📿 What is a Spiritual Person? Part 1

Maybe it's not what you think it is

Landscape with a chair (1929) Mikuláš Galanda

Let’s start here: I don’t think a spiritual person is someone who owns a really nice gong.

They might, sure. But it’s not the gong. It’s not the palo santo, the mala beads, or the way they pronounce “Bhagavad Gita.” It’s not even the number of retreats attended or meditation apps downloaded. Those things might accompany a spiritual life, but they are not at the core of what makes a spiritual person a spiritual person.

So what is?

I think a spiritual person is someone who allows themselves to be changed. To be altered by everything on their path and who is open to learning from the world around them. To see the suffering in this world and shift in response to it, opening their heart to accommodate all life brings us.

They enter into a relationship with life where everything—every heartbreak, every traffic jam, every political rage spiral, every bite of burrito—is part of the curriculum. And they try, sometimes haltingly, sometimes with great resistance, to show up to that curriculum with some willingness. They know the lessons won’t always be pretty. In fact, most of them won’t be. But they keep showing up anyway.

There’s a saying in Tibetan Buddhism that the road to enlightenment is “short sessions, many times.” This implies short bursts of formal meditation, i.e. being 100% there with ourselves and reality, over and over again. Then, when we’re out and about in the world, we apply that same view and bring ourselves 100% there with the annoying traffic jam and the delicious burrito as well.

I think a spiritual person is someone who doesn’t look away.

From their own mess, for starters. That might look like noticing when they’re being defensive in a conversation. Or catching themselves talking about being compassionate when really they’re just trying to win spiritual brownie points. Or realizing they’ve been avoiding grief by staying “too busy.” These are not fun moments. But they’re real, and they’re the birthplace of actual transformation.

To be spiritual, in my experience, isn’t to claim a certain moral high ground. It’s to recognize how often we fall short of who we hope to be—and to meet that gap with humility, not shame. And then…to keep learning. Keep growing. Keep changing in accordance with every new season of lessons that arrive at our doorstep, terrible and intimidating and ready to whip us into shape.

But also, they don’t look away from what’s happening around them. Spiritual people are willing to stare into the suffering they see in the world and not blink. They might, at times, crumble temporarily under the weight of what they bear witness to. But they get back up and keep bearing witness, keep trying to help. I think of the wonderful teacher Traleg Rinpoche who had a stroke when 9/11 happened (and recovered and continued to teach for many years).

In Buddhism, we talk about the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Sometimes people simplify that into an enlightened teacher, teachings, and community. I used to think that meant: find the “right” teacher, read all of the books, and go to a meditation group where people are actively rude with the excuse of “working through their trip.” And, yeah, those things help—even that last one, as annoying as it can be.

Lately, I’ve come to believe these jewels are everywhere. The grumpy barista who tests your patience is, from an expansive point of view, part of your sangha that day. The difficult conversation you have with a loved one who is suffering could be your dharma, a real moment of teaching. Your two-year-old daughter, shrieking about wanting a pop - but NOT THAT POP - might be that living embodiment of wakeful energy known as a buddha.

A spiritual person pays attention to these less-obvious teachers and teachable moments. And they allow themselves to be humbled by them.

Oráč (1924) Mikuláš Galanda

There’s also something else: spiritual people tend to radiate a certain kind of gentleness.

Not performative niceness. Not fake-smiles to someone’s face and gossip behind someone’s back. But a felt sense that they’re trying to do less harm. That they’re listening more than they used to. That they’ve softened the walls between themselves and the rest of the world. It might not be obvious until you sit next to them in silence (or at a dinner party) for a few minutes. Or until you watch the way they hold a door open for a stranger. Or the way they catch themselves and realize they don’t need to prove themselves right in a disagreement.

I believe these qualities all exist inside of us innately. But along the way we started tuning out from the traffic jam because it’s frustrating or the burrito because something from work was occupying our mind and so now, all these years later, we have to reconnect to these qualities through practice.

And to be clear, I’m not saying I’m the most spiritual person. I have written a whole book and opened it with, “I’m sort of a mess and also okay. Sometimes I’m sad or angry and yet I’m also confident that at my core I am a Buddha.”

If that resonates, it’s because so many of us are negotiating that awkward juxtaposition - maybe I am innately okay, wakeful and peaceful…but also strong emotions can easily rise up in me. We are working at being less reactive. We’re trying to be better listeners. Sometimes we remember to take a breath when a line seems interminably long.

Another one: I think one of the more underrated signs of a spiritual person is their willingness to laugh and be laughed at, especially by themselves.

I’ve had moments—on the cushion, in the shower, mid-email—where I suddenly saw the ways I’d been caught up in my own righteousness or anxiety or grand delusions. And I just…laughed out loud. There’s freedom in those moments of self-realization. It’s a release of ego, a brief suspension of taking ourselves so seriously. Spiritual people tend to develop a relationship with that laugh. Not because they don’t take life seriously—but because they know the ego loves to do so a little too much.

Maybe that’s it, in the end.

A spiritual person is someone who is sincerely trying, day by day, to wake up—to themselves, to the world, to the tender ache of being human. They’ll mess it up. Buddha knows I have. They’ll get impatient with their partner, or doomscroll when they really mean to meditate. But they’ll notice. They’ll feel the sting. They’ll breathe. They’ll begin again.

And that—more than any belief system, ritual, or self-proclaimed title—is what makes a spiritual person a spiritual person.

Not that they have arrived.

But that they keep picking themselves up from the ache of life, dusting themselves off, and they keep going on the path.