Spiritual Pathway Research Articles

Reclaiming synodality

Against the background of the inveterate politicization and polarization of synodical practice, this article aims to reclaim synodality as a spiritual pathway, in the spirit of Pope Francis’s current initiative. It argues that participation in synodality is the birthright of Christians and that the widest consultation is mandated. Synodality calls for an organic model of the church that is inimical to hierarchy and top-down forms of leadership. Synodality, so understood, has the potential to revitalize the church, not least in evangelization.

PKM PEMBERDAYAAN MASYARAKAT DALAM PENYUSUNAN RENCANA PENGEMBANGAN ARTEFAK BUDAYA SEBAGAI WISATA DESA DI DESA SIANGAN, KECAMATAN GIANYAR, KABUPATEN GIANYAR

The Traditional Siangan Adult Village can be found 31 kilometers northeast of Denpasar City. As a spiritual tourist village, this village has cultural potential to develop. Seven ancient sites, natural beauty, local art, and cultural traditions can all be used as a tourist attraction in the Siangan Adult Village. The indigenous village community has not fully appreciated the potential of cultural heritage to be used as a starting point for spiritual tourism. To support the tourist growth of Siangan Village, it is necessary to empower the public to inventory the heritage of cultural artifacts and its use as a tourist attraction. The Foundation Sentir Bali as a partner in the Community Partnership Programme (PKM) is expected to be able to cope with the following problems: (1) the entire cultural heritage that exists in the Adult Siangan Village has not been inventorized, (2) the historical background of the cultural patrimony existing in the Village Siangan, and (3) it has not yet been used as a spiritual tourist base. By carrying out the inventory of cultural reserves in Siangan Village and managing the cultural reserve as a tourist attraction, PKM is a form of empowerment of the community in the use of cultural reservoirs. Planning as a spiritual pathway. Archaeological documentation techniques and public archeological approaches are used in the implementation of cultural reserve management models. Partners together with the community will recognize the importance of the cultural reserve as the foundation of spiritual tourism, which implies the well-being of the community, as a result of this strategy.

Defeat Depression in Adherence to Spiritual Pathway in Bhagvad Gita

Dhritrashtra desires to know about the battlefield of Kurushetra. Dhritrashtra is inquisitive in relation to the combat zone. He denotes his sons as Kauravas and his brother’s son as Pandavas. He enquires Sanjay, “What my sons Kauravas and my brother’s sons Pandavas are doing in the war arena. He is concerned about his sons and calls them “Mine”. He is not worried about his brother’s sons and calls them “Others”. The way Dhritrashtra’s is characterized, it represents one thing that is his psychology, it’s critically analyzed his personality by his words. When he speaks something about war frontline his emphasis is on the words, “My sons”. When a person defines himself as “Me” and “Myself” and describes the others as “You” and “Yourselves”. Here the quarrel begins. Duryodhan is Dhritrastra’s son, whatsoever is the nature of Dhritrashtra, and broadly the son also has the same behavior. He said, “What my lads and Pandava’s lads are doing in the war - front”, from now, excess of love and affection towards his sons is revealed. He cogitates that, “Either, I ought to reign the country, or my sons might sovereign the nation, and no one else should be the supreme ruler. I would survive and my sons should subsist. My all possessions are supposed to stay secured and others should be empty handed. This is the language of self -centeredness. Dhritrastra had the mean mentality. Great writers have printed their writings, about those who notify these clothes are mine, these houses are mine, these jewels are mine, these are my eatables, these are my resting places, those whom speak everything is mine, the persons whom emphasize themselves by the words, “Me” and “Mine”, the evil deaths are sure for those persons, they will die badly. A writer has very beautifully depicted in a few lines, the way it is written that has been told. This is not the sayings of a saint. It’s just like a meaningful sequence, some lines have been written in verses. Let’s visualize;

Positive arts interventions: creative clinical tools promoting psychological well-being

ABSTRACTSince ancient times, the arts have been used by humans across the globe as healing methods and vehicles for communication. The arts are increasingly becoming clinical tools to promote health and psychological well-being in individuals. This clinical paper features positive arts interventions which positive arts therapists, positive psychologists and positive psychotherapists can administer in their clinical practice for individuals of all ages to creatively tap into their imagination, reflect upon life goals, gain insight into their character strengths, activate their positive emotions, determine their sources of life meaning and explore spiritual avenues. The following positive arts interventions will be described in great detail: Scribble Drawing, My Strengths Collage, Bridge Drawing with Path (BDP), A Favourite Kind of Day (AFKD), Tree of Life, My Sources of Meaning and Spiritual Pathway. To illustrate these positive arts-based activities, the authors share clinical case examples from Australia, Canada and Ukraine.

(Re)-discovering the sacred in the material universe: An exploration of cosmic spirituality in the works of Malcolm de Chazal and Michel Serres

The purpose of this comparative study is to probe the common threads that exist between the relatively unknown Mauritian author Malcolm de Chazal and the underutilised philosopher of science Michel Serres. In Sens-Plastique and throughout Serres’s diverse oeuvre, both authors clearly valorise life and all it has to offer despite the apparent absurdity of the human condition. Although Chazal and Serres’s passion for scientific inquiry leads them to the conclusion that existence has no predetermined meaning en-soi, both writers unwaveringly assert that life can be extremely meaningful and worthwhile. However, in order to access terrestrial, ontological remedies that are capable of effacing existential anguish, the modern subject must (re)-establish a primordial connection to elemental matter. According to Chazal and Serres, (re)-connecting to the biosphere that tossed us into the chaos of existence also (re)-awakens our dormant senses. Serres and Chazal maintain that our senses are vital organs that open up a spiritual pathway which allows us to catch a small glimpse of the divine universe and our minute place in it.

Pathways to mental healthcare in south-eastern Nigeria.

In sub-Saharan Africa, traditional and faith healers provide competing services alongside biomedical professionals. This may be associated with delays in reaching specialised mental health services, and hence with longer duration of untreated illness. As first line care constitutes a crucial stage in accessing of psychiatric care, investigating pathways to mental healthcare can highlight help-seeking choices. This study explored the pathways to care for mental illness preferred by a non-clinical sample of the population in south-eastern Nigeria. Multistage sampling was used to select participants (N = 706) who completed questionnaires on help-seeking. Results showed a significant preference for biomedical (90.8%) compared to spiritual (57.8%) and traditional (33.2%) pathways. Higher education predicted preference for the biomedical model, while low education was associated with traditional and spiritual pathways. Protestants preferred the spiritual pathway more than did Catholics. The use of biomedical care is potentially undermined by poor mental health infrastructure, a lack of fit between the culture of biomedical care and the deep-seated cultural/religious worldviews of the people, stigma surrounding mental illness, and the likelihood of a social desirability bias in responses. A complementary model of care is proposed.

İbn Haldun ve Tasavvuf: Şeyh ve İlgili Diğer Kavramlara Farklı Bir Yaklaşım

Discussions on whether or not a shaykh is necessary in sulūk (spiritual pathway) have especially intensified in the eighth/fourteenth century, and even after Andalusian scholars had long taken care of this issue, the well-known scholar Abū Isḥāq al-Shātibī (d. 790/1388) compiled a survey-like treatise on this issue by appealing to the erudition of Moroccan scholars. The Moroccan scholars include: Abū Abdullāh Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. ‘Abbād al-Rundī (d. 792/1376) and Abū al-’Abbās Aḥmad b. Qāsim b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Kabbāb (d. 778/1376). These two scholars gave their fatwā (judicial opinion) in Wansharī’s extant work Al-mi’yār almurīb. Ibn Khaldūn who has seen Shātibī’s Risālah put forward his views on this matter (in spite of not being a scholar of Sufism, and also not being asked of his stance). It was solely for this purpose that he had penned Shifā al-sāil li tahdhīb al-masāil. Ibn Khaldūn speaks of three kinds of Sufism in his book, and treats these three Sufistic characteristic types in relation to whether or not a shaykh is necessary.

Migration as a Spiritual Pathway: Narratives of Chinese Falungong Practitioners in Singapore

Owing to Falungong's illegal status in China, ethnographies on the qigong style often rely on fieldwork conducted with its members in other countries. Although most of these practitioners are ethnic Chinese immigrants, little is known about the role that Falungong plays in their migrant experience. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing an ethnographic account of the migrant experiences of mainland Chinese Falungong practitioners in Singapore. I seek to demonstrate that Falungong's other-worldly cosmology allows these migrants to construct a narrative that re-frames their disenchantment with the Chinese modernisation project and their subsequent departure to Singapore as an eschatological pilgrimage in search of a spiritual promised land.

Curriculum for a Spiritual Pathway Project: Integrating Research Methodology into Pastoral Care Training

In the immediate future Chaplains will need to practice evidence based spiritual care. To do this, they will need to be well versed in the research literature on spirituality and health, be able to critique it and incorporate it into their spiritual care, document their intervention, and measure its impact. To help train Chaplains for this reality, the Penn State Hershey Medical Center's Clinical Pastoral Education Residency program started the Spiritual Pathway Project in 2002. This paper describes the Spiritual Pathway Project, its evolution and contribution to the education of the next generation of Chaplains.

Psychosis and transformation: A phenomenological inquiry

Conventional views towards psychosis typically portray psychosis as an illness of the brain with a generally poor prognosis, even if treated with antipsychotics. However, there is a growing body of literature which presents an alternative view of psychosis, whereby people are not only able to recover from psychosis, but can also experience transformative and/or spiritual growth through psychosis. To learn more about the transformative potential of psychotic experiences, a phenomenological approach was used to research the experiences of six people who self-identified as having benefited from psychosis in a spiritual and/or transformative manner. Keys themes emerging from interviews with these six individuals included in the pre-psychosis phase “childhood foreshadowing” and “negative childhood events,” and in the psychosis phase, “sudden psychosis,” “psychic/intuitiveness and unusual visual experiences,” “comprised day-to-day functioning,” “experiences of dying,” and “communication with god.” Four themes made up the transformation of psychosis phase including “detachment and mindfulness,” “accepting the dissolution of time into now,” “embracing a spiritual pathway,”“ and ”re-alignment of career path.“ Overall, the results suggest that at least for some individuals, the experience of psychosis can be an important catalyst for spiritual and personally transformative growth.

Looking back to the future: The current relevance of Maria Montessori’s ideas about the spiritual well-being of young children

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was an Italian educator whose ideas and principles have validity in informing, understanding and responding to the challenges faced by contemporary educators . Many of her foundational principles are at the forefront of current educational thinking but are unacknowledged or unknown in mainstream education. It is argued that her ideas and principles about the spiritual wellbeing of young children have validity in the current debate. Montessori saw spirituality as innate in young children, the primary force driving their development and central to their capacity for joyful and deep engagement with their environment. She saw children’s capacity and ability to concentrate deeply as a spiritual pathway to a new level of individual consciousness and connection to the environment. These principles can inform our current thinking, understanding and response to young children’s spirituality. The conditions to bring about, support and protect what Montessori calls ‘concentration’ should be considered in pedagogical responses to the spiritual needs of young children

The Physical Maze and the Spiritual Labyrinth of Gide's Les Caves du Vatican

The maze motif in Andre Gide's 1914 Les Caves du Vatican is too obvious in a work of such subtlety. A carefully-crafted story that intertwines a farcical swindle with the psychological study of an apparently motiveless murder – the famous acte gratuit – all the while satirizing the bourgeois family and questioning organized religion, Les Caves du Vatican takes its characters through a confusing physical and emotional journey as it deconstructs the traditional novel. Freemason scientist Anthime Armand-Dubois's experiments with rats in a maze are described in detail only four pages into the work, and announce the author's intentions to experiment in similar fashion with his nineteenth-century characters, as he puts them into a bewildering twentieth-century mental architecture. But maze and labyrinth are technically two different concepts (although the lexical distinction is not made in French, which uses labyrinthe for both): the maze is designed to puzzle, while the labyrinth is a spiritual pathway. Gide has hidden a labyrinth in the mazes that mock the scientism of the Naturalists all the while evoking classical mythology. He intertwines the physical and the spiritual in many of his works, and Les Caves du Vatican is no exception; in the opening lines, the rheumatic Anthime announces his departure for Rome to seek medical help, to which his Catholic brother-in-law Julius replies that in Rome he should be seeking a remedy for his soul, not his body. The presence of a physical maze as well as a spiritual labyrinth metaphor in Les Caves du Vatican should hardly be surprising, given Gide's lifelong attempts to reconcile his physical and spiritual selves. Indeed, it is argued in this article that the spiritual labyrinth of French cathedrals, particularly that of Chartres, offers both the key to the novel's composition and a better reading of the spatial and emotional journeys of the characters than the obvious physical mazes of the work. The title of Les Caves du Vatican is where allusions to labyrinths and mazes begin. Caves has several possible interpretations; ut its principal meaning and the one that would first occur to the reader beginning the novel is 'cellars'. When associated with the Vatican, it suggests a catacomb-like network of ancient tunnels, but no action takes place therein. The misleading, empty title – cave also means 'hollow' – may be read as a hint that the underlying labyrinth motif is not merely physical. The Vatican cellars in the Les Caves du Vatican are mentioned only in a swindler's story, and the reader is forced to look for other meanings of cave and, perhaps, of labyrinth. By calling the work a sotie, Gide draws attention not only to the satirical intention of Les Caves du Vatican, but also associates it

Suffering, Choice, and Freedom

This article attempts to describe illness as a comprehensive individual experience quoting both sacred texts and writings of famous authors. Illness needs the concepts and the practices of soul, spirit, and meaning, which are the counterparts of the current medical notion of bodily and mental processes. In their absence, even the relationship from clinician and client transforms itself into a hopeless and compulsive interaction. Illness affects both feeling and thoughts in an unpredictable way and may allow an individual to rise through spiritual pathway it implies. The passage between pain and suffering toward the experience of freedom occurs by means of dark or even desperate moments, when active listening to the person in need and the operation of a Higher Power are necessary opportunities. Health professionals, nowadays in favor of medical technology and of the actions oriented to fighting the disease, may develop a therapeutic communication with their patients in order to help their understanding of the meaning that their illness has at the end for themselves.

A Spiritual Pathway for Prior Grief

Twelve spiritual pathways for problems commonly encountered by health care chaplains have been developed at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash.1 One of these, the spiritual pathway for prior grief is an approach to pastoral care for patients who have unresolved grief from a loss that precedes and may be unrelated to their present treatment. The author describes indicators of the elements of spiritual care for prior grief as well as the implications of this pathway for the training of chaplains. Effective spiritual care for patients with prior grief may promote integration of their loss and possibly reduce unnecessary utilization of health care resources.