Designing the Ultimate Spiritual Life | Vishen Lakhiani

So welcome to category eight, your spiritual life. This is one of the most important categories. We've spoken about our mind, we've spoken about our body, now we talk about that essence of us that is so hard to describe, but billions of people feel is real, is tangible. You can call it your spirit or your soul. Now the interesting thing about this category is that this is one of the categories that is most filled with brules. And many of these brules go back thousands of years. And so we live in a world today where people can be highly religious or people can be highly atheistic and dismiss anything that cannot be validated by science. The good thing about the world today is that there's also a large group of people in the middle, people who often call themselves spiritual but not religious. Now, interestingly, as of today, as of this year, I'm recording this video, the spiritual but not religious group is the fourth largest life adherence in the world, after Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. So it's a very interesting group and it's growing and growing and growing. According to author Greg Epstein, it Now measures perhaps 1 billion people. So you could be highly religious, you could be spiritual, but not religious. You could be an atheist. But what we're going to talk about here will work for you no matter where in this spectrum you lie. And keep in mind that it is a spectrum. There are very few people at the edge. Perhaps crazy fundamentalists who believe that everything in their religious book is true in the world today, but honestly, they do number a smaller percentage. The vast majority of religious people are decent for folks who do have somewhat of an open mind. And then there are those people at the other end, atheists, who are completely hardcore, that they will not accept anything that even smells like spirituality. Some will not even pay any attention to meditation. That too is changing, as science is beginning to show that certain practices like meditation can bring phenomenal good. As of this year, there are 1,400 studies supporting meditation. So even hardcore atheists are now beginning to see that there is some element of spirituality that we can embrace. Now, the important thing to know is this spirituality is still something highly unmeasurable. But we do not need to know what it is or how it works to be able to gain its benefits. Think about the sun. For 7,000 years, since the dawn of civilization, we've been using the sun for navigation, for agriculture, for warmth, for, for direction. Yet nobody knew what the sun was. The ancient Egyptians thought it was the God Ra sailing across the sky. No one really knew. Other cultures thought it was a giant fireball that rotated around the Earth. It's only in the last few hundred years that we figured out that the sun is a star. It's a giant helium hydrogen filled thermonucleic reaction that the Earth revolves around. It's the center of our galaxy. But it didn't stop us from figuring out how to use the sun for the prior 6,800 years of human civilization. Likewise with spirituality, we don't have to really know what it is. We don't have to define the soul, we don't have to figure out what makes meditation work to start embracing some of these practices. So have an open mind as we explore this category. But spirituality is an important part of our lives. Whether it's the practice of gratitude or the daily prayer that you do. To many people it brings peace, it brings wisdom, and it makes them better human beings. But while we do say that it is also important to understand what is not spiritual. It is important to understand that spirituality today has been corrupted by rules. And many of these rules come from the dogma of organized religion. So let's talk about that for a moment. You can be religious, but you do not have to buy into every bit of dogma that your religion says is true. As I designed this course, I decided to set a hard foot on the ground when it comes to tolerating or dismissing certain dogma. If your religion tells you, for example, that gay people are somehow sinners, that is bullshit dogma and we need to wipe that shit out from human history. There are aspects of spirituality that are not spiritual, and you can tell that they are not spiritual in a couple of simple ways. We'll come to that in a moment. But if your dogma teaches you to hate, if your dogma teaches you that you have the sole access to the one God, then your dogma is probably bullshit. So what you want to learn to do is to separate dogma from the beautiful aspects of religion to help you move towards pure spirituality. And the spirituality that we're talking about here is nothing more than the spiritual idea so common in all religions, in all spiritual books. It is the idea that we are somehow all connected, that we need to respect each other, that we need to take care of the common good. That earth as a living organism relies on all of us, and we need to cooperate and do no harm to others. When you view spirituality as a set of those beliefs and you're ready to shed the BS dogma, whether it was implanted in you from your parents or your preacher, you take a big step towards Being truly spiritual and moving away from being a fundamentalist prick. So let's talk about spirituality. In my book, the Code of the Extraordinary Mind, I make an important statement. I say this. Your spirituality should be discovered, not inherited. What I'm saying here is that spirituality is something that no one has a monopoly on. And therefore it is up to each of us to discover our own spirituality. You can take extracts from your organized religion, you can read New Age books, you can explore someone else's religion, but be sure to create your own spirituality. And one of the things we're going to do in this exercise is to let you set goals on spirituality. But be sure that you are setting goals that speak to your heart, your soul, and are not simply causing you to restrict yourself based on the rules of your culture or your religion. Your forefathers, your educators, your teachers, your preachers, your mothers and your fathers. This has to be your spirituality for this exercise to work. If not, you're just embedding yourself more into brules. If you tell yourself, I'm not going to eat that certain type of food because a 2000 year old book said so, or I need to dress a certain way, or I need to pray a certain number of times a day, or I need to dislike a certain type of person or a certain culture, then that, my friend, could be you restricting yourself and doing exactly the opposite of what this particular category is about. So let's first talk about the discovery of spirituality. How do you go about discovering new models of spirituality? And I want to be very honest with you. I'm going to share my discoveries, but keep in mind that this is just me. You should not be following me. You need to make your own decisions. So I grew spiritually through two books. Two books fundamentally changed my life, and these are the books. The first is Conversations with God. I was given this book on a camping trip in Colorado in 1998 by a friend. And this book opened my eyes to the idea that there was a different vision of God that we could embrace. I grew up in a religious household. And within a year or so of reading this book by Neale Donald Walsh and subsequent books, there are about nine books in the series. But start with book one. I gave up religion. Today, I consider myself highly spiritual, but I do not follow any religion. I follow any aspects of different religions, but no one religion. Because I find that limiting and against everything I teach. The second book that expanded myself spiritually is Autobiography of a Yogi. This book became famous recently because Steve Jobs labeled this his favorite book of all time. In his biography Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Isaacson said that this was the only book Steve Jobs had on his iPad in the month he died and at Steve Jobs funeral. This was the book that all guests received as a gift. It's hard to say exactly what aspects of this wonderful book Steve liked, but I can tell you I love this book so much. Within one week of reading it, my life started shifting and I've read it several times in my life. It is a book written by Paramahansa Yogananda, who was a man who introduced many Eastern philosophies to the United States. So those are some books I like. They might be books you like. Feel free to dive into those books and use the knowledge and wisdom from those books to set your spirituality. But remember, many of the greatest spiritual books out there today were not books written hundreds of years ago. They are books written in the last decade, maybe even in the last year. Spirituality, just like every other aspect of the human race, is constantly evolving. So learn from the old, yes, but also learn from the new and bring both together to create your own spiritual ideas. As for my spiritual idea, I call it the Gaudical Theory. When you're done with this particular video, on the next page of this chapter, I've set aside a simple four minute video that explains the Gaudical Theory. It was also described in my book the Code of the Extraordinary Mind. Watch that video and think about how could you create a similar theory about spirituality for yourself? The Gaudical Theory is simply something I created for my own self. It gives me four principles with which I live my life, and I believe that with these four principles I am able to live a good life, a decent life, and be tapped in spiritually. You may have different principles that you want to follow, but the Goddakal Theory helps give you a clue on how you too can create your own spiritual ideas and you can keep them with you. Now, here are a couple of things to think about when it comes to spiritual ideas. Ask yourself these questions before you go into this exercise. What values, spiritual values do you believe in? Why do you believe in these values? What aspects of your religion do you truly love? What aspects do you think you might be able to discard? Would you like to move deeper into a spiritual aspect you already have? Or discover something completely new? Or experiment by mixing and matching different practices? There is nothing wrong with that. What is your highest aspiration for your spiritual practice? Would you like to learn new spiritual ideas such as, say, lucid dreaming, creative visualization, mind Body healing, intuition, energy work or more? Are you stuck within models of spirituality enforced upon you by culture or religion that you are afraid to discard because you are afraid to to hurt those you love? Well, discount them secretly. You don't have to tell those you love. But you are free to craft your own inner beliefs in the privacy of your own soul. So with those ideas, let's go straight into the exercise. I'm going to set the timer for three minutes and you're going to write down some of the ways you want to grow spiritually. So let's begin. Where are you now spiritually and where would you like to grow? Would you like to move deeper into the spiritual practice you already have or try out a different spiritual practice? What is your highest spiritual aspiration? How many times a day would you want to engage in spiritual practices? Whether it's meditation or prayer, or going to a holy place of worship or reading a spiritual book? How would you like to feel on a day to day basis, fully in tune with your spiritual practice? What new aspects of spirituality would you like to learn? There are many programs today that help us expand different aspects of our spiritual practices. Programs such as lucid dreaming, Learning to go into deep states of meditation. Programs that teach us how to overcome fear, worry or stress. Mindfulness practices. Courses that teach intuition, empathy or energy work. Which spiritual teachers would you want to explore? What new spiritual books do you want to commit yourself to reading? What spiritual gyms like Soul Banner do you want to maybe have a membership to? Would you practice your spiritual growth individually or with a group? How would you remind yourself of your values on a day to day basis? What are these values that you want to hold on to and live and breathe? And our time is up. So I know that was a tough one. Spirituality is still something that's so hard to define. But I think you can see where we are going with that. So before we move on, I want to leave you with a couple of tips on how you can further fine tune your spiritual practices. I started mindvalley because aspects of spirituality really appealed to me. And I found that when I worked on my spiritual practices, practices such as meditation and intuition, I got better and better and better at my career. You've read my story, but perhaps in my book the Code of the Extraordinary Mind. So you can see why I would start a company like mindvalley. Now within Mindvalley we have a number of courses on different spiritual practices. On the next page I recommend a couple of advanced courses based on where you want to grow and what you want to learn. For example, if you want to learn energy work, I strongly recommend the course by Jeffrey Allen. He is one of our top energy teachers. Teachers. The course is called Duality and it's one of our highest rated programs. If you want to learn intuition, I recommend Sonia Choquette. Sonia Choquette is our intuition teacher. Her course called Tunein, is a remarkable course for helping you get in tune with your intuition. Perhaps you want to learn tantra. Tantra is a beautiful spiritual aspect that connects love, sex and spirituality. Our teacher for Tantra is Sal Misadora, and her course Tantra Touch is something that we're really proud to get out to the world. So again, in the next page, you'll see a range of different spiritual courses that you can explore so that you can grow yourself spiritually. I've always found that by exploring different courses and different aspects of spirituality, we make ourselves become more whole. I've met masters in my life and it is remarkable what they are able to do, from being able to instantly accelerate healing to being so intuitive they can tell you things about yourself without them possibly knowing. And I know, yes, there's lots of skepticism out there, but as an engineer, I know what is bullshit from what is real. And I can't explain how all of this work, but it is amazing to see what the human mind is capable of when we really dive in deep. Now, if you don't have a specific aspect of spirituality that you want to learn, but you want a gradual growth in spirituality, you might want to join Mindvalley Spiritual Gym. It's called Soulvana. Soulvana is a spiritual program where every month you connected with a group study a different spiritual course. And these courses come from incredible teachers, people such as Eckhart Tolle or the famous Zen philosopher Alan Watts, or Thich Nhat Tranquil, the amazing Buddhist monk, or courses on intuition and empathy and connecting with your purpose. And what's beautiful about Souvana is you study these courses as a group. Each course is only about five to eight hours, so it's not that much time in a given month. But you are part of a community. Everyone is studying one course a month. So you're committing to in a span of one month, spend between three to eight hours listening to a course. And again, you can listen on your smartphone in no extra time as you're commuting. And the host of Soulvana, Asha Gill, shares her wisdom. Her insights with the community gets people talking. So it's not just one directional learning, but you're learning as a group. It's the closest I've ever found to a gym for your soul. So while we spend hundreds of dollars joining a gym membership for our bodies, I think it's also important that we have a gym for the soul. Solvana makes it easy and affordable. On the next page there's a little link where you can try out Soulvana for an entire month for just $1. Experience it for a month, you get a full free spiritual course for a month. Go join the community with thousands of people, learn, see what you think and if this is something that you feel is right for you, stay a member and continue month to month. So thank you so much for joining us in this program. Thank you. Explore the additional resources in the subsequent pages, the goddamn theory, the list of recommended classes by Mindvalley if you know exactly where you want to learn and the access to Soul Varna where you can get started for $1. Thank you.