“Spirituality is deeply rooted in love, enables us to receive and experience love from beyond ourselves, and enables us and invigorates us to live out love as ourselves.” The precarious times we live in fill us with anxiety. The rifts and shifts of culture, politics, and religion are leaving us feeling unmoored, disconnected, and alienated from ourselves and each other. And a psychologically informed approach to spirituality is the antidote. In this episode, Dr. Pam King discusses why spirituality is so essential to the human experience, and how it operates as the antidote to the culture of anxiety and despair around us. She works through the Thrive Center’s 6 Facets of Spiritual Health (T.H.R.I.V.E). 1. Transcendence & Spirituality2. Habits & Rhythms3. Relationships & Community4. Identity & Narrative5. Vocation & Purpose6. Ethics & Virtues ANNOUNCEMENT! With & For Season 2 launches on Jan 6, 2025! Show NotesLearn more about the 6 Facets of Spiritual Health at thethrivecenter.org.With & For Season 2 launches on Jan 6, 2025!Living in precarious times, which gives us a sense of unrest and dis-easeFeeling “unmoored” and paralyzed by shifting religious affiliation and beliefsSpirituality is the antidote to the anxiety of this cultural moment.Spiritual health slows us down, and helps us reflect and connect.How Thrive aims to help you move toward and align with healthful and helpful spiritualityWhat is spirituality? A definitionSpirituality as experience and response to transcendenceSpiritual and religious harm and abuseHarm is done at personal and communal levels“Spirituality is deeply rooted in love, enables us to receive and experience love from beyond ourselves, and enables us and invigorates us to live out love as ourselves.”Thrive’s spiritual health framework is a unique, research-backed psychological approach to faith and spirituality that contributes to whole-person thriving by focusing on 6 key areas of human life and experience.Facet 1: Transcendence & Spirituality“Awareness of and connection to a source of invigorating love offers meaning and inspires purpose. For many this is God, for others it may be a higher power or nature.”People experience transcendence in many different waysExamples of transcendence: Prayer, Worship, Nature, Beauty, Contemplation, Reason, and Music“Transcendence is important because it is invigorating. It's emotional, as well as mind opening.”Points to meaning and purpose beyond ourselvesPractical Questions for Transcendence & Spirituality: Do you feel cared for and loved by God or a higher power? Do you have practices that connect you to awe or bring you joy and meaning?Facet 2: Habits & Rhythms“Habits and rhythms have to do with healthy spiritual practices and regular rhythms that allow us to slow down, to gain insight, connect to love and energize us into purposeful endeavors.”Forming us and changing usPractices to help us regulate, relate, and reflectHow traditional spiritual practices contribute to thriving and well-beingExamples: Sabbath, Celebration, Play, and morePractical Questions for Habits & Rhythms: Do you have regular rhythms of rest or sabbath? Do you have practices that help you regulate your emotions? Do you engage your gody in spiritual practices like breathing, walking meditations, or singing?Facet 3: Relationships & Community“Connections provide a space of belonging where we can be fully known to ourselves and others and learn to give and receive love.”We’re relational beings created to be known and loved.“When we are known, seen, and know that we matter, our brains relax and we’re able to grow.”Practical Questions for Relationships & Community: Do you have a spiritual community in which you feel loved and supported? Do you respect people who practice their faith differently from you?Facet 4: Identity & Narrative“Growing in clarity about who we are as a beloved, unique, embodied person and how we are related to others and the greater world.”The stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are“It’s hard to get a clear sense of our identity.”“Our identities are spread so thin, it's hard for us to have a cohesive story about our lives.”Who you areWhose you areWhere your life’s goingIs spirituality a journey of finding a static “true self”?Considering the evolving narrative of our livesEarliest attachmentsMeaning, hope, and direction—a sense of being beloved, with all the beauty and the brokennessPractical Questions for Identity & Narrative: Do you understand your life as part of a bigger story? Do you seek to understand who you are and who you are becoming?Facet 5: Vocation & Purpose“Contributing our strengths to the world by living out our response to love.”Spiritual beliefs point us to purposes beyond ourselves—bigger than ourselves, noble, and life-giving“Our lives are part of a much bigger story than ourselves.”Strengths, who you serve or love, and who you’re ...
