Comments on the Spiritual Path by Pati

If someone would have told me a few years ago that I was going to undertake the Spiritual Work, I would have said: "sorry, the 'what' work?" Because a few years ago the word 'spiritual' sounded very far away to me, in fact, is was a word that never came out of my lips. Spiritual, I thought, was something that weird-looking people like fakirs and Indian yogis were.

In my world there was not much time for such things as spiritual pursuits because I had "real" life responsibilities and problems to take care of. Born in a comfortable and loving family, my life was already planned. My parents always said that we were a lucky family as poverty and misfortune surrounded many others. When I asked about life, my parents explained to me its significance and mystery and it all seemed to make sense coming from a couple of well-balanced people. Basically, I was brought up with the idea that we are like other animals but with intellect, we are born, we grow, we couple up and, to be able to feed ourselves and get on with life, we need to learn and work. A strong follower of Darwin's theory of evolution, my father used to say to me that the world is a jungle where the strong and the clever survive and that religion is for those insecure and fearful people that need to have a divine answer for everything.

So my life continued as planned. To make myself strong and clever, I did well in my studies and even better in sports. I traveled to various parts of the world to compete in my sport and my everyday life was extremely busy trying to keep up with my university degree and my sporting commitments.

My life was going in a good direction, I received a lot of attention through my sport, I had a boyfriend who I eventually would marry and I knew that after completing the degree my father, through his business contacts, would place me in a good company. So then, where did the feeling of emptiness come from? Why did I often have a feeling of uneasiness if everything was going so well? Unfortunately, I couldn't do much about this feeling, as I didn't know where to find answers.

I moved out of home and out of the country but the underlying feeling of emptiness followed. Life went on in my new city with plenty of things to get distracted by and plenty of people to spend time with. One day, due to what appeared to be a strange coincidence, I crossed paths with one of those weird 'spiritual people'. She talked about the pyramids of Egypt, about the lost continent of Atlantis and fantastic UFO stories. Very abstract matters I thought, as they didn't have a factual or analytical side to them. However, my fondness grew towards this friend and her small group of spiritually inclined friends. They seemed more calm, confident, honest and reliable than my sporty friends. They saw life from a different perspective and, even though it made more sense to me than Darwin's theory, I was very afraid to change my already established life.

One day back in 1997, my spiritual friend picked up a pamphlet and invited me and others to come along to a free course called 'gnosis'. I must admit that I was never interested in going to any of the various spiritual meetings and organizations these new friends went to, but this one was free and I had nothing on that evening.

I expected to see people levitating or channeling or talking weird terminology, but I was glad to see that my expectations were wrong. The teacher spoke in clear and easy terms and the topic seemed to be especially for me as it explained the different parts of the human body and the energies within them, he explained thoughts, emotions, mechanical movements, etc. I not only understood the topic well but I could relate it to my own life. The teacher encouraged us to practice in our everyday activities what we heard and I saw it even more clearly.

I went to all the talks twice per week and life was starting to make sense. All the pieces were fitting perfectly in the puzzle. However, my first shock was to find out that the spiritual path could be undertaken by everyone, even by me! So I don't need to go to a remote mountain or to be a full-time yogi. I can achieve spiritual enlightenment in the middle of a busy city with a normal mundane job. The second shock for me was to have an astral travel experience, to be as conscious and clear as I am here but in another world, in the world where dreams belong. This experience really shook my little existence.

The feeling of emptiness and uneasiness has finally stopped and I find that my goal in life is now solid and permanent in comparison with the goals I use to have before.

For me, self-observation is an everyday discovery of aspects about myself and about life in general. It is amazing the amount of things I didn't know about myself, aspects that I used to criticize in others I found within my own psychology. Also I found that I use to hide or ignore other aspects to avoid confronting them. This was obviously damaging my life and my negativity was affecting those around me.

Through Gnosis I discovered not only how to see this negativity within but how to remove it from my psyche. This has been a breakthrough for me. Things I used to strongly react against no longer bring out this rage and small things that used to affect me are no longer an issue. I know that I have a long way to go in the journey of self-discovery but my small glimpses of understanding and little successes give me a lot of strength to continue.

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