Belief in Spirit

"The definition of spirituality should be 'that which is its own evidence'"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Since I was a child, I have maintained this belief that there is something that transcends the ephemeral in life, the temporal in time, and the apparent solidity of matter. I do not know how I arrived to such conclusion; I do know that I have put effort in maintaining and deepening it.
As a young man, disenchanted with the religion into which I was born, I started pursuing different religions. As a common denominator, in all of them I saw this unquestionable, unquenchable thirst to understand our relationship to everything around us and the comfort we find in believing there is more to existence than what meets the eye.

One diet I am very fond of is that in which I carefully select the quality and originality of what nurtures my mind. I enjoy reading spiritual writings, Eastern thought, religious writing, comparative religion, philosophy and science; all of which can be poetic or not.
It was while reading Karen Armstrong’s A History of God, in which she makes a call to re-examine our religion and our belief in God, that I found my call. In a chapter entitled “The death of God?” she concludes with a Holocaust account in which a group of Jews put God on trial in which at the end, after considering His trespasses, they find Him guilty and the Rabbi pronounces Him worthy of death. Then he looks up and states the trial is finished: it was time for the evening prayer.
That short ending paragraph had a huge impact on me. It taught me once and for all that this need we have to continue practicing what brings us solace in the midst of our sometimes bleak existence is not to be ignored and I decided to participate in this ongoing conversation we have about Belief and Spirit. I set out to writing, not for myself only, but thinking as well of helping others, of what empowers me, motivates me, and inspires me to regard the blissful life as a precious endeavor. It was this need in me to nurture the peace and comfort I find in reading that resulted in this blog.


The spiritual life is not one in which you kneal and recite some formula over and over again. It is one in which every breath you take celebrates the variety of life's experiences, the exultant, the grotesque, the ugly and the beautiful. It is one in which you are able to find a connection to a greater through the minor, the minuscule and the particular. The spiritual life is one in which eternity is not a question of if, when or how.

I challenge you to go beyond dogma and find in everything around you the essence of Spirit. We need to learn how to respect and regard other people’s belief systems as genuine and valid if only it helps them to participate in the mystery of life more fully, in a healthier way, and in a joyful manner. Belief doesn’t have to be homogenous, we each have our individual way of sensing the mysterious and we should guide ourselves by that unique internal compass.

It is necessary though, now and then, to sit in silence with your own thought and listen to what arises in it.

The Believer in Me