A love-centered spiritual practice should help you become more connected with yourself and others. While some spiritual seekers eschew the modern world and withdraw into solitude, there’s no reason you must adopt such a lifestyle. It’s possible pursue spiritual development in isolation, but the principle of love suggests it’s at least as important to do so by interacting with other people. If we’re all spiritually connected anyway, then why not explore that through direct interaction?
Quiet reflection and meditation can be powerful spiritual practices to help you connect within, but it’s best if they’re combined with abundant social interaction. Allow yourself to gain spiritual lessons both from your inner world and your outer world. Sometimes your answers will come from stillness; other times they’ll come from direct communication. Listen to both channels.
Personal relationships can be a tremendous source of spiritual growth. While it’s possible for us to fall out of touch with reality if we spend too much time alone, such problems are less likely with abundant interaction. If we become too impractical in our thinking, the people around us will tell us we’ve gone off the deep end. The pursuit of spirituality is really the pursuit of accuracy, where our goal is to develop the most accurate model of reality we can. If we fail to include other human beings in this model, we toss away too much potentially valid information, and our model is doomed to inaccuracy.
Spiritual development requires the freedom to connect with different parts of reality in order to understand them more fully. The more you’re able to explore, the more connections you can form, and the greater your spiritual growth will be. When you feel a strong desire to connect with something in your reality, listen to your intuitive guidance, and make the connection.
* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina