We feel a Great Awakening is occurring now in human history. It comes at a time of much advancement in science and technology, which has created good and bad consequences.
Holistic Coaching and Healing
How to Grow Spiritually
Becoming a wiser mature person — how do you do it? For spiritual development, it’s more than just aging and having more experiences, which come automatically. It’s what you do with your time and opportunities that makes the difference.
Shakespeare’s King Lear offers a cautionary tale for us here. The king made some bad decisions on ruling his kingdom with his adult daughters. His most virtuous daughter wouldn’t flatter him, so he gave his kingdom to his fawning daughters, who manipulatively praised him.
As a result, he lost his kingdom — and in the end, he lost his health and sanity. At one point, his companion/counselor — “the fool” — told him: “Thou should not have been old till thou had been wise.”
Important Items to Consider
Part of self-improvement is determined by two factors: having free will and how timing plays into our journey. Free will gives us the ability to choose, to create our destiny by our choices. Whether we make growth or fear choices matters.
Also, there is a timing to life. Sometimes we need patience, other times it’s good to strike while the iron is hot. Plus there are life stages. Often by midlife, for example, a transition or crisis causes us to pause and possibly change direction.
Keeping in mind these considerations (free will and timing), here are five ways to grow spiritually.
What Others Think of You
There is a notion that what others think of you is none of your business. This is a partial truth. To understand more, we can put things in context by viewing the bigger picture.
Let’s begin with considering a few things. We are all energy, and all connected. So what affects you, affects me. At the same time, we are still individuals creating our own destiny, our unique life path.
Actually, we’re embodied souls ─ and we are in the process of waking up to that fact. In turn, we can live more fully and help ourselves, others and the whole.
To put things more in perspective, here are three points relating to what others think of you.
Context Point 1: It’s natural to want approval.
Whether you desperately want to be approved of, or say you don’t care what others think of you, there still is an innate need for approval.
How to Age Well: Four Keys
At a certain point, it becomes more apparent that you won’t live on this plane, on earth, forever. So you might as well make the most of it.
Isn’t that why you (your presence, what brought you to earth) came here? Aren’t you here for some reason, beyond mere surviving and existing (although that is part of the scheme of things too)?
Coming on seven decades now, for us aging well becomes increasingly important. We have felt that successful aging means a holistic approach – body-mind-spirit.
Our experience – as well as research – has shown four keys to help you live fully. We are talking here about living with the power of your soul, growing wiser with fulfillment.
Here are four keys:
Who Can You Trust?
Who can you trust? That “who” first involves trusting yourself, then others and, looking at the big picture, trusting the universe itself.
Let’s examine trust from three angles.
1. Be able to count on yourself.
The essence of trust comes down to counting on yourself. If you can’t count on yourself, whom can you count on?
Soulful Living Show: Get the Most Out of Life
What is really important? To live fully and aligned with your soul would be our answer at Awakenings Institute.
To help, watch our weekly Facebook Live Show: Soulful Living.
Each show offers an actionable soulful tip and strategy to start your week off right — and put your life on course, spirally upward.
We, Phillip and Jane Mountrose, share from our over two decades in the holistic coaching and healing fields, including dozens of publications and trainings. Also we have wonderful guests on too!
Past show topics have included:
Thriving in an Uncertain World
What part of life do we so often resist? Uncertainty. In truth, no one knows what the next moment holds, much less the distant future that we are heading toward.
It may be distressing. Or not. To gain insight, let’s examine this important area further.
The brain has an often-outdated reaction to uncertainty, sometimes panicking as if one’s life might be at stake. For ancestors dealing with prowling predators, this came in handy. For most of us now it is a rarely needed impulsive reaction.
Today we are often faced with decisions that we need to make without much information. If you think about it, having little information should make you cautious and intentional, not flighty with a fast reaction.
Here are two common situations facing people: A business person who wants their business to succeed, but has little information on how exactly to proceed. Or a spiritual seeker who gets advice from an authority, and is not sure how to follow up with this new information and way of being. In either case, just being reactive can lead one astray.
So how do you prevent your limbic brain stem from hijacking your more intentional-thinking brain’s cortex?
Let’s start here: be aware of what you can and cannot control. There are some grey areas. But generally, focus on what you can control and let go of trying to control the uncontrollable.
As a motivation, know that you can make wonderful decisions and carve out a great life even amidst tumultuous times.
Keeping in mind a sense of what is within your control, here are four ways to deal with uncertainty:
Are You Hopeful?
Do you have hope, hope for a better tomorrow? We hope so, some pun intended.
In a world of COVID-19, civil unrest, climate change and more, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and feel helpless.
That is why hope is an essential quality, both a state of mind and an emotion. It’s not something to cling to, but to develop and cultivate.
It can find the light at the end of the tunnel, or there can be a “hope against hope,” with little prospects of success.
What is hope, then, and why is it so important for your life’s journey? Wikipedia notes that hope is an “optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.”
In life’s meandering journey to wholeness, hope serves as an energetic tonic to empower us and get us there. The “there” in the future can become, with hope, a brighter present. In other words, today’s hope becomes tomorrow’s better future.
Hope then need not be a desperate measure, a Hail Mary pass when all else fails. It can become a vibrant hope, filled with love, healing and more, brimming with possibilities. Without hope, you become less confident, more weary.For without real hope, life drains out of you till you eventually become hopeless.
Two Things to Understand
Your Brightest Possible Future
Even in these times that try men’s souls, we seek an optimal future. The current challenges can inspire us to rise up and envision a better – a much better —world.
What kind of future do you want to live in? To answer this all-important question, here’s some help. Fill in this sentence:
“I want to live in a more ____________ world.”
Now imagine your personal journey through this awesome future.
The more you can craft an optimal future, the better for you and for the world. Your optimal experiences can reverberate in wonderful, unfathomable ways.
If you are a holistic-minded, heart-centered person, you have certain priorities. You want to make the world a more connected, loving place.
What you contribute, how you live your life, can make the difference. So as you elevate your life, the world around you grows and flourishes too. As you rise to greater vibratory heights, your perspective expands.
The Bright Future Creates the Present
As you seek more freedom, meaning and depth in your future, you integrate this awareness into your present. Hence the future shapes your present.
For your exciting, future life, where do you want more freedom?
Announcing: Soulful Living — New Weekly Facebook Live Show
Check out our new Podcast: Soulful Living Show. If you are interested in engaging information you can use, join us for this show on transformation for coaches, healers and holistic-minded, heart-centered people. Each week. we share a key soulful success and prosperity tip for you — to focus on to uplift your week. Please share …