The world-wide search for a deeper spiritual experience

[harsi]

Heart Links

The Adventure Continues
by James Redfield

The book tour for 'The Secret of Shambhala' is now a few weeks old, and as we travel the United States, I'm continuously struck by the consistent increase in the numbers of people exploring their spiritual experience. Five years ago, conversation about our spiritual nature was often met with wide skepticism among the media, but today the opposite seems to be happening. Now, most of the media wants to know what is happening, what this world-wide search for a deeper spiritual experience really means, and where such a search is taking us.

Whether you believe the new Millennium is coming, it is arriving amid what can only be called an immense spiritual renaissance in human awareness. Recent polls show that over fifty percent of the population of all age groups now report that the pursuit of their spiritual life is "very important" to them, an increase in 28 percent in just the last ten years. What's more, this data indicates that the renaissance is broad and deep within human culture, crossing all religious beliefs and all cultures. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, all report the same desire: to pursue a deeper spirituality that goes beyond the recitation of creeds and beliefs. We seem to want our sense of the spiritual to come alive in our daily world in the form of real, tangible experience.

In fact, this may be the chief difference that separates the current inner renaissance from periods of mass religious revival and transcendentalism in the past. We seem to be actually discovering a heightened spiritual perception that enlightens our everyday world. One of the most common spiritual experiences now is a strong sense of synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence -- those sudden events that bring us just the right information at just the right time to shift our lives to a new, more inspired direction. Such events seem beyond pure chance, and give us direct evidence personally that there is a divine force operating behind the scenes in life.

Almost as common is the experience of an inner connection with the source of this force, with the divine intelligence behind the universe. In this experience we are suddenly imbued with a greater sense of energy and well being, and a higher sense of ourselves, a greater wisdom, that is more intuitive and in touch with an inner vision of how we, individually, can make the world a better place. The founders of every religion describe such a connection, and at the moment of experience, this union feels exactly the same, no matter what religious affiliation we have grown up with. We seem to know intuitively that what is most important isn't the creeds or beliefs we value; its the experience behind them.

Now a further experience is fueling this renaissance: our insight into the power of faith and vision that has always been called prayer. All of the information over the last few decades—from religious writings and anecdotal evidence of the advantages of positive thinking to the newly-published research studies on prayer and intention—is now coming together in a way that is truly revolutionary. When classic scientific studies are showing that when patient groups prayed-for by volunteers suffer 11 to 30 percent fewer problems and complications and get well sooner (a finding so meaningful that if prayer were a drug, it would be hailed a miracle medication) then the effect on our world view is striking.

Just like the other spiritual experiences we are suddenly taking seriously, we are exploring this power of prayer and finding direct evidence that it works. This means that in greater numbers than ever we are visualizing a wave of influence coming out from us individually and moving into the world to have an effect we can document as our lives unfold. Such are the experiences that characterize the silent renaissance around us. If anyone asks you if this awakening is real, if it includes actual changes in experience, simply make them a list.

Celestine Journal, December 1999
http://www.celestinevision.com