Self
Development & Transformation
Self-development is of interest to everyone at different times in their lives for differing reasons. For example, you might want to focus on personal growth because:
- you need to get along better with the people in your life;
- you need a sense of meaning and purpose;
- you need to live in a more harmonious and peaceful way;
- you need to be re-inspired or you feel a need to change the way you are.
Self-development is ultimately a personal task, but it can be guided by others; mostly professionals who specialize in self-development workshops and training.
Common
techniques for self-development might include:
- going to group therapy;
- going to a skills development workshop;
- going to an encounter group;
- working with a life coach.
Intense personal growth means change. This might be confusing for yourself, your family and friends, or your co-workers.
If you are dedicated to this growth you might also need support for your journey.
Self Development is different from Spiritual Growth
Self-development is different from spiritual growth in that self development might not ever include the element of spirituality.
As such, sometimes, our personal growth journeys will involve an element of spirituality.
Psychologists have found the need for spiritual meaning to be a powerful universal drive.
Similar to the reasons for wanting to undertake personal development work, you might also want to focus on spiritual development because:
- you need a deeper sense of meaning and purpose;
- you feel a need to connect to a “higher power”;
- you think being more spiritual might make you a happier person;
- you think being more spiritual will contribute to your overall sense of well-being.
For those who seek a deeper spiritual meaning in their lives, unfortunately, our society currently doesn’t provide a lot of support for this.
But there are ways to nurture spiritual growth. Some of these techniques include:
- travel;
- doing charity work or donating to charity;
- silent reflection and meditation;
- prayer;
- reading spiritually inspiring books;
- retreating to spend time alone in nature;
- doing art, music, play, or dance.
Spiritual
growth can occur separately from religion – but religion can
also
be spiritual and this usually is related to the mystical aspects of a
religion.
There are mystics from most of the world’s major religions and in these mystic branches they often focus on the individual becoming more aware of the mystery of the universe and re-inspiring a sense of “awe” about existence.
Every major religion also has it’s own primary text, for example in Judaism the Torah, in Taoism the Tao Te Ching, and in Islam the Qu’ran.
Unfortunately, very few people acquaint themselves with the religious books that are outside of the scope of their own religious experience and therefore they conclude that these other religious systems are completely in discord with what they hold to be true.
The interesting thing is that there are many areas where these texts overlap in terms of what is right and wrong and in ethics about daily living. For example, none of the world’s major religious texts condone the killing of another human.
Alan Watts, a famous scholar and mystic, noted in some of his works the commonality between religions. For example, he notes that almost all religions involve the image of a circle to represent harmony and completion, they all have a physical religious space (be it a temple, shrine, or holy cave), the burning of incense is common between religions, most religions also involve the use of bells, gongs, and whistles, plus they all have some form of prayer or silent inner reflection which they practice.
It is our hope that you can feel free to read, learn, and explore what the other systems of religion are teaching as these readings might also act as a support or inspiration for you if you are undertaking a personal transformation of spiritual growth.