How does one begin to awaken his or her spiritual existence?

The desire for God is the beginning and that desire resides in every human being.  The Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich calls this the quest for Ultimate Concern.  Psychotherapist Carl Jung, M.D. calls this the yearning for Ultimate Reality.  His colleague Viktor Frankl, M.D. calls this the longing for Ultimate Meaning.  This is the driving force in the life of the human – the desire for God. This is why we say the human spirit is what animates life and why St. Augustine says – restless is the heart until it rests with God.

Spiritual existence is central to a healthy life.  Why?  It is simple.  Because nothing that is finite, no matter how good it may appear, can satisfy like what is infinite.

The human person is designed to seek what is beyond the bounds of earthly life and temporal time.  Seeking God is what takes us beyond the limits of earth and time.  This transposition is endemic to the human person and why we say that the human, unlike any other creature on the earth, is self-transcending.  

To transcend is to live beyond immediate limits.  To awaken your spiritual life is to live beyond the limits of the material world.

This does not mean that one need discard all that is material but rather not be limited by the material.  This speaks to life in the material world but without being captured by the material or letting the things of this world denominate your life, define you.  This is what one means by being in but not of the world. This speaks to a sense of priorities, a health-giving detachment that flows from locating oneself within the central desire for a relationship with God.  To desire God is, in effect, the foundation of spiritual existence – your spiritual awakening.

Must this desire separate us from those around us?  No.  Indeed if God is love, a desire for God and this awakening actually brings you closer to others and all that transpires.  How?  If God is love and one’s life is centered on a desire for God, one loves God, all others and all creation.

Imagine this: by loving God one is more fully alive and at the same time self-transcendent.  This is the gift you have been given in life – the desire to know God and in that live more fully in love, in God.

Shalom.