beliefs. I highly recommend you read her post first. While you’re there, browse her other writing as well! I’m always very much inspired by Sylvia’s creativity and positivity. These past few years, I’ve similarly done a lot of searching to find what I already knew as a child, as Sylvia puts it. I’ve a bookish mind, and so I’ve spent quite some time reading various texts on Indian philosophy, that have greatly inspired me and continue to do so. But still, my big questions remain unanswered. For example, in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, I’ve read excerpts of tales about Vaikuṇṭha, the celestial realm of the god Viṣṇu: The parks there shine like final liberation itself and contain wish-fulfilling trees, which blossom all year-round. There are fragrant winds, and creepers dripping with honey near bodies of water. Cries of exotic birds mingle with the humming of bees, and magnificent flowers bloom everywhere.1 In short, it’s filled with natural beauty, and everything from the tiniest grain of sand to the largest tree is a living being: in fact, in that realm, everything is said to be made up of pure consciousness. While this is certainly a beautiful story of an ideal world, how different is it actually from this planet we’re all inhabiting? I strongly believe all life forms that we know are conscious, at least, according to their own nature. Our own world, too, is filled with wondrous beauty and life. We would do well to remember that from time to time, and to cherish it. Sylvia captures this feeling of wonder very well in her post: Writing this has made me remember what my spirituality is. It’s nature. It’s a deep connectedness that moves with the seasons and is filled with all the rawness of life. It moves like the sea does, sometimes calm, sometimes tempestuous, but always forces me to be in the moment. Present. I may never know if there is a God, what happens after death, what the nature of consciousness is, or whether or not I have an eternal soul. Perhaps my scientifically inclined mind simply has to accept it can’t find all the answers. I already know it won’t stop looking for them anyway, and that’s okay. What I do know is this: we’re all tiny, interconnected parts of this huge, bizarrely beautiful constellation we call Nature. We always have been, and we always will be. What more do we need to know? Thank you for this beautiful reminder Sylvia! From Bhakti Yoga, Tales and Teachings from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa by Edwin Bryant ↩︎ Thank you for reading this via RSS! View this article on my website. Replies: E-mail / Fediverse / Webmention