My thinking is that spirituality needs to be able to define what is different about spiritual experiences (being different to intellectual or emotional experience). If you feel that you have had experiences of spirit I would like to hear from you in the comments in the post. I think spirituality is something that we need to talk about. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Evan

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My yoke is easy and my burden is light. – Jesus
What makes for an easy yoke (the metaphor is from using oxen to plough)? That it fits well. That is, it is in accord with the way oxen are made. This is the proper role of any discipline: to make us more truly ourselves; to fit well with what we are and can do so that we can do more.

That the burden be light means that there are no impossible demands. What’s more, the preference is for ease. This is quite different to the Nietzschean, “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”. Jesus favours ease and doesn’t ask us to risk our health or sanity to prove ourselves (but to who? Nietzsche? Our parents or other authority figures?). This approach can be applied in the martial arts – see the various books by Bruce Frantzis who emphasises doing 70%.

Grace
Biblical Christianity emphasises grace. In secular terms: life comes free. We did not make ourselves living beings. We can shape our lives and experience but we did not originate it. We can collaborate with and develop in harmony with what is real (life), or we can be miserable and fight it.

This can lead us to a life of gratitude. Not for everything in our world (the Bible is quite unsentimental about evil realities) but often for what we have and experience.

The Cross, and . . .
Biblical Christianity is quite often preaching about the cross of the Christ. And Jesus told his followers to take up the cross and follow him. The person carrying their cross was heading for certain death. Today it would be like saying: walk out in front of the firing squad with me.

The death referred to I think is the death of the ‘old nature’ (our bound and miserable existence devoid of true life). This is, often, not easy to do. Anyone who has been through a deeply transformative experience can tell you this. We know that the change is for the better – and we still can feel like we are dying (as in a sense we are).

After the death comes resurrection. Contrary to many a sermon, Biblical Christianity, does not praise the misery or suffering of the cross. Biblical Christianity focuses continually on the resurrection to full and real life. It emphasises the joy of the new way of living – that this is in accord with our true nature – that the old way was a life of delusion and misery.

The spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us from the law of sin and death – Paul
This is perhaps my favourite Bible verse. You can hear the joyfulness, the ecstatic release. The one point I want to emphasise is that for Biblical Christianity life comes in Christ. It is the ‘spirit of life’. Biblical Christianity is continually emphasising that the experience of spirit is one of joy; that it is able to cope with what life can throw at it, the spirit brings life.

This verse profoundly affirms life. God is not against creation but its distortion and misery. Biblical Christianity is a vision of life triumphant.

Flesh and Spirit
There has been much loose talk of ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ in Biblical Christianity. The ‘flesh’ is usually taken to be evil. This is not quite right. The problem with the flesh is its weakness (‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’ – Jesus. When Isaiah tells the Israelis to not fear the Egyptians horses because they are flesh not spirit, his point is that they are weak and God (being spirit) is strong.

It is known that the flesh in this evil age is weak – a source of vulnerability, but God’s desire (revealed in the vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation) is for healing of the flesh and for more life. Spirit brings more life – as Paul says, the spirit himself gives life to our mortal bodies. In Biblical Christianity there is no hint that creation is essentially evil – only that it has been distorted.

For a superb and insightful examination of flesh and spirit in the Old Testament see Perdersen’s Israel, its life and culture. This book changed the field of biblical anthropology; and its examination of the text is still relevant.

Theological digression. Neither does the Reformer’s doctrine of Total Depravity, despite the name, mean that there is nothing good in people. The reformers were emphasising that reason was not adequate to reach god. They were emphasising that reason too was fallen and not an especially spiritual part of us.

A Biblical Affirmation of Life
Biblical Christianity is for life, it emphasises the experience of joy and self-forgetfulness (to be able to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep means being able to set aside our own concerns). And it emphasises that this is not something we can do, however much we fret – it is received as a gift. Biblical Christianity emphasises gratitude. Biblical Christianity emphasises that the way to realise life is light and easy.

This post deals with things that have been the subject of reflection of reflection and argument for a couple of millenia.  For anyone with deep knowledge of these things this post will inevitably look thin and inadequate.  I have only really sketched an approach.  All comments are most welcome.

The answer is living authentically. Buy the book or sign up for the course now from my Living Authentically website.

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It’s a question I often ask myself when people say that faith heals – if faith could really heal, then are those who are spiritual in the prime of health? And if you’re an atheist, does that mean that you’re always prone to be sick? Now I know that the answers to these questions are not as clear cut as we would like them to be. For one, there is no concrete proof that health and spirituality are linked in any way. All of us know that to be born healthy, you need to be blessed with good genes. And then it’s up to us to maintain and care for our health by eating healthy food, exercising regularly, avoiding stress, and staying away from habits like smoking, drinking and drugs.

Now where does spirituality fit in to this equation? Do we mean to say that praying for good health alone makes it happen? No, definitely not. But there is a thin yet very flexible thread between spirituality and health – the one that is called strong belief. It’s a power that most of us don’t know exists, and even if we did, we have no idea how to tap it. Let me explain further.

Ever heard of Noetic science? If you’ve read Dan Brown’s novel The Lost Symbol, you’ll know what I’m talking about. In the book, there’s a scientist who researches the power of thought and is successfully able to quantify what we have until now known as only a quality. The book may be fiction, but the study of noetics is very real. Scientists are working on a way to prove that our thoughts affect who we are and what we become.

Perhaps this is why they say that positive thinking helps. And perhaps this is why we see that religious fervor helps block pain. But most of all, Noetic science proves the fact that more than individual thought, it is the collective thought process that has an altering effect on the course of things to come. For argument’s sake, let’s say that if most of the world were to focus their minds on one particular thought, then it has a fair chance of becoming a reality – that is what Noetics is out to prove.

But let’s come back to our topic – spirituality and health and how the two are related. It may sound completely unscientific, but I do believe that faith can help you when you are ill:
• If your disease is terminal, it gives you the courage to bear your pain and suffering and accept what is going to happen.
• If it’s something that you can overcome, spirituality helps you discover your willpower and commitment and allows you to fight the disease even though it is an uphill climb and a painful process.
• If it is an unexplained illness, spirituality helps you put your trust in doctors and others who care for you.

Spirituality augments health when it is combined with that one aspect whose name is an oxymoron – common sense. I say this because common sense is not so common these days. So if people expect to stay healthy even though they lead hedonistic lifestyles just because they’ve asked God to keep them in good health, then they’re sadly mistaken. What you need to do is follow the path that spirituality defines if you want to be healthy – and that means abstaining from negative aspects like gluttony, sloth and vice. Once you do this, you’ll soon realize that spirituality and health are connected after all.

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Karen Anderson, who writes on the topic of online bible colleges . She welcomes your comments at her email id : karen.anderson441@gmail.com

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For lack of a vision people perish. We need a vision of a path that is humane, practical and collaborative.
As well as a vision we need a way of speaking to each other.
As well as a way of speaking we need the patience to listen: to enemies and friends and, perhaps most of all, to those we are indifferent to.

But how?
It’s easy to forget that sometimes we succeed.
Hip nihilism is an easy way out, our (post-)modern temptation.
Our world is too complex and confused to be painted in only one colour – including black.
We have moments of connections with individuals; but this is not enough.
Our problems are as big as our planet and we lack ways to work together.
We lack a vision and a way of speaking – we are blind and dumb when we try to do big things.
But we know love and compassion and joy and laughter and delight and celebration with individuals.

How do we build from here? And how do we do it in time?
This is the big question I think: and I don’t have an answer to it.

I think we go on:
For the sake of our integrity. Because we care for our friends and families. Because there are places of beauty on our planet and in our neighbourhood.

We need to be ruthless with what doesn’t work and to build on the smallest successes: to experiment and learn.
We need options for actions:
that make a difference that we can see,
We need a vision, and a way of speaking; so that we can listen and act.

May we see clearly enough to take the next step,
May we listen well enough for compassion to arise,
May we act together for the good of all.

This reflection flowed into my journal almost without pause, almost exactly as written here. Even though it is a bit off topic for this blog I hope you will indulge me as it is close to Easter.
I’d like to hear from you in the comments if you have a prayer, confession or manifesto to share. Perhaps just a word or two or perhaps more extensive. Looking forward to hearing from you.

The answer is living authentically. Buy the book or sign up for the course now from my Living Authentically website.

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I am told that Jungian therapists have a saying to the effect that people come looking for a solution to a problem and leave when they find transformation. That is: we want a way to keep our old way of life to keep going. Which is quite sensible: Who needs extra stress in our lives – and change is stressful (even change for the better). From the point of view of this Jungian saying, the therapy is about going through the process of knowing that the old doesn’t work any more and finding a new way.

It also means that from this perspective finding a solution is a failure not a success (many a study on the success of psychotherapy is quite beside the point from this point of view).

This process isn’t confined to psychotherapy. Any significant change means some kind of change in ourselves. Would we really not want to be changed by the birth of our child?

The new is (at least partly) unpredictable. A new friendship is a friendship but may have unpredictable elements. Perhaps we anticipate the hard work of our new child but are stunned by the depth of feelings they evoke.

When we let go an attachment to our old way of life, this can be scary. We can’t know (exactly, in the old terms) what the new will be like. There is often a blank while the old is dying and the new emerges. This can be extremely difficult. To not go back to the old way is VERY difficult – it can take a memory of great suffering to provide sufficient motivation to stay with the blank.

If we can stay with the blank, the new will arise. Perhaps as slowly as the growth of a delicate shoot from the seed, perhaps with the overwhelming force of a hurricane.

This Easter I think that one of the meanings of the resurrection is that the new is somewhat different to the old. It was Jesus who rose from the dead, but a new and different Jesus. I think Easter means a new and more fulfilling way to live – and the way to it lies through allowing the old to die and waiting for the new to come. I have never found this easy; I have always found it worthwhile.

The answer is living authentically. Buy the book or sign up for the course now from my Living Authentically website.

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I am told that the Taoists having a saying to the effect that we should die 10,000 times a day: that is, with each breath we let go of what has gone before and welcome the new moment.

This only applies to some aspects of life. It doesn’t mean forgetting the language we learned many years ago and that enables us to read this advice for instance.

What does it apply to? It applies to what I loosely call ‘attachments’. What is an attachment? An attachment is an intellectual and emotional position that we live by and which we are unwilling to update.

An attachment is not an intellectual or emotional way of relating, it is not a belief or judgement. We all have these things and they often serve us well. The problem comes when we are confronted with a decidedly new situation or a situation that we are familiar with changes.

A situation that often reveals our attachments starkly is a divorce or relationship break up. We find that our understanding of the other person was quite wrong – and looking back we can see the signs that we missed. We may realise that they had been asking us to be more intellectually rigorous or emotionally forthcoming for years. We missed them because we were attached to our understanding of the person. We might find that we are experiencing new emotions for ourselves. We might be surprised by the words we say and the things we feel like doing (burning down houses perhaps). We are surprised because we are attached to our ideas about ourselves. We may have thought of ourselves as calm and reasonable and now find that we feel rage. We may have thought that we were warm and giving and discover we feel cold hatred.

Similarly, a change in a relationship can reveal our attachments. Going into a business with a friend, having a child with a romantic partner – things like this bring a change to the relationship. We may find that we need new ways to communicate or to divide tasks differently. The surprise or difficulty we have doing this is the measure of the depth of our attachment.

Giving up an attachment can be hugely difficult. We can feel like we are being torn apart – if you have been something like this you will know that I am not exaggerating. It really can feel like we are dying.

Take up your cross and follow me. Jesus – the gospels. Those carrying their crosses were headed for death.

This Easter you may like to take time to reflect on what situations are new or changed in your life. And what this new or changed situation is asking of you? What is the change that may be required of you? And what is making the change hard?

The answer is living authentically. Buy the book or sign up for the course now from my Living Authentically website.

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Michelle and I have been blogging friends for a while now. We realised that we have overlapping but this is the first time that we have spoken ‘face to face’. Michelle and Leila Reyes have a course called Divine Purpose Unleashed where they help you discover your purpose. If you feel that you haven’t found your purpose yet, this is your chance to.

The video is a little over 14 minutes long, its simply called Talking Purpose with Evan Hadkins. I hope you like it.

The answer is living authentically. Buy the book or sign up for the course now from my Living Authentically website.

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The answer is living authentically. Buy the book or sign up for the course now from my Living Authentically website.

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