Do Your Spiritual Beliefs Sustain You?

Today I’m going to get really personal and talk about my spirituality…

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about religion here… I respect all religions and no religions and homegrown spirituality like my own… whatever you believe or don’t believe is perfectly great.

My spiritual beliefs saved me when all I could do was lay in the dark depressed and watch a candle burn. They gave me sustenance in moments of greatest fear. And they gave me the inspiration and faith to keep going, to heal my childhood traumas, and to create the life of my dreams.

I didn’t always have my spiritual beliefs to sustain me. I was raised in an atheist family in an atheist culture (I was born and lived the first 8 years of my life in the former Soviet Union). One of my earliest memories was learning the Marxist slogan that “Religion is the opiate of the people” and my dad saying things like, “Does anybody actually believe that there is a man up in the clouds directing everything?”

As a child, I was terrified of churches and synagogues.

And yet, when I found myself at 10 years old desperately scared the first time my parents announced they were getting divorced, I lay in the dark praying that they would stay together.

I have no idea where I got the idea to pray or why I found comfort in it, but it was all I had at that time in my life.

And my parents stayed together.

I started to believe in a power greater than myself to help me get through tough times.

And I started to pray regularly.

In the years that followed, my faith has grown by leaps in bounds. I believe in a loving energy force (I call it the “Universe”) that is always there for our highest good and evolution (even when the gifts come in crappy packaging) and that we access our connection to this force through our intuition and by listening to the small, still voice inside of ourselves.

I’ve come a long way from my Soviet childhood.

I have experienced the power of prayer, the power of surrendering my will to a Greater Will and the power of asking for guidance and having it answered almost immediately.

I have allowed myself to be comforted by this energy in times of great loss and pain.

I have learned to pay attention to my intuition and to listen to my heart as it guides me to my deepest truth of who I am and what my soul wants to experience in this lifetime.

My relationship with the Universe has become the most important, primary relationship in my life. As long as it’s solid, I feel centered and grounded and all of my other relationships (and all of life) flows beautifully.

What about you? How have your spiritual beliefs supported you and sustained you?

I would love to hear from you! Feel free to leave a comment below.