"Once you believe in yourself and see your soul as divine and precious, you'll automatically be converted to a being who can create miracles."Believe in yourself... That is the Credo of Dyer and many other motivational speakers and self-help authors. To be spiritual, they believe, is to look within oneself to find the keys to happiness, freedom, peace, love, self-esteem, the meaning of life.
Here are the 12 signs of spiritual awakening posted on a number of recovery websites. The author is unknown.
I think these are meant to be an addendum to the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. How ironic. The 12 steps of AA begin with a confession, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable" And continues with a faith statement, "Came to believe that a power higher than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Bill and Bob, the founders of AA were Christians who believed the basis for healthy spirituality involved the confession of personal weakness and faith in the power of God as the only way to recovery. Yet, the 12 signs of spiritual awakening listed above says nothing about either of these.
- An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
- Frequent attacks of smiling.
- Feelings of being connected with others and nature.
- Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
- A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experience.
- An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
- A loss of ability to worry.
- A loss of interest in conflict.
- A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
- A loss of interest in judging others.
- A loss of interest in judging self.
- Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return.
Who wouldn't want to have the unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment. The world would be a better place if more people had frequent attacks of smiling and were able to love without expecting anything in return. These are admirable qualities. Yet, with a boatload of self-help books and seminars, and enough mood-stabilizers stimulants, antipsychotics, anti-depressant, and anti-anything-but-reality drugs to choke all the cows in India, we continue to be sad, depressed, lonely, selfish, unloving and and even hateful... far too much of the time.
The Apostle Paul confessed that (while he might have longed for the unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment), "The very things I know I should do, I don't do. And the things I know I shouldn't do, I do... wretched man that I am, who will save me from this life of sin? Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ," (read Romans 7:14-15).
Paul goes on to describe his spirituality in Romans 8:9-11:
Self-confidence is okay, but to trust in the Lord with all your heart is better. Self-awareness is good, but knowing the goodness of God is better. Self-appreciation is fine, but to love the Lord with all your heart, soul and strength is the only way to a deeply spiritual life.But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! (The Message)
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