Gifts of the Spirit was an effort to present an overview of nontraditional belief systems. This effort, I hope, has provided a kind of road map for further inquiry. It is the result of my years of research, experience and adopted practices. Its purpose was to make it easier for the interested reader to sample the subject matter. The various systems I have only summarized offered me renewed and unique insight and actual change in my life, outlook and circumstances.
But to be spiritual is to often be in isolation because the majority of people simply do not understand mysticism and spiritualism. Educators have debunked the Old Ways as mythology, superstition and primitive in favor of contemporary science. Yet, in the last thirty years, people so educated have seen for themselves the havoc that “progress” has created in ecosystems, ethics and political institutions. As a backlash to religions that focus on Heaven as the end to all of the means, even educated people such as doctors, teachers, writers and lawyers secretly sought a more meaningful way to handle day to day living with peace, dignity and graciousness.
Native American prophecy predicts that in the last days, Great Spirit will offer to ALL nations a calling to reconnect with Mother Earth. The truth is, mankind’s survival may depend on shifting current values to older, wiser ways in order to offset the despair that is so rampant in the world.
I was ‘educated’ in debunking learning institutions. But, something within me kept telling me that my learned professors had it all wrong. Having experienced some unusual things in youth, I began to observe more, read more and THINK more. Eventually, I could not avoid the fact that there was something to my college games with friends and the more I researched, the more I learned the values of older, non-Western religion and thought. There is a type of dayto-day morality that pervades these belief systems. Not that Western European religion does not have moral principles but older belief systems incorporated them into waking, sleeping, doing day to day into mystic systems. There is an order to things without which there can be confusion and ineffectiveness. Cultural differences withstanding, it is this order that requires discipline be practiced by the various systems. Whether in and of the mind alone or with the aid of tools, these disciplines are ritual.
There comes a time when one’s spiritual journey must become a discreet one especially since the majority of people are skeptical and critical. As I realized the power of mind, I had to acknowledge power in others’ minds as well so I shared my insights and changing perspectives with only a trusted few along the way because the age of witch hunts are not over. People still fear what they do not understand. Today, people can be put away for far less then seeing the things that are really do “bump in the night.”
My spiritual journey was a solitary one until some years ago. One day, after about a year after my husband and I had begun saying to each other that we needed to meet other spiritually inclined people did we began to meet those few who, here and there, have also discovered and lived their spiritual truths.
I was no longer alone.Thanks be to the Creator of us all through whom only good things come and Blessed Be!!!
I have included a list of recommended books and resources so that anyone who simply would like to know where and how to learn more can begin.