My beliefs

Spending a significant portion of one's life at home doesn't mean one has no life, libranaster!

It would be very difficult for me to list a set of beliefs; like so many of the folks here at OSH (including you), I am spiritually aware, so I experience life a little - well, a lot - differently from those who are not, but I don't view folks who aren't spiritually aware as any 'less than' anyone else; it's just not their path this time 'round, far as I'm concerned. My beloved, for instance, is highly intuitive and somewhat of an empath, although she's more likely to affect the moods of others than be affected by others' moods. She 'picks up' on a lot, but processes it differently than most empaths. She's very head strong, and I think that's what keeps her balanced.

Anyway, she is an amazing and powerful being in terms of who and what she is beyond her human self, but she's not really aware of those aspects of her self, and her path in this lifetime is not highly spiritual. That really bothered me at one point in our relationship, mostly because the spirituality-minded folks I was meeting at the time insisted that her lack of spiritual focus would in some way hold me back. Hee... Letting others define my path for me was the only thing that would have held me back. One person actually went so far as to suggest I should leave my beloved, merely on the basis that she and I were not going the same direction spiritually. I got a lot of really bad advice early on (people insisting that what is true for them must also be true for me), and although most of my life I was easily swayed in different directions according to what other people thought and believed, having other people try to point me toward this and that spiritual path when my experiences were different from what they were suggesting really opened my eyes. I learned how to deal with it when someone tried to define spiritual reality for me in a way that didn't resonate, and I'm grateful for all the practice I got in doing that when I was new to my path. lol

Like lots of folks, I was raised to believe that there is only one true spiritual path, and of course my family and our social circles were all onto that, right? But it bothered me, even when I was little, how many variations there are on the 'one true path'. Took me until I was nearly 40 years old to realize that none of the paths I'd been shown so far had much to do with my reality. I worship no gods, I am not in the process of ascending, I don't have distant relatives from Nibiru coming to escort me into the next dimension, and just because much of what I've experienced seems to mesh with Buddhist or Native American or pagan traditions does not mean I'm on any of those specific paths, either.

Which is not to say that no one is on any of those paths; I'm just saying I am not.

It's not my place to define spiritual reality for other people, and I feel it's very disrespectful when folks try to define it for anyone other than themselves. This seems to be a major theme in my posts, doesn't it? Yikes. I do think it's enormously valuable when folks share their own experiences with one another; people have shared things about their own paths that have helped illuminate mine, and it's that kind of sharing that helped me learn to discern the difference between something that resonates because it's true for me and something that resonates because it's true for the person who's sharing it.

Anyway, I guess my basic outlook is this: I am a multi-dimensional being, having a presence in this physical universe but also in the spiritual dimension(s). No aspect of my life is more or less real than any other, although the physical aspect - this body of mine - is finite, so I rather cherish it simply because it's not mine to keep forever. Just as I'm aware of my energetic connections with other physical beings, I'm aware of my energetic connections with other spirit beings as well. Although I did incarnate here for a specific purpose, the bottom line purpose for any incarnation (of mine) is to experience the many aspects of existence. In some past incarnations, the aspect of existence that I came here to experience was that of physical life without an awareness of spiritual reality, a sense of separateness. This time 'round, the focus of the experience is more inclusive.

I believe... well, I believe it's lunch time and so I'll stop here. *grin* I'm looking forward to what others share here; thanks for starting this thread, libranaster.