Becoming Aware of Your Spiritual Self

Before spiritual growth can begin in earnest, there first needs to be awareness of the existence of a spiritual self. The following text was extracted and edited from “Gift of the Spirit” by Prentice Mulford (1834-1891).

It is the body’s continual assertion of itself and its physical senses that checks the spirit, and prevents it from acting. When we have in mind the idea of forgetting the body, we help greatly the play of the higher senses. This power is increased by practice.

By forgetting the body, we mean the temporary shutting from the mind of all remembrance and exercise of the physical senses of touch, taste, sight, smell, or hearing.

You may not at first be able to do this at all. But, you can commence such exercise. You can begin, if only for five seconds, by fixing your eyes on any small object about you, say a spot on the wall, a portion of the figure in the carpet, etc., and gaze at it.

Simple and silly as this may appear to you, it is the A B C or commencing step in the power of abstraction. That is the power of temporarily closing up the physical senses and opening the spiritual.

Do not expect immediate success in this or any other experiment for the purpose of liberating your spiritual senses. A relative success may require months or years. It may come slowly. But it comes to stay.