Spiritual Connection in Daily Life

Sixteen Little Questions that can Make a Big Difference

By Lynn Underwood

Templeton Press

Copyright © 2013 Lynn Underwood
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59947-427-4

Contents

Part One: Why Read This Book?,
1: Invitation and Introduction,
Part Two: Exploring Your Experiences,
2: Instructions for Answering the Sixteen Questions,
3: The Daily Spiritual Experience Questions 3,
Part Three: Why Numbers?,
4: Using the Number Scores,
5: "Studies Have Shown": Results from Research Using the DSES,
Part Four: Themes,
6: The Flow of Love,
7: Connection versus Alienation,
8: Yes!,
9: Translating "God",
Part Five: Springboard for Communication,
10: Why and How to Communicate Using Daily Spiritual Experiences,
11: Organizational, Professional, and Personal Uses,
Part Six: Awake and Alive,
12: What Now? What Next?,
Acknowledgments,
Appendix,
Notes,

CHAPTER 1

Invitation and Introduction

Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. —Arthur Schopenhauer

What does the world look like to you? What is the texture of your daily life? Do you find richness, jazz, color, deep satisfaction? Or do you often feel swamped by discouragement, apathy, stress, exhaustion? Where do you look to relieve dullness or distress if and when it plagues you? I often find myself looking for solace and stimulation in food and drink, using the computer, buying things, working obsessively, or looking for entertaining distractions. We have superficial social encounters, in person or electronically, that do not really provide the deep connection we are looking for. At other times we just settle into a lull of complacent boredom. We deal.

There are sources of experience that can add vibrant flavor that doesn't fade, providing a renewable inner resource. These can include being spiritually touched by the beauty of nature, the wow of a sunset. We can give and receive love, or feel thankful for our blessings. We can experience deep peacefulness or find spiritual strength in the midst of stressful times. We can sense the presence of God, or the divine. These ordinary experiences of the "more than," the transcendent, can add punch to our days. They can transform a dull day into one full of light. This book explores ways to draw our attention to these experiences, to cultivate awareness of flavors that are already there in daily life, but that we are somehow missing.

There are times when we feel fully alive. There are other times when life feels flat. It is not always the obviously exciting times that make us feel fully alive. In times of quiet contentment or even times of engaged struggle we can feel awake to the richness of life. We say something kind to someone and see his face light up. A child gives us an exuberant hug. We smell bread baking in our mother's kitchen. We hear the waves on the beach. We experience a tough situation and are not pulled under by it. During moments like these, the rough and the smooth, we can sometimes sense a kind of timelessness. We may also sense that something is happening that has profound significance, significance beyond this moment.

What you bring to your ways of perceiving the events of your days is so important to the color, the flavor, the texture that you find. What do you look for, what do you expect, and what do you find as you go through each day? So often we can become hypnotized by a vision of the mundane details of life as boring, senseless, or pointless. Are your lenses clouded by this hypnotic view? Are your taste buds dulled? If that is the case, you can miss the beauty, joy, and vibrancy that are there not only in the obviously happy times, but also in the midst of suffering and struggle.

In the interests of cultivating this ability to appreciate and sense the "more than" in the midst of your days, and to communicate about this with others if you want to, this book offers a set of sixteen questions. Each question is designed to draw attention to a particular aspect of life, providing both an opportunity for enrichment and flourishing, and a common language to communicate experiences that may otherwise be difficult to share. We can become more alive together. These simple multiple-choice questions form the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale.

The spiritual experiences that these sixteen questions measure are not exotic, like near-death experiences or hearing voices, or dramatic religious conversion, but ordinary experiences that many people of many different beliefs and cultures have. Overall, these are good feelings that lift us up, but they can also challenge us. They provide an internal source of zip, aliveness, jazz, a sustaining buzz that can also nourish us over the long haul. We often think it is the big things in life that are most important, but our lives are actually made up of many small moments that contribute to the rich texture of each day. We sometimes underestimate the contribution this texture and substance make to the big picture, but without them there is no big picture.

Tens of thousands of people have answered the questions in the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale. All kinds of people, from a wide variety of cultures and countries, use the questions for various purposes: doctors, psychologists, ministers, teachers, nurses, managers, social workers, chaplains, and students. Since I developed the scale, they contact me frequently and I read the published articles describing the results of research using the scale. I get involved in the research and the translations. But what I enjoy most is how the individual questions help people to think in a focused way about these experiences of the "more than" in their daily lives—how the questions help people identify underlying things of importance. And how the questions can enhance communication, enabling people to better understand one another. Rather than leading us to quibble over how each of us defines spirituality, these questions focus on the specifics such as awe, gratitude, other-centered love, and sense of connection. This set of questions, which has been useful in research and therapy, can be useful on a personal level, too.

A More Satisfying Life

Many people find that ordinary spiritual experiences are part of a more satisfying life. This is true for those who call themselves religious as well as for those who would say they were not religious. In research using the questions in a variety of settings throughout the world, scores on the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) have been linked to many good things in life, such as increased happiness, shorter hospital stays, better health behaviors, weight loss, diminished pain, recovery from addictions, and prevention of burnout. More frequent experiences as reported using the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale tend to predict better outcomes of various kinds. These kinds of experiences can also, in and of themselves, improve life's quality, make life more worth living. They can also act as signals that we are heading in the right direction as we make decisions in our lives.

These spiritual experiences can also help us to stick with activities that enable us to flourish, such as prayer or meditation, taking time in nature, or engaging in activities that nurture others. In the process we may become more fully ourselves and more fully alive. People often find that they have more of these experiences in the midst of dire...