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
Episode3: Slowing Down, The Gateway to Spiritual Awakening
The hamster wheel of modern life leaves little room for deeper awareness. But what if spiritual awakening doesn't require tragedy, finding a guru, or abandoning your daily routines? What if it simply begins with a pause?
This episode explores the profound concept of the "holy pause" – that magical moment when we intentionally slow down the karma of body, mind, and world. When we're constantly busy with work, family, money-making, and digital distractions, the deeper dimensions of our being remain hidden. Yet through deliberate pausing, we create space for spiritual unfolding to naturally occur.
Rather than viewing spirituality as separate from modern living, we discover how these dimensions can beautifully complement each other. The episode offers three powerful, practical techniques for creating holy pauses throughout your day: returning to sensory awareness, closing your eyes to access inner vastness, and asking yourself profound existential questions. These simple practices bring you immediately into presence and open doorways to deeper consciousness.
Spiritual traditions worldwide recognize our need for rhythmic breaks from ordinary awareness – whether through Sabbath observance, meditation retreats, or community practice. When we regularly step off life's hamster wheel, even briefly, transformation begins. The stillness, stability, authentic happiness and inner peace we seek become increasingly available, not just during our pauses but throughout our everyday experiences.
Ready to discover what lies beyond constant busyness? Join us for this transformative exploration and let this podcast become one of your regular holy pauses – a gateway to spiritual awakening in the midst of modern life.
Hello everyone, welcome to the episode 3 of SpiritX podcast. I really appreciate your attention. We live in an attention economy, an attention world, so you being here with me means that this podcast is important for you and spirituality is important for you, and I have nothing but appreciation for that. This is episode number three SpiritX podcast. We are exploring life from a spiritual standpoint and we are slightly using my book SpiritX Spirituality for the Global and Digital Age as a guide, and that's what we are going to do today. We are going to deal with the first paragraph in the book. So the book consists of 69 principles of paragraphs. So that's how I structured the book, like there is a good rhythm to ink of spiritual unfolding. So we actually started some real work today and we are dealing with one important, single, but very, very important issue, and the issue or the question is how does spiritual life start? Or how does the inner work start? Or or personal growth, or there's an overlap here, clearly, between spirituality, philosophy, psychology and other disciplines that are important for our growth. How does that start? I'm contemplating upon that issue a lot. There's a reason why I opened the book that way.
Speaker 1:In tradition, there are several ways of how that whole process starts In the East. People usually meet a guru or a lama and they realize well, this is a really, really special being, so I want to be near them. In the West it's a little bit different. I don't think we have that awakened beings in the West. So spiritual unfolding is a little bit different. For a lot of people globally, spiritual or inner life starts with some sort of tragedy God forbid. Some people get cancer or end up in a car accident or lose a job or are devastated after a relationship and they are actually pushed by life to explore some inner foundations. And for many people spiritual life starts like that. But that's a little bit tough start, I would say, and I wanted to choose something more gentle and elegant and I came up with this solution. So for me in this book and I tested that with many spiritual practitioners Spiritual life starts with a pause, with a slowing down of the karma of the body, mind and the world, and then the inner peace kind of kicks in, the deeper investigation kind of kicks in, and that's how spiritual life starts.
Speaker 1:We continue with that process and then it kind of snowballs in a good direction. But let me read something from my book. So I'll show you how the book looks. So there is 69 principles, so there is a principle number one, and in each principle there are numerous paragraphs, so there is a kind of rhythm to it. So I'm just going to read a little bit from the book to kind of open a discussion.
Speaker 1:Spiritual life starts with a pause, a holy pause, with slowing down of the body, the mind and the world. Modern living is characterized by high speed, complexity and overwhelm which overshadows the deeper dimension of our being, our higher potential and our true self. When we pause, we slow down the karma of the body, the mind and the world and get ready to explore the deeper dimension of our being and reality. The best kind of pause is produced by engaging with numerous spiritual practices such as meditation, prayer, contemplation, satsang, yoga, communing with nature, connecting with others, using technology for spiritual purposes, etc. Modern living and spiritual living don't exclude each other. On the contrary, it is very possible and even advisable to live a spiritual life while fully engaged with the various dimensions of the modern world. This meaningful and creative engagement adds fullness to a spiritual life. So there is lots to this paragraph. I found it very rich and a kind of good and elegant opening. But we are exploring how does spiritual life start? And suggestion here is that we need to slow down, we need to pause, we need to slow down with the karma of the body, mind and the world.
Speaker 1:I will explain what that means, but I'll give you an example from my life. I'm originally from Serbia. I came to the United States in 1999 from a world war-torn country, so I had nothing but gratitude and appreciation. When I came here, I was like, oh, this is great. At the age of 30, I got the chance to actually start my life anew. So I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:But I did notice one interesting thing about the US and the West in general Everybody is very, very, very busy. So the life look to me like people live on a hamster wheel and you know that metaphor very well. So busy with work, busy with family, busy with money making, busy with multiple careers, busy with problems, busy with social media nowadays. So busy, busy, busy. So when we are busy, the deeper dimension is never going to reveal itself to us. So if we don't slow down, if we don't go out of that hamster wheel of everyday life, we will actually never experience spiritual life. Spiritual dimension, deeper life, true healing is never going to happen for us. Enlightenment is never going to happen for us. Enlightenment is never going to happen for us. So this pausing and this slowing down turn out to be very, very, very important.
Speaker 1:So the question arises how do we slow down? And it's not that difficult. You either slow down externally or you slow down internally. You slow down externally. You go to nature, you go to park, you go for a weekend somewhere, you have some quality time with your friends and family. You pause and slow down internally. You can read a book. You can pause actually at home. You can say okay, I'm going to turn off television, no social media, for two hours and I'm going to read a good quality book. And it's a slowing down. You will drop deeper, you can meditate, you can do yoga, you can do Tai Chi. So there are numerous ways of slowing down and pausing everyday karma. The key is just to do it and the key is just to do it regularly.
Speaker 1:When I was a practitioner, before I became a teacher, my favorite way of slowing down and pausing was actually to do spiritual retreats. Back then I was following several teachers and, for instance, one Zen teacher was organizing lots of spiritual retreats in Utah desert, the high desert. I loved it. I did numerous of those retreats in Utah desert, the high desert. I loved it. I did numerous of those. My own teacher, mokshananda, was offering satsangs in Boulder and in Seattle and in Santa Cruz, where I ended up living.
Speaker 1:So what I realized when I did those spiritual retreats, as my favorite form of pausing and slowing down, was that I exclude myself from my daily karma. Back then I was fairly happy with my life. I was married, my son was little, I was a 10-year philosophy professor, so it was okay. But I needed to explore a little bit deeper. So I noticed what was happening. Back then I would leave my everyday routines and everyday karma at home and I would place myself somewhere else, did some healing, did some spiritual work and then come back totally transformed. So that's the idea of this pausing and slowing down you drop deeper, you hear, and then you come back to your everyday life, everyday routines, everyday karma transform and then you re-embrace your life and that's how transformation happens.
Speaker 1:The best way to do some high-quality pausing and slowing down is actually engaging with spiritual practices and that's the suggestion of the book and that's one of the basic premises of the book. So meditation, satsang, yoga, tai chi, those are the best breaks that you can give to your body, to your soul, to your mind, and those are very, very potent transformation practices and that will transform your everyday life. You can do it on your own, you can do it with others, you can do it with me. You can watch this podcast, you can attend my events, you can attend some other people's events, but that's my strongest recommendation. So if you want a high-quality pause, a really really holy pause, if you want to really really slow down, engage with some spiritual practices, I'm just going to mention one more thing to kind of inspire you.
Speaker 1:So if you look at this notion of pausing and slowing down and if you analyze literally all, literally all religious and spiritual traditions, they all insist that Sunday is the time for God and time for spirit. So even on those weekly basis in spiritual and religious traditions, they realize that at least one day should be totally different than everyday routine. And in religious context, that's the day for God. In spiritual context, that's the day for spiritual practices. I practice both and I recommend both. I may be more on the spiritual side, a little bit more contemporary, but Sabbath has certainly certainly its own place in everyday life. So please do a holy pause. And those of you who watched previous episodes know that I insist upon the experiential part of this podcast. The experiential part is the key for spirituality. We talk about spirituality, we read about spirituality by doing. Spirituality is absolutely the key, and in each episode we do some experiential stuff.
Speaker 1:So I want to give you three ways today, very short, very effective ways on how you can pause in your everyday life. And first way is very simple, very potent, very transformational, and we are going to do it. I invite you to, right here and right now, go back to your senses. Just focus on the smell. How does your environment smell? Focus on the sounds. You're clearly focused on my voice right here, right now, but there may be some other sounds in the environment when you are, so just focus there.
Speaker 1:I'll give you one more example. For instance, if you are having a lunch, so you can focus on the taste in your mouth, you can focus on the sense of touch, so notice the vas. Vast majority of you are probably sitting or doing something, so just notice how ground holds your tail chair holds you. And notice one extraordinary thing that happens when we come back to senses. When we come back to senses, we are always in the here and now. You cannot smell past, you cannot smell, and that's why that's a very, very, very good pause. So let's say you have a lunch break and you're on your own that happens to me a lot, that happens to everyone in the West and instead of going on social media or on the phone or on computer or whatever, you just put everything down, you eat and you fully focus on the sensation of food in your mouth. So you come back to present and that's the holy path right there. So senses always bring us back to the now, to the presence, and thank God for senses and that's the holy path.
Speaker 1:The second example of a holy path is also very simple and you can do it at any point. I'm going to invite you just to gently close your eyes with me. So we close our eyes, just notice several things. What happens to our whole being when we close our eyes? First we suspend the outer world and we focus on the inner world. So it's kind of oh, thank god, I'm leaving behind me all of this focusing here. So when we focus on our inner world, our body, sensations, emotions, feelings but there's also a sense of presence, sense of deeper peace. It's possible to go there with a little bit of practice and when we close our eyes we tune into the inner universe. And inner universe is very, very, very vast, very vast. So we rest in that vastness and what a phenomenal holy pause that is and we gently open our eyes.
Speaker 1:That was number two example of a holy path, and number three example of a holy path that you can implement in in everyday life easily is more philosophical and existential. So you can sit somewhere let's say you're at the lake or in the nature or at home alone or whatever and you just sit and you ask yourself, but gently and wholeheartedly, what's going on really here? Why am I here? Who am I? What's my purpose? Who is listening to those voices? Who is speaking to this guy Nikola? Is it Nikola speaking? Or some higher principle is taking charge here, consciousness or spirit or whatever. So we just ask ourselves philosophically and existentially what's going on right here, right now, and you slow down. So you notice how your body is relaxed, your mind kind of slows down, you drop deeper. That's exactly what you need to enrich your life.
Speaker 1:The suggestion in the book is to do this regularly, repeatedly, and we'll do this, certainly, in the podcast. You can do those pauses quality pauses on your own. You can do those pauses holy pauses on your own. You can do them with your family. You can do them with your friends. You can do them with your spiritual community we usually call it sangha. You can do it at work, here at Cruzayo Internet, where we are filming this podcast. In this very room, we have mindfulness sessions with me and with Spirit Without Boundaries. It's really working. It's from 11 to 12, one hour of a holy pass in the work environment.
Speaker 1:So there are various ways to do that. There's lots of places online, online groups that are good. We have one with Spirit Without Boundaries and I will share that information in the next podcast. So there are various ways to slow down. When we slow down, when we take this holy pause, the deeper magic starts happening, the deeper transformation is taking place and the life of healing begins, the life of stability and stillness and bliss and happiness and humor. So it's definitely worthy of doing it. Hamster Wheel is not going to take you there. My hope with this podcast is that it becomes one of your favorite holy pauses. And this is all for the episode number three and episode number four will be available very, very soon. Thank you for your attention and don't forget to take your holy pauses regularly. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
