#9. Highly spiritual people dress weirdly.
All my life, I have been called crazy for being “too spiritual.”
Many have told me, “We must get over the spirituality thing; we are not living in the Middle Ages.”
They don’t understand that spirituality is something serious: it is about 1) personal fulfillment, 2) union with the whole, 3) transcendence, 4) the search for the true meaning of life, and 5) the salvation of the soul, among other things.
The thing is that people think that highly spiritual people are little kids playing with the palo santo and doing weird rituals on full moon nights.
They see us as Peters Pans or Harry Potters who don’t want to grow up. And that’s a false myth.
Here are ten others.
- Spiritual people are naive. — One is not stupid for being good. The real stupid is the evil one. Naivety is no worse than malice because malice is ignorance. To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, “What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee.” Spiritual people are good because they want the common good. And that is to be intelligent, for life as we know it would be unsustainable without good well-being. There is a need for morals, values, and spiritual and generous people who facilitate the generational relay and take care of older people in an increasingly aging society.
- Spiritual people always do the right thing. — People are imperfect by nature. If we were perfect, we wouldn’t be perfect; we would be archangels, wouldn’t we? Besides, the more you evolve spiritually, the more temptation and adversity you face. The road to spiritual realization is not a path of roses but a battle full of trials and risks. An old Benedictine monk once said, “If you don’t bump into the devil on the road, you are going in the same direction.” So, the more you go against temptations, the more challenges you face.
- Spiritual people cannot backslide. — Everyone can fall back into old bad habits. Spiritual life is like a ladder; like any ladder, you can go up and down. The important thing is not to give up on your efforts to improve every day. This is called perseverance or fortitude; according to Catholic tradition, it is one of the seven gifts that highly spiritual people can ask the Holy Spirit for. (For the curious, these are the seven gifts: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God).
- Spiritual people are always at peace. — I have spent my life among Catholic priests and nuns, and I can tell you that they are highly spiritual people but super strict. Mind you, they never demand from you what they don’t give. But they fight terrible battles that few know about, which is why many monks ask their parishioners to pray for their faith because sometimes they are tormented by what the Fathers of the Deserts called acedia or the midday demon, which is an energy that wants to make them give up their efforts to progress in the spiritual life. Spiritual life is a constant battle, whether you are Catholic, Christian, Buddhist, or Muslim.
- Spiritual people have many friends because they have people skills. — Being spiritual is one thing; being a narcissistic sectarian leader is another. Highly spiritual people are typically loners, and although they are always willing to help, they do not usually have many friends. Darkness flees from light; don’t forget that. Highly spiritual people often lose their friends because their friends want to continue leading a life full of vice and bad habits. They know that if they stay too long listening to their self-righteous friend, they will have to change and don’t want to. ( But the unseen stars also shine 🙂
- Spiritual people find their soul mate. — Many people start on the spiritual path for the wrong reasons, the most common being to find a soul mate. And not everyone has the same destiny. And while it is true that there are souls that resonate with us so much that they could be considered twins, they may not be on our agenda. In fact, when you are truly spiritual, you focus less on the physical and more on the inner self. You become a much more selective person, which reduces the number of candidates to choose from to start a romantic relationship.
- Spirituality becomes easy with time. — Time corrodes everything. No one escapes the passage of time, and spiritual people are no exception. Also, as we grow older, we face more and more material and personal losses: we stop being able to do the things we did when we were young, and our loved ones begin to die. And then come the hardest lessons of the spiritual journey, such as detachment. And it is not easy. The spiritual path is a video game, and with each new screen, the difficulty level increases.
- Spiritual people have all the answers. — Each answer leads you to new questions. And suppose you have spent enough time in this life looking for answers. In that case, the number of questions has grown exponentially to the point of realizing that life is a great mystery. We don’t even know 1% of what is happening deep down, and we don’t see.
- Highly spiritual people dress weirdly. — Dressing hippie doesn’t make you spiritual. In fact, the most spiritual people I know dress in plaid shirts and Dockers. A clear example of this is the anecdote of the old lady who went to a lecture by Ram Dass dressed as if she lived in the fifties. At the end of the speech, Ram Dass, hallucinated by her presence, asked the old lady if she understood anything about what it is to transcend by meditating, and the old lady said, “Yes. That’s what I experience when I knit.”
- Highly spiritual people are not ambitious. — They are very ambitious, but they have different goals. Spiritual people are pursuing the eternal and in the business of changing lives. And that is more ambitious than wanting to be a millionaire and live in Beverly Hills because spiritual people want to change the world. And that has to do with power. Gandhi was powerful, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta was powerful. Their ambition was gigantic. And that’s why they had such an impact on the world. Spiritual people fight peacefully for their dreams; no force is more potent than love. However, many people do not realize it. Love is capable of transmuting hate into gold 🙂
A virtual hug.
AG