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LINK to share: https://www.hanglberger-manfred.de/en-spiritualitaet.htm
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u Spirituality: What is that? uuu Body spirituality |
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Spirituality – what is that? Spirituality is the culture of spirit and soul >> to search for, >> to discover and >> to cultivate relations aiming to become a soul-transcendent reality. Christians and also many other religious people understand this reality as a personal counterpart whom they call God. They believe themselves to be fully and fundamentally affirmed by him, they know themselves to be surrounded by him and touched in their innermost being, the relationship with him gives them a deep sense of the meaning and value of their existence. It gives them a shelter, an inner support and it transmits to them a profound justification to live and to exist. From him they experience a Yes to the whole of their life story, in which the light and shadow sides of their being as well as all moods and feelings are included. In this relationship they experience a freedom from fear, through which they do not have to suppress or hide anything, which rather helps them to look at themselves honestly and comprehensively. They experience God as the one who moves them to look honestly at the network of their relational reality with near and distant people, with animals and other creatures, with natural elements and also with Himself, the mystery and origin of all reality, which works behind everything and which connects everything in the innermost with each other. They experience all of this as “divine love”. And believing people are convinced that there is a great hunger for this comprehensive and multi-dimensional love in every person.
Such spirituality, such experience of "being loved by God" conveys a spiritual knowledge that God basically means well with us and that He wants to help us in all our problems and worries - but in the sense of "helping us to help ourselves". He does not relieve us of our problems, he does not incapacitate us, but rather helps us to solve them and to live with them in such a way that they do not paralyze us, but that they become a blessing for us. Christians see in the message of Jesus the image of a God who wants to help us also with our guilt problems - not punishing, but healing - but who does not take from us the consequences of our wrongdoing, but helps us to bear them and to take responsibility for them. It is one of the central statements of the Gospels that God loves us even as "sinners" and helps us to accept ourselves again - in spite of our guilt - and to affirm our life again and to shape it responsibly and beneficially for ourselves, for our fellow humans and for the whole of creation.
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Above all, spirituality has the following goals: >> To trust life, to find life valuable despite so much suffering, to understand life in the diversity of its phases of development and its different moods as a unity, as something whole given to me by God. >> To consciously perceive and accept the transience of the external form, of the physical existence, to accept and endure the fear of transience. Experiencing oneself perceived, affirmed and loved (by God). >> To perceive and affirm one’s own
body and soul with the diversity and contrasts of feelings and moods. >> To be at home in the house of human community; to cultivate relationships of trust, of being connected to others and of solidarity with them. To develop a culture of compassion for the fate of fellow humans and also a culture of expressing oneself to others. >> To be at home in the house of the great mother nature, to respect the other creatures as cohabitants in this house and to interact well with them. >> To be at home in the house of time, of the history of my ancestors, of my people, of humanity. To feel connected to the fate of my parents and grandparents, to respect their path and decisions, and to shape my life as something new on the foundation of the past.
Manfred Hanglberger (www.hanglberger-manfred.de)
Translated by: Ingeborg Schmutte
LINK to share: https://www.hanglberger-manfred.de/en-spiritualitaet.htm
Other texts in English >>> |
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Spirituality and the dimensions of love >>> |
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