Integral Spirituality – What is the place of Spirituality in our busy 21 century life & times
A guided conversation
The material here was originally designed for a workshop.
Now you can use it in any way that pleases you.
You may simply read what i have to say about a topic or you may contribute by sharing your point of view.
When you see this sign 
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I would be very happy to see many comments.
Spirituality – A guided Conversation / Exploration
The conversation may flow along & around this sequence of questions that keep the flow on topic.
The conversation goes from the general to the specific, from the philosophical to the practical.
Overview / Itinerary:
(Part 1)
1. What do you expect from this conversation
2. What would you like to take home from it
3. How to keep the conversation lively (Do’s & Dont’s)
4. Definition of terms / What do we mean by:
– distinction between: spiritual / religious / esoteric
5. What has Soul got to do with it
– The nature and origin of soul
– The journey of the soul thru re-incarnations
6. What has Love got to do with it
– A new definition of Love is needed
7. What is Spirituality / Spiritual Practice good for
8. The “How-to-do-it” of Spiritual Practice
– Definition of a Integral Spiritual Practice
– Basic ingredients for a successful Integral Spiritual Practice
– Aspects of Integral Spiritual Practice:
– Psychological housecleaning, Shadow-work
– Developing specific Values, Qualities and Attitudes
– Study / Inspiration from external sources
– Prayer: in many ways & forms
(1.person / 2.person / 3.person prayer)
– Definition of Service
– Mindfulness in everyday life & activities
– Meditation
9. Meditation – a Cornerstone of Inner Growth / the Evolution of Consciousness
– The Brain and the Mind
– Brainwave States
– The Monkey Mind
– Breathing & Posture
– Meditation as Concentration Exercise
– Meditation as Open Awareness
– Meditation as Awareness of Awareness
– Discovering the “I Am” Essence
– Dealing with specific challenges in Meditation
– Beneficial “side-effects” of meditation
10. Pitfalls, sidetracks and dead-end-streets on the Spiritual Path
11. How to live Spirit-oriented in busy busy 21. Century
– Time
– Lifestyle choices
– Priorities
– Some simple tricks to make it happen
– Children
– Career / Professional life
– Work / Life Balance
– Fun
12. Life Cycles and Stages of Consciousness
13. What is the Future of Spirituality
– Spirituality is the new “religion” of the 21. century
– “Trans-personal” Spirituality
– Spiritual Activism
– Deep Ecology
– WeSpace Practice
– Intentional Spiritual Community
14. What is the ultimate meaning of being alive
Ok, here we go!
1. What do you expect from this conversation
Please click here to share your expectations
2. What would you like to take away from it
Please click here to share a bit
3. To keep the conversation lively:
Do:
– be here & now
– be curious
– acknowledge that you don’t know all that much
– say what you think
– ask
– probe
– be honest
– question the status quo
– show interest
– allow different opinions
– feel free to say some stupid things
– make mistakes
– laugh (mostly about yourself)
– try out different viewpoints
– explore
– dare
– think
– feel
– trust
– open up
– have fun
– go with the flow
Don’t:
– just sit there ; (
4. Definition of terms / What do we mean by:
“Lets choose our words carefully, deliberately. Probing like research submarines, exploring the depth of the ocean.”
When it comes to topics like spirit, soul, consciousness or even god, it might be a good idea to define a bit what we mean by those words we use – that we use often very unconsciously.
Here is my own take on things:
I use the word “Spirit” interchangeable with “The Divine”, “The Ultimate”, “Essence”, “God”, “God/Goddess/All That Is”, “The Tao”, “Brahman”, “The Absolute Truth” . . .
Surely there are many other names used in different spiritual and religious traditions that point towards this . . .
“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.
The Name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
The Named is the Mother of ten thousand things …”
– Tao Te Ching –
In most traditional religious and spiritual traditions there is a split between
spirit / matter
creator / creation
heaven / earth
nirvana / samsara
And the suggested path is always to somehow escape or outgrow the second to get to the first part of the pair : )
For myself i came to the understanding that
– Spirit is Creator and Creation all in One
– Spirit is God/Goddess/All There Is
– Spirit is transcendent (beyond all) as well as immanent (in everything)
Obviously this is a paradox, a Koan that blows the mind!
But maybe we need our mind blown in order to experience the Absolute Reality ; )
What you think?
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
For me, to be spiritual means:
– to learn about the essential things of life,
– to aspire to the highest values that i can find
– and to embody those values – and the experience they bring – in everyday life, in all i do and be/come.
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
– Spirituality / The Spiritual Path
All the methods, practices and specific teachings that help me in a systematic way:
– to integrate and actualize my personal self,
– to open it up to the transpersonal aspects of myself
– and experience and realize the Essence of Life, the Ground of Being.
Contrary to most traditional spirituality, such Integral Spirituality does not lead away from life but is a path deeper into the here and now of existence, closer to my fellow beings, closer to the manifest creation. And ultimately it leads me into Oneness with my Self – home.
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
I believe that – as human beings – we grow progressively thru stages of consciousness,
from the gross, narrow minded, ego-centered, excluding, materialistic
to the subtle, open-minded, inclusive, all-embracing and self-giving.
from the unconscious
to the conscious
to the super-conscious
from separation
to Unity / Oneness
Similar to the phases of development that a child goes thru while it grows up to become an adult, our consciousness also develops thru phases that we could call:
– Ego-centric: My needs, my desires, my satisfaction, my ambitions . . .
– Etno-centric: My family, my tribe, my gang, my country, my nation . . . “Birds of a same feather flock together”
– World-centric: Understand and welcome “the others”, different cultures, other lifestyles, unfamiliar values . . . “Unity in Diversity”
– Cosmo-centric: Welcome “the great unknown”, awareness of the interconnectedness of all beings and things . . . “You and I are One”
As we grow, we – our values and self-identification, our consciousness – progressively become more and more expansive and inclusive on the way to become one with our Self and All That Is.
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
We live in a time where there is a multitude of workshops, seminars, retreats, books, videos offered in the context of spirituality. Its almost like a marketplace, especially when you search at the internet.
This can be very confusing for somebody without much overview or experience.
My suggestion is always not to jump from one thing to the next, not to consume workshops, not to mix&mash everything together and call it “my spiritual path”.
I suggest to ask advice of some experienced advisor or friend and decide on a specific practice for a certain time period.
Sincerity, consistency and commitment to this practice are the qualities that will make it work and bring verifiable results.
I think it is definitely helpful to have somebody with some clarity of mind and experience where you can share and talk about your experiences and receive feedback and correction of the course, if necessary. It is quite easy in life to fall for our own wishful thinking and illusions and in the area of spirituality this is even a greater danger. All too often do we tend to believe what we want to believe.
But here, on the spiritual path, this shall not be!
Cause here we are actually looking for The Ultimate Truth.
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
– Distinction between: spiritual / religious / esoteric
I think the meaning of those words is not clearly defined and “the worlds” they describe are overlapping.
For me, there is a distinctive difference when i use those words:
* Esoteric: As in Esoteric Bookstore, Esoteric Science and so on.
Esoteric is a rather vague term for things that are unusual or obscure or unseen or known only by initiated people. It stands in contrast to the exoteric, the outer, the visible, the tangible.
In the past esoteric has often been associated with the Occult, with so called Mystery Schools and more or less dubious Secret Societies.
In the last thirty years or so the word has been synonymous with the marketplace of New Age Spirituality, with teachings, books, pseudo-experts ; ) who can be found in every Esotera Fair where you can choose from offerings from card reading to astrology to crystals, runes, water energizers, sacred geometry, instant enlightenment courses, alien contact workshops and so on.
The list is long ; )
* Religious: religio – to re-connect, bind again to the source
Religion: a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe.
Religion involves devotional and ritual observances and often it contains a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
Throughout human history there appeared a few extraordinary beings with a powerful message and mission to re-align the mass of people with God and offer moral rules and commandments to give a framework for people to live by.
Equally important, these rules created cohesion and community and a general good will towards the members of the religion.
It is also a sad fact that shortly after those founders, avatars or Godsons left the earth, each religion formed a hierarchy of power and a more and more doctrinal approach to the teachings of the founders.
Very often this rigid belief resulted in a missionary zeal with sometimes unbelievable consequences.
History is full of wars in the name of “God”, cruelties of Inquisitions, slaughter in the hands of Islamic extremists, sexual molestation of children in the hands of priests, destruction of ancient tribal cultures by over-zealous missionaries and so on.
Of course, religion has been a blessing as well, it created community, brought out the best in a lot of people on massive scale and in general provided a moral framework for people to live by.
Without religion, humanity would have been fallen into complete chaos a long time ago, this is my belief.
It is also my belief that the time is over for religion. Obviously religions are loosing massive amounts of their follower because of their rigid hold on the deeply ingrained power structures of their hierarchies and the outdated and rigid belief systems that very often have little to do with what the founders were teaching to the people of their times.
But in every religion i know about there were always a couple of people that managed to stick to the essence of the teachings, the things the founders pointed to.
We call them Mystics.
It is really interested to read what they said, their texts, their books.
Because they say very similar things, may they be Christian Mystics, Hindu Mystics, Islamic Saints and Mystical Poets or Buddhist Teachers.
Basically what we see when we study those texts is, that they all point to similar experiences, similar universal principles, similar values and similar laws governing life.
We could also call this: Spiritual Principles, Spirituality.
Nowadays many – especially young people – declare that they are not religious but they consider themselves spiritual.
* Spiritual: Well, i guess this is what we are talking about here ; )
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When i say that I am conscious of something then i actually mean that i am aware of it.
Awareness is the ability to focus my attention on something, to notice something and to hold it in my consciousness.
Self-awareness is the ability we human beings have (potentially), to recognize and to have an awareness of the “place” inside of myself that is aware – the I Am.
I see. I hear. I feel. I act. I am aware . . .
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What is consciousness?
That’s a tricky questions that philosophers, spiritual seekers, psychologists as well as neuroscientists and neurophysiologists have tried to answer since long long time. Well, the scientists actually only recently in a systematic way ; )
The clearest answers that i have found come from the oldest of writings, the Vedas of Ancient India as well as the Buddhist traditions, especially Tibetan Buddhism. Also the writings of Alice Bailey and Helena Blavatsky have been helpful for me, as well as certain newer channeled teachings.
In my understanding, consciousness is
– the very substance of everything
– the “stuff” in which everything that exists appears and out of which everything is “made”.
And by “everything” i mean really everything in all dimensions, everything visible and invisible throughout all universes and parallel universes.
– It is said in the scriptures that it is The Mind Of God
– It is also said that in consciousness God dreams the Universe, dreams up All That Is
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
These are very big and broadly used words and i do not want to discuss or argue about that one, it is simply too much for my mind to really grasp him/her/it/that ; )
But in any case, the experience of Pure Consciousness is the closest I can get to the experience of Spirit/God and my Oneness with God. That has been my experience in my own path of spirituality.
In most spiritual traditions Meditation is the primary method, the practical means to have this kind of ultimate experience, this direct contact with The Divine.
For me, Meditation has undoubtedly been The Path to establish a solid foundation in the “Ground of Being”.
A foundation, from which to encounter life as it shows itself to me. And the foundation on to which i can firmly stand and create my personal reality and being in the world.
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
5. What has Soul got to do with it
– The nature and origin of soul
– The journey of the soul thru re-incarnations
A Creation Myth:
The way I picture the whole story ; )
God is One, is potentially all and everything, is unmanifest.
God dreams, dreams up The Creation, dreams up the Heavenly Hosts, Logis, Archangels, Angels, Souls, the Dimensions, the Galaxies, Solar Systems and all. Minerals, Plants, Animals. The Hu-man.
God dreams up the multitude of souls, gives them the gift of Free Will to explore Creation, the ability to create from thought to see what is possible.
Soul is a GodSpark, always at one with the source but also existing to grow thru experience and the gaining of wisdom.
Soul incarnates into all kinds of dimensions, all kinds of places in the universe, takes on all kinds of roles in order to play, to learn, to serve, to expand, to grow in wisdom and in-sight.
When Soul incarnates into the 3.Dimension of Time & Space – a.k.a. Planet Earth – and takes on the human form, it temporarily forgets its origin and reason for incarnation. Believing to be a limited person, it goes thru life and creates Karma. The natural consequence of any kind of action is what we call the Law of Karma.
By experiencing the pains that limitation and separation brings, the soul grows in inclusiveness and unconditional love, understanding and enlightenment, growing and merging back into Source.
Thus the circle of incarnation ends, the soul’s journey comes full circle.
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6. What has Love got to do with it
– A new definition of Love is needed
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
7. What is Spirituality / Spiritual Practice good for
Well, you could also ask what is breathing good for?
I guess it keeps the body alive!
And Spirituality keeps the Soul alive. That’s the way I see it : )
Developing a Spiritual Worldview and a Spiritual Practice gives me:
– a feeling and understanding of what life is all about
– an understanding of the ups & downs, the challenges of everyday life
– a framework of reference for all my human experience
– clarity of the purpose and meaning of my existence
– inner peace and a independent source of happiness
– strength to carry on when the going gets rough in my life
That should actually be already plenty good reasons for everybody to jump on the Spirituality-Train immediately. ; )
Don’t you think?
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
8. The “How-to-do-it” of Spiritual Practice
– Definition of an Integral Spiritual Practice
By Integral Spiritual Practice i mean a philosophy and practice that is inclusive, holistic. That includes and integrates personality and soul and spirit, heaven and earth, the good, bad and the ugly, shadow and light and so on.
– Basic ingredients for a successful Spiritual Practice
In my experience the ground must be prepared before the seeds can be put into it and the plant can grow. Similarly there is a set of attitudes and qualities that one can cultivate which will make a successful spiritual journey possible:
* Aspiration – towards Spirit/God/Oneness
* Sincerity – in order not to fool yourself, not to engage in “make-believe” and wishful thinking
* Faith – the fundamental trust that something of a higher order is guiding me
* Patience – because the journey will take time and effort
* Persistence – to counter our all-too-human tendency to give up
* A clear and concrete Spiritual Practice
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– Aspects of Integral Spiritual Practice:
– Psychologic housecleaning, Shadow-work
A good house needs to be built on a solid foundation, otherwise its a “house-built-on-sand”. It will fall down sooner than later.
When we attempt to go higher in our consciousness we need to make sure that our personal ego, our Psyche gets cleaned out of unconscious tendencies, destructive patterns and hidden traumas.
I my experience those things come to the surface sooner than later once the energy gets higher because of a spiritual practice. I think it is a good idea to attend counseling sessions or seek the help of an experienced spiritual-oriented therapist in order to uncover and integrate such unconscious patterns when they appear.
Shadow-work can be done in various ways but it is imperative to be vigilant and attentive to everything that comes up on the way. The ego is a very tricky thing in any case, but the “spiritual ego” is often even harder to recognize by yourself, very hard to unmask when you don’t have the mirroring of an experienced person who can point it out to you.
Of course, the “housecleaning” also implies that we take care of unfinished personal business in practical matters, in matters of relationships and finances.
The clearer the personality, the more thorough the “psycho-logic hygiene” is done, the smoother the spiritual path will be.
But maybe i actually should not make such predictions, right? ; )
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– Developing specific Values, Qualities and Attitudes
Consciously chosen values are always the cornerstones of a refined person, of a cultivated society. But here i am not talking about rigid norms of society or traditional moral or rigid religious commandments.
Rather than that i am talking about things that a healthy conscience asks of us, what in our heart we know as right and just and beautiful. I am talking of Ethics, spiritual Ethics.
We could definitely list a many great values that are worth cultivating for the spiritual path or for any wholesome path a human being can walk.
But here just a few Spiritual Values that should be reflected on, explored, practiced, cultivated and embodied. With patient practice those values will become part of the character makeup, qualities that will be – over time – reflected in the attitudes and behaviour of the person.
* Self-responsibility
* Response-ability
* Attentiveness
* Goodwill
* Care
* Gratitude
* Compassion
* Empathy
* Givingness / Generosity
* Joyfulness
Please click here to share your own opinion and point of view about this topic
– Study / Inspiration of essential texts and scriptures
Inspiration in a spiritual sense is very much needed in our outside-oriented world. In-spiration already has Spirit inherent in the word itself. But the over-abundance of information, of books, videos, blogs on the internet and such has also transformed the spiritual literature into a marketplace of thousands of possible sources. Can be pretty confusing to say the least!
For me, it has always been a good habit (helped me to stay sane ; ) to look for source material, sacred texts, scriptures that passed the test of time, books by and about certain teachers who talk of essential things.
Not always easy to understand, those texts don’t simply provide information for the mind or concepts to satisfy the intellect. Many such books are literally expanding or even blowing the mind : )
Channeled texts can also be very helpful to gain insight and perspective from a non-human point of view. But choose carefully, not everything that is channeled is automatically of a high quality. Some channelings are – honestly – quite a crap!
Just a few sources i want to name here that have greatly enriched and inspired me. Once you learn to trust your intuition, do your own exploration, go only for the best!
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu
- The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi
- Journey of Souls by Michael Newton
- Meister Eckhart, From Whom God Hid Nothing by David Steindl-Rast
- Love is a stranger – Poetry of Rumi
- The Dhammapada – Essential teachings of the Buddha
- Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch
- I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
. . . and many others.
Be selective, make your own list!
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– Prayer: in many ways & forms
(1.person / 2.person / 3.person prayer)
When i was a kid we had to go to church on Sundays and pray before going to sleep as well. It has not been my most favorite activity, to be honest. It did not make much sense to me to repeat those old words again and again.
Much later – usually in situations of danger, in peril or when overwhelmed by a crisis i learned to go to my knees, to fold my hands over my heart and address God with trembling voice. There i found my own words to plead to God, to ask for favors, to acknowledge to this invisible power that i am alone and at the end of my pride, that i need help.
If he/she/it heard me, i don’t know. No voice came down from the clouds, nothing really happened externally. But definitely inside of me there has been a release of sorrow, a lessening of the emotional pressure and the burden that has been pressing onto my shoulders.
And i could carry on to help myself again.
In those moments we spontaneously use Second Person Prayer.
We address God as “You” or – in the language of ancient texts – as “Thou”. We speak to the Divine as we would speak with a person, we plead, we ask, we shout, we demand, we beg, we thank, we sing . . . we pray.
It is a spiritual activity that opens the heart, that looks upwards, that generates hope and faith.
It is a very healthy activity in my eyes ; )
Singing Mantras (hopefully understanding the words ; ) is such a spiritual practice of prayer as well.
Bhakti Yoga in India has made this form of prayer into a “spiritual science”.
We can also practice prayer as Third Person Prayer.
This is usually happening when we experience deep feelings of universal gratitude towards life, when we are deeply touched by the beauty of nature or the vastness of the night-sky full of stars.
It is often a prayer beyond words, something uplifting happening on the level of our feelings.
It may also be happening in connection with animals in need, when we answer to other people’s fragility and vulnerableness or when we see the needs of the world in a transpersonal way.
Selfless Service is a natural way to pray in the 3. person mode.
In the East and specifically in India this is known as Karma Yoga, the path of selfless action.
First Person Prayer is maybe hard to understand. I feel it should not be actively practiced but rather experienced when it is spontaneously happening.
“I am Thou”, “I and God are One”, “Be still and know that I AM God”, “I AM”.
Those are very big words, very directly pointing towards the ultimate truth.
I guess they can also be greatly misunderstood.
But they have been spoken by great saints in the past, they can be read in scriptures, they are revelations of the highest order.
For us “normal people” they can be something to contemplate, to consider, to understand what they might mean.
In deep Meditation, beyond mind and metaphysical concepts this truth can be directly experienced and realized.
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– Mindfulness in everyday life & activities
– Selfless Service
People often tell me that they have no time for Spirituality or some practice of it. Obviously we people are a busy lot!
I understand, there are bills to pay, money to be earned, bosses to satisfy. Babies to wash, Pampers to be changed and kids brought to school. And movies to be watched and books to be read and Facebook to be checked and the News to be digested. And friends to be visited and old parents to be cared for.
And the list goes on and on and the days are never long enough for all that and more.
Survival needs, personal needs, external obligations and responsibilities are a fact of life and can not be ignored.
Not everybody lives in a Costa Rican fisher village on the beach
; )
So what to do? How to make Spirituality happen anyway?
I think that the answer lies in a change of attitude. The attitude and approach towards the things we do in the outer world, the job, the work, the domestic chores. And also the pleasurable activities that we all have to some extent.
Mindfulness is a very trendy word these days and the practice of it becomes more and more widespread. Companies and corporations are sending their managers to do Mindfulness Trainings and many books and blogs are full with descriptions of the benefits of that approach.
Mindfulness – in my own understanding – simply means to do whatever i do with my full heart, give it my complete attention and care. Try to do only one thing at the time and do it as well as i can do it. Don’t think of anything else while doing this one thing.
It is practically a kind of Meditation in Action, an attitude that brings me into the present moment.
My focus is on the task at hand and i give it my full attention. I don’t judge anymore if it’s a mundane thing that i do, if i want to do it or have to do it, what i will gain from this activity and what i will do next.
Mindful walking, mindful washing the dishes, mindful breathing, mindful writing an essay for my blog. Mindful driving the car to work and mindfully hugging my partner. Everything can become a celebration of the full-hearted present moment.
If Mindfulness in Action is practiced and experienced continuously it can lead to an experience of a state of joy and fulfillment that is one of the signs of elevated consciousness. Independent of time and circumstance. Independent of reward, recognition or appreciation for the job done.
Those feelings are clear signs of a transpersonal state.
The continuous practice of such a Mindfulness approach leads to a state of consciousness where our inherent but hidden qualities of selflessness, non-attachment, overflowing joy of givingness and connectedness with life become real for us.
In many spiritual traditions such an approach to work is called Service, Selfless Service.
It has been one of the cornerstones of life in Monasteries, Ashrams, church communities and charitable endeavors throughout the ages.
Nowadays it is even employed to increase the wellbeing (and productivity) of employees of companies!
Well . . . that’s another story all together ; )
But in any case, Mindfulness in Action, Selfless Service, the giving of yourSelf to the world for the sake of Givingness can be done NOW and in every moment of this day and the next.
You only need to change your attitude and approach.
The blessings will be manyfold!
Mindful Selfless Service is Prayer in Action
To be continued . . .
Stay tuned, we will be back soon with Part 2 : )
i love itReference
What a treasure map you have laid out!
Thank you and a deep bow, dear brother.
T0 get in deeper touch again with spirituality, to take time each day for dealing with spirituality, to feel more openness aginReference
a feeling of love and trust and peace and safetyReference
to become more conscious of all there is again, to live spirituality troughout my whole life, to come in deeper touch with spirituality againReference
How do I found out if my mind needs to be blown?Reference
call 911 ; )
In theory it sounds very reasonable and agreeable. The thing is, where in this world you meet “someone with some clarity of mind and experience….”. Sharing and talking about those deepest topics is quite a risky thing to do…Reference
Thanks for clarifying those terms! From what I have seen, I personally don´t think the time of religion is over. Maybe in Europe there has been a continious decline, but defintely not world-wide. However, yes, spirituality makes more sense to us here.Reference
nice and inspiring lists – the three aboveReference
My favourite part is this final about mindfulness. Thanks for inspiration!Reference
I don´t feel that it is risky, I feel that it is only seldom possible, because most of my friends don´t feel and talk about spiritualityReference