A Personal Perspective On Spirituality

Individuality

Generally you are born into a particular religious or spiritual tradition. Though personal developent you develop your own ideas of how you should pursue life. Thus, spirituality is an individual's concept. There are billions of people in the world, but no two people have the same fingerprint. Similarly, with all the world's population, no two people have the same DNA. In like manner, no two people have the identical understanding of spirituality.

This phenomenon of individual spirituality partly accounts for the multiplicity of religions and spiritual traditions, as well as significant differences within the same religion or the same spiritual tradition.

Generic core values

While no two people have the same perspective on spirituality, there are certain fundamental values that form the foundation of all spirituality. These core values can be expressed using the acronym FOLDING (Forgiveness, Openness to love, Learning for growth, Denial, Intentionality, Nurturing your spirit, and Gratitude).   

There are other generic core values such as honor, service, discipline, dependable, kindness, faith, honesty, excellence, politeness, integrity, caring, loyalty, belief, and benevolence.

Dichotomy of duality

You have been programmed to believe that the body and spirit are two different elements, rather than two sides of the same coin. This tends to lead to a conscious or subconscious set of actions that sometimes separate your daily living from your spiritual expressions.

Spirituality is the exercise of your core values on a daily basis. Spirituality occurs with action and not by mere intention. Your outward actions are an indication of your inner thinking. The adage goes, "So within, so without." Your thinking affects your actions, and your actions affect your thinking. They are both inextricably linked together.

Your Spiritual Manifesto

You need to have a clear notion of what should run your life. There must be clarity and consistency underlying your daily activities. This can be gleaned from your "Spiritual Declarations" that constitute your manifesto—your "Spiritual Manifesto".

Determine what are the core values that you are at present living by, or the core values that you now decide will be your "Declarations of Spirituality". This is your "Spiritual Manifesto". They should be no less than 7 declarations indicated by the acronym FOLDING and a maximum of an additional 5 declarations to customize your "Spiritual Manifesto". Selecting more than 12 declarations will defeat your purpose of focus.

What's next?

Do you want to have a better life? That is, if you want to have improved results in your personal life and spiritual evolvement, you have to do some things differently than you have done in the past. What are the areas in which you will consider to effect some changes?

You determined your 7 to 12 "Spiritual Declarations" earlier on. Assess how well you have been doing in them. Use a personal assessment scale from 1 to 10. A score of 10 indicates that you are doing extremely well. A score of 1 is that you are doing poorly.

Select the declarations in which you made the highest score and the lowest score. For the next 3 months focus on improving your performance in these two areas. You can follow working on the other values in the following months using this original system. You have the power of choice to generate a successful life both materially and spiritually. Choose wisely to leave an enduring legacy.