Soul Food
Last week I talked about having a spiritual connection, soul food is what helps increase our spiritual connection.
Soul food is spiritual nourishment, it is anything that simply uplifts or inspires us. One universal source of spiritual uplift is to bring more beauty into life, whether this is through exploring nature, being creative or simply appreciating art. Beautifying your home or garden is an easy way to feel more spiritually nourished. Other common soul foods include enjoying the wonder of children or exquisite music. Making time to catch the sunrise or sunset can seem like a huge challenge in our busy lives yet it never fails to leave is feeling more uplifted. Similarly climbing to the top of a hill or mountain is worth the effort to see the view which can often uplift us. Another, key spiritual nourishment is to simply stop, and remember you are a “human being” not a “human doing”, so stop and take the time and space to simply be.
We often feel down in the dumps or depleted when we have gotten to bogged down with responsibility, and “doing” while forgetting how to play, sing, dance and make things with our own hands. That is when its time to stop and nourish yourself with soul food. Remember soul food can literally be anything that nurtures us and makes life feel it’s worth living.
Identifying your soul food and feeding it to yourself increases your spiritual connection which is profoundly healing and nurturing and probably one of the best form of preventative medicine you can give yourself.
If you would like to improve your spiritual connection try exploring the following
- What lifts my spirit and inspires me? Can I spend more time doing what inspires me?
- Who lifts my spirit and inspires me? Can I spend more time with people like this?
- Are there any places that inspire me? How often would I like to visit them?
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Spiritual Connection
The holistic approach has the view that we are spiritual beings in physical bodies; that we take on our physical form at our birth and return to the spiritual dimension after out death. It is important to get ourselves out of the hurly-burly of everyday life and to expand our state of awareness and consciousness by becoming more away or our own spiritual nature. People often suffer without realising it, from longing to connect to their own spiritual nature. Religious belief, prayer and meditation are the most well-known way to expand out awareness, consciousness and reconnect with our spiritual nature. Often it is an intense shock of a diagnosis of a life threatening disease e.g. cancer that awakens people to the reality of their spiritual connection. For the rest of us, there are often fleeting moment of spiritual connection when we are in nature, when we meditate, when we pray or experience moment of intense joy, beauty or pain. Others feel the reality of the spiritual dimension through experiencing the loving presence of a loved one who has passed away, spirit guides or divine beings. The purpose of mediums is try to contact this spiritual dimension to provide evidence of life after death. For the skeptics amongst you Michael Newton's books the Journey of Souls and the Destiny of Souls may provide more evidence to support the idea of life after death and a the concept that we are spiritual beings in physical bodies. Buddhists and Yogis believe that the material world and even our emotions are the illusion and that the spiritual dimension is the only reality. They maintain that our preoccupation with the material world stops us from experiencing the bliss and freedom of the spiritual dimension. For myself, I believe we very much live in this material world with jobs to do, children to parent and bills to pay so I always try to have my feet firmly routed here on earth. While I am not religious, I find being aware of my spiritual self and actively trying to increase my spiritual connection as it nourishes me and give me a sense of perspective and peach of mind which I find reassuring in my everyday life. So while my feet are firmly routed here on earth my head is in heaven.
More on building your resiliance
Following on from last week’s entry on building resilience, it is important to state that resilience don’t just help you manage stress but it fosters inner strength to help you meet goals, life challenges and achieve success. Most of my clients hold more or less physical tension which I would like you to think of as a bad habit that relaxation will help you break. Relaxation is like changing the idling speed on a car. When a car turns over too quickly, wasting expensive fuel and putting a strain on the engine, the mechanic can reset the idling speed to a much lower level. Similarly when busyness, concerns, time pressure have speeded us up too much, making us tense and irritable, we can learn how to let go and attain a much calmer state of being. So taking the time to learn what relaxes you! It is worth re-emphasising the point that it is possible to make an enormous difference to your state of mind through yoga, tai chi, relaxation and meditation and all other sorts of physical exercise. While most of celebrate our wins, it is also important to celebrate when we do good for others, as often other’s don’t notice. We all know life has its ups and downs, when your life is in turmoil, you may not do things "perfectly". Rather than worrying or simply surviving turmoil, why not ask what you can learn from the situation. But don’t beat yourself up, remember you always do your best, when you know better, you do better! One habit that I try to cultivate to help put a smile on my face especially when I am feeling down is to cultivate a gratitude attitude. However bad my day goes, before I got to sleep I try to think of three things that I am grateful for. These don’t need to be big things; it can be as simple as “I am grateful that the transport system ran on time” as I had a busy day. A gratitude attitude helps foster joy, fulfilment & peace of mind.
