{"id":125,"date":"2008-05-17T10:19:35","date_gmt":"2008-05-17T14:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/?p=125"},"modified":"2008-05-17T10:19:35","modified_gmt":"2008-05-17T14:19:35","slug":"experiencing-the-sacred-2-spirituality-and-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/experiencing-the-sacred-2-spirituality-and-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"EXPERIENCING THE SACRED 2: SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION"},"content":{"rendered":"

EXPERIENCING THE SACRED <\/strong><\/p>\n

Intuitive Focusing<\/a> and Focused Listening<\/a> can be used purposefully to “attend to,” “sit with,” “articulate” the “intuitive feel” of spiritual experiences. But more importantly, the practice of Listening\/Focusing opens our eyes to seeing the Sacred around us by encouraging attention to those moments when the Sacred enters our lives.If you have just joined us, click here to read the rest of last week’s first e-newsletter introducing this cycle, Instant Ahah # 10: Experiencing the Sacred Week One<\/a><\/p>\n

Spirituality Is Different than Religion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Elfie Hinterkopf, in her book Integrating Spirituality into Counseling: Using the Experiential Focusing Method<\/em> (available in The Store at <\/strong>www.focusing.org<\/strong><\/a> \u00a0), makes the following distinction<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0“It is important to distinguish spirituality from religiousness — in this book religiousness will be used to mean adherence to the beliefs and practices of an organized church or religious institution (Shafranske and Malony, 1990). Spirituality will be used to refer to a unique, personally meaningful experience (Shafranske and Gorsuch, 1984). Although spirituality may be positively related to specific forms of religiousness, spirituality is not necessarily reliant upon any given form or appearance of religion.”<\/p>\n

And:<\/p>\n

“The spiritual experience is one of bodily felt release, more life energy, feeling more fully present, a sense of feeling larger and being able to reach out to more parts of oneself, to more people, and to more of life (Campbell and McMahon, 1985).”<\/p>\n

Notice that Hinterkopf is not at all diminishing the experience of being “religious,” of following the practices of an organized religion. She is saying that this other thing, this “spiritual experience” can happen within those formal confines and also separately.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hinterkopf’s work has helped people to overcome those times when organized religion, for whatever reason, has dampened their access to the actual bodily-felt experience of The Sacred in the world. She shows how to use Gendlin’s Focusing in a counseling setting to help people explore their past histories of experience with religion as well as to find and articulate the present, bodily-felt\u00a0experience of spirituality through\u00a0the kind of growth experiences possible through Focusing.<\/p>\n

Our purpose here is to enrich your spiritual experience in relation to any symbols or belief systems.<\/p>\n

Exercise: Focusing on Spirituality: Experiencing The Sacred<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to go to last week’s blog with the actual Focusing Exercise<\/a><\/p>\n

RESOURCES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember, Intuitive Focusing is often learned more easily in the company of a Focused Listener<\/font><\/a>. Go to Creative Edge Focusing TM<\/sup> at www.cefocusing.com<\/font><\/a> \u00a0to find many resources, from self-help groups to Creative Edge Focusing Consultants for individual Coaching or Classes and Workshops.<\/p>\n

Tell me what you think at cefocusing@gmail.com<\/font><\/a> or comment on this blog\u00a0! Or email your findings to The Creative Edge Collaborators\u2019 Group. Join at http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/creativeedgecollab<\/font><\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0See blogs under <\/strong>Category: Conflict Resolution<\/strong><\/font><\/a> in the sidebar to find a complete mini-course on Interpersonal Focusing and Conflict Resolution, including Rosenberg\u2019s Non-Violent Communication, Blanchard\u2019s \u201cOne Minute Apology,\u201d Patricia Evan\u2019s books on Verbally Abuse and Controlling Relationships, McMahon\u2019s Beyond The Myth Of Dominance, <\/em>and much more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Download complete Instant \u201cAhah!\u201d Mini-Manual, in <\/strong>English<\/strong><\/font><\/a> and <\/strong>Spanish<\/strong><\/font><\/a>, from CEF Website<\/strong><\/p>\n

Find links to <\/strong>free articles, personality tests, multi-media\u00a0Self-Help training, Classes and workshops<\/strong><\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

Dr. Kathy McGuire<\/font><\/a>, Director<\/p>\n

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

www.cefocusing.com<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EXPERIENCING THE SACRED Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening can be used purposefully to “attend to,” “sit with,” “articulate” the “intuitive feel” of spiritual experiences. But more importantly, the practice of Listening\/Focusing opens our eyes to seeing the Sacred around us by encouraging attention to those moments when the Sacred enters our lives.If you have just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[375,365,229,57,160,75,744,378,376,377,366,757],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}