One of the first issues people on the spiritual path have to address is a doctrinal one: Is it wrong to ask questions that I’ve never asked before? Is asking questions about the truth we’ve been taught “sinful?” Your answer can have a dramatic effect on your ability to explore who you are and what you believe in without guilt!

If anyone has ever told you that the path to spiritual self-awareness (defined in it’s simplest terms as “knowing who you are and what you believe in, and letting those beliefs be the driving force in your life”) is an easy one, they were being less than honest!

Finding your own truth in these times of confusion and change is no small undertaking, and it isn’t surprising that many people begin the journey full of hope and enthusiasm, but – as each step becomes even more difficult because it requires even more honestly with yourself and with others – they begin to lose courage. They find a comfortable plateau – a point in their lives where things are better than they used to be – and they decide that staying where they are might not be such a bad option. Why seek the infinite potential within yourself if you’ve found a self you’re comfortable with already?

Unfortunately, the first stumbling block most of us run into is a “biggie.” We run into a catch-22 situation: we can’t question our personal truth without questioning the doctrine of the religious environment we grew up in, and there’s a part of us that feels that the very act of questioning is, in some way, “sinful.”

Whether our conviction is for or against our basic religious beliefs, we hesitate to rock our spiritual boat by entering the world of adverbs: who is God, what is my relationship with Him, where does He fit into my life, when will I know for sure what is truth and what is not, and how do I get to a point in my life where it all makes sense to me, and I’m no longer caught up in the never-ending cycle of trying to understand why this is happening to me?

Between the guilt of not accepting at face value the religious doctrine we were taught as children and the confusion of trying to find something solid to replace it with, we move into the Scarlett O’Hara mode: who can forget the dramatic moment in Gone with the Wind when Scarlett says, in the face of adversity, “I shan’t think about this today. If I think about this today, I shall go absolutely crazy.” We put the whole issue of “spiritual truth” on the back burner, and go on with our lives. For a while.

Sooner or later, we find ourselves right back where we started: some situation in our lives points out to us – again – that we really don’t have much of a spiritual foundation at all. If we did, we’d understand ourselves, and other people, and see the order of the universe reflected in the order of our lives. Instead, we see the same old, same old emotional chaos driving the same old, same old lives, and we feel the need – again – to question who we are and what we believe in and why our life is the way it is.

It is this sense of dissatisfaction (discontent, unhappiness, frustration, confusion) that makes us want to question again, and we find ourselves – once again – in a learning cycle that encourages us to confirm our personal beliefs and begin expressing them in our day to day relationships with others.

If our life is working for us – if we aren’t in the Scarlett O’Hara mode and we feel good about who we are and what we’re doing – we don’t feel any need to question our spiritual truth, because it’s – obviously – working for us. It’s not human nature to seek answers for what IS working in our lives; it’s when the situations and relationships that make up our “lifestyle” create circumstances that are NOT comfortable that we question.

If the present-moment pieces of our personal puzzle fit together, life works for us, and we are happy and contented with what’s happening on a day to day basis; when the situations and relationships create pain, conflict, and/or disharmony, and we wake up each morning feeling less than enthusiastic about what the new day will bring us, we need to have the personal courage to ask why. There are no victims in life, and we need to be willing to look at ourselves and our lives – and the truth that motivates our behavior in any given circumstance – to see which pieces of our personal puzzle are bent, broken or missing altogether.

When we do everything that we’re “supposed” to do, and life still doesn’t work for us, we realize, with some sadness, that our “personal truth” looks good on paper but doesn’t work when we apply it to our day to day lifestyle, and we are driven to find the missing element (or elements) so that we can be at peace again, knowing that we are living day by day according to our own truth – a truth that we have developed through the experience of discovering for ourselves what works for us instead of listening to what other people think should work for us.

Our conviction in that truth is soul deep, because we have applied it to our lives and our relationships and seen it work positive miracles on a daily basis. We come to understand that we’ve grown spiritually to the point where “truth” is no longer what we say we believe; it’s who we are, and a natural expression of our “self.”

Most often, the missing piece in the puzzle is a personal relationship with God. We discover for ourselves that the day to day ritual that is such an important part of “established religion” doesn’t constitute a working relationship with the Higher Power in our lives, and when we limit the spiritual expression of ourselves to ritualistic participation in specific activities within certain timeframes, we’re not only prohibiting the development of a personal relationship with God, we’re prohibiting our personal growth and self-expression overall.

We’re missing the point: spirituality is an aspect of ourselves that is present 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Spirituality is our personal definition of the adverbs in our lives, and the foundation on which we decide who we are, what we believe in, where we choose to “come from” when we deal with other people, when we have the right to be happy, and how we choose to express our personal truth on a day to day basis. Religion (that is, the “right religion” for us as individuals) allows us to express our personal truth through fellowship with others who believe in the same truth we do, and shouldn’t be mistaken for spirituality.

Spirituality is the foundation on which our life is built, and should be the basis on which we make our everyday choices. It is through this day to day expression of our personal truth that we express our personal relationship with God; it is our active choice to live our life according to God’s universal laws (which are the foundation on which all “religions” are based) and make an active choice to work in the best interest of everyone involved rather than focus into our own ego-driven emotional responses – a willingness to look at our lives and the world we live in with a more loving and accepting perspective that sets us apart from the average person.

Living our personal truth is what enables us to live an ordinary life in an extraordinary way, and that is the ultimate objective of every major “religion” in the world:” for each of us to experience, on a daily basis, the extraordinary benefits of having a personal relationship with God.

The questioning that comes with change is a natural process. It’s through questioning that we come to confirm our own truth about life. As we grow in awareness, and begin to integrate the spiritual aspect of ourselves into our day to day lifestyle- as it becomes not a part of who we are but who we are, we come to realize that we need not feel threatened by someone else’s truth or someone else’s perspective.

Once we’ve moved beyond our own emotional issues about spiritual truth, we find that the journey to places we’ve never been – new ideas, new opinions, new perspectives – gives us truth in it’s many forms and with it’s many faces that we can use to confirm (or deny) what WE think and therefore, who we choose to be.

Questioning feels right, because we understand that it was intention that we use our minds to explore, to question, and to find our own path to Him. We realize that life issues such as this aren’t really as complex as we sometimes make them out to be. We don’t pour a cup of coffee into a cup that still has hot chocolate in it; we don’t add iced tea to the glass with lemonade leftovers. We take a new cup, and we fill it with the drink of our choice.

So it is with spiritual truth: we must be willing to give up the old, if even for a little while, to make room for the new. Some of the old we will go back to, and some of the old we will replace with something new that is more appropriate to the newer, wiser person we have become. When we have finished, we will know the sense of being in a position where “our cup runneth over” with peace, contentment and happiness.

It’s at the point when we begin to question in earnest that our higher consciousness – that is, our willingness to listen and follow the little voice inside – becomes a key factor in determining which path we’ll follow next. To be all that we can be, we must be willing to give up all that we have been before; we must be willing to experience a “spiritual death” so that we can be “reborn,” if you will, to a higher understanding of life and it’s purpose.

It’s our “higher self” (as represented by our “inner voice”) who carries us – if we allow it – through this process, reminding us that from chaos comes growth, and from confusion comes understanding. As D. H. Lawrence so aptly put it in “Phoenix,”

Are you willing to be sponged out,

erased, cancelled, made nothing?

Are you willing to be made NOTHING?

dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.

The phoenix renews her youth

only when she is burnt,

burnt alive, burnt down

to hot and flocculent ash.

Then the small stirring of a new

bub in the nest

with strands of down

like floating ash

Shows that she is renewing

her youth

like the eagle

Immortal bird.

Know that your Higher Self is driving you to change, compelling you to let go of your self-imposed limitations and fly high, until you have reached your own infinite potential and are – every hour of every day – all that you intended to be in this lifetime.

I recently had a friend ask me “If God was omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and all-loving, then why is it that He made man knowing that he would sin just to turn around and destroy him with a flood? And, if He was “so loving”, why would He allow for such atrocities in our world as rape, murder, child abuse, and so on and send natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes to kill thousands of people? What kind of God is that? Who is this God, anyway?”

These questions were posed in such a way that, unless someone could answer them, they simply couldn’t believe that God possessed these all-powerful characteristics.

In all honesty, only God Himself can answer these questions with any assurance of a correct answer. However, in a human attempt to offer insight, I believe that one must internalize a couple of things.

First, one must understand that God has banished Satan to this world and has allowed him to reside here temporarily. As sang in the hymn “A Mighty Fortress” (1529), “on earth is not his equal” and, as stated in 1 Peter 5:8, “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Without the strength of God working in us and through us, we have no chance against the power of Satan. Furthermore, only a portion of the world accepts and seeks the power of God for anything, much less strength. So is there any question as to why there is such evil in our society and world when Satan runs rampant throughout it?

I once heard someone in a sermon answer the question of “How powerful is Satan,” with the answer being “as powerful as God allows him to be and not one ounce of power more.” This is an important point but it also raises the question again from my friend. “What kind of God is that?”

Second, one must consider the God that we are asking this about and think of Him in comparison to us – man. Louie Giglio makes an interesting such comparison in his sermon “How Great is Our God”.1 He starts out his sermon by describing how we, as individuals, relate to the world population – one of 6.7 billion people. To put it into perspective, that is like comparing one second to over 212 years. Giglio takes the comparison further by comparing the size of our world, the Earth, to our Sun – and then to other stars. He finally reaches the comparison of our Earth to Canis Majoris – the largest star in the universe identified by man. To make the comparison, he states that if the Earth were a golf ball, Canis Majoris could contain the same number of Earths as it would take to cover the entire state of Texas with golf balls to a depth of 22″. This is just one star. According to Universe Today, on average there are approximately 200 billion stars in a galaxy and astronomers estimate there are approximately 100 billion to one trillion galaxies in the universe. 2 Although we cannot even fathom the magnitude of this number of stars, to say that this number of stars exists means that there are a finite number of them. But if the universe is infinite, then so are the stars.

So what? What’s important about all of these stars? The importance is that something created them. Something that was significantly larger than all of the stars and galaxies in the universe. God is the Creator; the universe and man are the creation.

To further help with a comparison of God to man, we should look further into our own human bodies and how we are created. Each of us is created from a blueprint (DNA) of which half came from our mother and half from our father. This DNA blueprint and the formation of the initial human cell from which we formed is a miraculous concept. Man may have a limited scientific understanding as to how this continual process works but he has no scientific explanation as to how this occurrence happened the very first time – how God made man from nothing.

Our bodies are full of evidence of God’s amazing power and capability. Take the human eye for instance, arguably the most technological advancement on earth. As Giglio also explains in his sermon, during the development of the human eye while we are still in our mother’s womb, a million nerve endings from the brain must match up and connect perfectly with a million nerve endings from the eye. One million to one million! Think of the level of complexity that is required to accomplish this and how many children are born each minute in this world with excellent eyesight. The planning and execution of the formation of our bodies is NOT without divine intervention each and every time a child is conceived and born. It’s no wonder God cares about each one of us.

Giglio points out one other interesting observation about our body’s chemistry in his message. He describes one of the proteins key to bonding together the cells within the human body – a component that holds us together. The interesting observation about this component is its shape. This important protein is called laminin and it is shaped like a cross.

When I learned this, the only thing going through my mind was “How awesome is this? Christ, all throughout my body, holding me together, cell by cell. And what perfect planning.” I know God planned for us to become technologically advanced enough to piece this together one day. He knew what He was doing with the cross 2000 years ago and He planned it before creating the first human. Christ has been with and in man since inception. If all of this is not incredible planning, what is?

Someone might say, “Oh, that’s just a coincidence.” But I don’t believe in coincidences. The use of the term coincidence is only our arrogant way of dealing with the fact that we are incapable of understand something enough to explain it. My guess is that God only laughs about our thought of something being a coincidence.

The bottom line in all of this is that we can make no rational comparison of ourselves to God. God is obviously so far beyond our ability to comprehend what He is thinking and doing that for us to expect to do so is completely preposterous. To focus our meager mind and a stubborn effort on trying to fully comprehend Him is futile and will only drive us insane.

God doesn’t expect us to understand His thinking, planning, or execution in how He runs the universe – including who He allows to have power in this world. He doesn’t have to ask our permission for this and He doesn’t have to explain Himself in our individual circumstances, whatever they may be. He simply wants our love, trust and faith. To “earn” this from us – and we often treat Him as though HE has to earn this – He’s demonstrated His awe and power through the creation of the universe and all things within it. He’s demonstrated His love and promise to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He isn’t asking us to question Him, to challenge or test Him, or to criticize Him. He IS all-knowing and He knows that He’s beyond our comprehension so He doesn’t expect us to understand Him. What He expects is for us to worship Him, praise Him, fellowship with Him, and obey Him – Him being the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – all being one God. In showing our love for Him, He wants us to also love one another within which He exists. What He promises to us for this faithfulness is eternal life with Him. Although we can barely imagine how good that will be, only He can comprehend how absolutely magnificent and glorious His presence is. But He promises that – and what a promise. His promise is good enough for me!

Footnotes:

1 Louie Giglio; How Great is Our God, 40 min., Six Step Records, 2009, DVD.

2 Fraser Cain; “How Many Stars”; http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/stars/how-many-stars/ accessed 1/17/10

By Mark Trail

Spirituality is a global, cultural (and sometimes religious) phenomenon. People have various beliefs concerning how best to receive and participate in it. Must one have a priest, minister, pope, or other intermediary, or can one have a direct, independent relationship to experience spiritual bliss and health?

There is something for everyone in this list of Top Ten (10) Books to Read for Spiritual Health and Fitness in 2009. Some have sold millions of copies worldwide, while others are not as well-known because they are not mainstream or do not have a publish date as of this article publication. Whether their format is non-fiction or fiction, the following books are on this list because they challenge and inspire people to visit spiritual beliefs and behaviors in our challenging and remarkable world.

1. The Bible (and related texts)

There are so many translations or versions of the bible. Why limit yourself to just one version? The version with which most people are familiar is the King James book. Theologians know there are multiple texts available for the serious student of Judeo-Christian theology, some more controversial than others like the “Gnostic Gospels of Jesus.” Interested in women? There’s “Women in the Bible,” by Ann Spangler and Jean Syswerda. Become re-acquainted (or newly acquainted) and perhaps discover something new about your own spirituality in the process.

2. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Spiritual Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams (Deepak Chopra)

Deepak Chopra wrote “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success” in 1994. They are a guide to living a healthy spiritual life from an eastern perspective that on the surface looks fairly easy to follow; putting them into practice in daily life takes significant attention and commitment. Each person who attempts to follow them will discover which are relatively easy and which are more difficult. Try living this one on a daily basis:?”In order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it” (The Law of Detachment).

3. The Four Agreements?A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (Don Miguel Ruiz)

The author is Mexican and a master in the Toltec Wisdom spiritual tradition. He shares this wisdom for spiritual living in his book as four main principles. Just like in “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,” some are more challenging than others. “Do not take anything personally,” is similar to the Law of Detachment in Chopra’s book. It’s interesting to learn how universal spiritual principles are despite the different cultures and geographical locations from which they are born. This guy is so open-minded; he even suggests that we regularly question what others, he, or we believe as the truth.

4. The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous)

The “Twelve and Twelve” as they are commonly known in anonymous program fellowships were created to help people recover from a variety of addiction diseases. They are used as spiritual medicine and treatment for self-change and healthy relationships with “God, ourselves, and others.” The principles are so powerful, it’s a shame they are not used more widely by others outside the program: surrender to what you can’t control in your life, gain hope that you can change with the help of a power greater than yourself, turn your will and life over to a loving, caring power, and these are just the foundation principles.

5. The Alchemist:A Fable about Following Your Dream (Paulo Coelho)

“The Alchemist” is a simple story about a boy on a journey to find a treasure. What occurs along the way in this fable is engaging, thought-provoking, and utterly enjoyable. By the end of the story, you’ll find that the boy isn’t the only one who reaps rewards and riches: miraculously, so do many readers.

6. Chocolat (Joanne Harris)

“Chocolat” invites you into the world of a small village in France, where the inhabitants lead lives that appear frozen and uneventful centered in the guidance of a priest. A woman and her little girl (“foreigners”) come to town. They set up a chocolate caf?. Somehow, the caf? owner knows each person’s chocolate preference, and what will suit them best in their lives. A battle begins between the priest and the woman for the soul of the town. “Chocolat” takes an honest look at the positive and negative potential affect of religious and spiritual extremes.

7. Standing Naked in Rose Petals (Eleanora Amendolara)

What’s most precious to most human beings? Is it to know and love your Creator, yourself, and others? “Standing Naked in Rose Petals” is the true story of a woman valued as an extraordinary human being, healer, and teacher by people whose lives she has touched. This book is an account of a gifted woman in search of her place in existence with her eyes, heart, mind, and soul becoming wide open. Email the author, join the mailing list, and be notified when the book is published. (Link to the book project: http://sacredcenter.net/book.html.

8. What They Want You to Know: Messages from beyond the grave (Carter Shepard & Carolyn Cummings)For all you Fox Mulders out there . . . What does Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, or John Kennedy, Jr., think about United States politics today? When Leonardo DiVinci painted The Last Supper, who did he paint as the figure to the left of Jesus? Is it a male or female disciple? Read conversations with some VIP political, scientific, and arts personalities who are now in the spiritual realm, who want to share wisdom to help us lead loving, positive, spiritual lives. The authors have used their communication and channeling abilities to create this unique book, and hope readers will keep an open mind. It’s a fascinating read whatever your beliefs.

9. Animal Speak: The Spiritual & Magical Powers of Creatures Great & Small (Ted Andrews)

“Animal Speak” is a comprehensive dictionary on the spiritual properties of mammals, birds, insects, and reptiles as believed and understood by Native Americans and other indigenous cultures. Have you ever felt heavily drawn to a particular animal, or wondered why a certain one tends to cross your path regularly or is in your dreams? This book identifies the particular characteristics and energies animals have to guide, inspire, or help people. Animals are crucial in many religious and spiritual traditions (e.g. Saint Francis in Christianity). Discover what it means to have Wolf or Raven medicine.

10. Harold & the Purple Crayon, 50th Anniversary Edition, 2005 (Crockett Johnson)

“Harold & the Purple Crayon is a story about a boy and his purple crayon. Originally published in 1955, it’s been read by millions of children worldwide for years. It’s a simple, and yet, profound book about imagination, manifestation and creation. There are eight books in the “Harold” series. Read up on the spiritual properties of color for more insight into the color purple.

These are a few of the food for the spirit resources currently available in book stores and libraries, or scheduled for 2009 publication. Since the body and mind are connected to the spirit, reading these books will increase one’s fitness and wellness overall.

God is the creator of all nations.The human being is God’s greatest creation. The human being can make intelligent decisions, has a conscience and differentiate between good and bad. God created man out of the dust of the earth. He blew life into his nose resulting into man becoming alive.Man is not a mistake. He has been created in a wonderful way. Man was created to glorify God. He created Man for Himself. He wants to have a uninterrupted fellowship with him. Adam and Eve could decide whether they wanted to glorify Him. God would have been honoured if they voluntarily glorified Him. Sins caused Man not to glorify Him any longer.However, God`s original intention remained intact. God took steps to restore them to their original function.This restorative process would last their entire time on earth.

The creation and maintenance of the universe could not have been because of a big bang or by accident. Who else could have created it? Only God has this power. Secondly the creation of all things was by the spoken Word of God. The fascinating design can be seen everywhere.The universal laws controls and maintains this.

God also created heaven and earth for himself. Man was appointed as his representative on earth.God is the supreme owner of everything. God governs this world by laws He made Himself. He may pass decisions as He pleases to do. God can send storms, droughts, floods, pests or whatever he wishes to send.God can also send either problems or blessings or both. His possessions can also be given to whoever He thinks to give to. Nobody can question him about that. God may give or take as he wish. He may cause nations to rise and kingdoms to grow and rule. Nations may even be enriched or impoverish. Life and death on earth is controlled by God.

God and idols have a big difference between them. Idols are the creations of the imagination of people, usually in the form of a man-made image. Evil spirits initiates the creation of idols. Idols may also be ordinary things that man prefers before God. People can not monopolize God for themselves.

God’s disciples, through Jesus Christ, are called His children.God is glorified by people who voluntarily submit to His authority. His disciples glorify Him out of gratitude. God’s glorifies everything He wants them to do. God is alive and still are healing the sick and solving problems. God is the Master of the Universe.

It is a letter but is it more than just a letter? It certainly is and it was compiled by leaders who at the time were totally unaware of how serious the document they were writing would be regarded by others.

I am referring to the first letter to the Thessalonians, and it is a letter from Paul and Silas, or Silvanus, and Timothy, and it is sent to the Church of Jesus Christ, and the wording is most specific and precise. It is some title.

God and Christ are mentioned quite categorically. God without Christ can give rise to a question and Christ without God is nothing but heresy, but God and Christ is power and these people knew the power of God the Holy Spirit.

There is a double emphasis here. The Church belongs to Christ and to God. When we belong to God we belong to Christ and when we belong to Christ we belong to Almighty God.

There is another double emphasis from these leaders. Grace and peace to you from God and from Jesus Christ, and we know that this speaks of the unity between the Father and the Son, and of course the Holy Spirit.

There is perfect unity and perfect harmony and perfect agreement.

From that unity flows grace and peace. Grace and peace flow from a source which knows no disunity or disharmony. If only the world could understand this!

No matter what shortages there are on earth, there will never be a shortage of grace and peace.

The Church is universal, but this letter is to a church in a particular place.

Thessalonica was named after the sister of Alexander the Great. It was on the main road from Rome to India, west to east, and we know it was governed by a democratically elected Assembly, and we think this is the first such place with such democracy to which the Christian faith had come.

What happened in this city could be transported and take root elsewhere.

This was another strategically important area for a different reason, from the Roman colony of Philippi.

Alexander the Great came to conquer for Greece.

Paul and his anointed team came in a different direction to conquer for Jesus Christ the King, and with very different methods.

Everywhere Alexander of Macedonia went the people spoke Greek, and as Paul preached in Greek, the Gospel of Jesus Christ swept through the Greek and now Roman Empire.

Although we regard this letter as one of Paul’s, do note that there are three names in the opening greetings. Take time to read and even study the letter. It becomes part of the Word of God.

Sandy Shaw