Spiritual Mentoring

This process is an evolutionary one, in which it is understood that growth is not a linear experience. Growth is an expansive experience, as in three dimensions, that progresses in stages that are identifiable, both mentally and experientially. As each new stage is attained, it includes the previous stage. Growth is accompanied by an experiential awareness of the transcendent movement into each new stage. As one learns to use this approach to spiritual growth, the framework acts as a guide into an ever-expanding awareness. As in most traditions, the ultimate goal is to experience the transcendent, the All, the Godhead, Oneness. In my experience, life is such an awesome creation, because every aspect of Life and every aspect of ourselves, can help us to move along this path of expanding awareness.

One of the most common experiences that someone on this Journey will have that will confirm that they are making progress, is the noticing that their relationship to the things and the people around them changes. It changes as a result of their expanded awareness. When we have a limited knowledge of something, that will limit our experience of it; when our knowledge increases, we see and experience it in a new way. This is the reason why rigid beliefs can inhibit and limit one’s experience of Life/God, and precipitate the pain and suffering that results from a fundamentalist or judgemental relationship to others and Life. As we grow spiritually, our expanding awareness opens us up to experiencing ourselves, others, and our relationships to the things around us in new ways.

Expanding awareness is always accompanied by an increasing capacity for mindfulness. Mindfulness is a capacity that one can individually develop by intentionally following a particular practice. An intentional practice will result in the unfolding, transformation of self. Mindfulness facilitates our becoming aware of increasingly subtle aspects of our experience. In my mentoring practice, I encourage people to find evidence of the usefulness of their spiritual work in their own experiences, in the context of their own lives. I suggest that spiritual growth is better appreciated as shifts in the quality of one’s experiences are noticed, rather than by developing a belief system based on the interpretation of the teachings of a particular historical tradition. To be sure, there is much to learn form such traditions, but I use these traditions as “sign posts” pointing us in a particular direction or noticing where we should look, to find our own evidence or validating experiences.

My practice with individuals is based on the ideas described above. The work is approached with respect for an individual’s own current beliefs and expectations in life. There is no right or wrong way to engage in our spiritual growth. We all have what we have in our lives; this is what we have to work with and that is where the work must start. The fact remains, however, that we have all been raised in a particular familial environment, and within a particular social and cultural system. Little progress can be made until we are aware of the subtle and often restrictive nature of the influences that each of these influences can have on how we perceive our world and how we react to it. Bringing these influences into our awareness is often a first step in our developing a choiceful, and, therefore, an empowered approach to our life situations.

The work, of necessity, involves developing functionally useful new ways of working with our emotions and being more aware of how we generally move through an experience from the perception to a resulting behaviour. Rather than doing this reactively, behaving as we have in the past, we can learn to be consciously, choiceful about how an experience unfolds. In my opinion, these are essential first steps in the beginning of a consciously motivated spiritual journey. WE have to have the capacity of heightened awareness to volitionally enliven those aspects of our human heritage, that we can use to open ourselves up to the awesome aspects of our human capacities.