Start Your Spiritual Journey Today With These 5 Easy Steps

Jun. 20, 2018 09:02AM EST

A lot of people in this world have been relying on religious affiliations or self-help gurus and books to navigate life. For them, inner peace or direction is found through going to church, or absorbing materials that are meant to help guide you to happiness and joy.

Still however, many are left with unanswered questions about how to obtain true inner peace, balance, happiness, and purpose.

Despite gravitating towards resources that are believed to grant those things, some people wonder why their life is not where they always dreamt it would be. By embarking on a personal spiritual journey, I believe people could live and lead more fulfilling lives. This piece will help you get started.

Self-Love

First things first, you must learn how to love yourself from the inside out. It's crazy that self-love needs to be learned! It is meant to be instinctual. I'm not talking about vanity or ego, rather genuine love for the essence of what makes you complete, which is all within you.

No additives should ever be necessary.

Do you know how unnatural it is to look in the mirror and hate what you see? The dark things of the world have managed to separate us from the innate love of self by poisoning our minds with the beliefs of seeking validation externally. Dangling false sense of beauty and jaded ideals of what it means to be successful, or worthy; pushing every soul away from their truths.

Related: 5 Truths About The Higher Self That Will Elevate Your Life

Who are you when you take away your money and clothes? When you relinquish your job titles, political and/or religious affiliations, and Instagram pages? Who are you outside of Black, White, Male, Female, Gay, Straight, etc?

Describe your soul. What does your Spirit look like? Love the heck out of whatever that is. Once you do that, love for your physical vessel is a piece of cake!

Introspection

Going inside of yourself and understanding what motivates you is an important step along your own personal spiritual journey. Allowing yourself to be alone, uninfluenced by the world around you is imperative to finding your truth.

Get still and be quiet about what you personally feel about any and everything that bothers you. Whether it's about yourself, about your friends, or family, or the world at large. Figure out who you are without the opinions of anything outside of yourself.

Understand your pet peeves and what irritates you. Figure out what makes you smile, and what makes you sad. Learn to monitor your thoughts as if they are separate from your body.

Introspection of self is the key to finding where it is you need to heal.

Unpacking

Once you get a handle on your mind, you open the door to get a handle on your emotions. Unpacking is the psychological term for realizing wherever you hold emotional baggage. This can stem from your childhood, to experiences with other people in platonic and romantic relationships, to how you have fared so far in your professional life.

Every emotion we feel is connected to another emotion. It's up to you to figure out where the negative ones come from. This is what unpacking means. It is not always going to be fun. Unpacking painful emotions and feelings can feel like picking at scabbed-over wounds.

Related: Every Major Win In My Life Came After A Breakdown

You can't think that you are over something that you have repressed, put a big Band-Aid on it, and call that healed. The truth is, it is not healed until you get to the source or the root of the wound, and remove the origin of said pain. That is why a scab still hurts. It is not fully healed. A scar however, is physical proof of something that has been healed.

This will require you to be humble and dissolve your ego. It is definitely one of the hardest parts of a spiritual journey.

Release, Shedding, And Rebirth

Once you have gotten to the bottom of any pain within your spirit or your soul, it is time to release any hang-ups or resentments about it. This can come in the form of accepting apologies, or giving apologies. This can also represent cutting people off who no longer serve you, and have decided not to continue growing with you. This can also take the form of forgiveness.

Whether you have to forgive yourself for something you have done wrong, or forgive someone who has wronged you. Forgiveness is proof that you have healed what needed to be forgiven. This release, or shedding, can represent an old personality as well. If you have been known to be a hot head in the past, or mean, or envious, these are all low vibrational traits that dissolve with ego. If you have been impatient, you have to reverse that. Where you have been intolerant, or angry, you have to release that energy.

Emotions, characteristics, and toxic people aren't the only things that need to be released. Addictions, bad habits, and materialistic desires need to be balanced in order to remain on a spiritual journey.

You don't have to subscribe to any religious affiliations to be reborn. You need only truth.

Find Purpose

Once you get through these initial steps of healing your soul, you can move on to finding your purpose. The truth is, all of these steps lead to purpose to begin with. This is the point of embarking on a spiritual journey. In actuality, every human being has been on a spiritual journey since they were born.

With this process comes true joy, happiness, inner peace, unconditional love, empathy, compassion, and an understanding of universal oneness.

Meditation, affirmations, self-care, and connecting with like-minded people help to keep you aligned along this journey.

As someone who has navigated the waters of this journey of truth-seeking, I have found that I literally exude a glow. I am not perfect, but I am happy, whole, worthy, and a survivor. I tattooed on my wrist the word, "healer", because my journey has healed me.

I mentioned in the very beginning of this article that you do not have to be affiliated with organized religion to start a spiritual journey. I personally believe that truth shouldn't be organized. As someone who has broken out of a very Christian upbringing, I can honestly say that I have never been more spiritual.

*Featured Image by Giphy

Like xoNecole on Facebook

Fontaine Felisha Foxworth

Fontaine Felisha Foxworth is a writer and creative entrepreneur from Brooklyn New York. She is currently on the West Coast working on creating a TV Pilot called "Finding Fontaine", that details the nomadic journey of her life so far. Keep up with her shenanigans @famoustaine on IG.

popular

Becoming A Popstar’s Amira Unplugged Is Where She’s Meant To Be

Before she was Amira Unplugged, rapper, singer, and a Becoming a Popstar contestant on MTV, she was Amira Daughtery, a twenty-five year-old Georgian, with aspirations of becoming a lawyer. “I thought my career path was going to lead me to law because that’s the way I thought I would help people,” Amira tells xoNecole. “[But] I always came back to music.”

A music lover since childhood, Amira grew up in an artistic household where passion for music was emphasized. “My dad has always been my huge inspiration for music because he’s a musician himself and is so passionate about the history of music.” Amira’s also dealt with deafness in one ear since she was a toddler, a condition which she says only makes her more “intentional” about the music she makes, to ensure that what she hears inside her head can translate the way she wants it to for audiences.

“The loss of hearing means a person can’t experience music in the conventional way,” she says. “I’ve always responded to bigger, bolder anthemic songs because I can feel them [the vibrations] in my body, and I want to be sure my music does this for deaf/HOH people and everyone.”

A Black woman wearing a black hijab and black and gold dress stands in between two men who are both wearing black pants and colorful jackets and necklaces

Amira Unplugged and other contestants on Becoming a Popstar

Amira Unplugged / MTV

In order to lift people’s spirits at the beginning of the pandemic, Amira began posting videos on TikTok of herself singing and using sign language so her music could reach her deaf fans as well. She was surprised by how quickly she was able to amass a large audience. It was through her videos that she caught the attention of a talent scout for MTV’s new music competition show for rising TikTok singers, Becoming a Popstar. After a three-month process, Amira was one of those picked to be a contestant on the show.

Becoming a Popstar, as Amira describes, is different from other music competition shows we’ve all come to know over the years. “Well, first of all, it’s all original music. There’s not a single cover,” she says. “We have to write these songs in like a day or two and then meet with our producers, meet with our directors. Every week, we are producing a full project for people to vote on and decide if they’d listen to it on the radio.”

To make sure her deaf/HOH audiences can feel her songs, she makes sure to “add more bass, guitar, and violin in unique patterns.” She also incorporates “higher pitch sounds with like chimes, bells, and piccolo,” because, she says, they’re easier to feel. “But it’s less about the kind of instrument and more about how I arrange the pattern of the song. Everything I do is to create an atmosphere, a sensation, to make my music a multi-sensory experience.”

She says that working alongside the judges–pop stars Joe Jonas and Becky G, and choreographer Sean Bankhead – has helped expand her artistry. “Joe was really more about the vocal quality and the timber and Becky was really about the passion of [the song] and being convinced this was something you believed in,” she says. “And what was really great about [our choreographer] Sean is that obviously he’s a choreographer to the stars – Lil Nas X, Normani – but he didn’t only focus on choreo, he focused on stage presence, he focused on the overall message of the song. And I think all those critiques week to week helped us hone in on what we wanted to be saying with our next song.”

As her star rises, it’s been both her Muslim faith and her friends, whom she calls “The Glasses Gang” (“because none of us can see!”), that continue to ground her. “The Muslim and the Muslima community have really gone hard [supporting me] and all these people have come together and I truly appreciate them,” Amira says. “I have just been flooded with DMs and emails and texts from [young muslim kids] people who have just been so inspired,” she says. “People who have said they have never seen anything like this, that I embody a lot of the style that they wanted to see and that the message hit them, which is really the most important thing to me.”

A Black woman wears a long, salmon pink hijab, black outfit and pink boots, smiling down at the camera with her arm outstretched to it.

Amira Unplugged

Amira Unplugged / MTV

Throughout the show’s production, she was able to continue to uphold her faith practices with the help of the crew, such as making sure her food was halal, having time to pray, dressing modestly, and working with female choreographers. “If people can accept this, can learn, and can grow, and bring more people into the fold of this industry, then I’m making a real difference,” she says.

Though she didn’t win the competition, this is only the beginning for Amira. Whether it’s on Becoming a Popstar or her videos online, Amira has made it clear she has no plans on going anywhere but up. “I’m so excited that I’ve gotten this opportunity because this is really, truly what I think I’m meant to do.”

The daily empowerment fix you need.
Make things inbox official.

Become a Member

Culture & Entertainment

How Malcolm X Taught Us To Love And Protect Black Women And Girls

Today is Malcolm X’s birthday. As an icon of Black liberation movements, his words are often rallying cries and guideposts in struggle. In 2020, after the officers who executed Breonna Taylor were not charged with her murder, my timeline was flooded with people reposting Malcolm’s famous quote: “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”

Keep reading...Show less

Wellness

How Neglecting Your Mental Health Can Literally Stop Your Bag

We’ve all been there: Exhausted, lacking motivation, on edge, or simply not feeling like working at all. And we might have even used up all of our sick days, not to rest from a cold or injury, but just to get a bit of relief from those job or business responsibilities. Sometimes, you're not able to shake that nagging feeling of gloom, eventually finding yourself in a toxic pattern of unhealthy habits and behaviors. There's a larger issue that goes way beyond just needing a break.

Keep reading...Show less

Exclusive Interviews

Start Your Spiritual Journey Today With These 5 Easy Steps

Self-Love

No additives should ever be necessary.

Introspection

Unpacking

Release, Shedding, And Rebirth

You don't have to subscribe to any religious affiliations to be reborn. You need only truth.

Find Purpose

Meditation, affirmations, self-care, and connecting with like-minded people help to keep you aligned along this journey.

Tiffany Haddish on Using Baths to Bring Positive Energy Into Her Life

On Getting Into Agriculture

On How She Felt After Her Big Chop

Tiffany Haddish on Advocating for Herself

On Being Fake

The Cost of Poor Mental Health

How to Maintain Mental Health Wellness

1. Be sure to honor and uplift yourself.

2. Remember the connection between body and mind, and get active.

3. Take an accounting of your network and surround yourself with great people.

4. Set boundaries and seek balance.

5. Don't underestimate the power of coaching and/or therapy.

How CultureCon Founder Imani Ellis Prioritizes Self-Care

Imani on Her Self-Care Routine

Imani on Her Tradition Before Every CultureCon

On the Best Advice to Give Creatives During Times of Struggle

Staying grounded is one of the actor's biggest priorities.