As I mentioned in the post “Reflections on Spirituality,” there's an aspect of spiritual wellness that reaches beyond practicing meditation or tai chi. This is the structure, steps or path that one must explore in order to develop a mature sense of spirituality. As I participated in Jonathan Ellerby’s workshop, “Sacred Path – 12 Keys to the Spiritual Path,” I realized that I was enrolled in the introductory course.

What can spiritual practices do for us? Since my exposure to the work offered at Canyon Ranch, my answer to that question would be that practices of spirituality allow us to experience the totality of our world. Spiritual practices are a gateway through which we walk to feel how we are connected to the life force within us and around us. The 12 Keys workshop provides an overview of 12 elements of spirituality taught by great healers and spiritual masters to those seeking deep healing and spiritual growth. What I really enjoyed about the workshop was the realization that these 12 dimensions cross cultural and religious boundaries and can enrich any belief system.

The two dimensions that speak strongly to me at this point in my life are self and heart. I have been learning quite a bit about how I must do “inner work to face outer challenges.” There is a quote from the workshop that really sums this up: “We see not what we are looking at, but what we are looking through.” It is so important to really know ourselves on many levels: Each of us needs to understand what we bring to the story as we move through the world. When we run into challenges in our lives, we need to ask, what is my role in creating this challenge?

I am also drawn to the idea of the compassionate heart and the difference between it and the emotional heart. Our emotional heart is a filter of our life experiences and no healthy decision can be made from it. We must learn, instead, to speak from our compassionate heart, which lives in the depth of soul, and which allows us to move through life offering what we can for the good of all things. These are the lessons that are my focus at this time.

If you have experienced this workshop at Canyon Ranch or have come across this work in your life, I would love to hear of your experiences. There's a quotation by Rumi that seems to capture the ultimate work of a person nurturing his or her spiritual life: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Does that resonate for you as it does for me?