“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Teilhard de Chardin
There are not enough ministers to go around for people who look to organized religion as a way to connect to the Divine. There are not enough traditional therapists who feel qualified to assist people who do not desire to belong to a church and yet use spirituality as a guide for living. Spiritual Counselors are growing in numbers due to this gap in the healing arts.
In my opinion, the best spiritual counselors are those people who have been able to synthesize the challenges of their own life with spirituality and who then serve others by offering the knowledge of transcendence. They meet each client where that client is on her/his journey and apply wisdom, love and patience toward each person’s spiritual journey knowing that each person is unique in their approach to the Divine. They use whatever mystical or contemporary writings that will assist their clients and fellow spiritual journeyers to deepen their understanding of themselves as spiritual beings in human form. They use life experience, divine guidance and constantly hone their ability to love on the deepest level possible.
As a minister, whose training was intentionally geared toward non-denominational and non-traditional approach, I am able to float from one belief system to the other based entirely on what the spiritual seeker may need at that moment so that dogma does not hinder the process of spiritual exploration.
Our world is changing. A Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that the greatest growth in changes of affiliation to a religion is actually the group who choose no affiliation to at all. Many of these people continue to desire a connection to a higher power or Source Energy they believe exist but have very little or no support for this endeavor. It is an unnecessary suffering that the right spiritual counselor can attempt to alleviate.
