The challenges of living spirituality day to day — YouTube from the CEC Library

I was thinking about what spirituality was like for me before I went deeper into it. I was searching and visited various spiritual places, more remotely than in person. Several topics made sense to me, such as reincarnation, astral projection, and extraterrestrials. As you seek information, it fulfills you because we live within a limited reality. Talking about life after death and continuity expands our view beyond this existence.

Our searches are connected to earlier moments of our existence, to other lives. Many of us have already had contact with spiritual knowledge, even if only superficially. When you come here, you already bring this information with you. I feel that this relates to me because my family was always open to it. As I went deeper, I began actually living spirituality. I am certain that I will do so even more in the future. It is different from curiosity, from wanting to know more about reincarnation or other topics.

When you begin to feel, your life and routine change. I am not talking about isolated moments, but everyday life, feeling energy and spiritual exchanges. This intensified when I began experiencing spirituality in a deeper and more coherent way. I was thinking how wonderful it would be to be born into a family that accepts spirituality. Your parents show a high standard of behavior, communicate assertively, respect one another, and teach this to their children. They also know energy practices and believe that energy can be directed to promote well-being. From an early age, you would have contact with this knowledge through your parents.

When you get hurt or do not feel well, energy practices may be used to support well-being without replacing health care. Many children have extrasensory perceptions that are generally suppressed by a lack of knowledge. With parents who welcome these perceptions, however, you receive confirmation and encouragement to develop spiritually. This balanced family environment may support a child's early development, including spiritual development and experiences such as astral projection.

Most of us, on the other hand, grow up in environments with closed beliefs, where the quality of relationships is poor and there are conflicts and arguments. Few people experience an environment without fighting from childhood through adulthood. This conflict-filled environment may contribute to blocks in the chakras and hinder spiritual perception that could arise in childhood. Spiritual development may therefore face additional obstacles.

When we talk about living spirituality, we are not adding something to life but avoiding the loss of part of it. Many people believe that discussing spirituality with children is wrong, but if it is done coherently, it can prevent blocks and difficulties in their growth. Unfortunately, most people live in the second situation and seek spirituality only as adults, trying to make up for lost time. This search should be continuous from the beginning of life.

We recently asked whether it is easy to experience spirituality in everyday life and what the difficulties are. Some people answered that it is difficult because they need something more concrete and doubt spiritual reality, wondering whether it is all merely a fairy tale. This is the first challenge: believing it is real. We grew up in a materialistic world opposed to spirituality, which makes it difficult to feel and believe. The difficulty is not seeing, because many people have not developed clairvoyance, but feeling. The challenge is to live spirituality, not merely have faith. When you live and feel spirituality, doubt about its reality disappears. The first challenge, therefore, is to overcome the difficulty of believing and begin living this experience.

A person follows spiritual work closely and receives daily messages, yet still expresses doubts about the reality of spirituality. This is not a judgment, because we all face challenges in living spirituality, and they vary from person to person. From an early age, many of us were taught to dismiss spiritual experiences, such as chills or imaginary friends, as nonsense. Now we need to relearn how to feel in order to believe. Faith without experience may seem distant, so the first step is to open ourselves to feeling.

This involves practicing and not testing the helpers as if they were part of a game. When we open our hearts, the challenges may diminish as we have real experiences. We often dictate rules about how things should happen, expecting the spiritual world to manifest according to our expectations. This limits our vision and our ability to establish a genuine relationship with the spiritual world. We need a broader view to understand these interactions.

Materiality influences the quality of the spirituality we seek to practice. We are immersed in demands of the physical world, such as the need to earn money and be successful, which could be connected to denser energies such as those of the base chakra. We should not ignore the material, but find balance among the areas of life. Materialistic influences are intense and can divert us from spiritual development. Assessing the amount of daily stimulation and how it affects us is challenging. Our life is a balance of weights, and whatever receives more energy tends to predominate. To develop spirituality, we must invest energy in it, but materiality frequently weighs more heavily in the balance.

Fashion illustrates how we are influenced. Some people in their twenties undergo cosmetic surgery in response to social pressure and a lack of an independent perspective. We absorb what society produces and become part of it. To develop spirituality, it is essential to distinguish between social influences and our true selves because society is highly dysfunctional. Caring for the body is important, but we should distinguish health from the pursuit of eternal youth. Common sense is difficult to achieve, but it is necessary to see these matters clearly.

When you mentioned material and physical matters, I realized that they pull us downward. I thought about some answers we received regarding challenges. Especially for those who have worked with spirituality for a long time, it is common to see people in desperate situations. I worked at a Spiritist center for many years and saw people arrive in despair, whether because of health issues or someone they loved. At those moments, spirituality becomes a lifeline.

It is easy to experience spirituality every day when you are at rock bottom, because you wake up praying or following spiritual practices in the hope of escaping despair. The challenge arises when everything is resolved. Remaining on the spiritual path and pursuing growth, giving back, and work is more difficult. Asking for help is easy, but many people then return to their previous pattern, spinning their wheels and going in circles. When we are in a peaceful phase, we can meditate, do spiritual practices, and attempt projections. When life brings challenges, however—such as excessive work or family matters—we move away from spirituality. Life's demands make us feel unable to maintain our spiritual practice.

There are two main points: when spirituality is the only salvation and when, despite things going well, life draws us away from it. Spirituality should be part of who we are, regardless of our difficulties. Until spirituality becomes part of who we are, we need to work on it. Maintaining continuity in spirituality is a challenge because habits and everyday demands can interrupt the practice.

We operate on impulses: we begin the year with energy, but continuity is difficult. Writing down our goals for the year and reviewing them at the end can help. Difficulties include criticism, a lack of presence, and giving in to desires even when we know we should not. Desire often overcomes the knowledge we possess. Continuity is a major challenge, as is our environment.

Experiencing spirituality in everyday life is difficult because we often feel alone on this journey. We assess the forces around us: from our social setting to family and professional circles, we are led to pursue material things. In the workplace, for example, pressure to sell can turn into greed. We deal with forces that run counter to the subtler energy of spirituality. The question is how to deal with these disproportionate forces. From personal relationships to society as a whole, we face challenges. Even in Brazil, where there is openness to spirituality, the connection to materiality is strong. We need to create an inner strength to deal with these influences and begin a more solid spiritual path.

An experience in India revealed a relationship with religiosity and spirituality different from what we experience here. Even with whatever changes the country may have undergone, a spiritual presence was perceived in everyday interactions, commerce, and service to others. When a friend’s motorcycle broke down in India, an Indian man spent the day helping him and refused payment, saying that helping was part of his path. This experience makes us reflect on how unaccustomed we are to receiving help without wanting to repay it materially. We often think that a simple "thank you" is not enough. It is easier to give money than to express sincere gratitude. A genuine feeling of gratitude, however, may be more valuable than any material gift.

In a conversation, Moisés asked what the greatest obstacle to a person's spiritual growth might be. My first answer was material concerns, because I believed that once basic needs were met, a person could focus on the spiritual. He argued, however, based on experiences in India, that spirituality can remain present even amid poverty. This makes us think about the importance of seeing beyond material needs. One way to thank those who help us is to pass that kindness forward. Gratitude is work, and we can reciprocate by helping other people and creating a chain of good. We must learn not to feel embarrassed when receiving help and instead draw inspiration from these experiences.

Experiencing spirituality every day can go beyond practices and meditation; it can be about how we act toward others and having inner time for people. This is truly living, truly being. If we were at an advanced level where people say that "we are all one," this phrase would need to be understood well. In the concept of the monad mentioned by Moisés, there are several monads: we came from an origin, but we are not all from the same origin—we have differences precisely because we have different origins—and we would be here to return in a very good condition.

We often look only at our own navels, without understanding that the spiritual process and ascension involve relationships with billions of people, animals, plants, and everything that exists. Spirituality means learning to relate to what is around us. We study consciential levels from the base chakra to the crown chakra. Even if I am at the base chakra, I can study, practice, and bring perceptions into everyday life. If I achieve 1% of what I seek, that is already progress. We are prone to denial and to being carried away by difficulties, which prevents us from fulfilling our potential. We can reach new levels as we grow, but if we do not pay attention, we underuse what we have already achieved.

We should reflect on how much energy and perception we have already attained and why we experience them so infrequently. Perhaps we are focused on things that are not our true spirituality. In addition, many of us were not raised within an open spirituality and tend to explain coincidences as chance.

The helpers would work with us, but we are accustomed to denying our perceptions. Difficulty believing and practicing in order to feel spirituality distances us from it. When comparing Moisés's experience with that of someone who is beginning, many people stop because the ideal seems far away. We wait until we are ready to begin practicing and donating energy, but we will not reach a better condition without taking initial steps. One challenge is reducing self-pressure and the inner inquisitor that prevents us from moving forward. We need to respect our path and proceed step by step, because without action, we will never be well.

Here we go: I know I have endless difficulties, but I am fighting. I keep working and walking, facing the challenge of not stopping at myself and not being a perfectionist in the negative sense—someone who believes that if something is not perfect, it is worthless. We need to look at ourselves, accept ourselves with our imperfections, and work to smooth those rough edges. Within this, we can mention our own experiences, such as the work of laying on of hands and the Daily Assistential Task, which is the donation of energy at a distance.

This practice, created by Moisés, is an extremely rich way to exercise spirituality, mobilizing our energy to help others. By doing so, we would include ourselves in a movement that goes beyond us and work with a group of helpers. What keeps us motivated to raise our hand for 20 years and say, "This is very good; I am grateful to be able to do this"?

It is a matter of balance. If we do not pay attention to our conveniences, desires, and difficulties in dealing with emotional or energetic situations, these issues may dominate us. The space devoted to spiritual growth may then shrink. For those who practice it, the Daily Assistential Task offers a return perceived as real and concrete. Donated energies would be used in acts of assistance, and over time the practice may also help the donor. The intention is to benefit others, but the exercise also affects the person who opens their hands to donate.

Immersion in practices such as clairvoyance, astral projection, and energy circulation creates an atmosphere conducive to spiritual work—unlike the family environment, where we face fatigue and everyday challenges. Many people feel isolated in their spiritual search and look for a place where they can talk and be understood. When we find people with similar interests, the feeling of isolation decreases; we do not feel like a fish out of water. Shared work prevents distractions and provides a constant reminder of the evolutionary purpose.

Working alone is different from being united with people who share the same purpose. The beginning of the year is a good time to reflect on our relationship with spirituality, integrating it into life rather than approaching it only out of curiosity. We can write to or mentally converse with our helpers. By thinking about the subject, we connect with it, and intuitions and ideas may arise.

Monitoring one's own life is essential to developing spirituality. Without review, we let everything pass. We want to remember past lives, but often do not remember what we did in January. To grow, it is important to focus and recall. The study of reincarnation and past lives, the here and now, and telepathy address the possibility that energy may circulate regardless of distance and that physically distant people may remain spiritually close. Some people contribute to events even when unable to attend, allowing others to participate—everyone faces difficulties but seeks to overcome them.

Energy donation is a fundamental practice. At the end of each session, ten minutes of exteriorization are performed, directing energy to the helpers, who could use it across various areas of work and assistance. Donating with perception and presence is essential, avoiding automatic behavior and keeping the mind focused.