Spiritual Fitness – A Lighter Way Of Living
By Caroline Reynolds
So where are we going? As we edge our way into the 21st century, how are we evolving? Where is your next cycle of growth, and what is being called of you in 2007?
A new year brings lots of questions yet if you look closely, you will find every
question contains the seed of an answer. The suggestion here is that we remember
life is a fluid, organic process of constant creation rather than a fixed,
static entity. We are organisms not mechanisms and we live in cycles, spiraling
through higher and higher levels of consciousness as we simultaneously move
through our everyday lives. Your unhappiness equals the size of the lie you are
living. If you are not at peace and fulfilled, one of the first reasons is you
have forgotten your need to flow, to evolve and live lightly in the world.
Softening Into An Easier Life
It is time for us to acknowledge this process, to realize we are being asked to
partake in a softening, with less action and more assimilation and reflection.
We are invited to live in a more feminine way, deepening and being more
sensitive to each other and our environment. We need to develop our wisdom,
which is impossible when we are constantly caught up in endless activity. For
this, we must create the space in our lives to listen, watch and feel. Beyond
physical fitness and material well-being, it is time to develop our spiritual
fitness. We start by perceiving reality through our hearts instead of our heads,
using our intuition and understanding the real values of the spirit.
What Is Spiritual Fitness?
In my book, “Spiritual Fitness – How To Live In Truth and Trust”, I describe how
for me spirituality is not defined by how many gurus you have studied with, how
many certificates you have on the wall or how many yoga positions you can get
into! It is based on the principles of love, truth and trust. The gauges are —
how loving and kind are you to everyone you meet? How honest are you, how many
people know what you really feel, your dreams, hopes and fears? How free are you
— how much of your life is your own? How wise are you — are you learning as you
go? How joyful are you, understanding the gift in every situation? And how
peaceful are you, how quickly can you re-center yourself?
Spiritual Fitness also means making your faith real and developing a robust
relationship with your higher power. How much do you really believe there is a
uni-
versal intelligence within you and all around you? If you really took it
seriously, how would it affect your life? So often we pay lip service to this
power — we go to church, read the right books and use the correct language — but
we fail to use it in the areas where we need it most, in our
finances/family/career/relationships. Living in constant communion with our
higher power and learning to ‘hand over’ the problems we can’t work out with our
minds would bring us so much more peace and freedom.
Developing Spiritual Fitness
In “Spiritual Fitness” I’ve created a comprehensive, 7-week program to help us
progress into this new way of being. We begin by getting real about where we
are, how much we are living our truth and how much we have forgotten who it is
we came here to be. We can only be truly fulfilled and at peace when we are
delivering our gifts to the world, yet so often our greatest fear is the fear of
our own greatness. We allow ourselves to be distracted by pettiness instead of
realizing how short and precious life is, and how at the highest level we have
come here simply to express and experience as much life force and as much love
as possible.
The next stage of our spiritual growth is to rid ourselves of all the mistaken
thinking we have adopted since we got here. We arrive with open, loving hearts
but are trained in the language of fear. Before long we start to mistrust and
separate and we develop an artificial persona as a survival tool. By practicing
forgiveness in the ‘Course In Miracles’ sense, seeing through and beyond
negativity and waking up from the illusions of this world, we start to connect
with our hearts again. We reconnect with the beauty of life, we can feel love
and unity, and we rediscover our natural ability to trust.
Developing Our Sixth Sense
Healed and able to expand, we can develop our ‘sixth sense’ and learn to ‘read’
people and situations at the soul level. Just as we learned to read language,
our next evolution is to learn to ‘read’ energy and become aware of the other
dimensions of reality through our feelings. This new century is calling from us
a more visceral spirituality. We are moving from the Age of Information to the
Age of Intuition, from thinking to feeling, explanation to experience and from
control to trust. It is an energetic move from the masculine to the feminine,
from structure to flow.
Magnetism vs. Manipulation
As we get spiritually fitter, we start to live more effortlessly. By truly
embodying our own spiritual truth, we set ourselves free to live in a state of
grace. Instead of thinking we must ‘manipulate’ our reality by going out and
making things happen, we start to ‘magnetize’ it by aligning with our soul’s
truth, creating pure intentions and attracting and allowing all that suits us
best.
Spiritual Fitness is a lifestyle and an attitude. It is a choice we make to live at a higher level and it takes discipline and dedication. As Gabrielle Roth once said, “It takes discipline to be a free spirit”. Spiritual Fitness puts the wind beneath your wings so you can become the magnificent, vibrant, unique expression of Spirit you have come here to be. And imagine how our world would be if we each shone our brightest light and radiated our greatest love. It could be paradise.
Caroline Reynolds runs Spiritual Fitness Programs nationwide by phone, and in person in Southern California. “Spiritual Fitness — How To Live In Truth and Trust” (DeVorss Publishers). Visit www.carolinereynolds.com or call (949) 715-1039.
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