Introduction to Spirituality

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Example 1

Spirituality is a quality that belongs exclusively to the human animal…. It’s the life energy, the restlessness, that calls us beyond “self” to concern for – and to relationships with – others, and a to relationship with the mysterious “other”. Spirituality is our ability to stand outside of ourselves and consider the meaning of our actions, the complexity of our motives and the impact we have on the world around us. It is our capacity to experience passion for a cause, compassion for others and forgiveness of self. Spirituality is a process of becoming, not an achievement; a potential rather than a possession….

I. What is your spirituality?

The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a positive way

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The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a negative way

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Your position in regard to this example

Your account of this position

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II. What is your concept of spirituality?

The sentence(s) which relate the most to your concept of spirituality

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The sentence(s) which relate the least to your concept of spirituality

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Your position: what does this example have to do with spirituality

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Example 2

One thing that especially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker’s yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks.

It was quite incomprehensible to me – this was before I began going to school – why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: “O heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace.”

It was spring and the end of Lent, when one morning my friend said to me: “Come along, let’s go on to the Rebberg and shoot some birds.” This was to me a terrible proposal, but I did not venture to refuse for fear he should laugh at me.

We got close to a tree which was still without any leaves, and on which the birds were singing beautifully to greet the morning, without showing the least fear for us. Then stooping like a red Indian hunter, my companion put a bullet in the leather of his catapult and took aim. In obedience to his nod of command, I did the same, though with terrible twinges of conscience, vowing to myself that I would shoot directly after he did. At that very moment the church bells began to ring, mingling their music with the songs of the birds and the sunshine. It was the warning-bell, which began half an hour before the regular peal ringing, and for me it was a voice from heaven. I shooed the birds away, so that they flew where they were safe … and then I fled home.

And ever since then, when the Passiontide bells ring out to the leafless trees and the sunshine, I reflect with grateful emotion how on that day their music drove deep into my heart the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”

I. What is your spirituality?

The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a positive way

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The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a negative way

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Your position in regard to this example

Your account of this position

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II. What is your concept of spirituality?

The sentence(s) which relate the most to your concept of spirituality

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The sentence(s) which relate the least to your concept of spirituality

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Your position: what does this example have to do with spirituality

Your account of this position

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Example 3

Late one evening in May 1985, Alice had her nature-mystical visionary experience, beautifully described in the following words:

It was close to eleven in the evening when I happened to look out of the window. The sky was grey and cloudy, and in the twilight everything was so calm and quiet. Behind their black, shining windows people already had gone to sleep, but from some windows a feeble light was shining. All my life I have lived in a sort of friendly relationship with trees and I privately share my existence with those birches and pines that grow outside my house. Suddenly my gaze was fixed on one of the pines, the trunk of which was concealed behind a house. I could only see the top of the tree, which shone flaming red in a strong glowing light. Flames of light sort of devoured the top of the pine-tree. Waves of light were visible around the top of the tree. From my window I clearly saw the braches of the pine and its needless looked strongly enlarged. They seemed to be self-shining and sparkling red. /…/ I stood there, breathless and quiet, with my sight fixed on this pine-top, which really was burning of fire and heat – but without being consumed and charred into ashes. A feeling of total harmony flowed through me during these seconds, before the glowing, shining light slowly dissolved and disappeared. My whole being was in strong union with an indestructable, universal wholeness, where everything is eternal and immortal.

I. What is your spirituality?

The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a positive way

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The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a negative way

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Your position in regard to this example

Your account of this position

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II. What is your concept of spirituality?

The sentence(s) which relate the most to your concept of spirituality

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The sentence(s) which relate the least to your concept of spirituality

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Your position: what does this example have to do with spirituality

Your account of this position

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Example 4

“From the loudspeaker of a mosque I heard the cry ‘Allah akbar’ [‘God is greater’]. The Muslims were together in prayer. It is their way of honoring Allah. When I approached the mosque and arrived at that level, people were streaming out. Because it was so busy I braked [my bicycle] to give them a chance to cross the street. At that moment I saw a man lying in a ditch next to the mosque. I walked toward him. Pulling him out of the ditch, I discovered that both his legs were paralyzed. His wheelchair lay upside down. I parked my bicycle by a small drinking stand and pushed the man in the wheelchair three kilometers down the road to where his house was located. It was already getting dark; I had no light on my bicycle; I was hungry and tired. But I wondered: how can I help this man who rolled into the ditch and is completely soaked and dirty? His wife and only daughter were shocked when we arrived. I told them my story: ‘Mother, I saw him lying in the ditch by the mosque. I helped him out of the ditch and brought him here because I felt sorry for him’. I had to join them at the table but was shocked when I noticed that all there was to eat was sweet potatoes with salt. How can people possibly live on such food, I wondered. That night I had a hard time falling asleep: a man in a ditch, no helping hand, sweet potatoes with salt! My heart remained restless”.

I. What is your spirituality?

The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a positive way

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The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a negative way

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Your position in regard to this example

Your account of this position

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II. What is your concept of spirituality?

The sentence(s) which relate the most to your concept of spirituality

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The sentence(s) which relate the least to your concept of spirituality

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Your position: what does this example have to do with spirituality

Your account of this position

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Example 5

In the midst of reciting the Benedicite I saw the great presence of the sun, which had just risen behind the cedar trees. And now under the pines the sun has made a great golden basilica of fire and water.
Perspective: crows making a racket in the east, dogs making a racket in the west, yet over all, the majestic peace of Sunday. Is this, after all, the real picture of our world? Deus cujus providentia in sui dispositione non fallitur …

This is the great truth: Christ has indeed conquered the world and it does indeed belong to Him alone. This cannot help but be rejected even in a world where all men ignore Him and misunderstand His kingship. Society cannot be left entirely to the forces of evil. But that does not mean, either, that we must expect the eventual triumph of our own small, prejudiced self-complacent idea of the civitas Christiana. Certainly not if this involves some kind of clerical fascism!

I. What is your spirituality?

The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a positive way

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The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a negative way

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Your position in regard to this example

Your account of this position

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II. What is your concept of spirituality?

The sentence(s) which relate the most to your concept of spirituality

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The sentence(s) which relate the least to your concept of spirituality

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Your position: what does this example have to do with spirituality

Your account of this position

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Example 6

Life is like a big leap – it can only be freeing when I know that God catches me; when I dare to risk living, knowing that whenever I arrive, I’ll be caught hold of; that I don’t have to catch God, that God catches me.

What it comes down to is this: that I surrender myself completely to the catcher, that I stretch out my hands and trust that he’ll be there to catch me at the critical moment. And when I saw it like this, I realized that I now have a deeper longing than being completely free. And this freedom is only possible because I also know that I’m caught hold of.

I. What is your spirituality?

The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a positive way

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The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a negative way

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Your position in regard to this example

Your account of this position

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II. What is your concept of spirituality?

The sentence(s) which relate the most to your concept of spirituality

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The sentence(s) which relate the least to your concept of spirituality

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Your position: what does this example have to do with spirituality

Your account of this position

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Example 7

Reb Areleh said that in his hasides the Alter Rebbe (Rabbi Shneur Zalman) always spoke about how you have to make spiritual things from material things. One night he was speaking on this topic. There was a large group of Hasidim around him. He forgot all about the law at that time, that nobody is allowed to go out on the street. So after he was done saying hasides, they were so engrossed by what he said – that there is no physical world – they all went out that night and of course police caught them. They saw men with beards and peyes and they asked one another, ‘What can we do with them?’ One policeman said: ‘Make them dance.’

So one of the hasidim said: ‘If we must dance, let us dance full-heartedly. Let us dance with truth, and not as a punishment.’

I. What is your spirituality?

The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a positive way

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The sentence(s) which hit you the most in a negative way

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Your position in regard to this example

Your account of this position

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II. What is your concept of spirituality?

The sentence(s) which relate the most to your concept of spirituality

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The sentence(s) which relate the least to your concept of spirituality

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Your position: what does this example have to do with spirituality

Your account of this position

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Example 8

Helpless you stand there, my God. You have gotten up from your fall, but your feet refuse to serve you, now that your shoulders again have that heavy weight to carry. Quivering and shaking you stand on your feet, the cross acts as a support to keep you from falling, but when you have to lift it from the ground to carry it further, you waver and threaten to collapse again. Yet you must and will get up the hill, such is the will of your executioners, and you will carry your cross also. If you cannot do it alone, you will be given help, just so that you do not succumb before the end of the journey. You must be alive when you reach the top of the hill. To this pass, O God, you have finally come: more dead than alive, exhausted by torture, drained, in no state even by force of kicks and blows to drag your cross to the top of the hill. Helpless you stand there. Your enemies want very much to have you reach the place of execution alive. With frightful kindness they allow you to be helped, only in order to be able to torture you. But no matter how much they want this, they do not deign to lift a finger themselves. Help you? It would be tantamount to exposing themselves to shame. Help you? Only a few steps up the hill: it was an indignity which one did not dare to urge even on the executioners. These would rather have beaten you to death on the spot; in that way their work was done. Not so your enemies who had to see you on the cross, humiliated to the very end, as much as it was possible for a human being to be. Who will help you, Jesus?

In vain did your eye look around, to see if there was anyone willing to help, but there was no one. Infinite loneliness. There is no one, no one who will give you that slight consolation. No one who stirs on your behalf. They all look on indifferently and let you stand there helpless, terribly helpless. Finally, they force the task on a foreigner who, because he is in no condition to resist and because he cannot do otherwise, will help you, not only coldly and indifferently, but perforce. Perhaps cursing you and your cross and without pity on your weakness, he seizes the cross and drives you forward with it. My God, I sometimes think that I would have acted better and would have lovingly relieved you of the cross, to lessen the weight of that terrible last journey. But no, Simon is also the image of me. I say I want to follow you on your way of the cross, but I want to cast off every little cross, even the lightest. I have no more desire than he, in the face of the mockery of those who do not love you, to show that I want to serve you. My God, I will no longer be idle. This very day I take up your cross and will try to carry it after you.