Tag Archives: experience

To Know Requires Faith

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, Life-long learning continues, simple spiritual insights

A spirit teacher shares His understanding of timeless wisdom.
He tells me that knowing is not a matter of faith, and yet
there can be no knowing without faith.

What has faith to do with knowing?

How do we learn?

Through experience.

Yes, but not through experience alone.

We reflect on past experiences and use what we
have learned from them as foundations for future …

Future what?

To guide us in our responses to future challenges.

And if what experience has taught you differs from
what others would claim to be the way to live?

This is developing beyond intellectual concepts.

Yes.

Then please explain.

Knowing is awareness.

Awareness of what?

Awareness of what seems to be true, for us, if for
no other.

Where does faith come in?

We each, in time, develop faith in our own knowing,
or awareness; of our own truth.

I Am The Way I Am Because

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, higher education, life worth living

Spirit shares His understanding of timeless wisdom.

He tells me that I am the way I am because
that is the way I am.

The only question that seems to make any sense is,
So, why am I as I seem to be?

Your original nature has been modified
by experiences and reflection on those experience,
resulting in a personal interpretation, or
misunderstanding of the causes and consequences
resulting from previous experiences.

We learn from experience, and yet, some of us
learn quicker than do others.

Pain and pleasure seem to be necessary components
of our learning how to live in this World; and to
discover what works, or seems to, and what does not,
in different situations.

We learn that consistency of response is
inappropriate. What works with one situation does
not seem to work in another. We must also,
He tells me, learn to measure the quality of our
response to any given situation.

What ever made me think that living should be
easy? Perhaps that’s why the way I am is, or
seems to be, confusion, personified.

Limitless Potential

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, A spirit teacher tells me that, developing awareness

Spirit tells me that limitless potential is all that is,

was, or ever will be.

 

What does that mean in terms of those of us

who live in a very material and physical world?

 

It means that your so-called world is a temporary

experience.

 

The world as an experience?

 

Your world as an experience.

 

I am experiencing a personal world?

 

Yes.

 

How?

 

How what?

 

How can I experience a personal world?

 

By creating one.

 

Consciously?

 

More or less.

 

Then, everyone else creates and experiences

their own personal world?

 

Yes.

 

Then, how do all of our personal worlds

merge together?

 

They cannot.

 

But, we co-exist on or in one material world.

 

Do you?

 

What does that mean?

 

When or while we each create and experience

our separate existence from others, then

we each see the same reality from a personal

perspective.

 

Example?

 

One group may fight to defend a perceived claim

to land that the inhabitants of that land fight

to defend as their homeland. Then, each group

justifies their own action and condemns that

of the other.

 

You’re going to tell me that individuals think

and behave in the same way as groups?

 

No.

 

Then, what?

 

Groups are individuals who think and behave

as individuals, only collectively.

 

Then, the way we see the group world we each

create individually can only be changed

by individuals?

 

Yes.

 

How?

 

We need to learn to accept that others may not

experience the same thoughts as we do.

 

What about emotions?

 

What about them?

 

Do we not also experience different emotions?

 

No.

 

Then, emotions are more limited than thoughts?

 

Yes. Emotions have a more limited variety

than thoughts, but their depth is endless.

 

So, thoughts have an endless creative potential

but emotions possess a limitless depth of

expression?

 

Yes.

Spirituality as a Coping Strategy

Posted on by under developing awareness, Finding our unique way, higher education, self-transcendence, Spirit shares words of wisdom

Spirit tells me that spirituality is a coping
strategy. Spiritual people do not escape from
the challenges that human life requires them
to face and cope with.

However, spirituality provides an understanding
of how difficult situations develop and offers
an opportunity to learn ways and means of moving
around, over, under, or through difficult
situations.

Spirituality is not separate from intelligence.
It is a quality of intelligence, as is emotion.
Actually, intelligence itself is wisdom wearing
an academic cloak.

Intelligence is highly valued in human society.

What field of intelligence?

High Tech.

Yes, technological progress, as it is called,
has served to connect people in a way that would
have been considered as magical a few generations
before your current lifetime.

But, the quality of our global communication ….

Technology is a tool. People use tools to do
what they would do without them, if they could.

So, technology does not improve intelligence?

No.

So what does?

Intelligence is intelligence.

To some degree, more or less?

Yes.

What about spiritual intelligence?

What about it?

How do we develop it?

We cannot develop anything that we do not
already possess the potential to develop.

So, everyone possesses or is …

Is what?

Spiritually intelligent?

Yes.

Wow!!

Yes, we each are potentially spiritual
beings.

The breatharian mantra claims that “I am
a spiritual being sustained by the breath
of life.

Saying it doesn’t make it so. We are each
forms of energy with unique potentialities.

We each possess potential to become
spiritual?

To become more spiritual.

More than what?

More than what we now are.

But, if we were potentially …

Potential spiritual intelligence cannot
be considered as more than only …

Then, potential spiritual intelligence
is a necessary prerequisite to developing
any spiritual intelligence?

Yes.

How does spirituality become a coping skill?

Spirituality is a coping skill.

How to use it?

How do you use anything?

By first learning what it can do.

Yes.

How to learn what spirituality can do?

By living and reflecting on lived experience.

Awareness, Courage, and Faith in Self

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Spirit tells me that we each know what we know,
even though what we know may not be so.

How can we ever really know anything?

Experience helps.

But, we can’t possibly experience everything.

That isn’t necessary.

Then, what is?

Awareness.

Of what?

Of what we are experiencing, when we are.

How can we not be aware?

We are always aware of what we are experiencing,
at least to some extent.

Then, to develop a deeper awareness?

Yes, and an ever-more expanded experience
of awareness.

So, awareness itself is an experience.

Yes. Awareness must necessarily be experienced.

How to experience awareness?

Of what?

Of awareness.

Meditation and quiet reflection.

Perhaps some of us do all that now, and do
experience awareness of being aware of the
complexity of our personal and social existence,
but are unable to do anything about them.

In what way?

To change them.

Awareness is not designed to change anything.

Then, what is?

Courage, and faith in self.

We Each Know Everyone Else

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Spirit tells me that there have always been
dedicated teachers of wisdom in every culture
since time began, who have shared their
understanding and awareness of how life
can be lived for the benefit of all.

But, there are surely many more ways than
one to live a life that benefits all,
if it was possible to know how the life
we live could harm anyone.

Awareness would teach you.

How to become aware?

Experience.

Experience of what?

Being harmed as a result of how others
live their lives.

It isn’t possible to know how all others
live their lives.

Why?

I don’t know all others.

Do you know yourself?

Yes, I think so.

Then you know everyone else.

Where do Expectations Come From?

Posted on by under simple spiritual insights, Spirit shares words of wisdom

Spirit tells me tht we deprive elderly people
of the simple pleasure of self-care when
we do for them what they only require
assistance doing for themselves.

They become the object of our care and then
they begin to lose the sense of self-worth
that self-care allowed them to experience
and express.

What if they are unable, even with assistance,
to care for themselves?

When they are dead?

Not physically dead.

Emotionally?

No. Not that either.

Then?

You’re setting me up.

Yes.

Then, please explain.

Explain what?

I have been a care-giver and have
personally assisted clients with
bathing and home care, but
I have never, as far as I know,
been anyone’s first experience
in receiving paid care from.

What has that to do with anything?

Clients have expectations of what
to expect from paid caregivers.

Where do their expectations
come from?

A social worker would have
assessed their needs and …

How?

By testing their performance level
of activities of daily living.
The results would be recorded
on a scale of from very well
to not at all.

The results of the assessment
would determine what assistance
the person being tested required?

Yes.

Have you ever personally known
any client assessed as requiring
partial assistance cleaning
her kitchen or bathroom?

It’s quicker for the caregiver to do
the job alone and the time she
or he is allotted to any one client
is limited.

Then, the client becomes the job
that is objectified;?

That sounds impersonal.

In today’s so-called health care
system, client care has become
very impersonal.

So, how can we improve it?

We can learn to care.

How?

The only way possible.

Personal experience?

Yes.

Knowing requires Faith

Posted on by under developing awareness, grass-roots ethics, Spirit shares words of wisdom

Spirit tells me that knowing is not a matter of faith
and yet there can be no knowing without faith.

What has faith to do with knowing?

How do we learn?

Through experience.

Yes, but not through experience alone.

We reflect on past experience and use what we have
learned from it as a foundation for future …

Future what?

To guide us in our responses to future challenges.

And if what experience has taught you differs from
what others would claim to be the way to live?

This is developing beyond intellectual concepts.

Yes.

Then please explain.

Knowing is awareness

Awareness of what?

Awareness of what seems to be true, for us if for
no other.

Where does faith come in?

We each, in time, develop faith in our own
knowing, or awareness, of our own truth.

Do we only think we know what we are?

Posted on by under developing awareness, grass-roots ethics, simple spiritual insights

Spirit refuses to accept my complaint that I am what I am and
I need what I need.

No! He claims. I only think I am whatever and need whatever,
without thinking deeply.

So, if I thought deeply, if I could, then what would I
think I am and need?

You would not think. You would know that you are spirit
living a physical life, and you would be aware that it
is all an illusion, except for the awareness that you
may have developed from playing the Game of Life,
according to whatever rules your particular society has
designed for you.

If different societies play the Game of Life by different
rules, and we are all becoming, more or less, citizens of
a world community, then how can we possibly interact with
each other?

The Rules of Life of different cultures, societies,
communities, or even neighbourhoods do not necessarily
have to be the same.

That may work in separated traditions but when people
migrate from one set of generally accepted set of rules
to another, then surely they need to adapt or learn to
live within the two cultures, without rejecting their
past.

They are their past, or at least they are a product of
past experiences.

The answer?

Respect for past traditions while adapting, or
creating our own set of rules to live by. Whatever
choice we make, however we choose to live our life,
we do choose and accept, consciously or otherwise,
the consequences, if there are any, and there
always are.

Your story is my story

Posted on by under developing awareness, grass-roots ethics, simple spiritual insights, Spirit shares words of wisdom

Spirit tells me that our personal stories must necessarily be incomplete and less than real.

“How can my life story be less than real?”

“Who experienced it?”

“I did.”

“And who recorded it?”

“I did.”

“How?”

“Through memories. How else?”

“Someone might have told you your story when you were too young to be aware of how true it was.”

“If so, that was then.”

“Your story can never be then. Life stories are never then and now, unless there are two or more versions of the same story, and there always are.”

“Then how can we know our own story?”

“It isn’t possible. We’re living interconnected life stories.”

“Then your story and mine may be the same story?”

“Yes, from different perspectives.”