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Spiritual Growth Meditation

To have spiritual growth is to take a closer look within yourself toward your inner soul.

For us as human beings and to grow spiritually in a world defined by power, money, and outer influence is surely a Herculean task. Modern conveniences such as electronic equipments, cell phones, and tools as well as entertainment through television, video games, and the web have predisposed us to direct our attention mostly to our physical needs and wants. As a result, our concepts of self-worth and self-meaning are muddled. How can we strike a balance between the spiritual and material aspects of our day to day living?

Challenges

Many challenging cross roads will come into our lives as we take this journey through this life. There are some pathways that lead to a life of single blessedness, marriage, and spiritual vocation. Some of these roads could ultimately bring us happiness,fame and fortune on one hand, or hopelessness, isolation and distress on the other. Some of these roads lead to shining happiness as there are roads to deep despair, roads towards triumphant victory and jubilation, and roads leading to defeat and dissatisfaction.

Examine

When we look deep within ourselves we should go beyond the recalling of recent events thattook place in a day, week, or month. You will need to look closely and reflect upon your inner thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Periodically try to examining your experiences, the decisions you can make, the relationships you are working on, and the things you engage in provide useful insights on your life goals, try to focus on the quality traits you must sustain and the negative traits you have to discard.

A good mental and spiritual cleansing is absolutely necessary for your spirit.Moreover, it gives you clues on how to act, react, and conduct yourself in the midst of any situation. Like any ability, introspection can be learned; all it takes is the willingness and courage to seek the truths that reside within you. Here are some pointers when you introspect: be objective, learn to forgive yourself, and focus on the areas of needed improvement.

To grow spiritually in within,is to develop your capabilities.
Each and every time that you do your best to improve the quality of your life and your being, be it to cleaning up your house, extending your hand and helping a stranger, to fail on school exams and brushing yourself off and trying again, maybe you have offered in the taking care of your neighbors sick cat,life has a way of giving you equivalent points for those merits.
Religion and science have alternate takes on these unknown matters of the human spirit. Religion views humans as spiritual beings temporarily living on Earth, while science views the spirit as just one aspect of an individual. Mastery of the self is a recurring way if thinking in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings.

The needs of the human body are recognized but placed under the needs of the spirit. Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and hard work provide the blueprint to ensure the enrichment of the spiritual being. In Psychology, self-actualization is the realizing of one’s full potential. The psychologist Maslow identified several human needs: physiological, security, belonging, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence.

James earlier categorized these needs into three: material, emotional, and spiritual. It seems that it is human nature that when you have satisfied the basic physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs will follow. Achieving each need leads to the total development of the individual. Perhaps the biggestdifference between the two religions and psychology is the end of self-development: Islam and Christianity will believe that self-development is a means toward serving God, while modern psychology views that self-development is an end to the means unto itself.

To grow spiritually is to search for a deeper meaning

Religions that believe in the existence of God such as Christianism, Judaism, and Islam suppose that the purpose of theirour existence is to serve the Creator of all life. Several theories in psychology propose that we ultimately give meaning to our lives. Whether or not we believe that life’s meaning is self-directed or pre-determined, to grow within your spirit is to realize that we do not merely exist. We do not know the meaning of our lives at birth; but we gain knowledge and wisdom from our interactions with people and from our actions and reactions to the situations we are in. As we uncover this sense of purpose, there are certain beliefs and values that we turn down and accept.  Our life has meaning. Thissense of belonging puts all our physical, emotional, and intellectual potentials into use; sustains us during tough times; and gives us something to look forward to—a goal to achieve, a destination to reach. A person without purpose or meaning is like a floundering ship at sea.

Religions stress the concept of our relatedness to all of life, live and inanimate. Thus do we call upon others as our “brothers and sisters” even if there are no direct blood relations. Moreover, deity-centered religions such as Christianity and Islam speak of the relationship between humans and a higher being. On the other hand, science expounds on our connection to other living things through the evolution theory.

This connection is clearly seen in the concept of ecology, the interaction between living and non-living things. In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the upper most human need according to Maslow. Recognizing your connection to all things makes you more humble and respectful of people, animals, plants, and things in nature. It makes you appreciate everything around you. It moves you to reach out to other people and go beyond your comfort zone, and become stewards of all the things around you.

Growth

Growth is a process, thus to grow in your soul is a day-to-day activity. The important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.

If your growth stops then you are dead.Never stop the learning of your soul. Learning is life.It is the bread and butter of our life and our earthly existence.

Christian Books are like extensions of the actual Bible. They’re chock full of stories with lots of lessons to learn relating to religion.

These religious books may be fun to read but it can be more stimulating to listen to them on an mp3 player or ipod. Thanks to the new technology, more and more websites are now offering lots of Christian Audio Books and some are even free to download.

With voices from NeoSpeech and TextAloud, you may now leave behind the hassles of regular reading such as eye strain and momentary boredom. What’s beneficial about these mp3 or wma audio books is that listeners get to enjoy more of it anytime and anywhere they may be.

The teachings of morality are made more real with through the use of animated voices and sound effects, leaving greater impact on children and adults alike.

Christian Audio Books are very much effective in making Christians more involved with their religion.

It is simple to access and you have wide variety of title choice of your favorite Christian writers, be that Lewis Carol or a local author who just so happens to be one of your favorites.

Some of these fine selections of Christian wma or mp3 audio books are Tender Warrior, The Excellent Wife, Spiritual Leadership, Desiring God. These wonderful mp3 audio books belong to different genres.

They are meant for people of different preoccupations and even personalities. Some of these books’ original and well known authors are John Piper, Max Lucado, Dr. Archibald Hart, Elizabeth George, Francine Rivers, John Eldredge, and many others who continuously write stories that have touched and changed Christian lives from all over the world. These Christian Audio Books can be downloaded in mp3, wma, and iPod formats.

For years, Christian and religious teachings have been observed through different kinds of media, from plain write-ups to Hollywood movies like The Passion of the Christ. These preachings have often played a significant role in shaping the lives of many people.

But people continue to create avenues to reach the widest audience as possible, particularly in these times, when the number of Christians is dwindling. Some blame it on capitalism while some others say it is because of the technological advancements.

No matter how different societies view religion thesedays, there are always folks who look for inspiration from a good spiritual audio guide.

After all spirituality is at its peak when everyone seems to be in dire need of it. Who wouldn’t want to hear The Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther?

It is the desire to end this gloom period that will eventually end it and what better way is there for us to get inspired? Listen to a great Christian audio book now!