Spirituality Course

Spirituality Course I didn't want to just go in to an essay of what I was supposed to learn, or information to which I could relate too. I want to begin at the beginning for me of spirit and communication. Which was many years before I had ever heard of spiritualism, mediumship, or spirit communication. I come from an ordinary family, in fact no body in my family is even the slightest bit religious. The only time we ever entered a church was for a family christening, wedding, or a funeral. As I grew up, I always new and felt different, but as I was only around the age of 9 when I started thinking about things, I really didn't understand as to why. I remember the first time I had an experience, we had just moved home, so that would make me 7yrs of age. I was standing outside the front door of our new house for the very first time. My father opened the door, and as I looked up the stairs I saw a dark shadow go up the stairs and round towards the bedrooms. I didn't know what to make of this, but as no one else saw it I thought it best not to say anything about it. Many people would read this and say, are you sure of what you saw, It probably was just a shadow, and I can understand them saying this, but as a spiritual person I try to be open to every type of persons belief, but i know what i saw. After that I didn't have any spiritual experiences until the age of 22yrs. Now this seems like a long time between spirit communications, but from that first sighting at the age of 7yrs my life would never be the same again. I always found myself asking who is god, what are we here for, and why do I have such love for this man I didn't know, called Jesus. It would take fifteen years of life filling lessons to understand. As a young boy, I always had to walk passed a church whilst I was on my way to and from junior school. I never entered the church, as I was to scared, but it didn't stop me standing outside, and letting my little mind wander every time I walked by. Jesus was knocking on my door and asking me to trust him. The funny thing was it felt so right. I felt as though he had been in my life forever. As I was growing up, I didn't make many friends as I was a very shy young boy. Even if I was with my friends, I would feel as though my friends were all enjoying themselves in a room and I was looking at them through the window from outside. Mostly I preferred my own company. I would take the dogs for a walk up the fields every day. The strange thing was I never felt alone. It seemed so right. It gave me time to ask questions in my mind. I would even walk to the cemetery at the end of our street, and sit by my grandad's grave and talk to him, even though he had passed away when I was just 4yrs or age. Like i said though, my real spiritual experiences started at the age of 22yrs. I believe that spirit train you through our lives and depending on how well we do, they will consider using us to do spiritual work. This could be in many different fields, healing, mediumship, teaching, ministering, etc. You say that there are basically two types of people, those who are driven by the heart and those who are driven by the mind. This I agree with in part. I do believe there is a third option, because sometimes I am driven by my heart and sometimes by my head. Depending on the situation, and the person that I'm dealing with. I believe as ministers, mediums, or healers we have to wear many hats. You asked for our first homework to practice our powers of observation. I really found this enjoyable as it was something that I have always done. For me observation comes in many different forms. I love to watch people living their everyday lives. This has served me very well throughout my spiritual development. As spirit now allow me to feel when something is wrong with people before they say anything or before their body language shows it. It was one of my hardest lessons to learn, feeling other people's emotions and learning to separate myself from them. This course opened my eyes to many different aspects of how spiritualism has evolved throughout the ages. The church has had a fundamental control over what everyday people were allowed to openly believe. There seemed to be an immense fear from the church of losing its control over the people. So spiritual people had to hide inside behind locked doors but luckily we have moved passed those times. They say to know the future we need to understand the past. I disagree. I believe that even though all the scholars of the past were very wise, many of their ideas were grounded by lack of knowledge or understanding. Just like society today, we only know what god wants us to understand. If you put the universe 1000yrs in the future people will have a greater understanding of god and the world. Weather that be spiritually or scientifically. Hopefully the two beliefs will be closer together, because really is there any difference between the two? I don't believe there is. Jason Dawson ******************************************** To ordain yourself with the Universal Life Church, for free, for life, right now, click on the Free Online Ordination link. Rev. Long created the ULC seminary site to help ministers learn and grow their ministries. The Seminary offers a huge catalog of materials for ministers of the Universal Life Church, as well as an online seminary program and a chaplaincy program.