Key Practices Towards Spiritual Awakening [Episode #596]

This week’s topic is: Key Practices Towards Spiritual Awakening

As we define spirituality, it has to do with a greater awareness and connection. Awareness of who we really are, of the beauty in each moment and of how to connect deeply with yourself and with others. The yogis call who we really are the true self. And the false self is all the surface, the ego, the thoughts, the personality, the hair, the skin, all the things that we identify with on a surface level.

When we work to connect on a deeper level with that true self, along with having a great surface appearance, it’s a doorway into greater self-connection, self-love, and confidence and connection to our gifts that we can use out in the world to help other people to our life’s calling.

We feel so light, peaceful ,and joyful as we move about our day. And we don’t take things as seriously. We’re going to care about what we look like. We’re going to care about things like our weight, however, we have access to this inner world. We are also so focused on our inner state, we start to connect within ourselves so that all of the tendencies to control things on the outside, or be over anxious about things on the outside, starts to fade away.

Spirituality is, in my opinion, the most important thing in our lives to work on cultivating, to work on in general. It’s one of our cornerstones, the others are food, body, emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. Spiritual growth influences all the other ones. It is something that I would love to support you with because I know that it is the greatest gift. It is the most impactful thing that we can do.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]

Luke – Colorado

Up until recently I never thought I could live a spiritual life without being part of my parents church. I’m relearning and could use some pointers. Much thanks Kimberly!

Roxanne – South Dakota 

Can you share what your definition of spiritual awakening is and how do you know if you’ve had one? There are so many opinions out there.

Julia – Maine

When I think of working on my spirituality, I can’t help but look to inspiring people like Jesus or Mother Teresa. How can I get past the comparison of reaching to their level of perfection while working on your perfectly imperfect philosophy?

Ruthie – TX

What would you say are the key practices one should follow when focusing on starting a spiritual ritual?

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Spirituality, at its core, is the emerging awareness of the true self within you, which is beyond form and unlimited in its power.

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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• 5 Signs of Spiritual Awakening
• How to Easefully Increase Spirituality into Your Life
• Practical Tips on How to Incorporate Spirituality with Gary Jansen
• Creating a Spiritual Practice for the New Year

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:05 Okay. Hi babies and welcome back to our Thursday Q and A podcast. Our community show where all the questions come right from our beautiful, amazing community members, including you. And I’m very excited about our topic today, which is Key Practices Towards Spiritual Awakening. And as we define spirituality, it has to do with greater and greater awareness and connection. So awareness of who we really are, awareness of the beauty in each moment and awareness of how to connect deeply with yourself and therefore to connect deeply with others. So the yogis call who we really are the true self. And the false self, so to speak is all the surface, the ego, the thoughts, the personality, the hair, the skin, all the things that we identify with on a surface level.

Kimberly: 01:06 And it doesn’t mean that we don’t want to look great, or we don’t want to have a great personality. That’s not it at all. But when we work to connect on a deeper level with that true self, along with again, having a great surface appearance and all of that. It gives us access, it’s a doorway into greater self-connection, self-love, and confidence and connection to our gifts that we can use out in the world to help other people to our life’s calling. So we start with this inner awareness and this inner connection and that flowers out that blossoms out into the world in the ways that we connect with others, which translates to more meaningful, connected relationships, more passion in our work and in our careers and what we are doing out in the world. It starts with that connection of beingness.

Kimberly: 02:10 And we just feel so light and peaceful and joyful as we move about our day. And we don’t take things as seriously. So like I said, of course, we’re going to care about what we look like. We’re going to care about things like our weight. We’re going to care about this and that, but we have access to this inner world. We are also so focused on our inner state, we start to connect in with ourselves so that all of the tendencies to control things on the outside, or be over anxious about things on the outside, it starts to fade away. Even issues like really intense food cravings and being controlled by food and constantly worrying about what your body looks like. All of this starts to fade naturally as the more we develop this inner connection. So spirituality is, in my opinion, actually, the most important thing in our lives to work on cultivating, to work on in general. It’s one of our cornerstones, the others are food, body, emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. Spiritual growth influences all the other ones.

Kimberly: 03:28 When we have more awareness of the true self, our diet, our bodies naturally start to go into balance and our emotions start to become balanced. And we’ll talk about this in more detail. I know some of this may sound a little bit esoteric right now, but we’re going to get into it right now with our questions, which will demonstrate, I believe in more specific terms, how we can bring our efforts at more self-realization, more self-awareness into our daily lives. And I will say, as someone that’s been on this journey now for over a decade, and I’ve been meditating now for over 12 years, over time just that consistent putting some effort towards this self connection. The relationship with self to grow, self love, to grow self-awareness really, really translates into all areas of your life.

Kimberly: 04:23 I get asked all the time, how do you live this passionate life? How were you able to write these books that you love and create this business and create this beautiful family? And all these things that I am so grateful for. And believe me, there have been many ups and downs and breakups and going down different paths, so-called mistakes and coming back to center, there have been a lot of things in my life. But the one thing that keeps me moving forward, and the one thing that is my guiding light and the one thing that I will attribute all of this goodness to is the deepening spirituality in my life is the deepening awareness.

Kimberly: 05:02 And so that was something that I want to share with you. It is something that I would love to support you with because I know that it is the greatest gift. It is the most impactful thing that we can do. I believe honestly, working on our awareness and that self connection, because it impacts every single thing in our life. It impacts our moment to moment experience and allows us to live life with more awareness, more joy, more peace. We become so connected and rooted in our inner state that the externals don’t matter as much. We don’t take them as seriously. So yes, we want things to be created in the way that we would like, we care about how we look, we care about our weight, we still care about all these different things. But when we have this inner connection, that is the real source of glow, it becomes so radiant. It becomes magnetic. It becomes easier in the world, ironically, to have all these other things work out in a more easeful way because we are so connected.

Kimberly: 06:12 And so I’m very passionate about this topic obviously, and I cannot wait to get into it right now. But before I do, I want to give a quick reminder to please leave us a review on iTunes, which is a beautiful, wonderful way to support the show. We’ve just created something new for you as well. Please take a screenshot of your review and email it to reviews@mysoluna.com and we will send you our free program, which is on self-love affirmations. And there’s a series of affirmations done in a very specific yoga technique. And I give a little talk a little lecture at the beginning through the different aspects that we hit in this program to really work on shifting underlying limited beliefs and can open up so much energy for you. So check it out, again take a screenshot of your review, send it to reviews@mysoluna.com. And while you’re over there, please be sure to subscribe to our show and that way you get this constant influx of positivity and inspiration through our Q and A shows on Thursdays and our Monday interview podcasts.

Question #1 around the topic of: Key Practices Towards Spiritual Awakening: Up until recently I never thought I could live a spiritual life without being part of my parents church. I’m relearning and could use some pointers. Much thanks Kimberly!

Kimberly: 07:23 Okay, let’s get right into our questions today. I’m so excited. And our first question comes from Luke, who lives in Colorado. Hi Luke, thank you so much for being part of our community. Sending you so much love out there in Colorado, no matter which part you happen to be. I love Colorado very much, and I actually did an outward bound adventure there between high school and college. So my memories of Colorado, of the beautiful mountains and the beautiful land and camping there. He writes, “Up until recently I never thought I could live a spiritual life without being part of my parents’ church. I’m relearning and could use some pointers much thanks, [Kimberly 00:08:06].” Luke, thank you so much for your question. We’ve been getting a lot of questions around this and I will share my personal journey towards spirituality and my relationship with religion personally.

Kimberly: 08:23 So I mentioned at the beginning of the show, when we talk about spirituality in no way, is it meant to usurp or shift your religion or take you to a religion or a way from your religion. If you have a religion or you don’t, that is your personal choice, obviously. And that’s something that you choose to have or not have. Spirituality is much broader than that. And spirituality, I believe is for everyone, whether you’re a part of a religion or not, because I’m, as I mentioned at the top of the show, spirituality has to do with awareness. It has to do with self-awareness. It has to do with really understanding the truth of who we are. And you can do that in the context of following a religion or not.

Kimberly: 09:15 So Paramahansa Yogananda, who is my yoga guru, my highest teacher. He came to the United States from India in the 1920s. And he was the first person to really talk about spirituality and yoga in this way to the Western world, to America. And he was saying, you can be any religion you want. And if you practice more of this awareness, you can actually be a better Catholic or you can be a better Muslim or whatever your religion is. And so he was saying these tools to connect in, to create stillness, to meditate, to be aware when we’re walking in nature and we look around. It’s about awareness of connection. So first we connect with ourselves and then we can connect to nature to the trees, to each other. And we see that this principle of oneness, which is really about connection is the truth. Instead of seeing division and separation, we just feel more united. And unification means harmony and it means feeling bliss. It means feeling that unity, that really is the truth. So when we align more to our truth, we naturally feel more joyful.

Kimberly: 10:31 I went backpacking after college and when I went to India for about three months, it’s when I started to really learn about yoga and meditation for the first time. It’s when I started to practice this, practice regularly. And at first I admit that I was a little bit confused because I was raised Catholic. And by the time college rolled around, I’ll be honest. I wasn’t feeling that connected to the church even though I went to a Jesuit university, I went to Georgetown and once in a while I would go to church, but it wasn’t resonating for me personally, but I did feel connected to the message of Jesus. And I loved the love aspect and all the different ways that the parallels talked about the love and the forgiveness and the unconditional love, and really seeing past the behaviors of people.

Kimberly: 11:29 So when I went to India, I was a little bit confused because I said, “Hey, I don’t want to be disloyal. I don’t want to convert to another religion or do something that feels weird or something that feels like a cult.” And when I found Yogananda, I found this deep peace settle in my heart because he was really speaking to me in a way that I could understand as a westerner. And again, he was, this is about awareness. This is about awareness of spirit that moves through everything. So here you can insert any word. You can say, love moves through everything. You can say universal, higher consciousness, that there’s a higher intelligence. There’s a life form that moves through everything. Spirit is what I like to say or God. But if those words don’t resonate with you just think about there’s an underlying energetic principle, or there’s just energy that runs through everything and connects everything. And the more I connect to that energy, the less division I feel, the less judgmental I feel I open up to more love.

Kimberly: 12:37 So to answer your question, look, if you don’t resonate with a particular church, that doesn’t mean you have to say no to spirituality. It means that you start to connect more and more within yourself. For me and again, I’m just speaking about personal experience and this may or may not resonate with anyone I’m just sharing my own experience. Growing up Catholic the one thing that never resonated with me was confession. And I always felt like I remember even being a little girl being really young five years old, I always felt that I could talk to God myself. I always felt that I could go inside and when I would sit and pray, I felt more connected sometimes then going to the ritualized mass.

Kimberly: 13:23 So what I would say Luke is self-connection for me, starts with being with myself. So this is very personal, but unless we spend time with that inner voice, that space of energy, and we’re just on the surface, it’s very hard to find that connection. So some starting pointers that I recommend is to find time to sit with yourself, to create a meditation practice. And to breathe, to sit, to be in nature, to go for a walk in silence, anything that starts to resonate with you. The other thing that I recommend is really starting to sit with this idea that spirituality and awareness and love is different than religion. And it’s okay. And you can either be part of a religion or not, as I mentioned. And so moving past any guilt or any ideas of limitation, that if you follow a spiritual practice, you’re somehow being disloyal to your religion.

Kimberly: 14:24 And I recommend reading some of these teachings of Yogananda, if you Google, he has many different works and many different ways of explaining this in the yogic sense. And also he talks about the underlying unity of all true religions. So if God is spirit again, universal consciousness is the top of the mountain. You’ll see that there’s many trails up the mountain, right? So in no way, do we say one way is better than another, we never say that. We say, well, this is one… The religions are all these different pathways. And to me, spirituality is just being more aware, aware of who you are, aware of when you are in truth and aware of when you are reacting a trigger from a wounded place, awareness of what keeps us blocked to more love, awareness of what keeps us blocked from our highest potential. What are the limiting beliefs within ourselves? What can we unlock within ourselves? What can we do to open ourselves up to feeling more connected with each other?

Kimberly: 15:35 So awareness is something that is a moment to moment experience. And so I encourage you Luke, just getting started, try meditation practice. We have guided meditations over at mysolluna.com also on our app. And just sitting with this idea of how can I bring more awareness into each moment. And we talked about this on last week’s podcast, but bringing more awareness to your breath, for instance. Bringing more awareness to your interactions, after you speak to someone, did you feel good about how you communicated? Did you feel good about being around that person? Is it why or why not? And then afterwards you can reflect on maybe I had a resentment that I brought into this conversation, or maybe I was thinking about something else I wasn’t really present, blah, blah, blah. So it’s just this awareness. As we move through life, we can start to uncover patterns. We can start to really introspect and to know ourselves more deeply. And then this opens the pathway for more and more deeper understanding. So that’s what I would say at first I could go on and on Luke, I think you’ll get some more information from other questions.

Kimberly: 16:42 I’ll pause here for the moment, but I hope that starting to open your eyes and your awareness to the awareness that spirituality brings. I also really recommend listening to our podcast with [Gary Jansen 00:16:56] from a few weeks ago, who was an amazing spiritual writer and editor. He’s worked on all of Deepak Chopra’s books and he’s worked on some of my books and the book I wrote with Deepak. He’s worked with Michael Singer on the untethered soul and the surrender experiment. He’s an amazing way of reframing spirituality versus religion and he happens to be a meditator and he loves Buddhism and he loves Hinduism and he also is a practicing Catholic. So it’s a very interesting way that he comes at it. So namaste Luke, sending you so much love and thank you so much for being part of our community.

Question #2 around the topic of: Key Practices Towards Spiritual Awakening: Can you share what your definition of spiritual awakening is and how do you know if you’ve had one? There are so many opinions out there. 

Kimberly: 17:33 Okay. Our next question comes from Roxanne and she lives in South Dakota and she writes, “Can you share what your definition of spiritual awakening is? And how do you know if you’ve had one? There are so many opinions out there.” This is a great question, Roxanne. And so to me, no one… This is something a spiritual awakening is non-linear, so it’s not, “Oh, I’ve been meditating or I’ve been praying, I’ve been doing this for a year now so this X, Y, Z should happen.” To me spiritual awakening is this experience and this knowing of more connection, more oneness with all things, with all people and more love. So to me, those are the three signs that you’re starting to awaken more and more and more.

Kimberly: 18:23 I think all of us can be really judgmental. And we create separation between ourselves and our sisters and our brothers. I mean that in the collective sense with the 7 billion sisters and brothers we have. We make little ways that we separate, whether it’s the way people dress or their political opinion or their culture or their skin color or their jobs or whatever it is. So to me, we know when we’re starting to awaken more spiritually, when we’re able to love more, when we’re able to see past other people’s behaviors, when we don’t feel so slighted and frustrated by other people. It doesn’t mean that we have to agree with them. It doesn’t mean that we have to be best friends with other people, necessarily we have to spend all our time with them. But what it means to me is spiritual awakening is this blossoming of expansive energy and expansive energy is more love. It is more connection.

Kimberly: 19:33 So I’ll give you an example from my life. I feel that as I look back over time from when I started meditating to now, and I look for instance, let’s take this angle in my relationships. I used to date, I think about New York, I was dating someone from my yoga studio who was vegan, who was a Yogi and I felt very connected to the people in my yoga studio who were practicing asanas every day and we were meditating, we were doing all these different things. And even though that you could say, “Oh yeah, that was we’re working on consciousness and we’re doing all the stuff.” If I’m honest and I look back at that time, I was judgmental still. I would look at someone who, let’s say was more worldly on the surface and wasn’t following any sort of spiritual path. And that would say, “Oh, they’re not there yet, they’re not on the path, they’re not on the journey.” It was spiritual ego.

Kimberly: 20:42 So that was 10 years ago. Right. So now… And there was growth that was happening. But now if there’s one thing that I’m proud of is that I’ve done so much self work and there’s been more awakening where I look past behaviors a lot more easily. I can look someone in the eyes. It doesn’t mean I don’t have those annoyances that still crop up sometimes, but I know that I’ve progressed. I still have a lot more to go, but I know that I’ve progressed because they can feel a lot more love and connection to other people.

Kimberly: 21:13 So to me, Roxanne, that is it, we want to have more love and we want to have more connection. And there’s many, many, many different ways to work on that deeper awareness. Self-awareness is a big one. Just being coming aware of when can I observe more and pull back from judging other people? When do I say to myself, my opinion isn’t needed here? And you can start to be more peaceful and witness and observe versus judge and evaluate. Where can I love more? Where can I forgive more? Where can I forgive myself? Where can I judge myself less? Because all the judgment and the evaluating that we do with ourselves really pours out into our relationship with other people.

Kimberly: 22:02 So really bringing awareness to our relationship with self is very important in this part of the journey, we really have to sit back and say, where do I hold on to guilt with myself? Where do I hold on to shame with myself? Where can I forgive myself and just give myself a break and realize that we’re all on this path and we’re stumbling along and we keep trying to grow? And it’s okay where we are right now. And we bring love and compassion to where we are. So again, Roxanne, I would say more love and more connection are the signs of spiritual awakening. When we can treat each other really lovingly and we can treat ourselves really lovingly, that is the sign of spiritual awakening in my book. And so that’s something that only you can into it only you can really be aware of.

Break

Kimberly: I love these questions so far. We’re going to keep going deeper and deeper into this, right after a short break. And then we will have two more questions for you guys on this beautiful topic.

Question #3 around the topic of: Key Practices Towards Spiritual Awakening: When I think of working on my spirituality, I can’t help but look to inspiring people like Jesus or Mother Teresa. How can I get past the comparison of reaching to their level of perfection while working on your perfectly imperfect philosophy? 

Kimberly: 23:09 All right. My loves, we are back from our break and we have two more questions for you on this topic of key practices towards spiritual awakening. And our first question, our next question rather comes from Julia, who lives in Maine. And she writes, “When I think of working on my spirituality, I can’t help but look to inspiring people like Jesus or Mother Teresa. How can I get past the comparison reaching to their level of perfection while working on your perfectly imperfect philosophy?” Wow, this is an amazing question Julia and I absolutely love, love, love, love, love this question says a lot here.

Kimberly: 23:53 So let’s put it this way. It is amazing to have spiritual figures that we aspire to. We aspire to taking on their qualities. And I think that can be very beneficial. I’m just looking past this camera, into my office and around, and I have so many different framed pictures of inspiring spiritual leaders to me. I have Yogananda, Jesus, [Nanda Moyama 00:24:18] this beautiful spiritual female, Saint of India, Mother Theresa, other yogis, just Buddha. There’s a lot that we can take on from these fully enlightened beings.

Kimberly: 24:36 But as I talk about in my next book, this idea of I have to be that level all or nothing that perfectionism that rigidity is of the ego, right. And spirituality is about bypassing the ego and melding into the true self living from the true self, which is this place of spirit inside of us. That’s what the true self is, this essence, this energy, which is the yogis belief, as I believe personally, this consciousness that’s in all of us spirit is in all of us. So comparison perfectionism that starts to soften and starts to melt away with the more we identify with our hearts, we identify with the love that is of spirit, the love that is of the true self.

Kimberly: 25:29 So on one hand, Julia, you can look at those beautiful saints and those amazing spiritual guides and leaders and be inspired. So we choose to be inspired. We choose to emulate them. We say, “Wow, what would Mother Teresa do in this moment? What is the highest, most loving thing I can do in this moment? What would Jesus do in this moment? What would Buddha do? What would [Krishna 00:25:56] do?” Whatever spiritual guide that you resonate with and there’s no right or wrong here. Obviously it can be any figure from any faith or tradition. And so you can use that as inspiration. And at the same time, you remind yourself, I’m here to grow. Life is about growth.

Kimberly: 26:17 And so I love myself, even in my humanness, even though I’m stumbling along and I’m not enlightened fully enlightened yet, I’m not Mother Teresa yet, I’m not Jesus. But every day, every moment I’m showing up and our power is in the present moment. It is so true at [Eckhart Tolle 00:26:36] says, “We focus on the here and the now.” And [Schwann Schweiz Deshar 00:26:41], which is the guru of Paramahansa Yogananda says, “Forget the past, be here now, be here now.” And then of course, [Ram Dass 00:26:52] wrote a whole book with that title. We are here now. So a big part of spirituality, Julia is focusing our energy in this moment. How can I be loving in this moment?

Kimberly: 27:05 And you know what, sometimes we mess up and sometimes the ego rises up and we fall into an old pattern maybe. We are reactive or catty, or the judgment comes back and then we learn from those moments. We can sit back. And the more we self-evaluate after that moment passes, we think, “Oh that actually didn’t really feel that good to me,” or, “I notice hey, I really was not of my highest self in that moment.” And that’s okay. We learn, we notice we witness and then we move on. And then in the next moment, we bring more love, bring love, do our best. And sometimes we make it and sometimes we mess up.

Kimberly: 27:43 So, but we keep going. This is about endurance. There is so much in the spiritual path about constancy and endurance and I think that’s really important to remember. This isn’t about perfectionism. It’s… We keep going and we keep going and it’s easier to run those last few miles of the marathon, right. We keep training and we train. We are not expected to learn all of this or to embody it right away. And we have this life to keep learning and to keep growing.

Kimberly: 28:18 So to me, it’s taking divine inspiration, inspiration from the saints and looking to them for more strength, for more guidance. But we keep going moment after moment, we keep showing up. Some days are going to be easier than others. Sometimes they’re going to be harder than others. We just keep going. And that’s what this is all about. It’s lifestyle. It’s like diet versus a lifestyle dietary practice. We live the teachings of the beauty detox solution. We want to have more [Greensboro 00:28:48] life. We want to have more fiber for life. We want to take SBO probiotics for life to keep ourselves healthy. This isn’t something that we are perfect for for a week and we drop off. And same thing with our approach to spirituality, we are perfectly imperfect and there is real perfection in that. It’s this blossoming flower, each moment is perfect at its stage along the way. We are here, we are meant to grow.

Kimberly: 29:16 So the more we can see the beauty in each moment and the more we can keep showing up in the moment, these ideas of comparison, Julia, really start to melt away. And that’s something I can say truly from personal experience. It’s something that we all have to experience. So constancy showing up with love, doing our meditations to center ourselves. So we bring more clearness and more equanimity into the day. That’s why morning meditation is so important and evening meditation to reset our energy and to come back to center. It’s like bookends on the day. And of course I’ll mention we have so many free guided meditations now on the app, the Solluna app, also on our website, I’m starting to put them out weekly.

Kimberly: 29:59 And of course in our Solluna circle, we take a really deep dive every month. This month, it’s about creative power. And this has to do with the fact that we are creators. So we create in each and every single moment we create the conversation. We create the meal, we create our outfits. We create our relationships. We create everything. So the more we can harness our creative power, it means we aligned to this now moment and we show up in the most truthful, loving way. So I also invite you Julia, and anyone listening that feels called to step into their higher purpose to please join our Solluna circle, it’s a beautiful sisterhood, it’s a beautiful program where we interact daily. So I’ll leave it there. And I send you so much love Julia. And let me know how you do, let me know how you progress. And of course, let me know how I can keep supporting you further.

Question #4 around the topic of: Key Practices Towards Spiritual Awakening: What would you say are the key practices one should follow when focusing on starting a spiritual ritual? 

Kimberly: 30:42  All right, our next and final questions comes here from Ruthie who lives in Texas and she writes, “What would you say are the key practices one should follow when focusing on starting a spiritual ritual?” Ah, so we talked about this a little bit Ruthie through the prior questions and today we’ll just hit it really straight on for the question. Of course, sending you so much love in Texas. Big virtual hug!

Kimberly: 00:04 Awareness is something … First of all, let’s talk about this, practices towards spiritual awakening. So awakening being, in our definition, more love, more connection. So it’s like anything, right? If we are working on a balanced diet, we want to have the practice of drinking, having our morning ritual and the food component. Drinking hot water with lemon consistently. Drinking our glowing green smoothie consistently.

Kimberly: 00:32 And we start to notice some benefits maybe in the first few days of, oh, I love not having to make a decision in the morning about this. I know what to do. My skin is starting to be more glowing. I’m starting to poop more in the morning, all these different things that start to happen.

Kimberly: 00:44 And then maybe there’s this period where it just feels a little steady or eh, this feels okay, but I’m not seeing a big period of growth. But then maybe three weeks later, we’re like, oh wow, another big milestone happened. And it can be subtle or not. But I notice more, even more glow to my skin. Or I notice my eyes are brighter. Whatever, it’s non-linear. But the most important thing here is the constancy. So it’s like we show up, and we keep doing it, we keep doing it.

Kimberly: 01:11 And over time these small, little steps add up to really big, consistent results. So what I would recommend, Ruthie, as far as a daily ritual around spiritual awakening, is to really create a consistent practice.

Kimberly: 01:30 And what I recommend is 10 minutes minimum, 15 maybe or more, let’s say 10 minutes in the morning. And honestly if, guys, if you can’t create 10 minutes in the morning, we need to relook at our lives. Because if I can do it, you can do it. And I’ve got two kids. And one of them’s only one years old.

Kimberly: 01:53 And I’m running this business, and doing the podcast, and writing the books.

Kimberly: 01:56 And I still can carve out the meditation practice. And this may require working with your partner, or reorganizing your work schedule, or waking up earlier, whatever it is. But if we really want to experience more love and more connection, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t? Because this, guys, this is the ticket. To the joy, to the peace that you’re looking for.

Kimberly: 02:26 It’s not going to come through more money. It’s not going to come through more Instagram followers. It’s not going to come from losing 10 more pounds. Those things are nice, and they can give us some level of surface enjoyment. Maybe it’s temporary, maybe it’s a little bit longer, whatever it is.

Kimberly: 02:46 But for that real, oh, that love, that wordless, it’s hard to communicate in words. That life that we want, that I want for you, it comes through more love. It comes through more connection. So I encourage you to make this a daily ritual. The best way to use those 10 minutes in the morning is to sit with yourself, and to get a regular meditation seat.

Kimberly: 03:12 It could be a chair, or a cushion on the floor. Mine’s right here next to this podcast equipment. I was meditating right before, actually. So to sit, and you can try one of our guided meditations, are typically six to seven minutes.

Kimberly: 03:25 So you sit, you do your meditation. And then the last few minutes, you can either keep the meditation going, or you can journal about your intentions for the day. You can journal about bringing more love and connection to your day. You can do affirmations. Or you can sit and you can introspect about what happened yesterday, and what you learned, and what you would like today to be like. You can bring an intention into the day.

Kimberly: 03:57 So there’s many different ways to use those 10 minutes, but meditation should be the through-line. And I don’t like to say the word should. But let’s say ideally it would be the through-line. Because meditation is the space where we tune out all this, the senses constantly going out in all different directions. And we start to tune in to this awareness of self. Awareness of this energy. And when we tune in, guys, it is amazing. We’re less reactive on the surface because we realize that there’s so much more to us, and there’s so much more to life.

Kimberly: 04:31 And we start to feel this unifying energy. So we become less annoyed when the neighbor’s going blah-blah-blah, because underneath we start to feel more and more compassion, and we can connect to who she really is. And then when all this stuff is getting crazy on the outside, your kids are running around and messing things up, tearing things up, you can take a breath and say, yeah, life is really choppy on the surface right now. But I can still connect to this steady place of energy underneath the surface, and feels really, really good in here.

Kimberly: 05:08 Yeah. So, starts with that 10 to 15 minutes, and it starts to weave an energy through the day. And then you can start to meditate longer. Then you can do more practices in the middle of the day, at the end of the day. But bringing this awareness to the beginning of the day, it’s like new year’s every single morning is the way to start transforming your life, and to start bringing this peace, this light, this joy in.

Kimberly: 05:36 And then what’s ironic about it is then, all this outside stuff, the stuff that you can see, food, creating the family life you want, creating the career you want, it starts to align in a much easier way.

Kimberly: 05:49 That’s been my experience, without all the pushing and the surface stuff. Because underneath everything is energy. And when you start to learn to work with energy in a deeper way, it means that you bypass all of this arduous pushing that most of the world is engaged with. Just, it’s very limited, working from the ego. But when we work from spirit, when we work from this deeper place of love and connection, we become more powerful. We become much more centered to our true power, which comes from that connected place.

Kimberly: 06:25 So a lot more in our discussion. There’s a lot more I want to share with you. But please check out, I won’t go into it too much again, but The Circle is where I really go into this. And of course, the meditations are always there for you. So thank you so much, Ruthie, for being part of our community. I am so grateful for you and for our connection. And I send you so much love out there to Texas.

Thought of the Week

Kimberly: 06:51 All right, my loves. This show was really deep, and you may be pondering a lot and thinking about how this relates to your life, and I think that’s a really good thing. I’m going to leave you with a quote of the week, just to sit in your heart. Maybe take this into your weekend, take this into your day. And it is spirituality, at its core, is the emerging awareness of the true self within you, which is beyond form and unlimited in its power.

Kimberly: 07:24 Spirituality, at its core, is the emerging awareness of the true self within you, which is beyond form and unlimited in its power. So maybe you’ve heard quotes from all sorts of historical figures. People like Abraham Lincoln, FDR, so on and so forth, they talk about, we can do anything and we’re unlimited. What is it, Napoleon Hill, I believe. Some of these motivational writers, Anthony Robbins, Tony Robbins.

Kimberly: 08:00 And it never really resonated with you because you were like, but I actually have tried things, and I feel really limited. And I keep hitting these blocks. And I feel small, and look at that person and what they’re doing, and how does that compare to me? And the reason you’re feeling limited is because you are identifying with your ego, which is limited by definition.

Kimberly: 08:24 It’s this surface, it’s this less than 1% of who you are. So imagine you’re identifying with this less than 1%, you are not going to be in your full power. You are not going to feel empowered. Yet, you had the choice, you have the opportunity always to connect deeper with the true self, with that spirit inside of you. Through these practices, through introspection, awareness, meditation. And then, oh, I’m not just that little surface ego at all.

Kimberly: 08:59 Then you connect with who you are, which is unlimited. But you’ve had to connect with the true self, not the false self, which is the ego. The true self is the essential essence within you. And it is unique to you, and you alone. So you can step into your own power, and you never have to compare yourself to anyone else. And your power never takes away from other people’s power. There is room for everyone to step into their full power. And it is life-changing when that happens, and starts to happen.

Kimberly: 09:36 It’s not like a button you turn on and off, but you get on the path like we were talking about. And then more awareness, more awareness. Ah, so much peace. Oh, more connection, and I’m less annoyed by what this person says or does because I feel so good inside of myself. The external world affects me less, and less, and less.

Kimberly: 09:57 And this energy I bring, people are feeling it, and people are responding to me in a very different way, and more starting to come at me. Things that felt impossible are starting to open up. Doorways are starting to open up. And that’s really been the story of my own journey, where I didn’t have all this information and connections, or anything, really, when I started out.

Kimberly: 10:25 But I kept going, and working on my energy, and taking steps forward. And then things kept opening up more and more. And the more I worked on my own practice, and the more I meditated, the more I connected in, the more things around me in the actual physical world really started to shift and change in big ways. So I would, of course, want the same for you. I am here for you. I’m showing up to serve you, to support you. I am so honored to be on this journey.

Kimberly: 10:56 And honestly, all I want is to share this journey with you. And so it is my great honor, my great privilege to be here with you today. I’m so grateful for our connection, and I love you so much. So please keep the questions coming. You can also submit them now on Instagram, also on our website. Please check out the show notes, and mysolluna.com will have resources for you. And other podcasts, other articles.

Kimberly: 11:25 Again, I highly recommend listening to the podcast with Gary Jansen, which is a really good one that pairs with this one. I’m also on social every day at @_KimberlySnyder. I will see you back here for our next Monday interview podcast. ‘Til then take care, and so much love.