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What Does Spiritual Friendship Look Like?

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What Does Spiritual Friendship Look Like?

As an introvert and a loner, I’m a tad shy of friends.  And that mostly works for me.  But when I came across the words “spiritual friendship”, I paused to see what I thought that would look like. 

Spiritual friends walk alongside each other on connected paths

Friendships are often based on similarities and mutual interests. That means we share values, are at similar stages of development and each has about the same level of knowledge and experience around our mutual areas of interest.

We are peers, fellow travelers going the same direction – at least for now.  The more esoteric my path becomes, the further afield I have to wander to find like-minded friends. I keep looking because everyone comes bearing gifts. 

I get excited about what I’m learning and discovering, and I need to share that fascination and amazement with someone who understands what I’m talking about. Having someone on a similar path helps me go even deeper in my own exploration.  My spiritual friends offer me insights and experiences that are aligned with our mutual journey.  We learn from each other.

Your role in a spiritual friendship may shift back and forth from student to teacher to student to teacher

In a spiritual friendship, we have shifting roles.  Sometimes you are the teacher who deeps our mutual journey with your insights and observations.  Sometimes you are the student who asks questions that make both of us stop and think. And we’re always partners on a journey, walking steadily beside each other, shining our lights on the unfolding path before us and walking alongside each other in illumined service. 

We learn from each other. We teach each other. We challenge each other. We encourage each other. 

At some point, our paths may separate.  We usually walk alongside a spiritual friend for only a portion of our journey, taking from the experience what we need to deepen and expand our own journey and give what we’re destined to give to the other person. The length of our journey together may vary from long to short, even a momentary connection, but the impact will be profound and long-lasting.

You’ll find your spiritual friends everywhere

Once you begin looking for spiritual friends you’ll find them in all manner of unexpected circumstances. One of my spiritual friends is a healer friend I’ve known since I lived in California and we have currently deepened our connection.  Another is a doctor who was assigned to be my partner in a shamanic online course we took together. I talk with both these spiritual friends regularly on Skype. 

Another spiritual friend is a very special man I took a course from five years ago. There was and is a deep connection which continues even though his field is entrepreneurial advancement.  We read each other’s newsletters and posts and steadily support each other through periodic emails.  

Thanks to the Internet our spiritual friends can be found any place in the world. 

Who have you walked beside?

If you look back over your life, you may recognize times when you’ve shared your path with someone. I only became aware of the idea of walking beside someone in service four years ago when my one male spiritual friend shared the concept and said that is what I was doing. Now that I have fully and enthusiastically embraced the idea, I consciously work to walk beside others whenever I can. With this awareness, I can look back over my past and see other spiritual friends who have walked beside me for a while.

The spiritual friends I currently find myself walking alongside happen to be from a younger generation. They’re at different crossroads in their lives. Their objectives are different – not yet ready to retire, but doing a bit of planning for it. They’re at a high point in their careers. However, we are spiritually on similar paths, and we each bring our unique experience and insights to our walk beside each other. We enrich each other’s journey. We learn from each other.

Your unique personalities add differences deepen your learning experience

My shamanic partner is a medical doctor who has been studying shamanism several years longer than I have. In our exchanges, she helps me clarify and consciously apply the principles. I offer insights from my extensive holistic background. I’m also approaching shamanism from a creative and free-flowing direction and that broadens the range of our mutual exploration. We bring our individual approach to our spiritual friendship and weave it together into a stronger journey for us both. 

She stretches me.  I stretch her.  

Our needs are different.  She is preparing for her retirement in six or seven years.  At 85 my focus is to still be here and still contributing. But for the time being, we walk beside each other in spiritual friendship.

Each person you spend extended time with is sharing their gifts with you. What are you giving? What are you receiving?

How do you actively seek spiritual friendships? 

I was feeling very alone until I redefined how I saw myself.  

I’ve thought of myself as a metaphysician, a spiritual philosopher, a Light Worker, a Transformational Thinker, an Agent of Change,  a student of Taoism, and a shamanism practitioner, but that is such an eclectic mix I can usually only find people who embrace one facet. And I could not bring myself to identify with only one group. 

Then one day I came across a broader, more encompassing definition for myself that brought me in alignment with many, many people all over the world. I saw myself as part of a larger, more expansive group instead of a unique collection of all my individual interests. 

Stephen Dinan of The Shift Network said, “You are part of the shift if you are growing a business that is offering products or services that help enlighten, evolve, or transform humanity.”

Enlighten, evolve, transform.  Big words.  Big job. Big purpose.  I suddenly know a great many people who are doing this kind of work and I feel connected, intertwined, supported by and moving forward with them as we walk along this broader path together. 

It’s not the type of work you do, it’s the spiritual intention behind it that connects you with other spiritual partners.

What words do you need to find to describe your work to yourself that will lift your awareness of the many light beings who are actually already walking beside you on the same path? Think in broad, encompassing, spiritual definitions rather than the specifics of how you do the work. That will help you identify others on your same path.

Look online for people who are on a similar path. They may be teaching, or studying, or simply shining their light through their work. Offer an unconditional generosity of spirit, and reach out to your fellow travelers by shining your light in their direction. 

Let your spiritual friendships evolve and take you where you need to go – together

Opportunity for spiritual practice and spiritual friendship is not someplace else – it’s right here. We can make a move to establish it.

Who will you reach out to next? How will you find more spiritual friends?

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

How You See Yourself – You Are

The Power of Being Different

The Path of Supportive Service 

Live in the Center of Your Being

What are the Foundation Stones Upon Which You Build Your Life?

How Your Spiritual Life Changes You

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I’ve been a metaphysician for over half my life.  I keep exploring the different expressions of metaphysics and my spiritual awareness keeps changing.

As it should.

My spiritual exploration gives me powerful experiences

Metaphysics opened up the world to me.  It freed me to explore all versions of spirituality.  And I have. I loved developing the power of affirmative prayer in the Center for Spiritual Living. I love the concepts I learned in Taoism – unfolding, mindfulness.  I love the ideas I get from the Sufi Poet Rumi. I love the concepts of The Village of Nothingness, The Unnerved Block, the Nowhere That I Came From. And now I have shamanism.

When you go exploring in your inner world, you begin to make aware choices that are more aligned with who you want to be in your own life, how you want to shape it.  You go within for guidance and support, and you get answers.

Increase your daily spiritual life

Whatever form your spirituality takes, do more of it.  Every day.  Several times a day.  Do conscious work in your inner realms.  Listen to your inner urges, your inner voices.  Learn to journey and ask questions and learn to interpret the metaphorical guidance of the helping spirits.  Then move back into your life with a raised vibration, a deeper self-awareness, and make more conscious choices about how you show up in the world.

Do deep inner work – daily

Create some sort of daily inner work ritual to begin your day.  To begin mine, I drum and sing and I have a whole sequence of discovery and affirmative steps I find meaningful.

Throughout my day, I work to increase my ability to express a quality – like mindfulness or unfolding, inclusiveness, and empathy, just plain radiating light.

These take practice, a lot of conscious daily practice, to bring them into active involvement in your life. I’m pretty good at unfolding. I am getting better at mindfulness. I journey daily and that expands and deepens my inner awareness. I am progressing.  Because I practice. My spiritual practice is active throughout my day.

Your spiritual life can help you see things differently 

When you cultivate your inner life, the outer world begins to change.  For instance, the more I focus on increasing my own radiance, the more radiance I see in others around me and together we become lighter and more illumined and share that with the world around us.

Shine light.  Be light. That’s an easy place to begin.

Know what you believe and why you believe it

As people in our world become more vocal in expressing their opposing views, we have the opportunity to examine what we think and believe and, more importantly, why we believe what we do.  Does our thinking need to change, to unfold, to become more inclusive?  Probably.  Can we see a situation from several points of view?

Being in light is an incredible common denominator.  If I learn to see others as light, in light, I see our sameness more than our differences.

But it may take some practice.  It’ll take working on my own light so I can see the light in others.  I must learn to resonate with it.  And connect with it.

We have choices

I feel much safer when I work on radiating more light into the world.  I feel that I’m participating for the higher good and that my inner light work is making a difference, raising the consciousness of not only me but those who come across my pulsating, ever increasing, radiating light are also affected.

Your spiritual life will raise your vibration and increase the radiance of your inner life.

Work on it.  Immerse yourself in it.  Be light!

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Unleash the Power of Your Inner Garden

How Your Belief System Dictates Your Choices

Find Your Most Impactful Spiritual Practice

Your Breath is a Doorway to Higher Consciousness

Embrace The Power of Your Inner Life

The Mirror of Appreciation

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reflection

The postcard from my grandson was a surprise.  He acknowledged qualities in me that he respected.  And I realized our family does not do that. We do not offer words of appreciation for the ways they express themselves that touches so many hearts, those less tangible qualities of soul and values.

And that’s going to change.  Beginning with me.

Do you state the obvious?

Of course, I know my daughter is kind and thoughtful but do I ever tell her that?  No.  I guess I figure she knows that about herself.  Do I tell my son he’s a thoughtful, attentive father?  Well, yes I do, on Father’s Day, but…you get the picture.

What do you need to tell someone that you see and admire in them?

Make an acknowledgment list 

I keep an acknowledgment list for myself. But I never thought to keep an acknowledgment list for those I care about. What would be on it? I’d tell the social services director here how much I appreciate our occasional philosophical talks. I’d tell my shamanic course partner how much I respect her choice to honor her spiritual calling even when she has an established major presence in medicine. I’d thank my healer friend in California for her ongoing support but I’d also acknowledge her for her perception and healing ability.

See how this unfolds? Look at what people bring into your life, then look beyond that to the gifts they share, and acknowledge those.

Overlook the differences

My grandson said, “I know our intellects are interested in projects of different natures, I nonetheless have tremendous respect for your ongoing passion and enthusiasm.” Acknowledge the differences if you need to, but then acknowledge the gifts, the thoughtfulness that person has extended to you.

Practice

I have to change my thinking in order to do this. I have online conversations with healer friends regularly, and I have to learn to end those conversations with not just a “thank you” but with an acknowledgment of the gifts they have and have offered and have shared.

I may acknowledge a choice they made or an insight they had. I may thank them for a heartfelt share or… I have to look and listen closely to see what I can reflect back to them. I want to hold up a mirror of appreciation so they know how valuable they are.

It’s a matter of changing your thinking and deepening your observation and choosing to say the words.

What kind words of acknowledgment will you say today?

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

What is Your Unique Purpose?

No Timetable, No Destination

The Unfolding Vision Board

How to Effortlessly Radiate Light

Are You Inspired By Your Own Life

To Survive, We Must Evolve

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Evolution

Animals who adapt survive. Animals who survive evolve. Are you, as a human, adapting as rapidly as you need to in order to evolve during this human lifetime?

Survivors adapt to their skill set

If you can’t sing, you won’t seek a career in music. If you love technology, that’s where you’ll go for your profession. If you love to be with people, you’ll find work among them. If you’re not a detail person, you won’t choose a detailed activity. If you’re a loner, you’ll develop your work alone.

As you mature, your skills and passion become more apparent. You’ve been drawn to your gifts all of your life. Look closely at the places you shine. Define your subtle skill sets, not just the obvious one. It took me years to figure out that one of my most special gifts is the ability to see the overview and show others connections they don’t immediately recognize.

Look closely at your skills. The most unique ones may be the ones you take for granted. Observe your unique differences and build on them.

Survivors either adapt to their environment or move to a more suitable one

As I grow older, I welcome a smaller space to care for. I have released several levels of belongings in order to do that. If you dislike the cold, move to a warmer climate. Or, if you like outdoor  physical activity, move out of the city.

What environment do you need to be in for the most support at this point in your life?

Be flexible in your choices. Be open to supportive change.

Like the animals, we need to adapt in order to evolve 

In nature, the animals who are the strongest and most adaptable not only survive, but they pass on their skill sets and strengths to their offspring, who are then better equipped to adapt and thrive in their environment.

That also holds true for people. A prime example is technology. Those who have the ability to understand and use technology will be in demand for jobs. Those who prefer more physical jobs will have a more difficult time since that same technology is gradually replacing the more repetitive physical work.

How adaptive are you?  How are you honing your survival skills?

To survive, we need to evolve

I’m very far behind in the use of my mobile phone because I had a landline for years. But I’m way ahead of the majority of people my age in the use of a computer and software programs for communication. Focus on what calls to you and get really good at it.

Look at how the world is changing and let go of the familiar in order to move forward 

It does me no good to wish for or hang on to the way things used to be. That time is never coming back. I have to grow to keep up. I have to keep learning and changing my beliefs. I have to let go and embrace the new. Keeping up with constant change can keep you very busy.

Everyone can grow 

It would be easier for me to master my phone if I were around young people who were better at it that I am. That’s how I got comfortable with Skype – a younger person helped me make the first call.

But I also go adventuring. I now have a vLog. I learned two new programs that simplify my book production. I know more than I think I do and with persistence I’m moving forward and owning it.

But you have to be willing to press forward and through.

How are you adapting and evolving in order to enrich your life experience?  Make more positive, concise forward-moving choices and watch how easy life gets.

Embrace the inevitable constant change

The truth is that the world is changing so rapidly that we have to keep exploring in order to even keep up.

My current focus is participating in group energy meditations.

I’m also evolving my inner work to embrace the unseen world, looking for ways to explore and understand and report back.

Don’t dwell on the past

Whatever is familiar, whatever we think we cherish, is either gone or going. There’s nothing to hold on to, nothing to go back to. We must embrace the present, adapt as much as we can, and allow our personal evolution to do just that – to evolve. Emerge, change form, go with the flow and respond with a clear heart to what shows up.

Life is about adapting. But the most exciting part is about evolving.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Our Work in the World

How to Walk Beside Someone in Service

We Are Part of a Larger Spiritual Order

16 – How to Find Your New Direction

20 – Why Are You in Service?

Our Work in the World

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heal world

Those of us who are spiritually active have very specific and powerful work to do. We have steadily worked to develop a highly conscious awareness. We look for spiritual guidance in the lessons of nature and embrace the on-going cycles of change. We understand our interconnection will everything. This inclusive consciousness gives us the ability and responsibility to promote and support positive change and we are greatly needed in the world of today.

At first I didn’t understand how I could help. I watched divisiveness and negativity and hatred erupt, even in countries that seemed more tolerant and accepting of individual expression. It shocked and dismayed me and I felt truly helpless.

Join with others to change the group consciousness

As I began to join groups of people from all over the world who came together to vision and meditate for a common cause, to focus their group energy on a higher outcome, I felt useful. I felt needed. And I did more.

I now understand the power we, as conscious, caring individuals, have to change our world. Those of us who work with the express purpose of helping the world to move into a higher consciousness, are expanders of consciousness, changers of the group energy.

This of us who are using our spirituality to heal and whole, are finding each other online and in person. As we combine our collective energy, we bring peace and harmony to others. Since our work is on the inner plane it may not be readily noticeable, but people will feel it and radiate more wholeness in their lives. Their light will ripple out and touch the hearts of others and the world will change and heal.

We energy workers are a small percentage of the population and there’s much work to do. Collectively we are very impactful.

We hold the vision

As spiritually aware and consciously active participants in our world, we are charged with holding a vision — a vision of inclusiveness, empathy, and active caring for the well-being of the whole planet, not just our own personal life experience.

We learn to move beyond ourselves to think bigger, to see the overview, to pull others up so they can see new possibilities. We believe that we can heal and whole our world by changing the group consciousness around what is possible. And that work begins with each of us and our daily, individual, active spiritual practice, whatever that looks like to you.

What is our purpose?

As healers of the planet, our purpose goes beyond our own lives. We have to hold the light for those who are not yet in the place of understanding that we are all one energy, that we are interconnected, that we are the same. Our purpose is to hold high a light of collective consciousness and show others the path to feeling and knowing and immersing themselves in the oneness that we are. We are leaders and explorers. We are way-showers. We are teachers, and guides. We are consciousness changers.

We do our work by actively and consciously focusing positive energy, both in our individual spiritual practice and in like-minded groups. Our personal energy work makes a major difference in the world, but when we gather together and focus on the same positive purpose, we more greatly affect the group consciousness and that leads to major positive change in our world.

Do your consciousness work – daily

Do some form of purposeful energy work every day. Meditation, prayer, affirmations, visioning, hands-on service. Shift your own consciousness to become more inclusive, more empathetic. Broaden your experience of the glorious diversity around you. Look for the gifts others bring. Learn from them Love them. Send your soul out into the world to heal and whole.

Do the work, daily. Focus on the well-being of the whole world or focus on a specific cause. Work with the knowledge that we are all one energy, one web of life. As you work, watch for change and become more aware of the power of your own focused and purposefully intention.

That’s our work in the world. To shine light in the dark corners and show others a higher path.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider
The New Wave of possibility
The Power of Positive Pursue
How to Hold the Space for the New Vision to Emerge
The Emergence of Collective Individual Spirituality
How to Embrace our Differences
The Core Value of Inclusion
How to Activate a Tree Messenger to Send Your Healing Energy into the Word.