The Spiritual Self
Learning Outcomes
Demonstrate an understanding of the spiritual self
Explain the importance of spirituality in one’s life
Discuss how spirituality is connected to religion
Describe how spirituality develops
Activity1
Agree or disagree
Spirituality is the same as religiosity?
Spirituality is only about our faith in God?
Only older individuals feel their spirituality?
Spiritual Self
-Spiritual self is an on-going, personal life journey, contextualized by
belief in God, culture, relationships, nature, and discovering meaning in
one’s life
-Christina Puchalski, MD, Director of the George Washington Institute for
Spirituality and Health, contends that "spirituality is the aspect of humanity
that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose
and the way they experience their connectedness to the moment, to self,
to others, to nature, and to the significant or sacred."
-The spiritual aspects of the self is the inner essence, the part of the self
that connects the person to the sacred, the supernatural, and the
universe.
-The spiritual self enables the person to experience a feeling of oneness
with a higher being nd the universe and gives a deeper purpose or
meaning of one's life.
-The spiritual self developes through interactions, observation, and
imitation. The family, school and church play a very important role in a
child's spiritual development. Spiritual begins at an early age but develops
throughout life as people continuously interact in the environment
“Spirituality”
“The root meaning of spirituality is taken from the Latin word spiritus,
meaning breath or life force. It can underand as the search for
sacred, a process through which people seek to discover, hold on to,
and, when necessary, transform whatever they hold sacred in thier
lives”
-Hill & Pargament, 2003
“Spirituality generally efers to meaning and purpose in one's life, a
search for wholeness and relationship with a transcendent being”
-Hage, Hapson, Siegal, Payton, & DeFanti, 2006
“Spirituality is connected with religion. Religion is an organized
system of ideas about the spiritual sphere or the supernatural along
with associated ceremonial practices by which people try to interpret
and/or influence aspects of the universe otherwise beyond thier
control All religions recognize he importance of spirituality in one's
life. One's spirituality may be expressed through religion and
participation in religious rituals and ceremonies”
-Haviland, Prins, Walrath, & McBride, 2013
According to Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary, researchers and
authors of The Spiritual Brain, “spirituality means any experience that is
thought to bring the experiencer into contact with the divine”
Relationship between religion and spirituality
While spirituality may incorporate elements of religion, it is generally a
broader concept. Religion and spirituality are not the same thing, nor
are they entirely distinct from one another.
What is spirituality, and what does it mean to live a spiritual life?
-The relationship between spirituality and religion is entangled with
complexity.
-When some people talk about their spiritual life they just
mean their religious values and commitments, while for others, the fixed
practices of traditional religion are a hindrance to their spiritual growth.
-For some, spirituality is all about cultivating the divine spark within; but
not all spiritual seekers have religious beliefs, and others are quite
skeptical of religion and every form of divinity.
The three Aspects of Spirituality
-1st.Spirituality talks about the meaning and purpose that go beyond the
physical realities of life.
2nd. Spirituality is focused on a person's connections to different aspects of
his or her existence: to other people, to nature, and to sacredness and
divinity.
-3rd. Spirituality talks about the sacred and transcendent. It is a general
belief that is this vast universe, there is a force higher than the self. in
believing that death is inevitable. the different beliefs of what comes
afterwards shape how people choose to act and live thier lives The search
fpr sacredness is also triggered by the drive to attain peace and life
fulfilment. Acceptance and/or contenment is fostered and established
despite problems that occur.
-Many people now enjoy a comfortable lifestyle with abundant material
possessions, but they find that their lives are impoverished; their lives do
not possess the significance they wish they had, and so they search for a
spiritual meaning.
-“Spirituality” is a kind of refuge from everyday existence and that the
spiritual world is just the opposite of the material world we belong to.
-We may not be able to live without material goods, but spiritual goods are
those that make life meaningful.
-In this respect, spirituality is not a luxury or a secondary concern. In fact, it
is among the most important things to consider when we think about what
makes life worth living
Activity2
ART RECALL
Recall:
When was the first time you realized that there is a higher being than
yourself? How old were you then? What made you believe that there is a
higher being?
Draw:
Make a poster about the instance or situation that made you believe in the
existence of higher being.
Activity3
Write an essay using the following questions as guide:
a. What do you hold sacred in your life?
b. How do you express spirituality in your life?
