Spirit
Reflect on your intention: what do you want to gain from your self-development practices, and how does your spirit contribute to or hinder your ability to get there?
Choosing Practices
Reflect on your Beliefs
Assess your engagement with dogmatic beliefs, either religious or materialistic and reflect on how they enable or constrain your ability to connect with your inner wisdom and to relate with a sense of self that transcends the "I".
Surrender and Witness
Engage with practices that enable a disidentification with the parts of your physique that hold on to pain and fear. Surrender them and witness what may be beyond, opening space for an inner consciousness that finds contentment in the present moment.
Find your Presence
Explore how to ground yourself through the energetic body to find presence, the observant awareness that witnesses "what-is" without judgement or attachment, that accepts continuous change and brings a sense of being part of a greater whole.
A bit of Inspiration
When I try to expand my awareness, I look inwards and focus on the experience of presence rather than on any doctrine associated with the idea of presence. It is very interesting to look at different philosophies and how they describe consciousness, the awakened awareness that transcends everything else, but it is too easy to get attached to concepts and to trying to understand something that cannot really be known. Since this is your subjective experience, I can only suggest that you work on experiencing a frequency of consciousness that is resonant to you but gets you slightly out of your comfort zone (beyond identity and beliefs). Maybe you want to continue exploring embodiment and energy through your connection with nature, or the creativity arising from the abstract symbolic realm of shamanic traditions. Or maybe, you have an interest on mystical enlightenment and the contemplative methods that train your awareness to "being in the moment" so you can experience a joyful feeling of interconnection, a sense of all is one.
Practices: complement embodied/energetic practices (as described in the physical/emotional section) with contemplative practices based on mystical ideals, Buddhism, Vedic traditions, Taoism or any other you resonate with.
