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Finding Spiritual Alignment – How to Achieve Spiritual Balance
What you are intensely interested in, desire and hope for profoundly affects every area of your life – if you openly express it. And it is certainly true, as I can testify from my own experience, that when you start focussing on something, it starts popping up everywhere. So if you are a person with a spiritual outlook, how can you be authentic about your spiritual experiences and insights, instead of hiding them for fear of what the critical post-modern mind will make of them? This, I believe, is what spiritual balance is all about.
Those who approach life with a spiritual outlook may often find the question of balance a challenging one. The problem of unreliable feelings versus spiritual authenticity is relevant not only to followers of esoteric spiritual systems but also to Christians. Some approach faith purely through the head and are only interested in rational processes, the intellectual pathways of theology, and applying their minds to what the Bible teaches; to others it is very important to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, to respond emotionally to the central truth of the Christian faith, which is not a philosophy but a relationship with Jesus Christ, a personal encounter with God.
How can we bring spiritual experience into alignment with the realities of daily life? Carl Jung in his book “Psychology and Religion” addresses this very question. He takes into account “the symbols produced by the unconscious mind”. They are, he says, “the only things able to convince the critical mind of modern people.” A spiritual experience, he notes, in order to be considered helpful, must “help to make your life healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory to yourself and those you love.” Then, he concludes, you may safely say “This was the grace of God.”
Bernie Siegel in his book “Love, Medicine and Miracles” speaks of the vital importance of hope, which is a strongly spiritual quality. He says “a refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.” He also speaks of those who “choose their direction, make the leap of faith and fly”. This all about courage and self-belief, in how you choose to spend your time, and what you devote your life to. And before you can take action on this, you must start from a point of spiritual balance. I believe the key is to act on our spiritual insights, expressing them openly: only then can we ensure they do impact every area of our lives – and most essentially, our relationships.
As a fiction writer, I find the search for authenticity and balance is a continuous journey, and it is summed up in the word ‘truth’. I seek truth by observing people, listening to them, watching them, empathising with them and writing about them. When through fiction I show my characters behaving in such a way that a reader says, “Yes. This rings true. I recognise this… this is me… this is the way we are,” then I feel a sense of joy: and I know, at least in this moment, mind and spirit have aligned with each other and brought about spiritual balance.
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Source by SC Skillman
