Spiritual Growth: the Spiritual Dare of Contemporary Times
To grow spiritually in a world defined by power, money, and influence is a Herculean task. Contemporary conveniences such as electronic equipments, gadgets, and tools as well as entertainment through TV, magazines, and internet have predisposed us to restrict our attention mostly to physical needs and wants. As a result, our concepts of self-worth and self-meaning are muddled. How can we strike a steady between the fabric and spiritual aspects of our lives?
To grow spiritually is to see inward.
Introspection goes beyond recalling the matters that just occurred in a day, week, or month. You need to see closely and mirror on your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Periodically analyzing your experiences, the decisions you make, the relationships you’ve, and the matters you engage in supply useful insights on your life goals, on the good traits you must sustain and the poor, naughty traits you’ve to vacate. In addition, it gives you clues on how to behave, react, and behaviour yourself in the midst of any situation. Prefer any skill, introspection can be learned; all it takes is the courage and willingness to seek the truths that lie within you. Here are some pointers when you introspect: be objective, be forgiving of yourself, and focus on your areas for improvement.
To grow spiritually is to develop your potentials.
Religion and science have differing views on things of the human spirit. Religion views people as spiritual beings temporarily living on Soil, while science views the spirit as fair one dimension of an individual. Mastery of the self is a recurring theme in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings. The needs of the body are recognized but put under the needs of the spirit. Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and good works supply the blueprint to ensure the growth of the spiritual being. In Psychology, realizing one’s full potential is to self-actualize. Maslow identified several human needs: physiological, security, belongingness, love, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence. James earlier categorized these needs into three: fabric, emotional, and spiritual. When you’ve convinced the radical physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs come next. Achieving every need leads to the complete development of the individual. Maybe the difference between these two religions and psychology is the conclusion of self-development: Christianity and Islam look that self-development is a means toward serving God, while psychology dogma that self-development is an conclusion by itself.
To grow spiritually is to search for meaning.
Religions that trust in the existence of God such as Christianism, Judaism, and Islam assume that the purpose of the human life is to serve the Creator of all matters. Several theories in psychology suggest that we ultimately give meaning to our lives. If we trust that life’s meaning is pre-determined or self-directed, to grow in spirit is to fulfill that we don’t merely exist. We don’t know the meaning of our lives at birth; but we profit knowledge and wisdom from our interactions with people and from our actions and reactions to the situations we’re in. As we discover this meaning, there are sure beliefs and values that we reject and affirm. Our lives have purpose. This purpose puts all our physical, emotional, and mental potentials into use; sustains us during trying times; and gives us something to see forward to—a perfection to accomplish, a destination to arrive. A person without purpose or meaning is prefer a drifting ship at sea.
To grow spiritually is to recognize interconnections.
Religions emphasise the concept of our relatedness to all creation, dwell and inanimate. Thus we call other people “brothers and sisters” even provided there are no proceed blood relations. In addition, deity-centered religions such as Christianity and Islam talk of the relationship between humans and a higher being. On the other hand, science expounds on our link to other living matters through the evolution theory. This relatedness is clearly seen in the concept of ecology, the interplay between living and non-living matters. In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the highest human need according to Maslow. Recognizing your connection to all matters makes you more humiliate and respectful of people, animals, plants, and matters in mood. It makes you appreciate everything around you. It moves you to go beyond your consolation zone and arrive out to other people, and become stewards of all other matters around you.
Growth is a process thus to grow in spirit is a day-to-day come across. We win some, we lose some, but the significant object is that we memorize, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.