Spirituality

People often consider their spiritual work to be a separate arena from their worklife. In truth, the workplace can function as an ideal environment in which you get paid to grow spiritually.

Here are six ways:

1) You have the opportunity to confront your grandiosity.
The daily tasks it takes to become successful in business confront the glamor, fame, and wealth the ego feels is its due. On the career path, you start at the bottom and work your way up. The ego humbles itself in the process of admitting how much you don’t know.

2) You learn how to work.
To be successful at anything takes an inordinate amount of effort. Much of New Age thought has hurt its adherents, hypnotizing them into believing that all they have to ...

That old saying sounds so cliché and yet, for an instant attitude shift, there’s nothing better to do than to take a pause in your busy workday to appreciate everything that’s around you. Here’s 7 ways – that take only 10 seconds each - that I’ve discovered:

1. On the walk to the train station every morning, I stop at 1 house to admire the care and love someone has put into their potted plants or garden. It’s a short stop, but it jogs me out of my morning rush and into an instant appreciation of beauty and nature.

2. Savor a sip of your favorite drink. Too often we gulp down our coffee or tea on the run. Many times my tea will be gone and I don’t even remember drinking it. Tomorrow morning, before drinking your coffee or tea, take a deep breath to ...

A popular post circulating Facebook awhile back posited that the signs of spiritual progress are about becoming increasingly upbeat, positive, and blissful, a common new-age misconception. Spiritual progress is not about entering an eternally ecstatic state — that’s called being high. Instead, you’ll know real spiritual growth has occurred when you experience the following:

1)** You welcome all your emotions.
Beginners on the spiritual path often believe that they must be positive all the time, criticizing themselves for having normal human feelings such as grief, jealousy, rage, negativity, or a just-plain bad day. You’ll know you’re progressing when you accept that all emotions are essential to the human experience. You wouldn’t want to miss a second of what’s true ...

EXCERPT: from Chapter Ten ~ In Service



Lighten Up
When we remember to give our love as we go about the day, suddenly the world doesn’t seem such a serious and challenging place. There’s nothing wrong with being a walking billboard that screams: “Lighten up!” It’s a great relief to see a smile, hear a laugh, or see someone truly having fun. We can use more of the positive in our lives. It’s a great reminder that life is meant to be enjoyed. So play! Be silly. Let loose. Entertain yourself and others. Do the ridiculous. Skip down the sidewalk or whistle while you work. Despite protests of the meanie you’ll inevitably encounter, have a good time.

Fun is contagious. Light is uplifting. So amuse yourself by brightening someone else’s day. If ...

My Summary: Memories of God (Theological reflections on a life) written by Roberta C. Bondi (1995)

I recommend this book to all those who grew up female in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s or to those who want to know what it was like as a cultural experience in a Christian context.

In Chapter 1 - She expresses her confusion and struggle with calling God, Father. She sets it culturally and personally as a child of the 50's and tells us how she worked through her dilemma.

In Chapter 2 - she speaks of her life-treatment: (that) her emotions and experiences were discounted in her relationships with family, church, and culture.

She states: "what we know of God is always wrapped up in who we are, in our ways of feeling, thinking, and perceiving, ...

My inclination is to write about death and how witnessing this life passage affects our sense of self, and how, since time immemorial, the world has formulated rituals and religious apologues in the face of death. Having just experienced the death of a very dear friend, death is in the forefront of my conscious thoughts these last few weeks. My son also came close to death, so I feel the specter of mortality a lot these days and the effect it has in my own psyche. I will use a heuristic (personal) view of my immersion, meditations, and illumination on the events of these last few months to put forth a view of our self as mortal, and how death can, and does, inform both our construct of self , peoples self-object and more consciously a spiritual-self.

There is a Mayan stone carving of a man consulting with his death that I once saw pictured in a book about shamanism and religion in Meso America. This alchemical symbol of personal transformation through the consultation with one’s own death acknowledges the fact of our mortal existence which we face as living beings and represents in physical form the meanings such a confrontation offers as both life perspective and change agent. In facing our personal mortality as depicted ...

Ambassador of the Ancestors
Malidoma Somé shares a mystical journey inspired by his African ancestors

by Virginia Lee
for Common Ground Fall 1996


CG: Your name, Malidoma, means "to befriend the stranger and the enemy," a destiny which was given to you at birth. Would you tell the story of how you discovered your purpose in life and how you have fulfilled your destiny ?

MS: One's purpose in life, from a tribal perspective, is not really "discovered" by the individual as modern language seems to indicate. Instead, in the Dagara tribe where I come from, one's individual purpose is something that is already set prior to birth. And it is the task of the living to discover the purpose of an incoming ...

A few words about the intent of the ceremony:
This ceremony, performed as a ritual, offers us the opportunity to leave behind something that no longer serves our life. More precisely it is an act of letting go. The purpose is to release a pattern, belief, emotion or experience that impedes us. We offer our behavior patterns of thought and deed to make room for a new way of being. This ceremony is a request for transformation of something specific we individually wish to let go of, something to be returned to us renewed and in a form that serves and supports our lives in the present.

Together we ask for the possibility of transforming a negative condition into a positive replacement. The more precisely we articulate our request, the more clearly we can see what needs ...

As a Transformational Counselor/Ritualist, I support my clients in their spiritual goals. If appropriate for the clients’ goals, I ask them if they have an altar that may support them on their journey, and provide clarity in response to their questions and concerns. I've been struck that, more often than not, my clients will share that they do not have an altar. This has surprised me because most of my clients are transpersonally oriented, meaning thatthey have incorporated into their way of being, beliefs and practices which include non-ordinary states of consciousness, contemplative practices, self transcendence, and a connection or journey to the Divine or meaning-making.

Upon reflection, I've discerned several possible reasons why many of my clients may not think about creating an altar. They may have experienced spiritual wounding or negative references associated with the iconography of childhood spiritual ...