Spiritual Direction New and Old Therapy
That Works -- December 1, 2010
Spiritual Direction is a type of
therapy that has been around since the beginning of time. In our age
of science it is not too popular or well known among non-clergy
members, but is well known by most clergy. The difference between
spiritual direction and psychotherapy is that spiritual direction
draws on one's own belief system to help one not only cope with the
struggles of life, but overcome them. It is empowering to the client
and self empowering, considering that the client always has religious
scripture, sacred texts, a connection with the universe, prayer, and
or God available to for support and insight.
In the past spiritual direction was
usually just provided for clergy, now anyone can partake in spiritual
direction, especially since there are more interfaith spiritual
directors who can lead you into a great understanding of the core
mystical path of all religions. This may sound new to you. Most of
us don't even realize that the core of most of the religions we are
familiar with is mystical. Much of the mysticism was divorced from
many of our religions during the time of enlightenment, the
reformation and after, when science began to become a more powerful
force and influenced our views of the world. Mysticism became
something that it was very ignorant or immature to believe in, in the
west because it had the power to awaken individuals and connect them
with God. Mysticism moved to various denominations at the edge of
society that were very liberal, and remained in the very
fundamentalist religions. Now, however, it is becoming more
mainstream. What needs to happen is that the general public needs to
learn how powerful spiritual direction is, since it is a modality
that draws on the health of the individual and higher intentions
rather than trying to suppress that which is dysfunctional or even
considered a disease in many psychological circles.
Spiritual direction works. It helps
you reclaim your own belief system about the workings of the universe
and nature, it awakens you mentally, physically and spiritually, and
it gives you the power to tap into the life giving creativity, i.e.,
spirit at the core of the universe so that you may recreate your
true, expanded, divine Self each day. You can experience this world
as the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Rule of Love, through the awakening
that comes from spiritual direction. What does it take to find a
spiritual director. There are many professional spiritual directors,
of course. But the main thing that it takes to be a good spiritual
director is having a true relationship with God, or whatever you may
call your higher power, and not being a nut (I'm sure you know what I
mean). When one has that relationship one passes on the teachings
from their interaction with God. The interaction between you and the
spiritual director is shaped not only by you and the words you speak,
but by magic and the workings of the spirit.
If you are having difficulties that are
not being dealt with well through traditional psychotherapy and or
can't afford to pay for it, or you would like to go deeper in your
faith or reach higher, I would suggest you see a spiritual director.
If you are unchurched or not overtly connected to any one
faith—working out your own understanding of the world, I would
suggest you find an interfaith spiritual director. Why not start the
new year in a better way—by laying down the life that is full of
falsity, suffering, and deception, and picking up a life of joy,
contentment, and remembering your divine self so you can begin to
celebrate life, right here on this earth now. For the Kingdom of
Heaven will not come from the clouds the Kingdom of Heaven is in the
midst of you. It is inside of you and in this world of experiences
right now.
John Gilmore, D. Min. (Om Prakash) Is
a Massage Therapist, Body-Worker, and Spiritual Director. Om Prakash
was a Pentecostal Minister for several years and is now a retired
Unitarian Universalist Minister. Om Prakash received his D. Min.
degree in Integrating Work and Spirituality from the University of
Creation Spirituality, a school found by Dr., Rev., Matthew Fox based
on the Wisdom Tradition. Creation Spirituality, the mystical branch
of Christianity, pulls together the teachings of science, arts, and
religion emphasizing the original blessing of humanity and creation.
To find more articles like this one and/or to learn how to partake of
some of our specialized spiritual direction programs based on Eastern
and Western religious traditions, please visit our website
www.dswellness.com where you
will find a free Practical Spirituality Journal and a link to John
Gilmore's Healing Hands where you can find lectures, books, and links
on spiritual growth.
Practical Spirituality: Reclaiming
the Warrior -- November 19, 2010
When we discuss the concept of the
warrior many people will often think of fighting and violence.
Our minds are drawn to the soldier who fights to maintain freedom for
his or her country and to advance the cause of the nation without
question, or to Rambo who goes and shoots up hundreds of people.
This was not always what was considered a warrior even though many
soldiers can be warriors, but not all, by any means. The warrior
path was primarily a spiritual path, not only a physical path
created to promote one's own well being or the well being of people
who are similar in their beliefs and attitudes.
During this millennium it is time to
reclaim the old warrior spirit and to become compassionate
warriors. The compassionate warrior fights the battle on two
fronts with one being more important than the other. The first and
most important, is the battle within.
The compassionate warrior
stands against her most dangerous enemy: the maladaptive thoughts,
ideas and fantasies planted within herself through socialization.
These are the ideas that make us into hungry ghosts who can
only find satisfaction by looking outside of ourselves and consuming.
These ideas make us find very temporary satisfaction and self esteem
through the attainment of material things and power over other people
and objects. At the same time they cause us to ignore the beauty,
the power, the majesty that exists within ourselves already.
They cloud our vision and turn the
universe into a bunch of billiard balls and particles bouncing
around. They make a beautiful sunrise or sunset into the rotation of
a planet. They cause us to ignore the beauty and the magic of all of
the things that take place in nature and in creation because we are
always trying to explain them and struggling to get more than we
have.
We exploit nature instead of enjoying it, and engage in
one-up-men-ship as a way of being. Our energy is used playing out
some role or part that has been assigned to us through our early life
experiences. Until the compassionate warrior, through the strength
of her intelligence and applied love (compassion) destroys these
enemies she will be trapped in a box and will always need to obtain
good thoughts, feelings and ideas about herself from others; thus she
will always be a debtor, in need of social approval.
The second enemy that the compassionate
warrior must defeat are the external enemies that enter in and harm
his friends, family, and community. Today, in our age, instead of
fighting against advancing armies the enemy are usually false
thoughts and ideas; the very thoughts and ideas that socialize us and
take aware our power to awaken to the true self. These
thoughts and ideas are passed on by every institution, and especially
the media. Messages are sent to tell us who we are, how we should
look, what we should be, and that we are not good enough and if we
are we won't be until we get older. With every movie, every
commercial, every book where the rich, powerful and beautiful are at
the center of the story, these maladaptive thoughts and ideas are
reinforced until we give away all of our power and end up feeling
empty. We become depressed because we give away our hopes, dreams,
and desires to a small group of people that bring their dreams to
life in the media and cajole us to join along or be ostracized.
The compassionate warrior destroys
these false ideals by wielding the sword of truth. He shines the
light onto the darkness and the manipulation so people can see the
falsity and through the use of logic and intuition, the two sides of
intelligence, he dispels the false and reclaims his right to make
decisions, to decide on what is right or wrong, and to help each
community chart its own future. At Diana Sarah Wellness Center we
focused greatly on what we call our Warrior of Compassion Guild.
This is a group of people who work together to reclaim their power
and to become active participants in their communities and the larger
community through peaceful, legal, and responsible means in our
democratic society.
We have no list or meetings, we are joined
together in spirit. These people will have read On Being Love's
Warrior: Becoming the Compassionate Warrior Within, written by
Kendall Ronin, which is a step by step manual on how one can
reclaim one's power within and become a leading member in one's
community and the society at large.
Times are troubling now. We are
confronted with negative messages all the time. We are divided by
the media and some media outlets are actually lying. Many of the
religions are supporting racism, sexism, homophobia, and war. It
seems that the spiritual person is left on his or her own. This is
not the case.
There are those who work to reclaim the warrior
archetype and the power within. Today it is necessary, for anyone
who wants to live a life of peace and beauty, and to raise a decent
family with loving children in this age, to become a warrior within
and reclaim the warrior archetype. This I have already begin. I
hope that you will join us.
For more articles like this please
visit our website, www.philadelphiasatyoga.4t.com.com,
which will lead you to a link at John Gilmore's Healing Hands where
you can find books and articles on Practical Spirituality and a link
On Being Love's Warrior. You can also find similar articles at this
e-zine or by signing up for our Bi-monthly Newsletter.
A Beautiful Life Starts With You -- November 21, 2010
The secret of a beautiful life is
knowing who you really are. Most our lives we work at gathering
thoughts about ourselves, ideas about the world, and as much
knowledge as possible. We add them together, stir them up and create
what we call the self--the
acting me in the world. We then work to support that idea of
the me by pushing out everything that is not me. We begin to push
out thoughts and ideas that interfere with the idea of me so often
that this happens automatically. This closes us off from new ideas,
thoughts, and the potential for us to expand and become greater. At
the same time the world, especially the media, is pumping in images
and ideas about what the me should be, thus making the me
uncomfortable and unable to apply its full attention and energies to
improving life for itself or living out its own hopes and dreams.
Society shows us, in so many words or examples, that is not going to
happen except for the chosen few. While we work hard and
struggle to hold on to the old idea of me we become frustrated. It
feels that we are winning but we are not satisfied because the thing
that we struggle to keep is not the real Me. It is just the earlier
projections of friends, families, relatives and of course, the good
old TV Set, weaving themselves into a false identity.
We discover this later in life, if we
are fortunate, and our striving becomes one of letting go and peeling
off the thoughts, ideas, and images that created the me so we can get
back to the primal self, the originator of the idea of me, or I.
When we come to this true self life begins. This is difficult
though. There are many internal obstacles and external ones. The
best way to deal with these obstacles is through meditation.
There are various forms of meditation,
of course. All of them seem to work, if a person is patient and if a
person understand why they are doing it. True meditation designed to
awaken the Self takes much dedication. It may take a lot of time, or
a brief period of time. If a person has much knowledge of the true
Self and the truth of being in the universe it can happen in one
moment. It becomes tearing away the vale between the Holy of
Holies and stepping into that sacred space where no idol or
representation of the Self exists, only the true, eternal being that
is one with every aspect of the universe and beyond.
The Sat (Truth of Being) Yoga
Approach focuses on teaching the knowledge of true Self, Atman,
firstly. It works at tearing down the internal, psychological
obstacles that prevent us from seeing the true self so that we, no
matter what the form of meditation we choose, can realize our true
Self and be awakened, or enlightened. At John Gilmore's Healing
Hands we promote Sat Yoga and Sat Spiritual Direction. We
promote the idea of a strong mind and body, and cultivation of the
spirit. We also provide books that do so for those who cannot afford
to pay for long workshops or face to face spiritual direction with
our latest being, Distant Corners in a Crowded Room: A Practical
Sat Yoga Approach to Better Living.
John Gilmore's Healing Hands provides
lectures, readings, talks and workshops to create an open space
within the individual that allows the awakening of the self to occur
by not only grace, but by choice. Grace is always present. That is
the nature of grace. The difficulty has always been being centered
enough and secure enough to open oneself to the grace in the
universe. It is important, therefor, to develop a sense of security,
safety, and especially the desire. When we do we will awaken to the
real Self. Life will change then. We will become the creators of
creation, not moved by the fears, the anger, insults, or suffering,
but creating hope, peace beauty and love. Another world is possible.
It is right here. The key to the other world is realizing and
remembering one's true self, and then having the power to hold onto
that identity by keeping all of the maladaptive messages we are
presented with day after day at bay.
Dr. John W. Gilmore, D. Min. (Om Prakash) is a
Body-Worker and Wellness Consultant. He is a writer of several books
and articles on Practical Spirituality that can be applied to the
betterment of one's life. For more articles like this please sign up for our newsletter. You can also find audio files and descriptions of our services at John Gilmore's Healing Hands, including audio
readings from Distant Corners in a Crowded Room as well as other
publications.
The Season of Lights -- November 22, 2010
It
is almost winter again. December is the last month of the year
when most of the Season
of Lights Festivals
are celebrated. These festivals celebrate the fact that the
light only begins to return to its full strength again when the
seasons are darkest, the night is the longest, and the winter is the
coldest. We do rituals and remembrances to remember that this
doesn't only happen in nature, but in our personal lives.
I
hope that you will remember, this season, that your life will get
better. No matter how down you feel, or how cold or scary the
circumstances, if you hold on your life will get better. A
bright shinning light from somewhere deep in your psyche, from the
universe, or from God will break through the darkness, and if you
just hold onto that light and warmth it will get brighter and
brighter leading you to the beauty of spring and the full growth of
summer.
Just hold on, my friends, and keep looking up
and within, for
your redemption draws near.
Do you believe in miracles? You should because miracles always
happen in one way or the other--I have seen them in my own life and
in the lives of many. You can have peace in the midst of the
storm if you realize that out of the darkness and death life and
light is born if we choose to make it so.
Find
the strength within, a good community, and good friends, who will
help you do so. Because miracles, and being whole and happy,
are not necessarily about being comfortable, or rich, or even
physically healthy, they are about being happy, healed, and joyful on
the inside so that you may face life with a pleasant feeling in your
heart and joy woven throughout your psyche no matter what the
circumstance. This is the true miracle that can be discovered
much more easily in a community that also recognizes that with
courage and understanding we have the power to create life out of the
most desperate moments time, after time, after time.
Dr.
John W. Gilmore, D. Min. is a Body-Worker and Wellness Consultant.
He is a writer of several books and articles on Practical
Spirituality that can be applied to the betterment of one's life.
For more articles like this please visit sign up for our newsletter at this website or our Friends of Sat Yoga, John Gilmore's Healing Hands Website. There you can sign
up for our Bi-monthly Newsletter. You will find a link here to our
Philadelphia Friends of Sat Yoga Website
John
Gilmore (Om Prakash) is a Massage Therapist and Wellness Consultant
in the Philadelphia Area. John Gilmore's main focus in his healing
work has been working with people who are social workers, service
providers, or other groups who don't usually take advantage of
alternative medicine and meditation. He is working at interweaving
bodywork, meditation, and moving meditation to empower the individual
to become self sufficient and a healthy contributing member of the
society. For more articles like this visit this ezine or our
Practical Spirituality Journal at http://www.freebinar.com/jghh1www.dswellness.com.
There you will find a link to our John Gilmore's Healing Hands
website where you can learn more about the Master
Blueprints Program on the Free Offers and Wellness page.
Practical Spirituality -- On Reclaiming
Real Science -- April 6, 2011
There seems to be a gap between what
leaders want and what the people want that is supported by false
religion and pseudoscience (another form of religion that uses
scientific jargon). This gap has existed for a long time, but has
been growing since the Age of Enlightenment. During that time, and
throughout history, religions began as counter cultural agents in the
society created to better the life of the individual by getting him
or her to realize they were more than a small group of people
struggling to survive.
Religion supplied a bigger picture of
humanity and what humanity could be. It recognized that we were all
one people. Some of the original concepts in religions even said
that loving each other was equal to loving God. They had a great
deal of power to shape the memes (social genes) of society to make it
more fair and just. Since this was the case, many of them were
co-opted to support the culture they stood in opposition to and used
by those in power to maintain their positions or gain position for
their own small group.
Today we find ourselves inundated with
religions that support the status-quo and promote things that their
founders just wouldn't have tolerated. In order to bypass these
anti-equality, anti-sex, anti-love, and anti-life religions that
support the few chosen and curse everyone else, many people today
have chosen the path of the mystic; even if that isn't something they
realize. Seeking spirituality through Yoga, Tai-Chi, Meditation and
other forms goes directly to the spiritual, bypassing the religious
and the institutional. This is the path of the mystic.
The problem with this, however, is that
many people taking this path are carrying the beliefs rooted in the
latest philosophy/religion that has been co-opted to support
hierarchy and empire—scientism. They can't even accept that
mysticism and enlightenment are possible because they are outside of
the narrow scope of modern science and have been demonized throughout
history through said institution. This has not always been the case.
The original form of science has been around for thousands of years
all over the world. Great discoveries have been made throughout
human history through science. At the time, however, there was no
separation between science and religion. Scientific experiments were
carried out and the findings passed on in mythic and religious terms.
Nonetheless, people were still doing
science. It was only in the 16th Century, when there was
a battle for power between the elite in the church and the elite in
academia that science got separated from religion and art. The
institution of science was created around that time. As time passed
science slowly began to ascend and take the place of religion, and
the basis of reality in most western countries became science instead
of the will of God as reported by the clergy. The mystics of today,
not surprisingly—in the US anyway, are not free of this underlying
materialistic fundamentalism because it has been socialized into all
of us. The truth is that science cannot explain everything and it
was never meant to. We cannot get a full understanding of the
universe or life just through science. We need more.
There is a deep misunderstanding about
science, in the general population, that is not shared by most real
scientists, that results in leaps of faith where people are blindly
following the latest scientific understandings, jumping from one to
the next and reducing science into a religion. Now there are even a
few fundamentalist scientists who won't accept the existence of
anything they can't measure. This is both frightening and a shame,
mainly because it reduces science to the a belief system similar to
the religious system from which it freed itself. I call this new
belief scientism.
In order to live fuller lives and
understand truth, however, it is necessary to reclaim real science.
It is necessary to recombine science, the arts, and religion, because
science, in actuality, is for everyone. Everyone doesn't know all of
the scientific methodology or jargon. Everyone does not know all of
the specifics, but everyone knows how to observe objects in the
world, understand them, compare one thing to the other, and notice
how changing one element in a persons life can change the persons
life completely. If that element is changed in other people's lives
and the other people's lives change completely in the same way one
knows according to logic and observation, that it is most likely that
the change in the element is bringing about a change in the person's
life. That, my friends, is science. We don't need a double blind
test to learn by doing and observing.
This is not what we have been told,
however. Our new religion is pseudoscience. We are told that we
cannot reason. We cannot understand the universe until we can find a
scientist that agrees with us. In most cases that is not good
enough. We have to have research done that only the ultra rich can
afford to pay for that will prove the truth. Science has become the
religion of the day. In order to break free from of it we must adopt
spirituality and mysticism with our understanding of the experience
coming from within and from people who have had the experiences
before.
Science cannot do this; scientists
cannot do this because the philosophy itself stops one from fully
entering into the experience. Sometimes it is necessary to leave the
scientific reason for things home and learn through experience so one
can awaken the larger Self who is well beyond the understanding of
science. In other words we must come to the point where we say,
“Don't tell me how meditation works, just show me how to do it.”
When we reach this point those who use false science and religion to
push forward political agendas will lose their power over us and we
will be free until the next thing is co-opted.
Dr. John W. Gilmore (Om Prakash) Is a
Writer, Massage Therapist and Body Worker and Wellness Consultant.
He has a B.A. in Psychology, a M. Dive., and a D. Min. in Creation
Spirituality from Wisdom University. For more writings like this one
please visit our websites at: www.dswellness.com
and www.philadelphiasatyoga.4t.com
where you can sign up for our newsletter, listen to presentations an
discussions, and deepen your spirituality. You can also explore our
link for Maestro Conferencing, one of the greatest tools for doing
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