Spirituality brings purpose and meaning to life, and as we develop it, we grow in wisdom and love. We begin to experience a sense of awe, a sense of connection to all of life, and a deep reverence for the Divine. We find ourselves moved to prayers of gratitude and moments of spontaneous worship. Spirituality calls a human being to a life of trust and service.
    When our spirituality is nurtured and vibrant, we are connected. This connection is both a sense of relationship to the Creator, Great Spirit, or God (divine force), as well as a relationship to all people and to Mother Earth (our life-giving environment). Spirituality takes us beyond our egocentered lives by expanding our hearts with compassion towards all.
    Spirituality does not dwell in a realm apart. It is not an extracurricular activity. Spirituality involves a reverent attitude toward all things because it awakens us to a divine presence in all things. In this way of seeing and being, all things and persons are interconnected and interdependent. In the Sioux native language, the word for the Great Spirit is Wakan, which means ‘the great mystery.’ Yet this spirit, full of mystery, is every bit as real as the visible, tangible world.
    It is important to differentiate spirituality from religion. Some people have rejected religion in order to escape what they consider to be oppressive rules and regulations. In the
process, however, many lose the great gifts of joy and compassion that spirituality brings.
    Religion and spirituality are related and intertwined, but they are not the same. A person may experience spirituality without being a member of any specific religious affiliation, and even the most religious person may feel spiritually bereft. The true purpose of religion is to enhance spirituality through ritual and practice. This is accomplished when a person approaches his or her religion as a way to enter the great mystery, to become aware of the sacredness of all life.
    Religion can become a barrier to spirituality when it insists on narrow, judgmental dogma, and estranges its followers from a sense of connection with the Divine. Religion serves us best as a vehicle to nourish and develop our spirituality.
    It is possible, however, to get too caught up in the vehicle, the religious practice, while losing sight of the destination, spirituality, which is communion with the Divine and compassion for all. For modern, academically oriented professionals, like physicians and health care workers, spirituality is often a difficult subject.
    Their training is framed by science. They depend on logical, analytical, and rational approaches, and for good reason. These approaches have successfully ushered in a host of lifechanging improvements in health care and technology. While honouring science and the mind, our cultural tendency urges us to devalue belief and mystery, but the result is costly: They are left spiritually starved and out of balance.
    Some of life’s most difficult questions are the spiritual ones. What is the purpose of life? Where does real meaning come from? What is of real value in our lives? If there truly is a God who loves us, how could there be so much suffering and unfairness in the world? Part of our addiction to the busyness of life is an attempt to prevent ourselves from thinking about our mortality, the inevitable fact of our own death. But when we keep ourselves too busy to consider the purpose of our existence, our lives cease to have meaning. Strangely, it is only when we fully accept the reality of our mortality that we truly begin to live. This is the point at which we begin to enter into and learn about the spiritual dimension of our humanity. 

At this point, you might ask yourself several questions to help assess your own spirituality. Do i have a sense of connection with the Divine? Do i feel compassion for others? Do i feel awe and reverence? Do i live a life of trust? Am i called to service? Is prayer or meditation an important part of my life?    As French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin remarked, “We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience.” Our spirituality is our true essence. It is that part of our life which relates to our soul, which from a spiritual perspective is connected to the Divine and is infinite. This lifetime is but the physical experience of our deeper reality, our spirit, which is our fundamental nature. 

God can help manage your medication Spirituality helps older black American women with high blood pressure stick to the drug regimens that keep the condition under control, new research suggests. Older black Americans tend to have poorer anti-hypertensive medication adherence than either younger blacks or white patients, even though adherence helps reduce hypertension-related health problems and deaths, noted a team from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.    This study included 21 black women, average age 73, who were members of a Programme of All Inclusive Care for the Elderly. The women had been diagnosed with hypertension for an average of 16.7 years, and they were taking an average of 3.3 prescriptions to battle the condition. All the women said they used their spirituality to manage their medication adherence. As part of this process, identified as ‘Partnering with God to Manage My Medications,’ the women accepted personal responsibility for adhering to their medication regimen and used their spirituality as a resource to make decisions to remain adherent, to cope with medication side effects, and to increase their ability to deal with barriers that kept them from sticking with their medicines. It must now pass through all the necessary committees for final approval including the Senate and Governor of the State.

    by ALAN SHELTON

source: sunday times.

What we have created individually and collectively is a world where we believe we are each a separate entity from one another and separate from the very planet that sustains us.
   Because we believe we are separate, we go by the philosophy of “I have to look out for myself,” therefore, i will do whatever it takes to ensure i have enough of whatever i desire. If my desires impinge on your needs, my desires take precedence, because i am better than you. That is how our world is run today.
   We believe in a system that says i can go outside myself into the physical world and do the things it takes to provide me with the possessions that i lack to make my life better and make me happy.
   For too many of us this system does not work. Material possessions and being better does not seem to bring us inner peace and happiness. These concepts are elusive when you try to achieve them by going outside yourself into the physical world.
   Think about this: Inner peace. Just the very sound of it tells us where to go. You can’t find it outside of yourself; you have to go inside. You have to go to your inner source. The source that gives all of us unbelievable resources, strength and guidance is present in all of us to use on our life journey. We need merely go inside ourselves to find it.
   The key is to go inside yourself and reconnect with your spirit. You see, we are all made up as a threepart being; mind, body and spirit. We are born into this world in perfect balance.
   As we begin learning the ways of our journey we try to live in this balance. But when we encounter the external world, we find that our parents, teachers, and friends, with the
best of intentions, impart on us their interpretations of this physical world, along with all their rules and expectations.
   The spiritual side of us does not conform to these external parameters, but eventually we prioritise our lives around the external rules and expectations placed upon us by others and begin to lose the balance of our spirit in our day-to-day living. We become more and more controlled by the mind and the body.
   So the mind, controlled largely by the ego, and the body, which we identify as our entity, are subject to the physical world with the total ability to create and adapt to it as we like; that is, with “free will.”
   And adapt we do. We buy into the separation mentality that says, “My body and existence is different and separate from yours, and so I must do what is best for me.”
   Only by bringing the spirit back into the equation to create a balanced mind-body-spirit being do we come to understand that we are not separate at all, but that we are all one. Because we are one, what we do to another, we do to ourselves.
   It is the wonderful golden rule that we all know, but which we rarely live by: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
   Wow! Can you imagine what our world would be like if we actually lived by the Golden Rule?
   You can’t live by the golden rule if you thinkthat you are separate from everyone else. Only within the paradigm of oneness can the concept of the golden rule be achieved. This is what nuts and bolts Spirituality is all about.
   When you change the way you live your life you begin to influence others in the way they live their lives. It is in this conscious change that we collectively influence how the human race evolves.
   We are at a crossroads on this planet. We have created the ability to make this planet unlivable to the human life form. If we continue down the path that we are on now we could see this happen in the not too distant future.
   Our present belief system has taken us to this point in our existence. Only a change in our belief system will determine whether we will continue on a path of destruction or allow us to follow another path toward a more enlightened existence.
   You are totally at choice as to which belief system serves you. You can believe that you are separate from all things or you can believe that you are one with all things.
   You are always at choice in what you believe and how you create your life. Nothing has changed.
   The key is to be aware of and understand what serves you, and what does not serve you. It is then up to you to create your life by making conscious choices as to what serves you best.
   The choice is yours. It always has been and always will be.