Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

In terms of outward appearances there is something noticeable about people who have reached a high level of spiritual awareness. They seem to be in a constant state of bliss. In my own life I know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level of spiritual enlightenment at that moment.  The more cheerful, happy, contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep connection to Spirit.

Ask yourself this key question, “How do I feel most of the time?” If your answer is that you feel anxious, anguished, hurt, depressed, frustrated, and so on, then you have a spiritual disconnect. This could mean you have allowed your personal energy field to become contaminated by the debilitating forces of low energy around you. 

When you are spiritually connected, you are not looking for occasions to be offended and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.

I ask myself, “How am I truly feeling inside?” If my answer is “Not so hot” or “Upset,” I meditate and go to the quiet place where I can plug into my spiritual power source. The state of cheerfulness returns quickly. Every teacher who has been truly significant in my life has demonstrated this wondrous quality of being able to laugh, to take life lightly, to be silly and giddy.

Use this measure to test your own level of spiritual awareness, and if you are not of good cheer remind yourself that you will never be fully satisfied but in Spirit. I love Erich Fromm’s insight, “Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can be disconnected, that can feel evicted from Paradise.” Remember, only you can evict yourself from the garden of paradise.

Quietly communing with God, when we are searching for guidance, is a way of temporarily turning off our ego-mind. Instead of our ego-self thinking, “I can fix this,” we are willing to immerse our perceived problem into our higher self. For those of us who grew up believing life is a “do-it-yourself” project, it can be hard to admit that we need help just to survive. Like a drop of water separated from its source the little mind is unable to create and sustain life. When the drop of water rejoins the ocean it has all the powers of its source. The drop of water separate from its source symbolizes our ego-self when we are separated from our source of omnipotent power.

With our divine connection we are always in touch with the solutions we are seeking. Problems persist when we fail to recognize, realize, and finally, quietly commune with our own source, power, spirit, God.

I think of Abraham Lincoln watching his beloved Union crumbling under the energy of hatred that engulfed this country. He wrote, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go.”  He is saying, “I surrender to my source and turn this huge problem over to that same power that moves the stars.”  You can do the same thing in times of strife. “Let go and let God,” as they say in the recovery movement.

When you practice communing quietly with spirit, you will sense the presence of a sacred partner. You can turn your problems over to this “senior” partner and move to a place of peace. It’s possible to reach a place where you will rarely revert to the belief that you face insurmountable problems. Eventually, you will learn that all those so-called “problems” are dissolvable by saturating them with the higher energy of spirit.