Many people are repelled by the word spirituality. In the years I’ve been dwelling on my path I’ve found that this is usually because people associate spirituality with the dogma and negativity that surrounds organized religion. In fact, when you consider what the word spirituality means to you, chances are you will catch yourself thinking about religious authorities condemning every single thing you enjoy, or some creepy guy in the street crying “Jesus will save you!”

My aim with this article is to bust these negative connotations surrounding spirituality and introduce a more positive and liberating way of understanding spirituality that requires you to simply be true to who you really are. Who you really are has nothing to do with the ego’s identifications with your body, personality, interests and possessions. Your true self goes beyond your self-imposed boundary of the human body and is inherently connected to all living and non-living things in an energetic web of consciousness. Therefore, the purpose of spirituality is to awaken you to the fact that you are a pure-positive, all-loving, powerful and intelligent creator that came into this physical time-space reality to create, have fun and expand human consciousness through focused desire.

The following five processes are designed to help you establish a fuller and more intimate relationship with your Divine Self so that you can succeed on your life’s purpose of being and extending who you really are.

1. Pray. Don’t panic! When I suggest prayer people usually get defensive, because their perception of prayer is one of disempowerment – praying to a higher power that is believed to have some kind of control over you, and upon which your life depends on. From my perspective, praying helps us experience our interconnectedness with God and lets us know that we are acknowledged as equals to her power and intelligence. As a result of the feeling of interconnectedness achieved through prayer, all resistance we are holding against the manifestation of our desires wafts away and we are left feeling confident and content.

2. Meditate. Meditation is the simple act of quieting your mind from all thought. An emotion cannot exist without a thought, so when you cease all thought the emotion that remains is the original emotion of who you really are: Love. When you attune yourself to the love that lies within you then you have access to all the intelligence of God. A Course In Miracles suggests that prayer is the asking and meditation is the receiving of the answer. Therefore, whereas prayer allows you to establish a sense of interconnectedness with Source as you express your desires, meditation helps you deepen that experience by melding your consciousness with the consciousness of God and receive accurate guidance.

3. Go out in nature. Think of every piece of consciousness in the natural environment as a portal of Source energy. Literally, everything natural exudes that pure-positive vibration that defines God. When you expose yourself to nature by going for a walk at the park, swimming in the sea or even admiring and tending to the flowers in your garden, you are allowing your consciousness to blend in with the consciousness of nature. Therefore, every interaction you have with the natural world is a divine encounter that will inevitably and gradually raise your vibration to a high-feeling standard that matches your true self.

4. Be kind. “There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.” This quote by the Dalai Lama summarizes in a simple way the aim of spirituality. If our true nature is a state of oneness with God then this immediately presupposes that whenever we are not being kind, in our actions, words or thoughts, we are holding ourselves apart from who we really are. I believe that kindness is the cure to most of our everyday problems, and it is our responsibility to launch a momentum of kindness on an interpersonal level that will eventually spread to encompass interethnic conflicts.

5. Bless your water. I first realized my spirituality had reached a whole new level when I caught myself hugging a bottle of water and saying “Thank you, I love you.” Yet, the act of blessing water with a positive feeling has been practiced by almost all civilizations along the course of human history. Saying something positive to your water before you drink it, either mentally or verbally, imbues that water with the love that is You. In doing so, you are using your mind to embody spirit, which bridges mind, body and spirit into a divine communion that affirms the truth of who you really are.