Building Spiritual Muscle

In my post from June 21, My Two-by-Four Experience, I shared some insights I gained from living with my knee injury. Since then, I have been gifted with Reiki and other healing modality treatments, nutritional supplements, and prayers from many loving and caring people. I am happy to report that my knee is 85% healed, on the way to 100%. I am moving around much more freely and without pain. I experience only the occasional twinge. A heartfelt ‘THANK YOU’ to everyone who has contributed to my healing and continues to do so.

I also shared in that post that I am working with a friend, Jon, who is a personal trainer. I hesitate to use that term to describe him, because he is much more than that. He is a facilitator of healing through encouragement, education and gentle, but firm facilitation of physical exercises. While others have helped to support my healing through energy work which I can simply relax and enjoy, Jon’s healing techniques invite me to engage in the process through physical action. Working with Jon is helping me to improve muscle strength and increase my awareness of the body’s amazing wisdom.

I have discovered in working with Jon that the process of increasing physical body strength is in many ways analogous to the process of increasing spiritual strength.

I have been going to the gym and exercising several times a week fairly regularly for many years. I worked with a personal trainer many years ago, and learned how to do exercises intended to strengthen specific muscles. While I have experienced some benefit of using those techniques, I have not realized the level of results that I would enjoy. Even so, I have continued to do the same exercises in the same manner.

Until I experienced an injury and was inspired to learn new ways to strengthen my leg muscles to help support and aid in my healing, it didn’t occur to me to question what I had learned.

The same is frequently true in our spiritual journeys. We often continue to engage in habitual ways of approaching life until a traumatic experience, a grave loss, or some other life event that stimulates emotional pain and suffering, or sometimes even exhilaration, motivates us to seek new ways of strengthening our spiritual understanding and growth. We look for new ways to respond to life when we realize that our learned habitual ways no longer serve us.

Additionally, even after learning from Jon new ways of engaging and strengthening muscles and even after experiencing results, still I resisted setting aside time to do them. How many of us learn tools such as prayer, meditation, denials and affirmations, practice them for a time, realize some benefits and then decide that we don’t have time to do them regularly? Like building our physical muscles, strengthening our spiritual muscles requires commitment and practice.

Properly performing the movements that Jon is teaching me also requires clear intention and a great deal of concentrated attention. Staying engaged in the process while activating a specific muscle or group of muscles is key to strengthening them. However, it is equally important not to push beyond the body’s limits. I have learned that the adage, “no pain, no gain” is hogwash. Further, it does not serve overall physical, mental or emotional well-being. Building the strength and endurance of the physical body takes place gradually with sustained practice.

The same is true for building our spiritual strength. It is important for us to be intentional, dedicated and focused in our spiritual practices. Yet, it is vital that we do not push ourselves beyond the limits of our willingness or the capacity of our mental, emotional or physical endurance. It is good to be patient with ourselves while continuing to move forward in our growth. We will, through continued conscious practice, realize the desired results.

As I shared in my earlier post, I don’t subscribe to the idea that God/Universe/Source hits us over the head with a “cosmic two-by-four” to help us learn a lesson. I believe we can choose to learn from everything and everyone in our lives. I am certainly learning more about myself and about my approach to life as I move through this healing journey. My hope and my prayer is that I will take these lessons to heart and apply them in my life. I also hope that by sharing my lessons, I can help you as you move through whatever life brings your way.

Join us on Sunday at 10:00 at Unity Spiritual Center Denver as I delve a little deeper into my learning with my lesson “Building Spiritual Muscle” You are welcome here!