Hi everyone this is Fiona English and this is the introduction to the talk and workshop I give which is called the role of connection in spirituality.
So let me start with a quote.
You have this connection to out there do you know but in here and as Lucy described this to me she held her hand to her heart.
This quote was taken from a series of interviews I conducted when I was researching how people describe spirituality in their own words and the most common theme to emerge from that research was connection or connectedness.
People described how spirituality and spiritual practice allowed them to feel more connected and of significance was the connection they described as you can hear from Lucy's quote was an internal connection an embodied connection to something inside and this is the idea of imminence.
Imminence as a word comes from the Latin to dwell within.
The experience of the people I interviewed was that they felt connected to something which was residing inside them that their idea of the universe or God or life source was one which was inside them and their spiritual practice in whatever form it took helped them to connect more deeply to that source.
So to be spiritually healthy we need to be able to connect and the absence of connection to our spiritual self our soul can leave us feeling untethered or lacking a strong internal center.
To be more connected we have to practice being in our bodies not simply in our heads because connection is a feeling and our feelings reside in the body.
So this is not new this idea of embodied connection is not new.
The concept of the body as a vessel for the spirit or the soul is widespread among spiritual and religious traditions and a regularly quoted line from the Bible and one which we all have used at some point in our lives is the idea of the body as a temple.
So your bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit is a line from the Bible.
And yoga is formed on the idea that the body is a sanctuary for the soul or the spirit that it holds our soul or our spirit and therefore it's crucial to our spiritual development.
And this idea of the body as a vessel for wisdom has a long history.
Some traditions believe the Holy Spirit is just one representation of the divine feminine archetype Sophia which resides in or was represented by the body.
So this idea of the soul or the spirit being in the body.
The mythologist Joseph Campbell has said that throughout history divine feminine archetypes have been linked to the body as both the holder of wisdom and a vehicle for transformation.
So this would be linked to the idea of the butterfly so the butterfly transforms through its body it goes from being a caterpillar into a butterfly.
So this idea that the soul is what transforms the soul is the part of ourselves that is in the body.
So most spiritual and traditions and more spiritual elements of psychology such as transpersonal psychology view the body as a source of spiritual insight so it can provide us with information about ourselves.
And the people I spoke to when I was researching all discussed tuning in or accessing the knowledge or wisdom that was inherent within them and their spiritual practice in the many forms they discussed allowed them to connect more deeply to this source that was residing within them.
So often when we talk about spirituality we focus on what we might believe so what I believe or what you believe and how they might differ.
But a better question might be is how do you feel connected or what do you feel connected to?
How are you in relationship with life?
What is your connection to your life?
Because what my research showed was that embodied connection is central to spirituality.
To be situated in the body is to be centered,
Present and connected.
So when we talk about this idea of being more present it is to encourage us to be more connected.
But in our modern culture we often spend more time in our heads than in our bodies and that move over time,
This move out of our bodies,
This move out of the connected feeling of being in our bodies has encouraged us to forget who we are,
We've forgotten who we are and it has diluted our connection with each other and our planet because it's diluted our connection with our inner self.
So committing to a spiritual path is about finding our way of connecting back to ourselves,
That word connection again.
In every spiritual tradition contemplative practices play a role because whatever spiritual practice or contemplative practice we choose at its root is the desire to be more connected.
