#KISS - Minimalism and the spirit

True and complete happiness is not given by money, as you probably already know. Neither do material things, the right circumstances or even good health. Evidence of that is so many truly happy people around the world with different levels of good health, circumstances and zeros in their bank accounts. On the contrary, meeting our spiritual needs is one of the necessary aspects of being truly happy, and for that we need few, if any, material things. Therefore, it is not difficult to find a link between minimalism and spirituality. But which comes first?

For me, one is often a consequence of the other: cultivating a good spirituality motivates to lead a simpler lifestyle, without accumulating so many material things. I am not saying that maximalists are not spiritual people, nor that all minimalists are automatically spiritual people. We are human beings and of course there are exceptions to these premises. What I am saying is that true spirituality motivates us to see material things in their proper perspective.

Spirituality includes meditation, acquiring knowledge and putting it into practice, among other important things. How many material things do you need to meditate properly? I'm sure you would answer: ‘nothing’. And I agree with that. How long can you meditate for? Well, as long as you want and can afford, and I'll take the second part. Living a simple life allows us to spend less time buying, maintaining, caring for and cleaning material things, leaving us time for this important matter. How many material things do you need to do good deeds or a comforting word? Well, many of them are free! And we use our own life and breath to demonstrate our spiritual health.

In cultivating our spirituality, we are constantly faced with the idea of living a simple lifestyle, and everyone makes their own decisions as to how much they will stick to this. It will certainly have to do with where you live, your culture, your tastes, your circumstances? And that is why we will have different answers regarding the relationship between minimalism and spirituality.

In my case, I can state a couple of premises. First, cultivating my spiritual health is one of the reasons that led me to adopt a simple, minimalist lifestyle. That is the ‘cause and effect’ relationship that I have had in my particular case. The decision and conviction that a healthy spirituality brings to this way of life is very useful. And secondly, minimalism has helped me to maintain a healthy spirituality, since I have fewer distractions.

Often, we see the word ‘spirit’ related to a person's inclination towards something. To have a ‘joyful spirit’ means that joy is predominant in that person. Having a ‘conflicted spirit’ refers to someone who tends to seek conflict. It is not that he or she has something inside, something foreign, that moves him or her: it is the self itself. So when we seek to cultivate a good spirituality we will be improving our own being, what we are inside, and minimalism can help us a lot in that process. See you next time!

〽️