Inner
Theology
“Happiness
requires that you have an inner theology or spirituality that can
withstand the storms of life. It matters not what tradition it comes
from. What matters is that your inner spiritual truth is, in fact, a
genuine spiritual truth that truly nurtures you. You have to attend
to your spiritual life, not just visit it when things go wrong. The
Divine is not a hobby. The sacred is every breath of life—yours
included.”
Caroline
Myss (“Happiness According to the Chakras,” 2012 Salon, Part 4 of
4, Caroline's Blog)
I received several emails
from a person asking exactly what spirit I reference when I sign off
each day with “In the Spirit.” I understand that for some people
it is blasphemy for me to write about beliefs from every religious
tradition. They adhere to one religion and consider all others to be
heresy. That has not been my experience. I have studied many
religions for decades and have found truth and guidance in all of
them. I cannot imagine that the Creator would provide such diversity
in every other aspect of this universe and then designate only one
path to Truth. So, I was born into and am still a practicing Christian, but
I have great reverence and respect for those who are devout in other
religions. The Spirit I reference in my blog is the Spirit of love
and good will that exists in all traditions.
That being said, Caroline
Myss is a devout and life-long Catholic. In one of her first books,
Anatomy of the Spirit, she compared the seven sacraments of
Catholicism with the Tree of Life (Gaia) from the Jewish Kabbalah,
and the seven major chakras of the Hindu religion. What she found is
that the contents of each of the seven levels in all three traditions
is much the same. In her series of salons on happiness, she uses the
chakras to describe what happiness looks like at each level of
development. The quote above is from the seventh chakra—the
energetic connection at the crown of the head with the Divine above
and surrounding us. Her research shows that people with a strong
belief in something greater than themselves, whether they call that
something God, or Allah, or Brahman, or Great Spirit, or Higher Power
are better at handling the vicissitudes of life. They are, in other
words, better able to cope with loss and disappointment, they heal
faster, and are more functional overall than people who do not have a
theological anchor.
Others have noted this as
well. Dr. Larry Dossey, in his books, Reinventing Medicine and
Healing Words, writes extensively about the power of prayer.
Patients recover faster when people are praying for them, and when
they themselves have a sustaining faith. Some would say that we
humans have an innate need for belief in a higher power, and I agree that we do. But it is only when we devote ourselves to that
belief, to the study and understanding of it, that we are
sufficiently grounded. As Myss states, we can't just visit it when
things go haywire; it's not a hobby. And we can't simply swallow it
second-hand from others. But if we develop the personal connection
between ourselves and the Sacred, no matter what name we give it, we
are stronger, better people. All religions contain a moral code that
emphasizes compassion and forgiveness, and living by a strong moral
code elevates us as individuals and as a community. “The sacred is
every breath of life,” including yours and mine—and theirs.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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