It is wise to seek the advice of experts on important matters. In spiritual matters, people go to those they think have the answers, like priests and gurus. However, delving into our psyche is the only way to answer most of the important questions. Come and find out for yourself.
Spiritual Journey of Self-Discovery
The journey into spiritual awareness is based on self-discovery. It does not come about by reading books or memorizing texts. Self-discovery is all about using the proper tools to explore our minds, and one of these is asking the right questions. Using deep spiritual questions for reflection opens our minds and hearts.
We expect instant gratification. Our attention spans are shorter because social media have trained us. The propaganda of popular culture has stunted the bandwidth of our awareness. Organized religions replace spiritual exploration with the belief in myths and superstitions. These factors distract us from self-discovery.
Recalibrate, Eliminate, and Reprogram
Our first task on the spiritual journey of self-discovery is to recalibrate our awareness. Then, we can eliminate distractions and reprogram harmful with healthy values. The spiritual reflection questions to ask requires a healthy mind.
Recalibration
To recalibrate expectations, learn to take things as they come. Do not rush to find the answer. Allow yourself the time you need to process things. This skill will come in handy in both your spiritual and practical lives.
Listen to what people say without judgment or thinking about your rebuttal. Listen fully. If you do this, you will gather more information and know if what they are saying matches their nonverbal cues.
Recalibration is about slowing down your mind so that it can process the input. Slowing down keeps us from jumping to conclusions or misreading things. Scrolling on your mobile is one of the major culprits that contribute to our rushing.
So, set limits on your use of mobile devices and stop scrolling. Learn to use your mobile device to support a healthy lifestyle rather than a time waster. Use your mobile device for specific functions like checking email or health metrics. You will save, on average, about one hour a day and help to recalibrate your attention span.
The journey into spiritual awareness is a shift in perspective that helps us see the big picture in the midst of our busy lives.
Elimination
Eliminate all sources of unhealthy programming. If you expose yourself to indoctrination tactics, you will eventually accept their premises, even if you know they are not true or healthy. Propaganda and groupthink manipulation tactics are everywhere. They have become part of many socially acceptable institutions and organizations. Eliminating the source of harmful tactics is the first step in repairing the health of your psyche.
What does unhealthy programming look like? Unhealthy programming is that which promotes harmful actions. This includes things like discrimination, bias, and prejudice. All sectarian ideologies are inherently unhealthy. These belief systems promote everything from genital mutilation to genocide.
What are the known sources of this kind of propaganda? Here’s the shortlist.
The religions of the Abrahamic family top the list: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. They use mind-control methods adopted from their earlier versions of the mystery religions. These tactics work as well today as they did eight thousand years ago in Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Persia.
Conservative, Right-Wing and Fundamentalist religious/political organizations copy and use these tactics. They manipulate people and elect unscrupulous people to places of power.
Social media, from TV and radio to the internet, are ripe with people and organizations that use conspiracies and lies to manipulate. An example is Fox News, which promotes right-wing propaganda and conspiracies.
You may also use some tools to probe your beliefs and values to see if you have any harmful programming lurking in your subconscious. We use The Repetitive Question Exercise, Comparative Analysis, and the Enneagram. These tools provide the data to repair your beliefs and values.
Removing harmful programming is necessary for the journey into spiritual awareness. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are a good person because you believe in an imaginary friend. That is not spiritual. That is delusionary magical thinking.
Reprogram
Once you’ve eliminated the sources of harmful programming, you’ll have space to repair and replace them with healthy ones. The tools listed above will give you the data you need to identify and start the repair process. To program positive beliefs and values, we recommend the use of mantras, sutras, and affirmations.
To free your mind from unhealthy beliefs will speed up the spiritual journey of self-discovery. Now, you are ready for a deep dive into consciousness.
Spiritual Reflection Questions to Ask
Congratulations on doing the inner work necessary to identify, eliminate, and reprogram your mind. Now, we are ready to begin the process of self-reflection without interference.
The Repetitive Question Exercise is the preferred method for deep spiritual questions for reflection. This process entails asking the same question over and over, each time trying to find a new answer. This process gets past our normal canned answers to the genuine answers we carry in the subconscious mind. Each time we ask the question, take a moment to reflect and find a new perspective on the question.
We recommend using a spiritual diary for this exercise. A handwritten document will give you more data than typing. Your handwriting contains data about your feelings and mindset. The slant of the letters, the shape, and the pressure used are the heartbeat of your emotional state.
The Deep Spiritual Questions for Reflection
If you are growing, the answers to the questions about the spiritual journey of self-discovery will change over time. So, if you ask these questions again in three months and you get slightly different answers, that’s a good thing. If you keep asking these questions and you keep getting the same answers month after month and year after year, that’s stagnation. You don’t want that.
“We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.” — Alfred North Whitehead
Every excellent investigator knows everything revolves around answering the four Ws: who, what, where, when, and why. These are spiritual reflection questions to ask yourself. They are the gateway to the journey into spiritual awareness.
Who am I?
Who am I? is one of the first big spiritual questions we ask ourselves on the spiritual journey of self-discovery. It often coincides with the emergence of our existential fear of death. Children as young as three will pose this question to their parents. Children are looking for ways to understand the world, thinking that this simple question must have a simple answer.
When you think about it, this question is common ground we share with everyone. But it’s a simple one. It’s one of the deep spiritual questions for reflection. When you ask this simple question with the repetitive question exercise, you’ll be surprised at the range of answers you’ll get. These questions spark our spiritual journey, and this mystery is at the heart of our inner quest.
“Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answers.” — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Many great philosophers agonized over this one. That’s because there isn’t a coherent general answer. It’s like asking what is the best color and answering light purple. This answer won’t apply to everyone.
Don’t let this question lead you to frustration. Learn to accept these answers as part of the unfolding mystery of life. The best spiritual reflection questions to ask are those that take us down unexpected rabbit holes.
The best way to come to terms with this question is to use it as a barometer of your growth. Your answers should change over time. If they aren’t, then try to find out why. Make sure you are using all the tools available to explore and develop your spiritual walk.
Who we are should make us aware of our impermanence. Our existential fear of death is one of the deep spiritual questions for reflection that many people avoid. If you follow it through, it becomes the fuel for spiritual exploration.
The Tools for Spiritual Exploration
If you don’t know what these tools are, you should investigate them now. We divide these methods into four categories. You can learn many of them from articles on this website.
— Tools to enhance critical thinking abilities
— Meditative processes
— Methods that expand awareness
— Healing techniques and modalities
What am I?
Who and what aren’t redundant questions; they are approached from different vantage points. The second of the spiritual questions to ask delves into your motivations. When you run this question through the Repetitive Question Exercise, you’ll find it yields different answers than asking, who am I?
Technically, 99% of the human body’s mass is made up of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Only about 0.85% comes from five elements: potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium.
The physical elements don’t tell us about the consciousness behind the scenes. There’s much more to us than several elements. There is much about our lives that cannot be quantified easily. So what am I?
What I am is awareness connected to my body through consciousness. I have an Ego that has definable characteristics of personality and instinct. But these tools of the mind don’t describe exactly what it is that is experiencing this reality through my senses. The spiritual journey of self-discovery takes us beyond the physical into the metaphysical realm.
I am also a product of DNA passed down through a line of ancestors stretching back before humankind existed. In the end, my life will boil down to a collection of memories. But our memories don’t tell what we are here for.
Religion tells us our value is based on our performance in service to an imaginary friend. Our culture tells us what we are in terms of our monetary worth; it compares and categorizes us according to an arbitrary and unfair sliding scale.
When we awaken to these realizations, we can accept ourselves as we are. It’s welcoming to make peace with all our mistakes and flaws, and it’s learning to love ourselves because of them. What I am today will change tomorrow. I’ll be older for sure, but what else will I change?
Where am I, and When?
When and where we are is a matter of perspective. We can measure time and place in three-dimensional space. However, these measures depend on arbitrary human-made intervals. There’s nothing less absolute than time and nothing more pliable than space. These deep spiritual questions for reflection help us understand how special life is. If I weren’t here, where would I be?
The willingness to reexamine lifelong beliefs because of conflicting data takes enormous courage, and contrasts sharply with recent examples of public discourse in which our political, cultural, and religious leaders have fit data to preconceived theories.” — Donal O’Shea
From a universal perspective, we are hurtling through the cosmos while we revolve around a star. We are on a unique planet that enables us to survive as long as we don’t destroy it with short-sightedness. From a spiritual perspective, we are an infinite vibration.
This is one of the spiritual reflection questions you can ask yourself, which may bring up things that seem off-topic. It’s worth your time to follow up on these new topics. Journaling or exploring the subconscious with the Automatic Writing technique are good choices.
Why am I Here?
Unfortunately, many people turn to religion for simple answers to this question. Religion doesn’t answer the big questions about the meaning of life. It wants to make you a lifelong paying customer, so it provides stories and answers based on mythological superstition. Western theology sidesteps the underlying philosophical questions.
Don’t fall for this ploy. Instead of accepting what religion tells you, start asking more questions. Take responsibility for your spiritual quest. Start asking who, what, where, why, and when.
The Why question is one of the spiritual reflection questions to ask yourself, which is designed to open your perspective. It may take you back to the earlier questions.
Osho says that we cannot find truth outside of ourselves. No teacher or holy book can provide it. You must seek the answers within yourself.
“Why are we here? To remember, and re-create, Who You Are. You use life to create your Self as Who You Are, and Who You’ve Always Wanted to Be.” ― Neale Donald Walsch. (1)
Our culture tells us our value is in what we can produce for the economy. So, we become humans doing, instead of human beings, and our value is only in the monetary value we provide. Some people get stuck in the quest for commercialism, always chasing the dollar. Chasing dollars doesn’t make sense in the long run.
How to Use Deep Spiritual Questions for Reflection
One of my teachers, Guru Tua, told me the answer is in the question; just read it backward out loud. The answer is, here we are. He would laugh and say, see how easy it is.
So, I asked him, what about the question, what are we? If you say that backward, you get we are what. Ah, he would say, you just need to keep going; we are what… ever… what comes next? Then, he would start laughing again and say, don’t you get it?
So he went on and said try it with, why are we here? Again, I said, it’s not making any sense. When you read it backward, you get here we are … why? He would just laugh and say you’ve just got to keep going with it. The answer is there, just beyond your analytical thinking. Get your mind out of the way and allow your intuition to provide that gut feeling that you grasp the answer.
Understanding the Journey into Spiritual Awareness
A proper perspective helps us see the intrinsic value of life. The four “W” questions are excellent material for delving into consciousness. These questions help us achieve a balanced, practical, and spiritual perspective. Find a partner or group and take this journey with another spiritual explorer.