Posts Tagged ‘spiritual growth’
Attitude of Gratitude
Towards the end of December we held a Satvatove appreciation dinner here in North Florida, where, since 1999 there have been 25 Foundational Seminars, 14 Advanced Seminars, 8 Life Mastery Programs, and dozens of workshops and other Satvatove adventures. In attendance were about 20 Satvatove graduates who have contributed in special ways to sharing and expanding the impact of the Satvatove experience. Tears flowed. Laughter abounded. It was a memorably sweet experience, fulfilling in every respect- emotionally, spiritually, and gastronomically- as Dave cooked and we all stuffed ourselves beyond reasonable limits.
The special contributions represented at the dinner were quite diverse, covering areas such as accounting, video production, staffing, Satvatove Summit cruise organization, and assistance with room set-up for seminars. Reflecting on the past year I am moved to especially recognize those who took a stand and created a Satvatove seminar. Sometimes we say that if twenty people are interested and excited about a course happening in a particular locality- the course doesn’t happen. However, if one person has clear intention- “This course will happen”- then the seminar manifests. And of course, then the other 10, 20 or 30 who are enthusiastic contribute and synergize, around the one whose commitment is unshakable.
Sanya, Annette and Peter moved mountains in Switzerland to organize two combined Foundational/Advanced Seminars in 2009. This was the fourth set of Satvatove seminars organized by Sanya since 2006, and my heartfelt appreciation goes to her for these prodigious efforts. There has been a resurgence in Satvatove spirit in North Florida, and Lacey is the main reason for this. Our gratitude goes to Lacey for organizing the Foundational in March, 2009, and fully energizing the other courses in North Florida with the many workshops she has arranged, her caring heart and her unstoppable determination. Breaking new ground (or perhaps, ice) were Tina and Krista. Tina refused to acknowledge any obstacles and organized a Foundational in Edmonton in February (-30 F in the sun), and Krista transcended all limitations in creating the Satvatove Foundational in Petersboro, Ontario. Bringing together international forces, Sanaka manifested an unforgettable spiritual, transformative experience in Vrndavana, India, in November. And special thanks to Govinda Syer for arranging for pervasive Satvatove presence, including several workshops and presentations, at the mela in Los Angeles, and for his ongoing, active support for the programs of Satvatove for the past decade.
From Elizabeth Haage
I’ve had two main careers and several other ‘jobs’ in my 51 years. Taken a plethora of courses in self-help and improvement. Grown spiritually, emotionally and mentally. NOTHING compares or comes close to this experience as a catalyst for personal growth. This 3-day course is intensive as advertised, and very well organized. Marie and staff, thank you for what you do and most of all- sharing who you are.
Elizabeth Haage
Satvatove Foundational Course, July 2009
Gainesville, FL, USA
Relationships that Work
$14.95 – Limited Edition
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“This relationships book will touch the heart of every reader… Dr. Wolf’s unique ability to blend spiritual knowledge with practical advice makes Relationships That Work a must read for anyone seeking self-understanding and better communication…. Reading this book forced me to pause and reflect about the nature of my own life. This book is a worthy experience in today’s fast-paced modern world where doing and having often become facile substitutes for being.” - E. Burke Rochford Jr., Professor of Sociology and Religion, Middlebury College
Over 30 Years Experience
Relationships That Work: The Power of Conscious Living- How Transformative Communication Can Change Your Life contains four main sections. They are Spiritual Principles of Personal Growth, Transformative Communication: Creating Sacred Space, Be-Do-Have: A Paradigm for Conscious Living, and Realizing the Power of Conscious Living. In this relationships book Dr. David Wolf brings his 30+ years of experience in facilitation, counselor and coach training, and social and mental health services to provide you with a uniquely effective approach to a fulfilling life and satisfying relationships.
“Relationships That Work is straightforward and sublime, practical and profound. David’s relationships book inspires us to full expression in our lives. It is an experiential education, providing communication tools that open us to our spiritual journey.” – Sandy Grason, author of Journalution: Journaling to Awaken Your Inner Voice, Heal Your Life and Manifest Your Dreams
Transforming Lives
Transformative Communication, a communication-based foundation for self-realization, forms the basis for Relationships That Work. This relationships book is founded on the premise that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, and provides practical exercises and principles for you to master strategies for high-level communication.
You will be guided to recognize patterns of assumptions by which you’ve been living your life, and to replace unhealthy and ineffective belief systems with truths and principles rooted in your core spiritual identity. This relationships book will support you to step out of your past, taking from it what is valuable and leaving behind the rest. Through processes of courageous introspection described in this book, you are empowered to connect with what is vitally important, and live with intentionality to manifest your highest purpose.
“This is an extraordinarily compelling and practical relationships book on becoming a master of communication. Read it, apply the strategies and principles, and enhance your life and influence beyond what you thought possible!” - T. Harv Eker, author of the #1 NY Times Bestselling book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.
The Most Important Book You Will Read This Year
With Relationships That Work: The Power of Conscious Living, David Wolf presents a universal, spiritually-centered and communication-based approach to powerful and satisfying relationships. Through his system of Transformative Communication David reveals in this relationships book a sublime and accessible model for realizing our spiritual selves while achieving our most cherished goals in all life dimensions.
Apply the strategies of conscious living described in the pages of this relationships book, and connect with the courage, inspiration and wisdom to create profound change in your self and your world.
Dr. David Wolf, author of Relationships That Work: The Power of Conscious Living, has facilitated seminars and workshops in more than a dozen countries, and has been extensively featured as a communications expert on media outlets such as Fox News and CNN News.
“Sometimes you find a book, and sometimes a book finds you. There is no doubt that the profound wisdom and lessons in this relationships book will find their way into the souls of millions of people around the world. No ifs, ands or buts – Dr. Wolf gives you the blueprint on how to be an influence-maker in your life and the lives of others.”
— Burke Hedges, author of 7 books with over 4 million books in print,
including the bestseller “Who Stole the American Dream?”
“In this relationships book David Wolf has provided us with a clear, accessible summary of key principles that have guided his life and work for decades. Distilled in this way, they illuminate problems in perception and communication that, left unchecked, can undermine good intentions and derail otherwise solid relationships. His years of training, practice and leadership in human relations and social welfare have converged here, providing readers with straightforward guidance in looking more deeply into their own tendencies and those of their loved ones and associates. By encouraging us to reflect, reframe, and act with clear intention, he gently directs us down a path to greater understanding of the opportunities and options available in both personal and professional relations.”
Neil Abell, Ph.D, LCSW
Associate Professor
College of Social Work
Florida State University
“During the past six years I have participated in several of David Wolf’s phenomenal workshops. They have been a life changing experience for myself and the other workshop participants. In his new book, ‘Relationships That Work: The Power of Conscious Living’, David Wolf shares with us the basic principles he covers in his workshops as well as the tools he teaches to make our lives more balanced and satisfying. Once we appreciate that our fundamental nature is spiritual and sacred, we are able to unlock the inner qualities that increase our ability to please others, and in doing so, make our lives more satisfying. You will learn how to effectively listen to others, become more empathetic, understand the roadblocks to communication, and remove self-imposed limitations. Like the workshops, this relationships book teaches us how to live our lives from the vantage point of choice rather than fear. As you read this book you are likely to have profound insights into your own psyche that will help you achieve a better understanding of yourself and how to improve your life. Thank you David for sharing these principles and tools in a book that will surely have a profound impact on our lives.”
Miriam Mendoza, Teacher- New York City Public School
Strategies For Living- How are You Surviving?
An Uplifting, Purpose-Filled Spiritual Pursuit
Self-awareness moves us to choose life-enriching principles by which to live, some of which, such as Be-Do-Have, clear intention, and keeping agreements, have been described in previous articles. Spiritual principles for personal growth are universal, and thus, even if we are not able to articulate them, they are familiar, being inherent to our core being. Without actively applying these principles, we run the danger that our existence becomes a sort of animalistic struggle for survival, rather than an uplifting, purpose-filled spiritual pursuit.
What is Our Presentation to the World?
Each of us has a presentation to the world. Sometimes this presentation is authentic, where what is presented outside is consistent with what is happening inside. At other times our presentation is not genuine. We wear masks, facades.
Living From Choice
A spiritual principle of self-development is to live from choice, rather than from fear. Transforming our relationship with fear is an essential process of spiritual growth. Though fear may be present, instead of it being a cue to withdraw it becomes a signal to step forward and courageously take a risk. Sometimes we may put up masks from choice, such as deliberately responding that we are fine, although we don’t feel that way, because we simply don’t want to enter into conversation about our troubles. What we are addressing here is when we wear masks out of fear.
Masks take diverse forms, as varied as our personalities. There is the “happy” mask, where we want to be seen as a happy person, regardless of what may be going on inside. Being “strong” can be a mask, as can being “the class clown”, or “intellectual”. Playing the victim, or the “spiritualist”, or the helpless person, are other forms of facades.
What is Our Authentic Presentation to the World?
Of course, each of the types of masks listed above are not always masks. Each of us has a genuine happy and joyful side, an authentic intellectual way of being, a sense of humor, a strong side, a fragile side. It is when we feel we have to be a certain way, rather than choosing to be that way, that our authenticity is compromised. If I “have to” appear as “spiritual”, at the expense of acknowledging to the world, and perhaps to myself, desires or emotions that seem non-spiritual, then my spirituality is a mask and not a genuine disposition. If I feel I have to show myself as an intellectual, even at times when I would really like to drop that front and be playful, spontaneous, or emotionally expressive, then my intellectuality is a mask.
Are We Exhausted Yet?
Most of us spend much of our energy holding up masks, and pushing down experiences that we resist acknowledging. It is like holding a beach ball underwater, which requires a lot of effort to keep it down. After a while we become exhausted. A characteristic of readiness for spiritual growth is that we are exhausted with holding down our emotional beach ball. That is not how we want to spend our life energy any longer.
Living and Surviving
There is a distinction between living and surviving. Spiritually-based personal growth entails a commitment to living, rather than mere surviving. Surviving is reactive. We are in reaction to the beach ball. Holding our head above the surface, maybe putting on a smile, we show that we are in control. Actually, though, it is a pretense of control. Wherever the submerged ball moves, we move with it, not daring to allow it to be seen. It shifts here or there, and we follow. Who or what is in control? Even if we manage with great effort to keep it under, it is noticed.
Perhaps we conceal our rage, not knowing an acceptable means for its expression. But it comes out in different ways, like our irritability or loss of temper at petty things. It is similar with other components of our emotional beach ball, such as shame. Though we don’t want the world to see our sense of shame, or to recognize it ourselves, it drives our life, pervades our experience and relationships with feeling of inadequacy, of being inherently defective. It prevents us from fully sharing ourselves.
Strategies For Survival
A strategy for survival is to maintain the appearance of control. By doing this, the mask stays up, and the beach ball down. This is related to other strategies of survival, such as avoiding pain, looking good, and being right. “Looking good” means that we are invested in an appearance, rather than in being authentic. For each of us that inauthentic appearance has different forms, as explained in relation to our masks. For some of us looking good might mean showing ourselves as the strong helper. For some, looking good might mean “looking bad”, the rebel, the defiant person who doesn’t accept authority. Of course, blindly accepting authority is no virtue, though neither is indiscriminately resisting it.
“Being right” refers to a strategy where what becomes important is being right with another person, instead of genuinely being with another person. We get to be right, feel superior and self-righteous, at the expense of the closeness, understanding and intimacy we truly desire.
Strategies For Living
A life-enriching strategy conducive for the complete manifestation of our spiritual being is to participate fully in our lives, to give 100%. Not showing up fully for our own lives is at the core of self-sabotaging strategies. In fact, it is the foundation of repeating self-defeating cycles, because by not committing fully we restrict our potential to learn through experience. Acquiring wisdom involves granting ourselves the permission to make mistakes through which we learn.
A term like “experience fully” may evoke images of abandoning one’s intelligence or reason. Actually, to be fully present includes being completely available with all our faculties, including our mind and intelligence. Conscious living entails utilizing our intelligence to enrich and inform our experience. There is a distinction between employing mind and intelligence to enhance our complete contribution and presence, and using our analytical capacity as a barrier to experience. Making distinctions and judgments are a natural function of intelligence. Hiding behind those judgments is a survival strategy, borne of fear, that limits our growth, connection and experience.
Living in the Moment
Related to this, there is also an important distinction between living in the moment, and living for the moment. Living in the moment is being present, with all our qualities and capacities available. In the well known Indian scripture the Bhagavad-gita, Sri Krsna describes a person in this state as being free from lamentation about the past and hankering for the future. He is satisfied in the present. This is not the same as living for the moment, where we may whimsically abandon good sense for immediate gratification. Conscious, present living includes learning from the past, and planning for the future. In doing this, we don’t wallow in lamentation, nor do we brood in anxiety.
Giving ourselves fully to our experience is not the same as wallowing in distressing emotion. When we allow ourselves to fully experience, we feel clean, complete, resolved and ready for the next experience. To wallow in a feeling is a way of holding on to it, rather than letting it go by truly experiencing it completely.
To summarize, some common strategies for survival are being right, looking good, avoiding pain, maintaining the appearance of control, and hiding behind judgments. Life-enhancing strategies include participating fully in our lives, being courageous, suspending judgments, being vulnerable, and living with a sense of urgency.
