Everyone's Spiritual Quest: Awake to a Higher Consciousness

Isn’t everyone on a spiritual quest – yearning for spiritual answers – in one way or another?

That’s what occurred to me as I joined more than 6000 people who attended an Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra event in Los Angeles recently.

Perhaps ironically, the spiritual event was competing with its glitzy opposite, the 88th Academy Awards ceremony. And the mechanics of getting to the location of the event almost overshadowed it, with unbelievable Oscar-eve traffic in downtown Los Angeles. On arrival, there was just as much of a jam within a packed Los Angeles Shrine auditorium – comprised of Hollywood stars and millennials. This was a huge event, and although I had hoped to meet either of these popular spiritual thinkers, I soon realized that hope was going to be unfulfilled.

Tolle and Chopra both presented ideas that dwelt on an inter-connectivity and a form of mindfulness. They had taken the time and effort to frame their spiritual message to meet the expectations of the attendees – saying that spirituality is more than membership in material organizations. Instead, they said, it is activity that resonates with the soul. Judging by the audience’s reactions, these were the messages that the audience hungered for and connected with.

And it was as I sat in the audience of thousands that I realized that each of us is searching for meaning and purpose in life. And in particular, within that search for meaning and purpose, there is a yearning for spiritual freedom.

I can understand that. I found myself searching for spiritual freedom while in college. I started my quest by reaching out to different churches to find meaning. I even took courses in religion and had conversations with professors to find spiritual answers. In the end, it wasn’t until I came across Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, written by religious leader Mary Baker Eddy in the 1800s, that I found what I was looking for – an approach to religion that gave a reasoned, spiritual basis for seeing ourselves as inherently having unlimited freedom. Based on the Bible, particularly Jesus’ biblical healings, this book presented the idea of our true nature being wholly spiritual, a reflection of God, and untouched by materiality.

This new/old idea is expressed clearly by Eddy in this passage: “To understand that Mind is infinite, not bounded by corporeality, not dependent upon the ear and eye for sound or sight nor upon muscles and bones for locomotion, is a step towards the Mind-science by which we discern man’s nature and existence.”

Whether we talk about awakening to this realization of man’s spiritual identity, linked directly to God, or about finding spiritual answers step by step while walking toward God, the quest is under way to make unlimited spiritual freedom a reality, as it has been since before Moses walked out of Egypt.