ShinNa: Spiritual Blog

Looking back, I can laugh out loud at my spiritual journey because I believe I missed the obvious. The brother of my best friend in high school studied personally with the Dali Lama and he tells a story about the first time he saw the Dali Lama speak.  To the best of my memory, the story goes that after his talk , the audience was able to ask him questions.  A student asked the Dali Lama what the secret was to living a spiritual life.  Everybody took out their notebooks and with baited breath waited to write down the profound words of wisdom that they were about to hear.  The keys to the kingdom.  They were ready to write down many words and many sentences.  As the Dali Lama was about to speak, everyone focused in , not to miss the the pearls that would change their life forever.  And then came his answer.   “Be Happy”.  It seemed too simple.  Was that all there is? Now I can't say for sure this story is true because I wasn't th...

In spiritual quests, at least for me in the past, when something “goes wrong”, I would find myself doubting and even getting angry at God.  That has changed greatly since practicing Tai-Chi on a serious level. For the last few weeks, I have had a tender knee.  In the past , I would have been mad about that , thinking from a spiritual perspective that my body should  be without pain, or should heal extremely fast. It would be my measure of  how spiritual I had become. So in the past I would be feeling unhappy about my injuries, never noticing how miraculous my body is.  Think about it, broken bones heal, wounds stop bleeding, etc.  How wonderful our bodies are.  I never realized how full my life can be no matter what the state my body is in. From practicing Tai-Chi, I have developed a great respect and trust for my body that is undeniable and filled with joy.  I am using my tender knee to learn more about my body.  I have discovered that m...

We often think and speak about spirituality as a far away mystical place or as an abstract intellectual idea.  In both cases, it is easy to miss the beautiful spiritual world we live in right here on earth.  It is easy to disconnect our physical life from our spiritual life.  We have heard many times that the physical world and the spiritual world are interconnected, but we don't have many tools to teach us how that is true, so we often get stuck in our knowledge and lack understanding about our own connectedness and true nature. Tai-Chi, in my experience gives us an opportunity to intimately examine our true nature.   We get to experience our miraculous nature and our child like nature.  It allows us to practice spiritual principles with our own body where we can see those principles work in the physical world.  This practice allows us to develop deeper faith in our creator and allows us to learn more clearly what we are passionate about.  Whi...