Maru Kurian D’Souza writes:
Spiritual Practices over the years in my life
As a child I grew up with Christian symbols of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Kerala, the Church of South India and Sunday School influence from a very Evangelical Church.
How ever it was the religious family-order of the Ecumenical Institute and Order Ecumenical(that we were a part of)made that which was not transparent meaningful and transparent to me .
The Daily Office and the Sunday House Church events were very important for me. They rehearsed the foundational dimensions of the common understandings we lived out of and our values. They provided awareness or a rational and empowered us to do things we would have been otherwise afraid to do
When we stopped using the Christian ritual and started using the rituals created out of poetry such as that of Rabindranath Tagore I transferred everything that I held sacred in the ritualized spirit life from the Christian tradition to the new “secular” rituals.
After 1989 I tried learning to meditate. They were feeble attempts. I was hungry for methods that would help me be centered, spiritually mature and sensitive. I had the opportunity to work with Jean Houston. Here the body mind connection was discovered and has helped me. I worked with a journal writing methods created by Julia Cameron. This was helpful as for the first time I experienced the quieted Mind. Psycho-synthesis was yet another field that I worked with through the Unconditional Love and Forgiveness Workshops that I did with Charles Lingo.
However, that which has been most helpful for me has been Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now. This practice has practically revealed the “how to” of being available to Life at every moment. I have been working with this approach for about 7 years though the book is much older. The whole idea of Presence is something that has become more real to me through this study and work. Buddhism has opened its wisdom to me more powerfully after working with Eckhart Tolle’s approach. I am now working with another Buddhist text called Creating the Empty Field, the Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi and translated by Taigen Dan Leighton.
That is all for now.
Take a look around.