Spirituality Instruction Manual

By N.D. Plume

Spirituality Instruction Manual by N.D. Plume

A fresh yet timeless down-to-earth and practical guidebook to spirituality that is universally applicable for anyone and everyone.

The purpose of this book is to bring meaning, wisdom and a basis for positive change into people's lives by providing a no-nonsense, c

• Language: English
• Publisher: N.D. Plume
• Release date: Jul 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578949451

Book preview

Spirituality Instruction Manual

By N.D. Plume

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

SECTION 1: Building a Strong Foundation (or Retrofitting)

1. A Brief Introduction

2. The Spiritual Path

3. The Inner World of Mind, Emotions, Habits, & Intentions

4. Formal Practices Part 1: Getting to Know the Mind

Practice 0: Introduce yourself to your inner world

Practice 1: Watching the Mind

Practice 2: Watching the Breath to Develop Concentration

Practice 3: Awakening to the Present Moment

Practice 4: Opening the Heart with Love and Compassion

SECTION 2: Building Upon the Strong Foundation

5. Relationships: Your Part in the Self & Others Equation

6. Formal Practices 2: Advanced Practices

Practice 5: Exploring Each Sense Consciousness

Practices 6 - 10: Transforming Negative Emotions

Practice 11: Deeper Practice

SECTION 3: Advanced & Challenging Topics

7. Interdependence - Connections & Effects

8. Impermanence - Inevitable Changes

9. Mortality - A Spiritual Catalyst

10. Dream-Like

11. Purifying Negativities

12. Addiction

13. Health

14. Challenges

15. Wisdom, Compassion & Equanimity

16. Intuition

17. Power of Belief

SECTION 4: Formal Practices 3: Mystical Practices

18. Visualizations

Practice 12: Light body exercise

Practices 13 & 14: Giving and Receiving

Practices 15 & 16: Visualizations for Manifesting

19. Mastering our Energies

20. Sleep, Dreams and Meaning

SECTION 5: Integration

21. Keeping Inspired and Honest

22. Commitment, Discipline and Continual Practice

23. Making Everything Extraordinary

24. Natural Perfection, Everything as Sacred & Non-Duality

~ With respect I rely upon wisdom and love...

~ This book is for everyone. It is for you...

You…

You can change your own life, and the most powerful transformations come from within.

You have the power to change your life for the better for yourself and for others through working with your own mind, learning about yourself, cultivating your mind, focusing intentions, creating beneficial habits, and engaging in positive actions and this can all be accomplished through introspection and practice. It is work, and it takes time, commitment, perseverance, regular training, and learning from repeated failures, but it is the most meaningful and powerful of all worthwhile endeavors.  You can improve your experiences when you begin to understand and master your own mind.

* * *

The category of self-help books has become a bit cliché with random mixtures of psychology, philosophy, and new-age spirituality - often leaning too much to the far-out fringe side of things to be credible or too much to the religious side to be universally applicable to a wide audience - and the genre itself sometimes looks like a chaotic smorgasbord. The purpose of this book is to bring meaning, wisdom and a basis for positive change into people’s lives by providing a no-nonsense, cohesive structure of a grounded spiritual practice to people of various backgrounds. Hopefully this book will help you help yourself and empower you to help others along the way.

SECTION 1:

Building a Strong Foundation (or Retrofitting)

1: A Brief Introduction

(Get the most out of this book by reading it in order without jumping around)

This book explores the power, potential and practice of working with your own mind by offering perspectives and techniques for you to begin, develop, or refine your own spiritual path. It is intended for anyone and everyone who is interested in spirituality (or simply generating more meaning in life) whether they are agnostic, atheist or religious - and looks at what it might really mean to be spiritual. Some people know that they do not believe in God but feel some inexpressible depth and connection to the universe, the world, people, or nature, and are searching for ways to cultivate that experience outside of any set religious or spiritual system. Others might be curious, browsing the spiritual supermarket, making use of what suits them. And there are those who already adhere to a religious or spiritual system but might want a bit more of a personal connection to their faith or practice. It is the intention that this text may bring benefit to all people by providing contemplations, practices and techniques to ignite their spiritual path, improve quality of life and provide deeper meaning.

Here you will use your own mind to uncover greater experience, contentment and meaning. This book will reveal essential points of the spiritual path with clear instructions on how to practice and bring spiritual ideas into action. It provides insights to contemplate and spiritual exercises to practice in a universal way. It provides the openness to make it your own and incorporate it with your own religious path if you have one, while also providing a stable starting point for non-religious spiritual seekers. It will also provide grounding and inspiration for long-time practitioners.

A note on getting the most out of this book… it is intended to be read from beginning to end as opposed to picking around here and there, as the topics and practices follow an order that builds up in a gradual way so that the earlier parts inform and prepare for the later parts. If you were to jump to a later chapter without reading the previous chapters there is a danger of not understanding the contexts or reasons behind them or missing out on the stable foundation. Additionally, the ideas and practices are meant to be worked on and practiced by the reader many times. Even for those who do read the book from beginning to end, there is benefit in revisiting it and practicing again and again what you have learned and are continuing to learn.

However, this book is not meant to be too rigid either. Please make what you learn here your own. This is for you and your personal inner journey. If any part of this book does not serve you, or you do not agree with a specific part, that is totally fine and you can simply leave that part behind just taking to heart and using the parts that do resonate with you and that bring you benefit. Perhaps at different stages of your life different topics might become more relevant. An idea that you are unsure about today might become something you hold dear in the future and vice-versa. We are constantly changing, moment-to-moment and year-to-year and our personal inner journey does go through many changes. 

~ Author, history, credibility, authority...

It may be quite unusual but the author wishes to remain anonymous and is using a pseudonym. The author would however like to anonymously acknowledge all of the wise and compassionate mentors to whom credit is given for the essence of the majority of these ideas and for guidance on the spiritual journey. The essence of the perspectives and practices in this book can be traced to ancient times and can be found in many different traditions. However, this book aims to communicate this wisdom in a concise, organized, and universal way that has no specific affiliations, to bring the most benefit to the most people.  The author has attempted to stay removed as much as possible because this is not about the author but about your spiritual practice and your growth. The author is also still on the spiritual path which is why the use of the words we and us are used extensively instead of I, me or you in most cases. 

So why should you, the reader, listen to this nameless author or trust that the information is useful or correct? What authority does the subject matter bring that the reader can trust in? If the author was a famous person would there be some credibility built in that you could rely on? Maybe a Ph.D., certification,  or some sort of credentials would make you more secure in relying on the information? Even just revealing the historical sources of the ideas presented in this book might build in some kind of authority to lean on, right? The problem with all these sources of potential credibility is that people, titles, credentials, and historical backgrounds all can carry baggage or provoke a wide array of assumptions and preconceived notions. It is the intention that the content of this book itself can prove its own validity through the efficacy as tested by the authority of you, the reader. Ideas should hold their own credibility through tested personal experience, which is more powerful than relying on a charismatic personality, an impressive credential or a revered historical context. People change, credentials are subjective, and histories might exclude. The author’s gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, or background of any kind might invoke unuseful assumptions that might distract from the points this book is trying to express. Instead, your own experience with the subjects presented here are far more reliable as to what authority or credibility is present within. So you are empowered, as the reader, to discover for yourself if the ideas presented in this book are worthwhile for you or not. You have the freedom to adopt the ideas that you like and leave aside the ones that you do not. That is the source of authority of the contents of this book, your experience. 

~ How the book is organized...

It will be repeated throughout that one should read this book from cover to cover without skipping around as that will be the most beneficial to the reader. 

The first section of this book is about building a strong spiritual foundation that is more than simply an introduction but contains important preliminary main ideas and practices. It is set up so that each topic builds upon the previous ones and hopefully will provide you with a stable grounded approach to the spiritual path along with concepts and techniques that will serve you throughout your entire life.

The second section builds upon the foundation laid out in the first part going a bit deeper with more advanced practices to be practiced after having some experience with the practices from section 1. Section three goes even deeper into more advanced and challenging topics and practices, again built upon the previous sections.

Section four is on Mystical practices and might not be for everyone. Some people may find that the mystical practices section does not suit them so if while reading it you feel that it is just not for you that is fine but please don't let that prevent you from  continuing on to the fifth section of integration.

For those who do find benefit in any of the content of this book, please feel free to experiment with these practices and make them your own or incorporate them into your own spiritual tradition if you have one.

2: The Spiritual Path

~ The best spiritual practice is grounded in integrity and kindness… 

It has been said throughout the ages that although we might not be able to choose what happens to us and around us we can choose how we respond. That is where our power lives. Our choices are how we shape our present moment experiences and our futures. We can learn from past choices that did not turn out so well and make different choices in the future. We can think about the variety of choices we have instead of reacting without intention and then we can become better and better at making choices with greater results if we put our mind to it. When guided with the intentions to maintain integrity, wisdom and compassion we improve our own situation and that of those around us. 

What is the spiritual path anyway? That can be different for everybody. Spiritual qualities cannot be seen. We cannot see someone else’s mind and most of the time we can barely see our own. Each person has their own experiences, many of which are difficult to communicate to others even on mundane subjects, so within the abstract area of spirituality it can be more difficult to express. There are some characteristics that are common so this review of aspects of the spiritual path might seem a little elementary. However, the question is for us as spiritual seekers is if we are each embodying these qualities ourselves - and then if so, to what extent and with how much stability,  integrity, and compassion?  As spiritual thoughts, feelings and experiences may be difficult to convey with words, it is our actions that express our actual spiritual development and maturity.

Appearing to be spiritual is not the point. Before we delve into these spiritual qualities it is difficult not to voice the obvious pitfalls of spirituality including mere superficial projections. Burning incense, wearing organic clothing, playing soothing massage-friendly music, getting acupuncture, having beautiful religious statues, eating organic food, adhering to astrology, and so forth, alone do not make one a spiritual person. There is nothing wrong with any of these actions and they can be quite beneficial but check and you may see that some people merely display a facade of a spiritual person while lacking many inner qualities. This superficial spirituality has become so commonplace that it is regularly seen in movies and TV shows where the so-called spiritual character is portrayed as just a wacky, materialistic, egomaniac. Let’s try to avoid embodying this stereotype ourselves. That does not mean that anyone has to stop burning incense or eating organic, it just means, those outer displays are inessential compared to the development of our inner qualities. There are great spiritual masters who are completely camouflaged, with an entirely ordinary outer appearance. And there are many charlatans that have few inner qualities but exhibit a flashy display to attract fame, money and followers. There are also some truly spiritual people that are flashy too as well. The essential point is not the outer appearance as anyone can wear a costume and put on an act.  We cannot do much about them but we can take care of our own situation. Let’s check to see how much of our own spirituality is tied up in outer materialistic entanglements and then how much is invested in honest inner growth as well as being reflected in humble, compassionate behavior.

That said, let’s move on to the positive side, reviewing some inner spiritual qualities that are worthwhile to cultivate within yourself. Check to see how you feel about these. Do you embody them? Would you like to? If so, start thinking about how you might integrate these more into your own inner experience. Make it your own and adapt to what inspires you. And likewise, if you do not like any of them you can just leave them aside.

Spirituality Basics:

~ Honesty towards oneself...

This is perhaps the most crucial spiritual quality. A big part of spirituality is the journey towards truth and meaning. If you are not honest with yourself then it will be very difficult to make any progress on the spiritual path as you will be cheating yourself, making excuses, blaming others, ignoring inner faults that need to be addressed, and exaggerating qualities that you hardly have. This commitment to self-honesty can be quite harsh and difficult of a process because we all need to keep a balance between healthy self-worth and over-bloated ego-mania. Humility is a big blow to the ego and can be a difficult pill to swallow with ego putting up a tremendous fight.

So be patient with yourself and know that becoming honest with yourself can be a process that takes a long time to get used to. Don’t expect perfect honesty overnight but start looking at how you relate with yourself, start questioning some of your ego tactics and see if you are being honest with yourself. The first step here is just recognizing, then slowly start making positive changes and eventually, perhaps after many years of practice you might have made a solid commitment to be perfectly honest with yourself.

~ Seeking deeper truth and meaning beyond the mundane...

This concept is perhaps more obvious and might be at the top of most people’s list. Seeing beyond the mundane and material world into a deeper, elusive, indescribable truth might be what separates the spiritual from the non-spiritual for many people. It often starts with this seeking. Maybe at first this manifests as a glimpse of something profound that you cannot put words to, or maybe a full-blown spiritual experience. Whatever it might be, it can be like a crack in the shell of the tidy ordinary world that makes one question reality, life, the universe, and everything.

Having experienced even a glimpse into an extraordinary view is usually the first thing that puts one on a spiritual path because they see that there is more to life than this. That might come in a variety of forms and each person has their own experience so try to be humble about the experience or glimpse that cracked or shattered the seemingly solid world of ordinary appearances for you as someone else’s experience is just as important for them though theirs might be very different than your own. In any case most spiritual seekers are led by something extraordinary. Later on we will discuss ways to tap into whatever this is for you or provide a means to get a glimpse.

~ Integrity towards others...