Wisdom Connections

My notes are pretty brief from the fourth meeting of our Spiritual Exploration Group. We all shared stories of our experiences of Serendipity, Synchronicity and Grace from the previous month and this led into our discussion of Conscious Living.  As we become more aware of our experiences and how they relate to each other and the greater scheme of things we naturally become more conscious.  As we continue to practice we continue to grow.

Rosemary supported our discussion by quoting from a book germane to the discussion: Spiritual Development for Beginners, A Simple Guide to Leading a Purpose-Filled Life, by Richard & Jan Potter. Here is the passage she read:

“Spirituality may be seen as the purposeful changing of consciousness to provide more access to varying mental perspectives, subtler levels of experience, deeper awareness of self, the opening and awakening of the heart, a wider array of emotional experiences, and states of consciousness that connect with subtle realms of being.  Spirituality shatters our set convictions about the nature of life on the rock of Truth.  Spirituality is all about experiences.  It expands the range of acceptable experience by opening consciousness to more of life.  Indeed, most of us walk around in a bubble of highly constricted experience, cut off from the vast, amazing, and beautiful life around us.  Spirituality awakens us to life — usually gradually, but occasionally quickly.

“Spirituality is also about the interpretation of what we experience.  Some interpretations of experience lead to constricting our worlds, and some lead to further expansion and exploration of life.  Interpretation of experience comes in many forms. Some of these forms are religious, some are scientific, some are mystical, and many lie in the myriad of spaces among these perspectives.  Opportunity for authentic spirituality may be found in all of these interpretations, as long as they serve as doorways into further exploration and are not literalized door-closers attempting to stamp out continued searching for deeper experience and meaning.”

Our next meeting will be held on the first Monday of August, the 3rd, at Little Nepal Restaurant. The topic of this meeting is “The Enneagram: Nine Approaches to Spirituality.” According to Helen Palmer, one of Rosemary and my teachers, and a leading developer of the Enneagram:  “The Enneagram is a highly sophisticated system of nine personality profiles that are meant to help us know ourselves and to better understand the people in our lives, ‘as they are to themselves’.” Understanding ourselves and others is certainly a major component of Conscious Living.  Understanding others “as they are to themselves” is the basis for compassion. Moving beyond the personality and psychological applications of the Enneagram, Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson wrote The Wisdom of the Enneagram. This book is the first definitive guide to using the wisdom of the enneagram for spiritual and psychological growth.

Personally I have found the Enneagram as one of the most fully developed and useful tools in modeling the human condition. It helps me understand my own actions and responses and, thereby, helps me improve on those. And it helps me understand others, and their actions and reactions, especially those with whom I associate in relationships.

Please plan to attend this introduction to a tool for Conscious Living and the Evolution of Consciousness.