Finding Spiritual Alignment – How to Achieve Spiritual Balance
What interests you intensely, what you want and hope for deeply affects every area of your life, if you express it openly. And it is certainly true, as I can attest from my own experience, that when you start to focus on something, it starts to appear everywhere. So if you are a person with a spiritual perspective, how can you be authentic about your spiritual experiences and insights, instead of hiding them for fear of what the critical postmodern mind will do with them? This, I believe, is what spiritual balance is all about.
Those who approach life from a spiritual perspective can often find the question of balance challenging. The issue of unreliable sentiments versus spiritual authenticity is relevant not only to followers of esoteric spiritual systems but also to Christians. Some approach faith purely through the head and are only interested in the rational processes, the intellectual paths of theology, and applying their minds to what the Bible teaches; for others it is very important to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, to respond emotionally to the central truth of the Christian faith, which is not a philosophy but a relationship with Jesus Christ, a personal encounter with God.
How can we align spiritual experience with the realities of daily life? Carl Jung in his book “Psychology and Religion” addresses this very question. He takes into account “the symbols produced by the unconscious mind”. They are, he says, “the only things capable of convincing the critical mind of modern people.” A spiritual experience, he points out, to be considered helpful, must “help make your life healthier, more beautiful, more complete, and more fulfilling for you and your loved ones.” So, he concludes, you can safely say: “This was the grace of God.”
Bernie Siegel in his book “Love, Medicine and Miracles” talks about the vital importance of hope, which is a strongly spiritual quality. He says that “a refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.” He also speaks of those who “choose their course, take the leap of faith and fly.” All this has to do with courage and self-confidence, how you choose to spend your time and what you dedicate your life to. And before you can take action on this, you must start from a point of spiritual balance. I believe that the key is to act on our spiritual insights, expressing them openly: only then can we ensure that they impact every area of our lives, and more essentially, our relationships.
As a fiction writer, I find that the search for authenticity and balance is an ongoing journey, and it is summed up in the word ‘truth’. I seek the truth by observing people, listening to them, observing them, empathizing with them and writing about them. When through fiction I show my characters behaving in such a way that a reader says, “Yes. This rings true. I recognize this… this is me… this is the way we are,” then I have a feeling of joy: and I know that, at least at this moment, the mind and spirit have aligned with each other and produced a spiritual balance.