I know how to elicit value and place them in a hierachy and i have done this for my self in various contexts like relationships ,wealth, miney etc but I have know idea how to do this for spirituality because i am not spiritaul at all so i was qwondering if anyone has done a Hierarchy of Values of spirituality and what type of words came up so i can have a idea about how to do this for myb self.

I know that the words are supposed to come from your self because they are subjective but i cant evem think of one word or phase that is in portant to me about spirituality.

Try changing the word from spirituality to "Personal mission" or "Vision" or anything that creates for you the notion of something bigger than you

yeah, Sean's got a good point here. the word spiritual is a little semantically overloaded..

another thing to consider is that it's my personal belief that spirituality is largely about deciding your own way of doing things. You can take a lot of advice, but in my personal experience, all of my spiritual realizations have been founded in a deepening relationship with myself.

in fact, that's often the definition given to spirituality -- getting to know your self on progressively deeper levels.

if you're interested in spirituality, I'd say start with that. sit down and just go inside. focus on the desire to explore the spiritual aspect of yourself and just sit with it. ask yourself questions about it.. what it means, what is it, who are you, what ever comes up... or don't ask yourself questions. do what feel natural. perhaps just wait for an intuitive sense for a direction to go in.

IMO sitting quietly like that is #1 as far as spiritual growth in concerned.

tomkeane wrote:

I know that the words are supposed to come from your self because they are subjective but i cant evem think of one word or phase that is in portant to me about spirituality.

I agree that if you want to do this you're going to have to define "spirituality" so that it matters to you. That said, I feel compelled to ask: if it doesn't matter to you already, why bother?

tomkeane wrote:

I know how to elicit value and place them in a hierachy and i have done this for my self in various contexts like relationships ,wealth, miney etc but I have know idea how to do this for spirituality because i am not spiritaul at all so i was qwondering if anyone has done a Hierarchy of Values of spirituality and what type of words came up so i can have a idea about how to do this for myb self.

I know that the words are supposed to come from your self because they are subjective but i cant evem think of one word or phase that is in portant to me about spirituality.

I meant to ask you whether you are using Dilts' neurological levels model in your efforts. If you are then the spirit level (no pun intended) is concerned with anything bigger/greater than you that you are in service to. For some people it's God, for others it's family, for others it's a sense of personal mission. A few years ago I got to talk with someone who met Martin Luther King when she was 18 and that meeting completely changed her life. She has dedicated her life to improving the health of the poor and disadvantaged where she lives in Chicago. That for her is a personal mission that she is in service to and in her opinion it gives her the strength and ability to get all manner of sponsorship and gifts from the rich and powerful in that city.

Spirituality for me is simply a particular type of state close to euphoria. What confuses matters, I think, is that the word has been hijacked by the religious and now has connotations with God or the paranormal.

I find it, on the occasions it happens to me. to be uplifting and inspiring and many, many things can do it. Probably most common is when I go skiing high in the mountains, the birth of my first son was another, seeing the Milky Way (rarely) is one more.

Think back to situations you have been in and have you ever used any of the following words to describe it –

WOW
Awesome
Blimey
Fantastic
Incredible
…
…
…

If not then so be it, you are just you in that case, thank God.

John

What's white and can't climb trees? A fridge

It's not that the vocabulary for this kind of stuff has been hijacked by the religious: it's implicit in some of the words. Enthusiasm for instance, comes from en theos, which means with God. Which doesn't, please note, mean anything to do with any particular church. The abiding feature of these words, and I suggest many of the ones on John's list above, is the sense of being part of something larger than oneself. For which God is as good a name as any.

adrian r wrote:

For which God is as good a name as any.

Not for me I'm afraid.

John

But can you see why others might veer in that direction?

adrian r wrote:

But can you see why others might veer in that direction?

I can if they believe that God exists.

What other explanation for these things would they have?

John

Isn't this tautologous? Why not the experience itself give rise to belief in some form of divinity?

adrian r wrote:

Isn't this tautologous? Why not the experience itself give rise to belief in some form of divinity?

Why not the experience confirms a belief that is already present through some other means?

John

Yeah, that's a possibility. But so is the notion of imprinting: Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary developed what they called the 8 circuit model of human consciousness. The higher circuits are activated by experiences such as those referred to, among others, and -- crucially -- don't require a pre-existing belief system. Sure, people may well adopt one that's shaped by the trappings of what was around at the time of the incident, but it doesn't need to have been waiting in the wings.

For instance, the experience of Philip K Dick...the science fiction author had some unaccountable experiences in the early 1970s which he spent the rest of his life trying to explain. Some psychic phenomena were involved, and the models he ran through included communication with a living alien satellite, communion with his dead twin sister, and realisation that this world is imposed on another reality in which the Roman empire never ended.

Tom wrote:

...I have know idea how to do this for spirituality because i am not spiritaul at all...

Hi Tom. When the identity that you are NOT spiritual is part of you, you'll be too hard on yourself trying to elicit your values in the context of spirituality. Essentially, the values and beliefs we have, together form a system rather than being seperate entities. And higher beliefs/values influence/govern lower ones. It will be more fruitful if you would try eliciting in the context of "purpose of life" or "life's mission" as some here have pointed out.

Vivek.

Hi thanks for the repies

The reason Im doing a hierachy of values for spirituality is because it is an excercise in a coaching book.

the first prt of the excercise is to set the context that you are findoing your values for . for example carreer, wealth, health, spirituality, and relantionships etc

then you find out what you value about these contexts and then orderthem and then find out and conflicts and motivatiuon direction.

the reason im doing it for psirituality is because it was one of the contexts suggested iin the excercise but i have found ot dificult to think of things that are important to me about spirituality.

thanks for all of your suggestions i think what i need to do is think about a different context and use that for example the meaning of life or self development.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA]YouTube - Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity[/ame]

This talk by Elizabeth Gilbert is relevant to the discussion

Sean, that video was AWESOME!! thanks very much for posting.

Quite relivant here is what Ken Wilber (one of my biggest heroes) refers to as the distinction between pre-rational and trans-rational... (the words pre and trans here describing developmental stages)

a pre-rational belief would be some sort of belief system before rational enlightenment, such as a mythic belief in a god as perscribed to in lots of christianity (what i think John is describing as not ideal)

a trans-rational belief would be the type of apprecieation in the video that Sean just posted, where a person accepts a belief system that is non-rational, but is supported by the consciousness of the person to accept it as an "as if" -- for example, "it`s not true, but it doesn`t matter" (what I imagine Adrian is arguing for)

tomkeane wrote:

The reason Im doing a hierachy of values for spirituality is because it is an excercise in a coaching book.

That's a good reason. And it's proving to be a good exercise.

What, to you, is "spirituality"?

I like John’s contribution that dissects spiritual from “religious.”

Anyway, it seems that our brains simulate not only the “external world” but internal experience of the “subject” as well, from this perspective spirituality may mean eagerness to deal with this as an opportunity to expand consciousness.

On top of all interesting contributions in this thread, I would like to recommend checking out Nathaniel Branden’s Art of Living Consciously, the book that seems to examine in unprecedented depth just that - what it means to live consciously, and does it from the most intimate areas of life, to the workplace, to the social/political arena.


One of the most exciting ideas Branden introduces in his work is that of the spirituality of reason, in fact he develops soft of an operations manual for our basic tool of survival — the mind — and a summons to the best within us.


And the unique contribution of the book is the fact that all exposition is grounded in values, what they are and why we need them.

Jurek

How many psychotherapists you need to change a light bulb? Of course none, because it will change itself when ready. It just needs to get more spiritual and explore values a bit.