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
Direct Spiritual Practice For A Restless Age
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What if the fastest way to clarity isn’t more information, but a return to direct experience? We unpack three time-tested practices—yoga, satsang, and silence—that cut through cultural noise and bring you face to face with the living core of spirituality. No dogma, no middlemen, just grounded methods you can apply today.
We start by drawing a clear line between institutional religion and direct spirituality, then go deep on yoga as a holistic path that unites posture, breath, and intention. You’ll hear why modern asana culture only scratches the surface and how simple breath-led movement can shift your nervous system, sharpen attention, and open a felt sense of the sacred. From there, we step into satsang: gathering in truth with a teacher and sincere seekers. Through stories and examples, we show how honest dialogue, gentle inquiry, and shared silence can dissolve isolation, refine discernment, and keep practice real amid everyday stress and even heated public life.
Finally, we explore silence on two levels—the practical absence of noise that supports meditation, prayer, and focused work, and the capital-S Silence that traditions point to as the ground of being. You’ll get practical ways to create small pockets of quiet, meet inner noise without flinching, and rest in the stillness that outlasts every mood. Along the way, we highlight the rare abundance of modern spiritual resources and close with a short reflective practice to anchor insight in the body.
If you’re ready to deepen your spiritual practice with clear, direct tools—without getting lost in trends—this conversation offers a simple, potent map. Listen, try one practice this week, and see what shifts. If it helps, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a quick review so others can find their way to this work.
Hello everyone, welcome to the episode 11 of Spirit X podcast. We are exploring modern day spirituality, or even more general, we are exploring life from a little bit deeper psycho-spiritual standpoint. My name is Nicola. I'm an author, spiritual teacher, philosopher, and non-profit leader. And our focus here is to help you dive in deeper and to support your spiritual practice and life goals in general. In the previous episode, episode number 10, we introduced the notion of practice in a kind of twofold sense. As a noun and as a verb. We talked about the container for spiritual practice or for everything you want to achieve in your life. And today I want to continue in that direction. I shared with you in the previous episode that in terms of spiritual practices, we live in an absolutely extraordinary time. There was no time in human history that this many spiritual practices across spiritual traditions were available to us. So spiritual practitioners are actually lucky folks nowadays because spiritual practices are available to them. What I mean here by spiritual practices are our set of practices and techniques that provide direct experience of spirit. So this direct experience that's very, very important. And that's the difference between religion and spirituality. So religion is an institutionalized phenomenon, institutionalized form of spirituality. There is usually church, there is a script, there is a set of moral behaviors, there is a priest or or the head of something, there are rituals, but there is there's not that many spiritual practices and gestures that are direct. There is always some medium that connects you with God, connects you with spirit, etc. Something shifted in contemporary times and spiritual practices became more available in that regard, more mystical, more direct. So today I'm going to talk about those direct spiritual practices. There's lots of them. I would say three of them are essential and basic. Those are meditation, prayer, and contemplation. And I would like to devote to each of those three a separate episodes. So we are not going to talk to cover meditation, prayer, and contemplation today. I actually wrote a book about it, and I want to uh uh expose more on that, uh, go more into detail. But other spiritual practices that you know of and that are present in uh present-day everyday world are yoga, you're familiar with that. There is kirtan, a lot of people do that. There are various kinds of dance of movement that are important. There is spiritual kind of dancing, there is tai chi, there is jigong and stuff like that. So that's important. Uh forgiveness is, I would say, extremely important spiritual practice. Many spiritual traditions use silence of a kind. In Hinduism, there is a practice that I really like, which is called satsang. So, what I would like to do today is to discuss with you yoga, satsang, and silence. And in the next episodes, we are definitely going to cover meditation, which is extremely important spiritual practice, prayer, another important spiritual practice, and contemplation that is maybe not regarded as that important practice, but I found it really fundamental and easy, applicable. So we are going to do day. But today I want to discuss yoga, satsang, and silence as basic spiritual practices and ways to directly connect or experience various perspectives or dimensions of spirit, spirit with capital, capital S. So I define yoga as an experience of spirit, spirit through postures of body, mind and spirit, and conscious breathing. So think about it. And we use a lot of breath in yoga. Traditionally, yoga comes from Hindu tradition. There are some yogas actually in Buddhism too. Traditionally, yoga was uh a genuine hardcore spiritual practice that reveals to us our true self. It was very holistic. In the modern West, yoga is more physical practice, so there are those postures or asanas, and there is some breeding going on. I'm hoping that uh this modern day yoga is is going to rediscover its holistic and eastern roots. In the meantime, yoga is definitely doing uh a very, very good job. I practice yoga, I still do uh discovery of yoga in modern day American dreams was very, very important for me. It was part of my path. It was very, very early on my path, and it did open a dimension of my being that I later utilize. So I have nothing but respect for yoga practice, uh, which became mainstream in the modern West. And I have a hope that uh it deepens and that it includes more mental and spiritual dimensions, not only physical. I do think that those breeding exercises are superb. So I think many, many people, millions across the globe benefited from yoga. So yoga is definitely a legitimate uh spiritual practice nowadays. Another practice that I wanna discuss, it's called satsang. Uh it's not mainstream as as yoga. Uh, here in California and some other parts of the United States, it was very popular. I would say satsang is for some reason in decline and it it's a shame, but it is what it is. We need to embrace impermanence. That's another teaching from Buddhism. But I define Satsang as the experience of spirit, as gathering in truth, embodied in an enlightened teacher or a guru and devoted spiritual practitioners. So experience of spirit as gathering in truth. Satsang means originally gathering truth or gathering a being. So sati is being or truth, and sangha is a group. In a modern-day context, there is quite a few extraordinary satsang teachers. I learned a lot from them. My own teacher, Mokshananda, offered a lot of satsang, so satsang is very dear to my heart. Uh, other famous satsang teachers, I would say two most famous are Adya Shanti, you probably heard of him, and and Gangaji. She's amazing. So Satsang is a very, very uh extraordinary way to practice spirituality. It's very informal. It usually there are some parts where we meditate, there are some parts when we discuss some spiritual matters or etc. In a modern-day setting, satsang is more important than in the Hindu setting, and it's it you usually do some spiritual inquiry and some some important dialogues. I offered a lot of satsang myself, so I went to a lot of satsangs as uh as a spiritual practitioners, and as a teacher, I offered a lot of satsang. That's still my my favorite offering, and I would I always come back to it. Uh in 2016, I was offering, I had a group here in Santa Cruz, and you remember what 2016 was. There was these dramatic elections between Hillary Clinton and uh Donald Trump. So we did talk a lot about politics, but from a spiritual standpoint. So Satsang is a gathering in truth when when you discuss various topics from a spiritual standpoint. And this this actually podcast is really inspired by Satsang. We we have a uh spiritual look on everyday life. And finally, the third uh practice that I would like to uh discuss with you today is silence, and uh silence has a silence has a two-fold meaning in various traditions. Silence is first clearly the lack of noise, physical noise, because we need we need from time to time silence in order to do spiritual practice. So for this podcast, you know, I need some silence and good conditions to to deliver and for you to receive it. But for instance, in if you want to meditate, you need some silence and the lack of noise. If you want to pray, or if you want to accomplish some work uh in a group, you need some silence. But silence in spirituality, silence with capital S, is actually silence as the ground of being. So silence is something to be realized. So in genuine spiritual traditions, silence is where everything comes from and when everything comes back. There's this big void, spiritual void that is silent, but it's pregnant and it's beyond life and death. And a lot of spiritual teachers and spiritual teachings point to that silence with capital S. Silence is something to be realized, and silence is actually something to abide in or to express, to abide at. So in that regard, uh uh in spirituality we have silence and the lack of noise, and silence and the cry to being. Silence is definitely an imperative nowadays. I strongly recommend you to to practice silence in both meanings, in both ways, in both fashions. Modern day world is full of tangent, full of speed, and there's lots of inner and outer noise. Outer noises, all of these inner noises when when you are not at peace, when you have uncomfortable thoughts and moods, and uh physiologically you are not calm, and your nervous system is um is freaking out and stuff like that. So silence is an imperative today. It's a practice that I really, really, really recommend. Uh in the next few videos, I am going to talk about meditation, prayer, and contemplation. I think those are really, really important topics. And I wrote a book about it, so I really want to offer that to you. In the meantime, check out various picture practices. There are lots of qualified people out there, and uh when you apply those practices, the the the benefits are really, really extraordinary. And uh the experiential day for today is we are going to do just a little reflection. So I want you to assume the posture, take a few mindful and conscious breaths into the belly and out, into the belly and out. We are going to do a little reflection on contemporary scene, spiritual scene, and I invite you to just notice how many practices and techniques are available to us. All we need to do is just to utilize it. So there is meditation, there is mindfulness, there is yoga, there is psychology and many movements out there, there is kirtan, there is satsang, there is this teacher, there is that teacher. All you need to do is a little bit of time, energy, and money, and you will dive deeper and you will be living more fulfilling and peaceful life. So let's end this reflection with with the gratitude. There has never been a better time to practice spirituality nowadays. And luckily and unfortunately, it became a necessity because without it we go crazy, and that's not the option we want. So let's better be grateful for the availability of various spiritual practices in the contemporary spiritual scene. Here we end our little reflection, and I thank you for your attention. If you need my help or of my profit, just contact us. We are here to help, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thank you very much. Bye bye.
