Simple Spirituality   Our spirit is our essence which animates us. Being spiritual is the simplest non-complicated way to experience life.  It is existing consciously, with full awareness, and in love with living.   We are taught as children to complicate things in order to function in the world and protect ourselves from a hostile environment.  It is possible to shed complication and function more efficiently and effectively with full awareness and in love.  We have learned to wear masks to function in society but out of habit we have become the masks and lost contact with our real individuality.  Most of our life has elements of pretense and we have become confused out of habit so that we no longer can distinguish what is real inside of us.  Our spirit gets lost in all of the doing that life seems to demand.  In order to grow spiritually we have to be able to see clearly for ourselves that part of us which is real, and not get lost in everything we do. This can become a real treasure hunt.  We all have an innate yearning to be spiritual.  Normally we search for treasures outside of ourselves.  We have become deadened to that with which we are the most intimate - our own body, mind, and spirit.  We have to start a process of noticing, a process of paying attention and discovery, a process called self-observation. Somehow most of us have something similar to self-observation as part of our nature, something we can call self-criticism.  Self-criticism, in the mechanical way it operates, is one of the biggest obstacles to spirituality.  It is therefore imperative that all attempts at observation be made with impartiality.  We just want to see with no judgments; we want to bring in the light of consciousness and love.  With the presence of love, this new light of consciousness connects us with conscience, which has the quality of discernment in contrast to judgment.  To get there we have to spend lots of time looking impartially and every judgment must be neutralized with love. Once we have learned to see clearly we need to learn how to properly interpret what we see, and what can be applied to bring more depth to our consciousness and love.  This learning can be enhanced by following a spiritual path, having a guide, and a associating with community of like-minded people to synergize with. It is easy for us to keep making the same mistakes when we are on our own.  Somehow other people can always see things about my self that I am blind to.  Some people who have made progress in their spiritual journey offer themselves as guides as an expression of their love for others.  Some create paths and religions to follow.  Just like walking through the woods, it is easier to walk where others have walked. Even once we have found these needed elements, it is still necessary to learn how to not get lost in what we are doing.  When we are lost it is like our spirit evaporates, we do not remember to observe ourselves nor anything else that would increase our depth of consciousness and love.  We need to learn how to simultaneously share our attention between what we are doing and the awareness of ourselves doing it.  For this, there are many tools in the form of inner exercises, but we still have the fundamental problem of remembering to do them. In order to remember and not get lost in everything we do, we have to concentrate on our intention to remember, and create a yearning to ‘be.’  If we make this yearning strong enough, we will remember spontaneously and start living in a different way.  When we remember, and then apply the tools of inner work we start to create a new kind of life in us.