Spirit X
Step into a conversation for our global and digital age. Guided by Nikola Ristic, Spirit X explores the 69 Principles—a spiritual framework that draws wisdom from East, West, North, and South. It weaves together ancient traditions, rational thought, culture, science, and technology into a path toward greater unity, peace, freedom, love, and fulfillment.
In times of crisis, Spirit X is both a vision and a call: reminding us that genuine spirituality is no longer just a personal choice but a cultural and evolutionary necessity. Each episode invites listeners to engage with teachings that aim to nurture inner balance and collective awakening.
May Spirit X inspire the sanity, happiness, and awakening of all.
Spirit X
Episode 2: Spirit Meets World
Dive deep into the foundations of SpiritX, a spiritual teaching crafted specifically for our global and digital era. As technology accelerates at an unprecedented pace, our spiritual development struggles to keep up – creating dangerous imbalances in how we navigate the world. This episode reveals the five core principles that define SpiritX as a transformative spiritual approach.
What makes SpiritX different from traditional spiritual teachings? Unlike ascetic traditions that encouraged withdrawal from worldly affairs, SpiritX promotes deep engagement with life's challenges. The philosophy combines Eastern concepts of spiritual liberation with Western ideals of personal freedom, creating a practical synthesis accessible to modern practitioners. At its heart lies a simple yet profound understanding: we have bodies, we have minds, but we are essentially spirit.
The most revolutionary aspect of SpiritX might be its emphasis on experience over intellectual understanding. As we demonstrate through a guided meditation, recognizing the spiritual dimension within ourselves doesn't require years of study – it requires practice. "Doing two minutes of meditation is better than reading two hours about meditation." This experiential approach invites you to discover the alive presence dwelling within, the awareness that observes your thoughts and sensations without being them. Ready to move beyond spiritual theory into spiritual practice? Listen, experience, and transform with us.
Hello everyone. Hope you're having a good day. This is SpiritX Podcast episode number two. Thank you so much for encouraging words and comments regarding episode number one. We certainly aspire to create a container for spiritual growth and personal growth, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1:What I would like to do in this episode is to explain this notion of SpiritX. That's the name of the podcast, that's the name of my book series, that's the name also of my spiritual teaching. So here's the book. So SpiritX Spirituality for the Global and Digital Age. There is lots of philosophy there, because I'm a philosopher too. There's lots of spiritual injunctions, there's lots of psychology, there's some popular culture, et cetera.
Speaker 1:The notion of Spirit X actually came to me like an insight or even like a spiritual vision, and I kind of stuck to it and it was very inspirational. I'm aware there is lots of Xs there in scientific circles, technological circles, popular culture circles. It's usually associated with Elon Musk's lately because of the Twitter has nothing to do with that. I wrote actually this book before Twitter became Platform X. I was aware about SpaceX et cetera, but that wasn't certainly an inspiration. As I said, inspiration was that it came to me like an insight, but in general, spirit acts is a spiritual teaching for our time. So when I talk about my spiritual teaching, I usually say it's either spirit acts or spirituality for our time. And what I mean by that is that spiritual teachings are tricky because part of them reveal to us a timeless truth. So there is something which is beyond time and space and body and mind and world, and we want to reach that in spiritual teaching. We are certainly going to go there with our podcast and with my book. But there is another part of spiritual teaching that relates to our time. So spirituality is different in the time of Buddha than now, and it was different in the time of Jesus than now. So successful spiritual teaching has to capture that which is timeless, but has to capture very appropriately our time.
Speaker 1:And when I was contemplating our time while I was writing this book, I was thinking okay, what are the distinctive features of our time? And one of them and that related to X. So we live in the time of exponential technological growth and exponential global connectivity. So this exponential component of my teaching is what produced that X. So X relates to exponentiality of our time, especially in the tech. We live in a time of accelerated growth, especially of technology. But then when I contemplated that as a philosopher, I was like, okay, if we keep accelerating in the domain of technology and if we are slow in other areas, that's not going to be good. So technologically we are here, morally we are here, and it is morality that, using technology, spiritually we are here, educationally we are here, etc. So that's a tricky situation.
Speaker 1:So what SpiritX tries to accomplish is that produces some sort of accelerated growth in the domain of spirituality without negating other domains, and this is very important. So I'm not saying spirituality alone is going to save us, technology alone is not going to save us, although a lot of tech leaders actually think that. What I'm saying is that only a holistic, balanced, integral approach which save us, and SpiritX actually captures that, and that's why in this podcast, which is SpiritX podcast, we are going to have various topics that are related to life with a spiritual twist on it. So the first feature of Spirit-Tact Teaching and Podcast is that it captures this acceleration of things and it tries to put things in balance. The second feature of SpiritX teaching and podcast and book series is that it emphasizes the holistic or integral approach to things.
Speaker 1:In my first episode I already talked about it and I'll repeat it on and on. So if we look at the nature of human beings, if you look just at nature of human beings, if we look just as me, as an individual, it's a very simple holistic structure. I have body, I have mind and I'm essentially spirit. Again, I have body, I have mind and I'm essentially spirit. So the task of spirituality for 21st century is actually to put into balance body, mind and spirit and then, with that balance, to actually engage with the world. Spirituality is important for relationships, for work, for sex, for education, for parenting, etc. So Spirit Text, as a philosophy, as a spiritual teaching, as a podcast, is going to be highly engaged with the world. And I would say that's the third feature of Spirit Text it's deeply and passionately engaged with the world and passionately engaged with the world.
Speaker 1:And here is why For the 2,000 years or 2,500 years we did have spirituality pretty impactful here on planet Earth, but the form that was prevailing in that impactfulness was the ascetic form. So spirituality emerged on planet Earth as an ascetic discipline. So if you're interested in spirituality, you go to monastery, you study with the master, no matter which tradition, and you stay withdrawn from the world and you kind of keep the frequency of spirituality withdrawn from the world. I have huge respect for those people and for all of those traditions, but in the 60s and 70s something shifted and in the 2000s something needs to change. So we need to engage with the world. We need to bring our frequency to the world kindness, generosity, curiosity, humor, etc. The world is going through a dramatic transition and we need spiritual practitioners to actually show up rather than to hide while doing their spiritual work.
Speaker 1:There is something to spiritual growth and unfolding that requires, from time to time, withdrawing from the world. I totally understand that. That's the part of Hero's Journey and Campbell's work and stuff like that. So you do a little bit of this and then you embrace the world. But we can do that on daily and weekly basis, not on yearly and decade basis, and we can still engage with the world. So number three feature of SpiritX teaching and is going to be expressed in this podcast is that it is deeply engaged with the world. Number four feature of SpiritX teaching would be that it's global. So we live in global time.
Speaker 1:What I try to accomplish with this book is to give us some sort of global synthesis of spirituality and philosophy for our time that is practical and that is workable. So here is how I thought about it. So I thought spirituality is basically about freedom and liberation and on planet Earth at this point we have two basic concepts of freedom and liberation. And on planet Earth at this point we have two basic concepts of freedom and liberation. One comes from the West and freedom is personal freedom. It's individual freedom. That's the legacy of Western enlightenment. However, in the East in India, china and Japan we have totally different traditions in terms of freedom. They emphasize spiritual freedom and that's totally different than individual freedom. So Eastern Enlightenment tradition emphasizes spiritual freedom or liberation, so you overcome or you release your egoic identification and then you are one with everything. So it's very different than personal freedom. But personal freedom and individual freedom has its value.
Speaker 1:So what I was trying to do in this book, and what are we going to play with a lot in this podcast, is that we're going to combine the best from East and the West and then we're going to try to make that digestible and easy for a lot of practitioners to first understand and then to apply in their lives. So in that regard, spirit X is a specific East-West synthesis of global philosophy and spirituality that is practical and digestible for the large number of people, for the large number of people. Another way to look at it that we combine the best legacies from East and West. So what would be the best legacies in the West? Definitely democracy, definitely science and technology and a bunch of other stuff. What is the best thing in the East? There is some ancientness of the things there. There is a connection with the root there and with the sacred that is not present in the West. There's also those are very, very, very powerful spiritual traditions which unfortunately we don't have in the West. So we combine those legacies from East and West into a practical and easy digestible spiritual teaching and we're going to do that a lot in this podcast. And podcast is actually a fantastic vehicle to practice that and first episode just confirmed that.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I played in this book and I kind of extended this East-West synthesis. So there is one line when I say spirit tax is a global east-west, north-south synthesis. So usually northern parts of the countries or continents, they're more executive and orderly, and southern parts are more warm and spontaneous. So there's room for all of that in a good spiritual teaching. So SpiritX as a teaching and SpiritX as a podcast is going to be very, very global, without negating our local and national roots. And the final thing that I would like to say about SpiritX as a teaching is that it is deeply experiential. I'm very pleased with what's happening with spirituality nowadays.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are interested and in digital space there is a lot of spirituality. There is also lots of books about spirituality, so people read about spirituality a lot, which is thumbs up. People read about spirituality a lot, which is thumbs up. People talk about spirituality a lot, which is thumbs up, but the key thing about spirituality is actually to do it. So when I teach mindfulness in middle schools, I draw analogy between mindfulness and sports. I tell them you learn about mindfulness by doing mindfulness, and it's like sports. How you learn about mindfulness by doing mindfulness, and it's like sports. How do you learn to play basketball? Well, you can watch videos, you can talk about it, but you need to play basketball.
Speaker 1:So in spirituality, you need to play spirituality and you play spirituality by actually doing those practices, techniques and injunctions, and in each episode we are going to do this experiential part, which I think is the key, the point of that, that you practice with us here, but you also practice on your own and you practice with other people. Doing two minutes of meditation is better than reading two hours about meditation is better than reading two hours about meditation. Or doing 10 minutes of breath work is better than watching three hours of videos talking about breath work. So doing spirituality is the key, and I ask you to trust me on that. One of the best things with my life that I've done and I read a lot and I watched a lot of incredible content but one of the best things that I've done with my life was that I'm done, and I read a lot and I watched a lot of incredible content but one of the best things that I've done with my life was that I'm engaged in those practices and the reward was beyond expectations, and that's why I invite you, in every podcast, to actually do some practices with me.
Speaker 1:Speaking of which, I invite you to a little bit into the experiential space. I invite you to take a good posture, make sure you sit on your both sit bones, that the spine is erect, that your attention is fully here, and I'm going to invite you to actually close your eyes gently and just notice what happens with us and with our being. When we close our eyes, we clearly suspend our outside world and we enter the inner world. So I just want you to notice how cool it is that we enter the inner world. So I just want you to notice how cool it is that we enter the inner world. And with the inner world there's emotions, body sensations. There is also a deeper dimension. So I'm going to invite you to recognize that deeper dimension with me.
Speaker 1:There is a sense of presence, there is a sense of alive presence and all we need to do is just to close our eyes, just notice this alive presence behind body and mind and the world, and yet embracing body and mind, and that alive presence is aware and conscious. So just notice in this moment, just notice body sensations, so notice how your feet feel, notice how you're cold and hot and stuff like that, and notice the instance that is actually aware of that. So something in you, deep in you, is aware of body sensations coming and going, and that instance is actually spirit. So spirit is there all the time, dwelling within, and we just need to recognize it by turning our attention within. And for that it's usually necessary especially for practitioners in the West to close our eyes. So we close our eyes and we recognize the spirit dwelling within, and we can do the same with the mind. So that instance within you that is aware of the functioning of the mind thoughts, images, judgments, visions is spirit.
Speaker 1:And I just invite you to recognize that spiritual nature of your being and yet embracing body, mind and the world in a holistic fashion. And that's basically what SpiritX is. We want to go deeper as individuals and we need more people dropping deeper so that we can create better world out of this global drama that we are witnessing. But it's all different when we drop deeper and we just stay there for a while to recognize spirit without negating body and mind. And that's the essence of SpiritX teaching and that's what we're going to explore in this podcast, and we gently open our eyes. So I really appreciate you doing this experiential part with me. For me it's always like a sacred moment and sacred activity. I guess this is all for this podcast. There is another episode coming soon. I really appreciate your attention and I will see you in the next episode, episode number three. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
