This Is Expanding Worldwide And Is Encouraging

In our world today there seems to be areas where people are still closed minded when it comes to personal development and looking at new ways of showing and practicing faith. However, I did find that this is changing slowly and is quite encouraging. This is a good sign for unity and can boost your spirit to have a more open mind.

Deepak Chopra delves deeper into this subject.

When it comes to your spirituality, are you open-minded or set in your beliefs? Now more than ever, people everywhere are expanding their views of religion and spirituality. Deepak Chopra explains how this can lead us to deeper love, personal insight and a renewed hope for the future.

 

Last December, a poll revealed something encouraging about spirituality in America. When asked if they had ever had a religious or mystical experience, more responders said yes than no. This was a first in the 47 years that the Pew Research pollsters have been asking the question. (A religious or mystical experience was defined as “moment of sudden religious insight or awakening.”)

 

In the New York Times column covering the results, the headline read, “Paranormal flexibility,” which may reflect common prejudice but is entirely misleading. Spiritual experience is normal. As a catch-all, “paranormal” covers fringe experiences like seeing ghosts and being abducted by aliens. For that reason, skeptics like to lump deeply meaningful religious awakening into the same basket. We would be better off leaving all loaded words out, including the words “religious” and “mystical.”

 

The other word in the headline, “flexibility,” is the valid and important one. In larger numbers than before, believing Christians report they have absorbed aspects of Eastern and New Age thought. Whenever I hear that narrow dogma and secondhand belief systems are being replaced with more expanded awareness, I feel encouraged. Expanded awareness is the whole story. Without it, not just spiritual experience is closed off; so are the deepest aspects of love and personal insight.

 

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Learn more about what good an open mind does, Deepak Chopra