Posts Tagged ‘spiritual growth’
Modern Times And The Challenge Of Spiritual Growth
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.
<To recognize these interconnections is to grow spiritually./b>
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.