I was over with the Dalai Lama in Glasgow there a couple of weeks ago for a fantastic 3-day seminar he gave. It got me thinking lots on spirituality and how important it was in every day life. So this month I wanna share with you some ideas I have about the nature of spirituality and how NLP relates to it.

Lots of people seem to be attracted to a religion or spiritual seminar because it gives them meaning in their lives. Now as religion is often used as one of the major excuses for the worlds wars, lets examine what the elements are of a spiritual life from an NLP perspective.

Firstly, many people want to find themselves and how they fit into the world. This gives their lives meaning. When you find a group of people that share a belief system and they welcome you, if you like them you get to become a part of their group. The ideas expressed usually revolve around treating each other well and with compassion and kindness. The concept of GOD gives them a wonderful sense of connection with something gretaer than themselves which puts their world into perspective. They can answer questions like 'Why am I here?' and 'What happens to us when we die?' because there are universal answers in this group and they get extra confirmation from the others.

Secondly, many people want to secure their spiritual credit. Often it seems the older people get, the more they seem to be attracted to religion. It is almost like the reminder of death gives people a sense of urgency about becoming holier. When death happens where we go might depend on how religious we were and how well we treated the creator. Hence, spirituality is a means for people to get security in after life.

Finally, many people are born convinced of a particular religion as the truth. They are convinced that God is as true as the world being round and they are so convinced that it remains extremely difficult if even possible to ever change their views on it. They hang out with people of similar opinions and serve to reinforce each others views.

There are also many people that are no longer interested in religion. They have been annoyed by the corrpuption that exists in it or bored with the traditions. In their own lives, they usually substitute it for a sport or club, society or pub. In Ireland in particular, the country no longer revolves around the church as it did half a century a go. It now pretty much revolves around a pub.

To me, it's unimportant which church, temple or religion you belong to and believe in. Whether you are Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or a complete Atheist, what is important is NOT which religion you are a part of but rather how you live your life. To give meaning to your life and find yourself you need to realise that you can't find yourself because you are constantly chanaging all the time. Instead, ask yourself how can you become your best self. How can you treat more people with more kindness and compassion than ever before? How can you do the right thing for the right reasons? How can you live your religion in the best way possible?

You have to decide what is crutial for you and what isn't in your religion. Along with the valuable traditions lie some unnecessary rituals and old beliefs. You have to decide what will help you live a happy and fullfilling life. You have to realise that regardless of how certain you are about what you believe, other people are as certain of beliefs that are very much different. It's essential to respect other peoples beliefs and understand that your religion is right for you and not everybody else. You have to develop a sense of humour no matter how important your spirituality is to you. I believe in the religion I believe in because I like some of the concepts.

To me, it makes sense. Is it right for anybody else, I don't know as I don't know everything aabout other peoples lives. What I do know is that the crutial part of it is live a good life now and in the future being nice and compassionate to all the people you come in contact with regardless of how they behave. That way, you can live and let live and do so for the right reasons... because it is the main reason why we are here on this planet.