Journeying Together on the Spiritual Path of Life

A forest path covered with fallen leaves extends into the distance, surrounded by tall trees with sparse leaves and illuminated by soft, diffuse light from above.

The spiritual path of life is a journey of self-discovery where you meet life in its diversity, fulness, and authenticity. After all, everything that exists is life. You, too, are life. And everything that you experience is also life. We thus meet life together and in its depths we meet our true nature, our true Self, which is equal to the truth of life itself. The truth, the true, the valuable, and the bountiful nature of life is love, and it is you, because your essential nature is love.

The spiritual journey of life has several stages, which I would like to expand on below, so that you can recognize how it touches you, and feel how it also impels you on your life journey to a more profound openness to the essence of life and yourself. Let's feel through these seven stages one by one, so that you recognize where you are on this path, which stages are active in you, and which maturation you are already enjoying.

A path covered with orange and red leaves winds through a forest. Tall trees with moss-covered trunks stand along the path, and their branches are still thinly dotted with autumn leaves. In the background, a soft, glowing light creates a mysterious atmosphere that illuminates the scene.

The awakening

First and at the beginning of this journey, there is the awakening. Both your birth, by which you awaken in this life, as well as the spiritual awakening. Do you remember why you began your journey? In other words, do you remember what made you feel, that you wanted to uncover, explore and wake up from slumbering habits?

That was probably a long time ago. You could not accept that it seemed normal that there was so much injustice and pain in the world. After all, you also had experiences of beauty and harmony that you would wish for everyone and also for yourself, forever. You felt that there must be a way to give the deeper values of life more space than what you saw happening around you.

It is this "surely that cannot be everything" that made you willing to awaken. You wished to awaken to the vibrant nature life, to discover the more profound values of life, to open substantively to the truth of life and yourself.

Sunlight flows through a dense forest, illuminating tall trees and vibrant autumn leaves. The warm glow emphasizes shades of red, orange and gold, creating a peaceful and enchanting forest landscape.

The longing

Then you came to recognize your longing. It is the aforementioned experiences, from your willingness to awaken, that connected you to the energy of your longing for the deeper and spiritual values of life.

This energy is of great importance, because it guides you through all kinds of pleasant and unpleasant experiences, allows you to continue unceasingly on your life journey. Without this longing you miss your inner drive, you miss your inner guidance.

Perhaps at first your longing still mainly leads you to seek out your own needs, but once you are aware that this does not bring you to the essential value of yourself and your life and thus your deeper need is not really answered, your longing guides you past it to the deeper grounds of your existence.

Longing is the wish to change the distance between you and your essential home, to make it less great, less long. Our origin, the source from which we come, naturally lets us long to be at home and at ease in it, to feel undivided and whole.

There are no life happenings that are not initiated and undertaken by this longing. It is, however, the openness with which you feel this innate longing that determines how trusting you are to be guided by it and where it will take you.

A winding path through a dense forest in the fall. Sunlight filters through the tall trees and illuminates the golden and orange leaves. The ground is covered with a layer of fallen leaves, creating a serene and picturesque scene.

Your way of live

Then you notice the changes in your way of life. You wanted to go on this journey because you longed for an end to all the painful conflict situations within you and around you, and to live in loving, harmonious situations in a more sustainable way. In short, you longed to make the world and yourself more harmonious.

This beautiful, awakened, and healing intention that has been operating through the power of your longing has begun to define your actions more and more clearly. From there, you have made many attempts and tried many angles in the hope of making the world, your relationships, and yourself more harmonious. Through all these attempts, you have probably already come to the realization that you cannot achieve love, freedom from conflict, and wholeness through your well-intentioned will and effort.

Therefore, you have now also awakened to the truth that harmony or wholeness can only come from devotion and love for "that what is." This awakening, born of your deep longing, brings a profound change in your way of life: you change from warrior to lover.

A serene unpaved path winds through a lush, green forest with sunlight that filters through the dense canopy of the trees. The path, surrounded by thick undergrowth, invites you to explore and rest.

Love

Welcome to the world of love. As you continue to feel this transformation taking place within you, you become aware that it is no longer about what you think about something, but that you feel more and more clearly where you want the love that is present within you to flow out of your love for life.

A flow of love that nourishes, nurtures or supports that which needs love so that it too can receive the freedom and power to be whole, free and vibrantly alive. It is this heartfelt flow of love that connects you to that which is dear to you. Every flow of love towards any aspect of life allows you to experience that this is the longing, the intention, the answer, and the fulfillment of life and what you are.

Love is the essence of life and everything needs love to be fully alive and to be known and met in that deep authenticity. Only then does it feel free to blossom as it is. In the same way that you long to receive love and feel free to blossom as you truly are.

However, you cannot create, direct or use love. Love is the energy that only flows when you are vulnerable or open to being touched, and feel affection and devotion for that which needs love. Only by being open and experiencing in this affective sensitivity that there are aspects of life that are waiting for love and light in order to blossom and be released from their tension through a kiss, will a genuine and pure flow of love begin naturally. A flow of love that carries the essence of life within it and brings everything to life and into its fulfilling destiny.

Close-up of sunlight that filters through pine needles, creating a warm, golden glow. The background shows softly focused foliage, which enhances the serene, natural atmosphere.

Expression

Love leads to being touched, and being touched leads to expression. As you continually allow the energy of love to flow where it is needed, the flow of this life energy becomes clearer, stronger and more influential.

Your thoughts, your speech, your feelings, and your actions also become more clearly embedded in that quality, causing you to relate to the world differently and life to respond to you differently. You will hear yourself saying different things, giving different answers to life's questions and mentioning different values, expressing yourself differently.

As a result, there is more joy from within that is freely visible, audible and true on the outside. A joy that expresses the inner vibration of love. The joy of hearing, feeling and seeing this quality of love coming from you in ever clearer and more diverse ways has a deeply empowering influence on your progress along your spiritual path through life.

You also become visible to others in your authenticity, sincerity and flourishing, so that your contact with others and with everything in the world is easily deepened and refined.

A sunny forest path surrounded by dense, leafy trees. The unpaved path is lined with fallen leaves and the sunlight filters through the branches, creating a spotted effect on the ground. The scene is serene and inviting.

Insight

With this freedom comes wisdom, your vision becomes insight. As a result of liberating insights, you will find that there are more and more moments when you are connected to the truth of love, when love is your living truth.

You will feel that what you once only understood, realized, or became aware of, has now become true within. What you once perceived in a certain way has truly descended into your being. What you have seen has come into you, you have come to in-sight. You now realize that reality is as deep as you are open to it, and therefore people can all have different truths.

This will spur your longing to move further beyond your limited perceptions of life, yourself, and what is real. You long even more to live in the light of what is real, for that is what you wish to live with and in harmony with, so that all contradictions are resolved and wholeness can be experienced once again.

By now you have realized that observing and spectating is too detached to gain insight, and that investigating is too rational and lacks empathy. You long to comprehend life not just in philosophies or ways of thinking, but to connect tangibly with the true nature of what it is.

You no longer have a need for gods or masters who know, preach and declare, but you long for a loving relationship with the whole of truth itself. You have seen, read, and tried enough that you no longer need to give it any more attention, and you are willing to truly open up and allow what is actually true to come into your full presence in a direct, deep, and touching way.

You feel that it is time to let that which has only been seen into you, to open up to it and allow it into you completely, so that it can be true in you existentially and you can meet it, taste it and experience it.

If you look up through a dense bamboo forest, the high green stems stretch to the sky. Sunlight filters through the lush leaves, creating a lively and serene atmosphere.

Openness

Truth has never been so close as a result of your unfolding openness. Life is constantly inviting us not to stand still, not to hold on to anything and not to turn away from anything, but to open up again and again, so that the flow we call life and which consists of love, can continue and can truly be known.

Therefore, as you read this, I invite you to continue to open up to the different phases of the spiritual life path. I invite you to always be with what is true in your life, to be with "that what is." Intimate, near and together. I invite you not to "get into it" or "get absorbed by it" because then there is no togetherness, but to be very close, very open and very sensitive, to relate to it, to engage with it, and to be together with it.

To share, to mingle, to exchange freely and to be together with it in love. Being together in love will always mean that everything is allowed to unfold and flourish, and therefore can be known through complete openness. In complete openness you will meet love as the value that you are, that life is, and that is the essence and origin of everything.

Awakened by your longing for wholeness, you have left your struggles behind and come to know love. In it you have recognized your true nature and have come to trust these love currents. You continue to express its deep value, and in doing so, you continue to draw closer to its Source.

Anandajay meditating in a forest, sitting on a tree trunk in a beige winter coat and woolen hat on, in a meadow by a stream, on a winter day surrounded by tall trees on a misty day.

In receptivity, you have allowed this Source of all to enter and become true within you in order to be with it in your full presence. This meditative and relational openness is extremely sensitive, but also deeply grounded and therefore very stable. This sensitive openness allows you to be very close to the essential and to be with it in your most refined presence.

The love that flows freely within you washes your soul clean of duality and naturally brings you to peace. It's a homecoming into the true, innate, most essential nature of life and of yourself. Being at home in your true self is the most intimate, appropriate and fulfilling relationship you can have with life. You are then in the midst of the true essence of life, of yourself, in the heart of your true self.

Sensitive openness gives you an open, free and loving consciousness that guides you through life and all your awakenings in an illuminated, warm and connected way. It is a stream of eternal loving openness in which the soul shines like the sun in the sky, in which the essence supports you like the foundation of creation, and in which you, as a receptive and sensitive person, can tangibly experience the true glory of life, the spiritual value of life.

You probably now fully realize again why you began this journey and why you are currently walking with me on this spiritual path of life.

* Translated from Dutch using DeepL (AI)

Book cover 'Bezieling door Inzicht - 200 levensthema's voor innerlijke groei' by Anandajay

Translation of the text: Bezieling door Inzicht - 200 levensthema's voor innerlijke groei, thema: 134. Samen op de spirituele levensweg. (Only available in Dutch.)

Anandajay dressed in white, sitting on a reed braided chair with white pillow

Anandajay (which means “blessing from the heart”) has been dedicated to integrating the spiritual essence into daily life for over 50 years. He has developed twelve teachings (spiritual practices), 50 music albums (mantras, pujas and ragas) and twenty books (written in Dutch) to bring you closer to the natural basis of your existence, your spiritual authenticity, and its wholesome, joyful essence, so that it can also be your shining, spiritual guide in your life. He expresses the core value of his work as: The Light of Being.