Workshop 308Spiritual Empowerment
“Spiritual empowerment” might sound like a catchy, fashionable expression. If you look up the Web, you’ll find an array of techniques and topics under the term. Spiritual empowerment seemingly covers conversing with angels, excelling at yoga or taijiquan, taking hot baths, managing anger feelings, finding out the inner child within you, and much, much more… Furthermore, there is something tricky in associating” spiritual” with “empowerment’; is not real spirituality about making oneself vulnerable, open, weak among the weakest - and is not any talk of “Power” indicative of a misguided perception of what spiritual life is about?
Yet, I like to speak about “spiritual empowerment”, and I’d like to explain why.
First of all, it means for me that “spirituality” is not reserved to an elite, be it clerical, social, cultural or ethnic. Real spirituality is democratic: everyone has a right to be enabled to lead a fulfilling, exciting, adventurous spiritual life, to be “empowered’ in the attempt to reach the deeper layers of his or her being. In that respect, speaking about “spiritual empowerment’ means that there is still work to be done in order to make humankind share in its manifold quest towards its own humaneness, which might be also– who knows- a quest of the Divine that dwells within us
Second, the “empowerment”:’ that spiritual life provides us with is not for our sole benefit, it is akin to an accrued capacity for discernment. A person who is spiritually awakened will be more conscious of the challenges that threaten the future of Earth and the human species. She or he will be more sensitive to the miseries, sufferings, contradictions and violence that shape our collective existence. “Spirituality” is not a haven, it is a set of resources for improving and maturing not only as an individual but also as a community. “Spiritual democracy;” should naturally lead to more international and social fairness.
I often point to the triangular relationship that links together “spiritual empowerment’, “cultural diversity” and “sustainable development.” Spirituality fosters sensitivity, sense of discernment and mutual respect. Diversity means that we mobilize the whole array of humankind’s resources for devising solutions to the urgent and grave challenges that we are meeting at the start of this century. And sustainability is the imperative that we are trying to achieve in order to avoid a catastrophic turn-around. The three dimensions reinforce each other, and the goals they are pointing to will be achieved only as an organic whole. Let us not forget that our action will be void of direction and meaning if we do not work towards our own “spiritual empowerment”, then sharing what it brings to us, so that such strength may become the invisible link that groups humankind into One.