Our listening for the soul group is looking for ways for each of us to deepen our practice. Thanks for some food for thought.-Lanette
The spiritual journey is a path of waking up our awareness. It demands that we trust our experience, become friends with our burning. It does not matter if your hunger is a different hunger than mine: you must trust your own hunger. Sufi mystic Rumi writes that our hunger itself is proof of the existence of bread. Our thirst is proof that there is such a thing as water. If we trust our deepest inner hunger it will lead us on our own spiritual path.
I cannot tell you what your spiritual path must be. I can only offer you some gleanings, some sparks of light for your spiritual journey from my experience of following my own burning, and my experience of being in community with the people of my congregation and other spiritual searchers. 
Someone once described our faith community as a hallway with many doors to the holy…
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Listening for the Soul 
This picture reminds me of a time when my consciousness was raised. Life threw a lot of curveballs at me and i was juggling as fast as I could. I had three little kids and my marriage was dissolving. My husband was struggling with depression, drug addiction and unemployment. I was working 12 hours a day, commuting an hour and a half a day, getting up at the crack of dark to make the kids lunch (even little Brando had to have one in the fridge because Dad sometimes didn’t get up until it was time to go get the girls from school…:(.
When i got home from work i had to do French homework with my daughter who had an undiagnosed learning disability( and cried the whole time), make dinner, clean up, do bath time, read stories and fall into bed.
I sought counsel. One of the teachers I saw told me to imagine a gate and on the gate it said “BELOVED” … she told me to enter it and grasp hold of my golden rope… take one step after another , walking into the light until i found a way to my wonderful life. I meditated on that gate and that rope for three years and I finally got us out of there and we never looked back. Support was everywhere once I loved my self enough to accept it.
I used the loving kindness prayer:
May i be filled with loving kindness, May I be well,
May I be peaceful and at ease, May I be happy.
then I prayed it for others who were making my life hard or who needed a prayer. Blessings to all of you.
Thanks Jo,
I love the loving kindness prayer. How terrible it is that we can find it so hard to be kind to ourselves! Something so simple but so very important.Thank you for sharing your insights.
Lanette