Spiritual practice in difficult times

from Laura Park, Managing Director

It can be challenging to maintain spiritual practice in difficult times such as the current pandemic. We know these are the moments when we most need to ground in the source of our being, to gain perspective on the meaning of our lives, and to connect to that which is larger than ourselves. And yet, it can be hard to find focus, find time, find motivation in the moment for the practices that give us these gifts.

If you've received your Spirit Map report, you have tools to help you maintain your spiritual focus, even in difficult times.

Your Signature Strengths can guide you to practice that resonates deeply and supports you fully. For example: 

• "I see beauty all around me." Your ability to find beauty even in the most difficult moments of your life can sustain you through them and return you to hope. To take advantage of this strength, incorporate a practice of connecting to beauty into your daily ritual. You could seek out and reflect on beauty in your morning devotions. Or, if you have a practice of daily examen, you could consider where you encountered beauty at the end of your day and how that connected you to the holy. 
• "I believe it matters what I do." In this moment, when outside forces seem to dictate everything that happens to us, it can be particularly easy to wonder if what we do matters at all. Having this strength helps you maintain your spiritual practice, and the other actions that give your life meaning and purpose, knowing that it will make a difference in the end.  Lean on this strength to put hope and faith at the foundation of your spiritual life.

Your Key Opportunities can guide you to practice that bears fruit more readily. For example:

• "I make good decisions about when to act." This Key Opportunity invites you to come into alignment with the natural course things want to take, to avoid both urgency and passivity in how you act. Now would be a good moment to, as Martin Buber puts it, "Listen to the course of being in the world . . . and bring it to reality as it desires." Consider building a reflective practice that gives you time and space to listen more closely to the world's emerging possibilities and find your place in them. 
• "I have a clear purpose to my life and am able to articulate that purpose to both myself and others." Difficult times often provoke us to examine our purpose more deeply so this Key Opportunity may be particularly resonant for you right now. If you can recognize this as a true opportunity, yours will not be the static vocation that over time loses its ability to be a vehicle of service to the world’s need, or the all-consuming idol that brings you out of balance and right relationship. Instead, in your search for, as Frederick Buechner famously put it, the place “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet”, you have the opportunity to open your life to meaning, and to adjust your vocation as you, the world, and circumstances dramatically change.
  
  

These are just a few examples of how Spirit Map can help you better understand your unique spiritual landscape and use its strengths and opportunities to bring focus to your spiritual practice. What Signature Strengths and Key Opportunities should guide your spiritual journey? How has your spiritual landscape shifted in these challenging times? ​Take the Spirit Map inventory to find out. 

We're offering a special discount through June 15, 2020 to people who want to take Spirit Map again to see how their spiritual landscape has shifted.

Or, if the challenges of this time are encouraging you to try Spirit Map for the first time,
you can purchase a first Spirit Map report, or you can try a sample inventory. Or, explore our website to learn more about us. May you stay well, and may you find balance even when the ground shifts beneath you.