Ever heard of a Spiritual Badass? Most of us aren’t used to hearing those words together. When we think of spiritual people, we think of monks who live in monasteries, philosophers writing anthologies in ivory towers, or prayer-bead-wearing millennials in hatha yoga classes.
While all this is perfectly respectable, there’s no blueprint for a ‘spiritual person’. Despite the undeniable stereotypes, spirituality is a way of life that can be experienced by anyone.
What About Us ‘Normal’ People?
What about the average person…the one who wakes up every morning, commutes to work in a busy city, and spends their lunch break scrolling through the latest news on Facebook? What about the mother of two spinning plates? What about the guy in the mall drinking a latte? Can these modern-day badasses be spiritual too?
Yes, of course, they can.
In short, we assume that we have to make a choice between being a badass living in the real world or a silent hermit who prioritizes meditation over anything or anyone else. But we can choose to embody both.
Buddhas and Badasses – The World Needs Both
What’s more, the world is in desperate need of people who do have both qualities.
Spirituality is a huge, rapidly evolving concept.
At this point in history, we’re more technologically equipped, more universally informed, and more globally interconnected than we’ve ever been before.
At a moment’s notice, we can call up a relative who lives across the world. We can check the news to see what’s happening in this exact moment, anywhere on Earth. We can teach ourselves an entire college degree’s worth of information from the comfort of our sofas.
Yes, we have an endless number of wonderful tools, gadgets, and resources for navigating our outer world. But here’s the problem: We’re missing the tools we need to navigate our inner world.
Our inner world, that of emotion and introspection, lays the foundations for real synchronicity and oneness with others. The home of our emotional intelligence and our capacity for real love and connection lies within us–and spirituality is what brings that out. And the lack of that spiritual wisdom is striking. You only have to look at how humanity’s divisions deepen with time.
Despite having more virtual opportunities for connection than ever before, no one can deny that we’re more disconnected from each other than we’ve ever been.
To survive all this, we absolutely need to toughen up, gain some resilience, play the life game and win. We need a little less conversation, a little more action, please. We need to be badasses. But we also desperately need spirituality to give it all meaning, to give us the wisdom we need to make good decisions and make the world a better place. We need spirituality to make it all worthwhile.
The Truth About Spirituality & Spiritual Badasses
The truth about spirituality is that it’s accessible to everyone because everyone creates it together. It is whatever you want it to be. It should never be exclusive. The shift humanity is searching for can certainly be found in a remote Tibetan mountain village, but it can grow from the fiftieth story of a New York skyscraper too.
Spiritual badasses know that connecting with their inner selves on a meditative level is only the first step of the bigger process. The greater, more pressing task is to connect with the world and all of its inhabitants on a deeper level; to facilitate a widespread shift in human consciousness. One that will move us away from hyper-individuality, aka the ‘me me me’ mentality, and toward a global community who work together as one.
Spiritual badasses are the curious college students, work on passion projects between lectures because they see a change that has to be made.
Spiritual badasses are the entrepreneurs who undergo failure after failure because they know their business has the potential to have a positive impact on the world.
Spiritual badasses are everyday people who wake up, morning after morning, asking themselves:
How can I give back to the world a little bit more today? How will I show up, wherever I go, with 10% more empathy? 10% more honesty? 10% more patience?
So the idea is not to disengage from the modern world but to bring a heightened sense of awareness to the way that we exist within it. To show up every day more engaged, connected, and compassionate version of ourselves.
Join the Spiritual Baddass Revolution
Wide-scale spiritual revolutions don’t happen overnight. They don’t require a rapid rearranging of priorities, a complete overhaul of our lifestyles, or a sense of disconnect.
They happen bit by bit; every time you breathe that little bit deeper.
Every time you share a little compassion with someone.
Every time you choose to forgive yourself.
Every time you recycle that coffee cup.
Every time you choose to do the right thing, even if you’re scared.
Every time you feel some gratitude in your heart for what you already have.
Every time you kiss your lover goodnight.
Being a spiritual badass isn’t about closing your eyes and forgetting about the world and searching for disconnection. It’s about radical, widespread reconnection. And that becomes a little more possible each time we realize that the correct choice between Buddha and Badass…is both.
Want more? Grab your copy of Vishen Lakhiani’s Buddha and The Baddass by clicking the link below.
