Power Of The New Spirituality Summary

While many may not have noticed, our collective spiritual understandings have been undergoing change over the decades. Leading edge philosophers and open-minded theologians have noted an evolutionary shift toward a broader, more comprehensive existential understanding than that put forth by our traditional religions, and beyond that which is recognized in most of our mainstream society.

Where traditional religion was based on based on the need for comfort, protection and rules meant to save an individual person's soul in the next world, the emerging spiritual focus takes the person out of his or herself toward concern with the greater good of all in this world. Crucial to understanding this shift is recognition that the secular mindset that emerged with the Enlightenment saw through the myths and the next world focus of traditional religion, and concerned itself with "here and now values" in this life. Unfortunately, secular modernity threw the baby out with the bathwater; it disregarded the common human need to connect with something greater than the self.

Leading edge spiritual seekers are coming to a position …show more content…
In The Power of the New Spirituality: How to Live a Life of Compassion and Personal Fulfillment, William Bloom, one of Britain's leading mind-body-spirit teachers, points out how this is so. He says every religion, every culture has recognized that a natural vitality and energy suffuses the entire cosmos. The words prana in Hindu, qi in Taoism, or chi in popular spirituality, all represent the same idea as shekinah in Judaism, sakina in Islam, and the Holy Spirit in Christianity. However, where the Western religions have repressed the universal nature of this concept, the newly emerging spirituality openly and explicitly celebrates this vast field of energy in which we all live, and which connects us