on my personal blend of Spirituality

A woman from match.com asked me about my 'spirituality'

(yeah, I'm on there =;-)

I wrote this in reply..

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I've read about and sampled a lot of different spiritually related stuff..

starting out as a child, having 'out of body' experience and somewhat mystical encounters with animals.. I remember a persistent notion that someday I might be struck by lightning, following which I would know "everything..." One evening, a sort of a dark-night-of-the-soul experience, when I was 10yrs or so.. crying and screaming up at the sky "is THIS all there IS ???" -much of my childhood (like many people, I guess) was not so pleasant.. some of it was rather brutal .. I think I paid off some karma for being a mean person in the past

Then around age 12 or so, I stared reading a lot of psychic-related materials .. Edgar Cayce & such, then on to Theosophy.. later I got interested in a westernized Buddhism spin-off called Eckankar (after the chant ek on kar sri waha guru) and Sufism..

At several points along the way, I mixed in some entheogenic research ... at age 21 I had an extreme "traumatic" kundalini opening, complete with manifestations of some of the siddhis which I had once wished for (careful what you wish for ;) -recovering /reintegrating from this took some time, after which I studied many self-help and spirituality materials.. eventually settling on Tibetan Buddhism for its descriptions of mental and spiritual psychology .. and discovering with the help of Taoism, my own connectedness with the earth and sky .. my ability to move / exchange energy .. which ties in with some of the healing arts I've been trained in.

At this point, I've been on my path for over 20yrs.. my practice involves seated meditation on occasion, but never more than 15 minutes or so .. it's more of an active meditation than an approaching samadhi meditation... basically westernized Taoism .. Tibetan Buddhism is what informs my spirituality, but I don't do the many and various rituals that go along with vows.

Some small touches of pantheism, animism, and shamanism also permeate my sense of spirituality.

Basically, every day I am, for much of the day, aware of myself and others, and the Universe at large.. as more or less of a spiritual unity.. sometimes less so when embroiled in traffic -even then, I am usually able to move some energy and get in touch with my spiritual self and the grounding power of the Earth aspect of the Universe.

There are moments every day when my heart feels completely connected to "the world" .. and everything seems like a perfect precious jewel .. this is my daily practice, in truth.. to live within this sort of reality .. to walk with this pure Bliss at my side, and to take it into my heart when daily life isn't demanding too much mental concentration/focus for me to maintain the sort of dual consciousness of "life as human" and "life as spirit."

warm wishes, David Hartley my match.com profile:

www.match.com/usearch/usearchdl.aspx?bannerid=0&lid=226&handle=davehartley