Effective Spirituality: Being An Active Agent

Friday, 16 September 2022 Written by Semele Xerri

I’ve been dwelling a lot recently on the question of how to bring spiritual values and ethics back into the material infrastructure of a world gone mad with greed and lust for individual gain.

While I feel the measurable impact of the energy and vibration work done by all spiritual workers, I find myself longing for a more effective spirituality. How do we make soulfulness more active in shaping the new earth we choose to co-create? How do we emerge from the murky fringes and claim an influential place at the bright centre of things? We have to find a way to embed soul into every sphere of society and the way we live, to breathe it into every aspect of life with love but also with dynamic and inspiring credence.

I listened to a talk by Daniel Thorson a few days ago which focused me more on the mechanics of how this might be implemented. He’s part of the Monastic Academy, centred in Buddhism, which among other things runs a training course to shape leaders who think, speak and act from this spiritual psyche. He spoke of aiming for course graduates to be omni-harmonious agents in any situation.

In explaining the core trainings he reminded me of something I’ve written about before; the threefold heart flame of wisdom, love, and power. You might want to revisit that article I wrote back in 2014, The triple heart of spirituality. In his talk, Daniel reframed these three qualities slightly in terms of being a leader who is viewed as trustworthy to exercise power, like this:

Wisdom: The ability to drop all perspectives.
Love: The ability to see from another’s perspective.
Power: The ability to enable others to see from your perspective.

It was interesting that Daniel also mentioned the tendency for spiritual people to be allergic to power! I would hazard a guess that’s because power has so far been exercised in incredibly damaging ways by those who definitely don’t embody this triad of qualities in balance. And power has so often led to corruption. Movements begun with the very best of intentions grounded in spiritual values have quickly descended into dictatorship and abuse at the first intoxicating taste of power. You only have to think of the number of guru and spiritual community scandals that have hit the headlines in recent years. Perhaps this is why the archetype of the spiritual hermit has always been so popular; it neatly bypasses the challenge of testing one’s spiritual integrity in the context of conflict with other people and the stresses of normal life! But ordinary life and relationship with others is exactly where our presence is needed to heal these very wounds.

Daniel further mapped this triple heart flame on to Dr Zachary Stein’s vision of metapsychology which embraces three aspects:

Transcendence (Wisdom): The ability to move personally up and out of the self into a sense of beyondness and expanded consciousness through attention – meditation. The language for transcendence is symbol.
Ensoulment (Love): The ability to explore the deep roots and pyschology of what it means to be human; particularly focusing on a felt sense of your unique calling and purpose within the context of the whole. the language of ensoulment is image through the imagination.
Development (Power): The ability to develop skills through cognition which leads to the capacity to choose and act consistently. The language of development is language.

All three of these components need to work together harmoniously and healthily, feeding into each other in a circular reaction so that our psyches can evolve and grow. Stein believes any leader experienced in working with and balancing these three aspects can speak clearly to the psyche/soul of others, while still regulating their own behaviour. This is spiritual power in action and it’s a vital skill to have in the face of our current social disruption and possible collapse. More importantly, of course, we need to be able to educate and encourage everyone to experience and learn how to master this for themselves.

If you’re still reading then thank you for staying with me through some rather theoretical content! So having let this permeate for a bit, these are the ways I think we can, as spiritual agents, contribute more effectively to the shaping of a new world.

Don’t save it for the spiritual circles or self-development groups

Lead by example simply through your way of being in life rather than “doing” leadership which is not based on personal integrity. Leaders don’t always have to be out front and centre. You become a leader or role model when people voluntarily choose to follow and adopt your values and behaviour because it resonates with them in a deep way. Bring all the tools you use as part of your own deep self-exploration (ensoulment) and connection to Source through meditation (transcendence) into all your decision-making, particularly where that involves groups in your community, social, and work environments. Be brave enough to suggest trying out things in these ordinary settings, like joint imagination exercises to seek inspiration and solutions for problems, and deep breathing or simple meditation to allow people to move beyond their egos and calm the tension when things get heated. This is the development part of the cycle, where we restore a sense of the sacred to everything we do. We facilitate others to move beyond themselves and out into the field that connects and sustains every living thing – the web of life.

Empower rather than do for

I know I and many of my colleagues are moving progressively away from creating any reliance on the services we offer or the knowledge we’ve gathered. Instead, I’m providing clients with the tools and techniques I’ve tried and tested so they can develop their own sense of self, purpose, understanding, and capability.

Share what you know

Teaching, or perhaps mentoring is more appropriate, is where change-makers are required most. I’m involved with educating adults in the spiritual community mostly, and because of years of conditioning there’s a necessary and lengthy process of deconstruction that has to take place before they can begin to reconnect meaningfully to the soul. We need ensouled teachers able to reach young children in mainstream education, before they’ve become too hypnotised and brainwashed by the soul-scrambling imagery they’re saturated with on a daily basis by the media. If you have children of your own you can start at home obviously, but if you’re involved in the state education system already or you know you have a rapport with young people, then you could think about introducing these kind of soulful self-awareness activities as part of a well-being programme in schools and clubs.

Encourage unplugging

As mentioned above, the image-driven world of the media speaks the language of the soul, which is why it can cause such confusion and disruption so easily. Practice for yourself and encourage everyone you know to take regular breaks from TV, the Internet, and mobile phones to clear the external noise. Even better, replace some of that time with time spent out in nature, connecting to the earth and its restorative beauty.

Be aware of the triple heart flame in all your relating

Before you think, say or do anything that impacts on others, revisit these three aspects of wisdom (transcendence), love (ensoulment), and power (development) and ask if you’re integrating all three in your approach. Have you overlooked or bypassed any one of this sacred triad to get to where you are with whatever you’re intending? What needs to happen to reactivate this feedback cycle so that all three are informing your position and how you communicate that?

If we all contributed to carrying this internal harmony into every social context, and everyone was exposed in some small way over the next months and years to this triple-faceted way of being in the world, it would begin to be accepted as the norm. The benefits would be quickly obvious. I believe our more active spiritual agency in society gives us the best chance of finding our way to practical, regenerative and loving solutions to the global crisis, and ensuring resilience in the process.

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