Spiritual Life Skills

My first semester in KL was indeed a meaningful one, was being brought up well by God. Abundant blessings have been showered upon me and the love of God I felt was immense. All the happenings throughout my time in KL were clearly intervention of God and Mother Mary. God placed me in a society filled with wonderful people, both caring and loving and also arranged lots of sessions and seminars for me which brought about growth of my faith and the realisation of values in life. The sad part was that I came to realise the real presence of God and His continuous love for His people despite being rejected many times only when I was in KL.

“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statute and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you.” – Malachi 3:6-7

Today I’m going to share with you the knowledge gained from one of the seminars I attended pertaining to spirituality.

The two significant changes in human being are their conciousness and their spirituality. We, human no doubt are weak being, easily fall to the temptation of the world. We failed to be concious of our own doings and the resulting consequences. These often are a result of indulging in the material things that the world offers. In view of this virtue and spiritual upkeep faded from the picture of our life.

Thoughts to contemplate: Where is God in our life? Is your life rooted in God? Are you concious enough to relate the happenings in your life to the work of God, our creator? Are you able to use your internal values (e.g. love, sincerity, etc.) to response to people and the events in your life?  Do you lead a spiritual life as a sign of love and as a simple act of returning the favour that God has done for us?

How to develop a spiritual life?

Before we move on to the development of our spiritual life, it’s important to understand the development of our Faith. Faith is :

1. Given. It is given by God the moment we breathe our first breath. It is meant to be the source of our spiritual growth. It is given just as a child given milk.

2. Imitative. When our faith is fresh and a piece of blank paper alike, we are easily influence and tend to imitate others without knowing the actual purpose or the meaning behind . E.g. follow others to church without knowing the the purpose. “Why?”

3. Organised. The repetitive imitation of the faith of others will transform our faith to an organised one. It is as if our faith is an obligation and a routine in our life. E.g.  We begin to attend churches every Sunday, again leaving out the real meaning or purpose of our attendance – Present physically yet heart is far away…

4. Questioning. This is the point the faith begins to grow at a larger pace. One begins to have a questioning faith when the true meaning and purpose behind the faith he is practising begin to unveil. E.g. Why must we go to church? We go to church because we are obliged to do so?

5. Personal. Conviction of  faith nurtured through God’s working in one’s journey of faith and life experiences gained. It gives rise to questioning faith at times when one believes that the faith practised by others is not in line with God’s Word.

6. Communal. Faith becomes communal when personal faith is spread and shared with members of the community, making a difference in their life.

7. Universal. Faith becomes universal when it is shared with other religions.

Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realise that Jesus Christ is in you? – 2 Corinthians 13:5

Thoughts to contemplate: Do you know where’s your standing? Do you attend church for the sake of attending or you’re merely following others or because you are obliged to do so? Do you pray and reflect on your life to deepen your faith and share your faith with others? Are your heart and intention there when you pray?

How do you grow in power?

When we say “power”,  we often associate it with external source of power which is also linked to materialism. The external source of power can be family, peers, organisation and social status. We only seek to enhance the power in those respect, e.g.: live up the reputation of family as Christians.

It’s time to seek for internal source of power which is linked to spiritual values. Meaning, Passion and Wisdom are the main elements of internal source of power and they constitute a spiritual life. We must be able to connect each element with our daily living. One must be able to identify the meaning behind every event in life, applying his wisdom and passion to response to that event. To illustrate: Giving(passion) is from the heart, though less (wisdom) it is meaningful (meaning).

It’s all about being, not doing. In the church, doing God’s work isn’t as important as being a God’s person. We should not be deluded that doing requires more attention than our being. God is more concern of our spiritual health rather than doing His work and God wants someone who is passionate about his or her faith. The same goes with our daily living. When we are engaged in an activity, do it with our heart, that is to apply spiritual values in our doings. It’s about being spiritual in our doings. A point of concern here is we should not be influenced by external source of power(materialism).  Applying spiritual values in our daily life not only deepen our faith but also is in line with God’s concern.

Learning aids development of spiritual life.

To have an effective development of spiritual life, one must change their ways of learning. The following shows how you should change in your learning methods in order to improve life skills and bring about growth in spiritual life.

1. Knowledge to skills. Learning should not focus only on knowledge gaining but also skills necessary to learn and to apply the knowledge gained. For example, a child should learn to read through storybook rather than fixed and deadening academic materials. Freedom and tools should be given to him in problem-solving scenario to spark creativity and therein create a learning experience and skills which can be applied in life. We should also learn through experiences, be it your own experience or others, they enrich our life skills and provide valuable insight for us to reflect on and response accordingly in the circumstances of our life.

2. Organisational teaching to learning community. A learning community serves as a pool of knowledge and provides abundant life experiences and lessons for us to be learnt. Life experience and knowledge of a member of the community can be the learning source of another member. Learning is spread throughout the community through sharing. For example, when a person who has no idea of what confession is, he raises inquiry with another person, confession is then explained through the sharing of the other. This is called learning from community.

3. Achievement/work values to living values. Often in life, we tend to focus on achievement and work values that we neglected our living values. We should learn to live with one another. Learn to love and care for one another and our adversaries in life. No doubt we must work to achieve our aims and goals, but not at the expense of our well being.  Think through this for a moment: How many people’s foot have you stepped on in working towards success or your goals?

Change is the key to spiritual development.

Everyone is capable of changing and it’s never too late to change and it’s our choice. From external source of power, we can change to develop our inner life. We can change, we can choose to change.

An effective way of changing is through reflection of our life.

Through reflection:

We remember the past. We can choose to be different and change for the future and prevent the recurrence of unfavourable past events.

We begin to see things anew or think differently. We will become aware that there’s a good side in every bad things, there’s beauty in ugliness, there’s richness in poor, there’s happiness in sadness, there’s room for improvement when we’re not perfect and so forth. Change your way of seeing then you’ll think differently. For example, envision yourself as a teacher teaching students of whom you think are slow learners. You may think they are slow learners. Think again. Others may perceive that you are a slow teacher instead of the students being slow learners.

We begin to learn to handle our feelings and emotional response. We are able  to rationalise our doings and the consequences and again we have the choice to handle our feelings and emotional response. A point to illustrate: If your son did something wrong that made you really angry, don’t vent your anger immediately on him, do this instead: tell him that you’re very angry now, ask him to come back in one hour and allow your anger to subside. After that explain to him the reasoning behind his wrongdoings and how he should change. Talk things out nicely. Everyone is happy that way and problems can be minimised.

In relation to changing, it is important to understand human nature. So how do we understand human nature?

Know yourself. There are a lot of similarities in regard to the nature of human beings. Be it our feelings, reactions or response to the happenings in life. Try to understand why a particular person react to certain circumstances in a particular way by putting yourself in that person’s shoe. How would you react if you’re that person?

Question others. It is worth taking the trouble to understand a person by questioning them. Understand reasons behind their behaviours or their actions or their response to a particular circumstance. Look into their thoughts and opinions to understand them better.

Facing pain and suffering.

Life is like the Paschal Mystery. Life is filled with suffering. Life is interrupted by death. But when we face death, we will rise to a new life.

Throughout the life of Jesus, he underwent tremendous pain and suffering in order to achieve His aim of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth.

“Jesus began to teach His disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” – Mark 8:31

Pain, suffering and hardships encountered in life are not chosen by us. They come to us naturally without us asking. They are being placed in the journey of our life by God to build us up. They are the raw material to produce a spiritual life. Pain and suffering are not meant to be forgotten (through some form of pleasure such as getting drunk, it is temporary anyway) or to be avoided.

Thoughts to contemplate: Life is not whole if it is without pain and suffering. Without them, we won’t live life to the fullest and appreciate the gift of life and understand the meaning of life. Without them, we won’t be able to grow to face the tide of the world. Without them, we won’t be able to grow in holiness.  Only when we live through the pain, we will come out strong and have the skills necessary to handle hardships and challenges that lies ahead in our life and thus we rise to a new life.  What do you think?

In conclusion, I would like to point out that all of us have the skills to lead a spiritual life. It is because of the way we are brought up, we lost the skills to lead a spiritual live. Never stop learning, changing and have the courage to face pain and suffering in order to develop our spiritual life. No doubt we are weak but we can rest in God’s Word where God communicated to St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient  for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Thus, we are not weak as we live by God’s power.

Let us make the world a better place by putting emphasis on the improvement of our inner life, by applying living values in our daily life and by leading a spiritual life that strengthens our relationship with God.

Cheers!