Spiritual Balance

Most of my life has been spent divided from my spiritual self, until one day, feeling hollow and adrift, I began my spiritual search. My search began obsessively, expensively, and I treated this sacred event like I was going after a new client. Like most of us, I was used to immediate answers in our fast-paced world of eating and running and instant computer search engine information. I calculated this spiritual search would take me less than six months.

Almost three years later I had trekked Tibet, run from rabid dogs in Kathmandu, had an audience with a Curandera in Peru who spit in my hair three times, had a vision quest with a Native American Indian in Sedona, saw dead people in Lily Dale, NY, had my palms interpreted by a former nun in Chicago, had life-altering visions with a shaman in Mexico. I had a past life regression, my aura tuned, my chakras aligned, my spirit guides channeled, my Kundalini awakened. I prayed in churches, temples, cathedrals, mosques, Mayan festivals, and l always, always on rickety buses, especially in India.

I made my spiritual quest my absolute focus and in doing so, ignored my friends, family, and husband, and almost lost my marriage. I was completely obsessed and spun out of spiritual control.

In a society engaged toward overindulgence, it can be difficult to attain balance in our spiritual lives – let alone the rest of our lives. An unbalanced spiritual life has the potential to spread disharmony into the remaining areas of our lives, no matter how governed they might be.

Just as our health and well-being hinge upon balanced nutritional habits, our spiritual patterns must be in balance to boost complete harmony through every area of our lives. Harmony is about finding our sweet spot and being okay with it. Anyone who has ever achieved true harmony can attest to how incredible it feels. One feels on purpose. Time stops. Brilliance surfaces. One thrives. Maintaining harmony is the guide for helping us make choices that will bring the highest levels of fulfillment.

How do spiritual practices get unbalanced? When we spend either insufficient or immoderate time involved in spiritual quests as I did.

Today I find spiritual balance attainable when I follow some simple suggestions.

• Be content to be on a journey. One of the reasons people get swept off by their spiritual practices is because they experience an imperative motive to “arrive there” – the place where they will find content and sated spiritually. An authentic spiritual seeker will not arrive anywhere. The point is to enlist in a lifelong process of development and growth. Keeping this in mind may help us feel better about decompressing because there is nothing to rush towards – we are already at that place, smack-dab in the middle of the formula, which is precisely where we want to be.

• Spiritual knowledge solely is not sufficient. As beneficial as it can feel to at last be engaged in our spiritual self, we also need to fortify and systematically reinforce the other connections in our lives.

• Maintain spiritual balance by spending time with the ones we love, and build friendships outside of our spiritual circle. Don’t worry if your friends and family don’t share the same spiritual beliefs, most of mine don’t and we still manage to have zany and meaningful times.

• Less is more. Instead of trying to absorb heavy quantities of spiritual knowledge in a brief time period, make it a target, to begin with, bite-sized pieces.

• Relish spiritual wisdom and insights like they were made up of pieces of delicious chocolate. Allow them to hang around on the tongue (in our mind and spirit). Take your time absorbing them. Just like consuming a meal, we will savor the knowledge we acquire much more whenever time is spent absorbing it instead of gobbling it down so quickly that it cannot be tasted or enjoyed.

The longer we continue on a spiritual path, the more at ease and balanced we will become. Try something different this year and keep the balance between the spiritual self and the rest of our life.

Have any Feng Shui questions? Feel free to contact me at michelle@michellecromer.com and sign up for your Power Color. Visit me on Facebook at Michelle Cromer Feng Shui.