By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness

I wrote yesterday that I’m feeling more motivated to help people wake up, and today, I’m realizing that I also want to be more dedicated to the spiritual path. I want to write about more things that genuine spiritual teachers and other sources have said, and I want to put the things I learn into play.

Most importantly, I want to learn to be centered and present in this moment. I want to learn more about heart-centeredness and responding to difficult or stressful situations in a more constructive way, and I want to explore my consciousness a lot more.

Some of you might have similar goals right now, and the best advice I can give is to be confident in yourself. Don’t let your dedication wane, even when you don’t think you can keep on, and try your best to stay rooted in the spiritually-driven way of life you want to cultivate. Don’t let anyone make you think you’re wrong for living the way you do, and stand strong when you face criticism or condemnation.

The spiritual path requires surrender, but when we look back on it, we’ll see that we only had to surrender things that kept us from making progress. We only gave up things that we can’t take with us into a higher state of consciousness, and giving them up is the hardest part. The journey’s always difficult at first, but it gets easier if we keep at it and stay true to our discipline.

We have to create this discipline in the first place if we want to stick with it, and I’ll admit that I really don’t have any disciplines. I try to meditate often, but I haven’t been very serious about it and it doesn’t always work out. Now’s a better time than ever to get serious about these kinds of things, because we have an opportunity to peer into the next level of existence and all we have to do is make an effort – or rather, a non-effort.

Meditation doesn’t require any effort, and the point of it is to get to a place beyond effort, beyond thinking and beyond the constraints of the external world. Its purpose is to connect us with our inner world, and unlike anything else in life, it encourages us to relax and lose ourselves in the bliss of our higher consciousness.

Meditation isn’t the only thing that’ll help us, and we can also take advice from the countless people who’ve glimpsed enlightenment and taught others how to do the same. I’m starting to open up to spiritual teachers again, and I’ve struggle with their material for a while because I’ve felt like much of it was too strict.

However, like others have said, we can filter everything we learn through the heart and only embrace what resonates with us. Our path will always be ours to walk in whatever unique way we want, but we can still benefit from guidance given by teachers who’ve realized their divine identity and are constantly filled with the spirit.

With the power of heart-centered discernment, I’m learning to open back up to spiritual teachers, listen to what they have to say, and only take what helps me along my journey.

This is only one aspect of the personal transformation I want to embark on, and there are a lot of other changes I’d like to make to my eating habits, the amount of time I spend on meaningless things that don’t help me (or anyone else) evolve, and the control I wield over my mind and emotions. I want to commit to a completely new way of life, and if I don’t do it now, I might miss the chance for good.

So from here on out, I want to truly dedicate myself to the spiritual path and, like I said yesterday, to the work it inspires. I hope this personal transformation can help those of you who are also struggling, and the idea is to eventually become an example for others to live by – even though I’m nowhere near there yet.

I’m not the role model I could be, but I’d like to become one. I want to show the way for others, but I have to find the way for myself first and the lifestyle changes I want to make will hopefully make it possible.

Like anyone else who wants to change their life and come closer to enlightenment, I know I have a long journey ahead of me and I’m excited to finally take the first steps. Feel free to start walking your new path, because we have a responsibility to transform ourselves and the world. Our personal transformation has to come first, and as long as we stick with it, our individual and collective evolution will be inevitable.

Share freely.

I’m a twenty-two year old spiritual writer, blogger and channel for the creative expression of the inner universe, and I created The Culture of Awareness daily news site.

The Culture of Awareness features daily spiritual and alternative news, articles I’ve written, and more. Its purpose is to awaken and uplift by providing material about the fall of the planetary elite and a new paradigm of unity and spirituality.

I’ve contributed to a few different spiritual websites including The Master Shift, Waking Times, Golden Age of Gaia, Wake Up World and Expanded Consciousness. I can also be found on Facebook (Wes Annac and The Culture of Awareness) and Twitter, and I write a paid weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to for $11.11 a month here.