Spirituality and Healing
in Medicine
Dr. Phil Shapiro
The Convergence of Spirituality,
Healing, and Medicine

The convergence of spirituality, healing,
and medicine offers exciting new
possibilities.
• The Seeker: a personal, private spiritual
experience becomes medically relevant with
the advent of mind-body medicine.
• Mind-body medicine:
 People with an active faith or belief system
have better outcomes in medicine, surgery,
mental health, and addiction.
Mind-body Medicine






The scientific connection between spirituality
and healing has been made.
Spiritual belief systems have a role in healing
body, mind, and soul.
When we activate or intensify our spiritual
belief systems, healing power expands.
This gives health care professionals, patients,
and everyone access to an expanded reservoir
of healing power.
This is very good news. However, this is not
easy to do in medical practice.
There are many barriers.
Problems Entering the Spiritual
Domain
We don’t work with Spirit.
We are not comfortable talking about religion.
 We have no language or map.
 We ignore or refer to spiritual counselors.
 Lack of training
 Belief systems are personal, intimate, complex.
 Many have a traumatic religious history.
 Fierce feelings and defensiveness
 Fear of unravel to the abyss (The Cheeseburger)
 Enormous variation and level of commitment
 There is no time—brief appointments, paper work…
 How to enter without losing life, limb, or property.


Guidelines for Approaching Belief
Systems

Access: we need models that give us safe,
efficient, effective access to the territory of
belief systems.
•
•
•
•
Map: how to get there
Language: how to talk to each other and our
patients about religion and spirituality
Keys: to enter the territory of belief systems so
we can get in and out safely and effectively.
An efficient delivery system: so we can help our
patients learn how to do this work when we are
already too busy
Guidelines for Approaching Belief
Systems

Universal and inclusive
• Look for universal of near-universal spiritual
healing principles, methods, and qualities.
• Design models that can work for as many as
possible.
• Include atheist, agnostic, religious, and
spiritual persons.
Guidelines for Approaching Belief
Systems
Individualize
• Stay in religion of origin and expand practice
or
• Build your own program.
 Root cause and solution
• Look for root causes and solutions to our
deepest suffering.
 User-friendly
• Yet remain user-friendly and non-invasive as
possible.

Universal Spiritual Healing Models

To address these issues, I will present
two models:
1. Brutal Reality and the Illusion of Safety,
Security, and Immortality (1980)
2. Healing Power: Ten Steps to Pain
Management and Spiritual Evolution
(2005)
Integrative Medicine
Where Spirituality fits in the spectrum of
medical practice
Biological high-tech medicine has great power
but alone can be reductionistic, often leading to
symptom management without getting to the
root causes of disease.
 Integrative medicine includes biopsychosocial
and spiritual aspects.
• Look for the root causes of disease and
healing here.

Integrative Medicine
Four evidence based healing universes
1. Biological
a. Traditional medicine
b. CAM: Complimentary and alternative medicine
2. Psychological
3. Social
4. Spiritual
a. Mind-body medicine
Spirituality and Healing
Evidence-based: the data

It is now scientifically validated that people with
an active faith or belief system have better
outcomes in medicine, surgery, mental health,
and addiction.
• Includes cancer, coronary artery disease,
cerebrovascular disease, hypertension, asthma,
COPD, infectious diseases, kidney disease, and more.
• Lower medication rates
• Lower length of stay
• Higher quality of life
• Much more
Spirituality and Healing
Evidence-based: the data

Suggested reading:
• Herbert Benson M.D.: Timeless Healing: the
Power and Biology of Belief
• Jeff Levin PhD: God, Faith, and Health
•
•
•
•
David Larson M.D.
Larry Dossey M.D.
Dale Mathews M.D.
Harold Koenig M.D.
Spirituality and Healing
The Mechanism





Community: support from like-minded people
Behavior: good habits such as no smoking,
drinking, or drugs; healthy diet
Thought: the power of positive thought--faith,
hope, belief, optimism, and much more
Feeling: the healing power of positive emotion
such as peace, love, joy, compassion
Spiritual practice: expansion of the healing
power from spiritual practices such as yoga,
meditation, mindfulness, and prayer
Mind-body Medicine
Mind-body medicine teaches us how to apply the
power of the mind to healing and pain
management.
 Most medical schools now address mind-body
principles in their general curricula.

Mind-body Medicine Principles

There is no separation between mind and body.
• The mind is connected to every cell in the
body.
• In some yet to be determined way, thoughts
have leverage in the inner workings of our
cells having to do with:
1. disease and healing
2. pain management
Mind-body Medicine Principles

We can harness the untapped power of the
mind for:
1. expansion of healing power
2. pain control
Mind-body Medicine Principles

Pain Management
• Often we cannot take disease away, but we
can always help with pain management.
• Pain is both physical and psychological.
• All pain is experienced in the mind and can
therefore be modulated by the mind.
• We can control pain so pain does not control
our lives.
Mind-body Medicine Principles

Pain Management
• The fear factor: we are afraid of disease,
disability, suffering, the unknown, and death.
• This mental distress slows down healing and
makes the pain worse.
• When disease persists, we can teach people
to slow down and relax so they can stay in
charge and get their lives back.
Mind-body Medicine Principles
We think of high-tech medicine as real and
mind-body principles as touchy-feely. This is
reductionistic and wrong.
 We are biopsychosocial and spiritual beings. A
disturbance in any one of these leads to
disturbances in the others.

• Therefore, comprehensive treatment planning
includes biopsychosocial and spiritual interventions.
• There are many ways to do this. No one way works
for all people
Activating Healing Power
In Four Domains
There is an explosion of knowledge and models
having to do with healing in each of the four
domains: biopsychosocial and spiritual
 However, there is no time to do it all: Managed
care, fifteen minute appointments, paper work,
and so on
 How can we activate healing power in all four
domains given the limitation of time and system
problems?
 Good news: it can be done through skills
training and self-help

Self-help and Skills Training
Self-help: much of the healing in the
psycho-social-spiritual domain is self-help
 Skills training: classes, groups, books,
manuals, internet, tapes, CD’s, DVD’s
 We can teach people how to increase
healing power while in the comfort of their
own homes or during the day while
performing their routine activities

Personal Spiritual history
Before discussing the models, a brief personal
history
 From personal to universal

• To enter the spiritual domain, we need to learn how
to move with facility from our personal religious or
spiritual experience to the universal.
• In that light, I will share with you a very brief history
of my religious-spiritual journey as it relates to
professional work.
• As you listen, find yourself and your patients in these
stories and models.
Personal Spiritual History
Seventh month of fetal life: an early
introduction to brutal reality
 Conservative Judaism
 The dynamics of unraveling a belief
system

• The Cheeseburger
• The Chess game: the King goes down
• The Abyss: the unknown, the great mystery
of life
Personal Spiritual History
Whether we stay in our religion of origin or not,
belief systems remain monumentally important.
 Belief systems give us:

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The meaning and purpose of life
Story and metaphor
Cultivation of spiritual qualities
Inspiration
Protection and guidance
Truth
Healing
Community and service
Much more
Personal Spiritual History

The Seeker
• Mining the great religious fields for pearls.
• Studies in Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism,
Judaism, Native American Spirituality, others
• Review the lives of saints, sages, teachers,
masters.
• Develop a spiritual practice: meditation,
mindfulness, affirmations, prayer.
Brutal Reality and the Illusion of
Safety, Security, and Immortality
Dual diagnosis process group at Harlem
Hospital
 The emergence of a model
 Criteria

• Brutal reality and higher states of
consciousness
• Connect the dots between pain and healing
• Healing power: where is the leverage
Brutal Reality and the Illusion of
Safety, Security, and Immortality
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
People
Activities
Belief System
Self-knowledge
Brutal Reality
The Illusion of Safety, Security, and
Immortality
Belief Systems
Spiritual, religious, political, national, cultural,
racial, familial, psychological, personal
 Mechanism of perpetuation in health and
disease

• Thought repetition with denial and repression of
conflicting data
• The cheeseburger effect: a single countervailing
thought or action has the potential to unravel an
entire belief system, thrusting the individual into the
unknown, the abyss. This is equivalent to
psychological annihilation or death.
Belief Systems

Defense and resistance
• The Living Room
Simple fixed belief systems
 Eclectic synthetic belief systems
 The abyss between simple fixed and
eclectic synthetic systems
 Intra-psychic battle for healing

A Universal Prescription For Any
Pain, Problem, or Symptom


Tell your patients they can enhance healing
when these four domains are active and
positive:
 People
 Activities
 Belief System
 Self-knowledge
You can prescribe these with confidence: each
is evidence-based.
A Quick Assessment for the Busy
Practitioner
A quick, efficient, and safe entry into the
psychosocial and spiritual domain for the busy
practitioner:
1. People: Who is in your life that you can really talk
to?
2. Activities: What is your day like?
3. Belief system: Do you have a spiritual activity such
as church, personal system, prayer, etc.
4. Self-knowledge: How do you handle emotions such
as anger, depression, fear, and guilt?
Brutal Reality and the Illusion of
Safety, Security, and Immortality
1.
2.
Exercise
Describe how the six components weave the
fabric of your life.
• Focus on how you use people, activities,
belief system, and self-knowledge to shift
from brutal reality to a feeling of safety.
You might want to use the handout to
help you diagram your story.
Describe how the six components drive the
lives of patients, family, friends, strangers, and
enemies.
Mind-body Medicine
Herbert Benson M.D.
Conference in Chicago on spirituality and
healing in medicine
 Day one: science
 Day two: religion
 Day three: applications

Mind-body Medicine
Herbert Benson M.D.
Day one: scientific proof of the healing
power of faith and belief
 Research data: people with an active faith
or belief system have better outcomes in
medicine, surgery, mental health, and
addiction.

Mind-body Medicine
Herbert Benson M.D.

Day two: religion
• Rabbi, priest, Hispanic Pentecostal, Florence
Nightingale mystic, Tibetan Buddhist PHD—
former secretary of the Dalai Lama, Islamic
professor and teacher
• Each discussed healing principles, methods,
and qualities within their tradition.
Mind-body Medicine
Herbert Benson M.D.

Day three: application
• Extract the healing principles, methods, and
qualities from the great faith traditions,
organize them into cognitive-behavioral or
mind-body medicine practices.
• Practice these ourselves and teach them to
our patients.
Cascadia: Spirituality and
Healing Group
Clinic survey
 Create a group and manual using the
criteria described earlier.
 Two groups:

• One is now consumer run
• The other is ongoing at the Northwest
Institute for Healing Power

The Ten Step Model
Healing Power: Ten Steps to Pain
Management and Spiritual
Evolution
Steps 1-5: The evolution of suffering
1. The Core Drive
2. Duality and Brutal Reality
3. The Compromise
4. Bad Habits
5. Tools Become Barriers
Ten Steps
Steps 6-10: Spirituality and healing
6. The Seeker
7. Soul and Spirit
8. The School of Life
9. Spiritual Practice
10. Spiritual Experience
Step 1: The Core Drive

We want:
a. Unlimited peace, love, joy, and safety
b. No suffering
c. Immortality: more time

This is our motivation whether robbing a
bank or serving the poor.
Step 2: Duality and Brutal Reality
Life on the physical plane is dual and brutal.
 Duality

• The ups and downs of life
• Pleasure and pain, good and evil, health and disease,
success and failure, wealth and poverty, gain and
loss, praise and blame, joy and sadness, love and
hate, war and peace, and so on

Brutal Reality
• Death, pain and suffering, and the unknown
• The down side of duality
Step 3: The Compromise
There is a collision between the core drive
and duality.
 We can’t get everything we want on the
physical plane.
 We compromise by creating the illusion of
safety through relationship and activities.
 In the compromise, we may feel
comfortable and safe.

Step 3: The Compromise
However, suffering is unavoidable.
 Often we do not accept the inevitable
suffering of life.
 Instead, we make a desperate attempt to
eliminate all of our suffering through
faulty mechanisms such as the cultivation
of bad habits.

Step 4: Habits
We seek eternal love and safety in a world
where impermanence and limitation are
the rule.
 In a mighty but misguided effort to
eliminate suffering, we develop bad
habits.
 Bad habits have a profound effect on our
health and our response to health care
interventions.

Step 4: Habits
Alcohol
Drugs
Food
Sex
Power
Shopping
Gambling
Money
Materialism
Computers/Internet
TV
Work
Codependency
Hyperactivity
Violence
Crime
Step 5: Tools Become Barriers


We use six tools to achieve the core
drive.
While these tools are useful in helping us
find some measure of peace, love,
safety, and pain relief, they become
problems themselves and add to our
suffering.
Step 5: Tools Become Barriers
The six tools are:
1. Mind
2. Emotion
3. Desire
4. Body
5. Activity
6. Ego
Step 5: Tools Become Barriers
In Alignment
The six tools in alignment:
1. Mind: when positive, calm, and focused, it is
brilliant at solving problems and shaping meaning.
2. Emotion: a source of self-knowledge
3. Desire: health, prosperity, and love
4. Body: engage life, the doer of all of our activities,
carrier of higher states of consciousness; the source
of our potential liberation and enlightenment
5. Activity: work, recreation, culture, hobbies
6. Ego: establish our place in the world of work and
relationships
Step 5: Tools Become Barriers
Out of Alignment
The six tools out of alignment:
1. Mind: restless, relentless, a life of its own
2. Emotion: high emotional reactivity
3. Desire: excessive material desire resulting in
attachments and bad habits
4. Body: heavy, tired, hurts, disability, death
5. Activity: hyperactivity
6. Ego: separation, selfishness, territorial, selfimportant
Step 5: Tools Become Barriers
The six tools out of alignment:
•
•
•
•
The universal patient: does anyone not have
this?
Fixation: pin us to the mat of the status quo
Root cause: the root cause of much of our
suffering
Add ons: some people refer to these as add
ons.
• the suffering that we add to the
inevitable suffering of life.
Step 5: Tools Become Barriers

We can get the six tools back in alignment
by:
• Step 8: The School of Life
• Step 9. Spiritual Practice
Summary of Steps 1-5

Three levels of suffering
• The inevitable suffering of life: steps 1-3
• Bad habits: step 4
• The six helpful tools spin out of control: step
5.

We cannot control duality and brutal
reality-i.e.-the inevitable suffering of life.
Summary of Steps 1-5
However, we can control how we respond
 We can intervene at steps 4 and 5
 A comprehensive program must address
steps 4 and 5
 The great religions tell us how
 This is very good news as we add a lot of
suffering to the inevitable suffering of life

Step 6: The Seeker
Step 6: The Seeker
 The three layers of pain commingle
 Our pain deepens
 We may develop symptoms that invade
functioning
 Our suffering leads to a period of questioning
 We recognize the need to get help
 We become seekers
Step 6: The Seeker
Our search takes us to spiritual belief systems
 World religions delve into the heart of the
mystery of life and suffering and emerge with a
prescription for our difficulties
 We can heal ourselves, religion teaches, if we
learn how to manage our pain more skillfully by
developing a spiritual practice
 But first, we must define the nature of the soul
and spirit

Step 7: Soul and Spirit

Soul or Higher Self
• Spiritual qualities: religious traditions point to
spiritual qualities as the nature of soul and
Spirit and recognize these as the goal of all
spiritual work.
• Spiritual alphabet
• Periodic table of spiritual elements
Step 7: Soul and Spirit

Soul or Higher Self
• Extract the essence from the texts and stories
of the sacred traditions and summarize in
one-word qualities
• Tincture of religion
• Call it Love, Truth, Power, Wisdom,
Knowledge, Spiritual Qualities, Soul, Higher
Self, The Buddha, Atman, the Image of God,
or whatever you prefer.
Step 7: Soul and Spirit

Spirit or Higher Power
• The God of your understanding
• Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent
• The God of Love
• Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, Bal Shem
Tov
• The Infinite Mysterious Unknown
• Many other concepts, images, aspects
• Higher states of consciousness
• Higher or true self
• Higher meaning and purpose
Step 8: The School of Life
Life is school.
 Pain is the teacher if we let it be.
 Lessons have to do with the cultivation of
spiritual qualities.

Step 9: Spiritual Practice
External
Synagogue, church, mosque
 Rituals
 Sermons, singing, chanting
 Organizational work, committees
 Social gatherings
 Community service

Step 9: Spiritual Practice
Internal
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Affirmations
Habits
Breathwork
Progressive muscle
relaxation
Contemplation
Meditation
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Prayer
Mindfulness
Practicing the
presence of God
Service
Yoga
The Transformation
of Emotion
Step 9: Spiritual Practice
Internal

Recall the purpose of spiritual practice:
• Getting the six tools back in alignment.

This is difficult.
• It requires discipline and long-term practice.
• However, persevere and the reward is great.

The Promise: Step 10 Spiritual Experience
• The cultivation of spiritual qualities
• Conquer the inner world
• Become master of yourself
Step 10: Spiritual Experience
Expansion of spiritual qualities in four stages:
1. No change is noticeable. Spiritual qualities
are expanding but the increase is subtle and
imperceptible. Many people quit here.
2. You feel better. There is a tangible
experience of ever-expanding peace, love,
strength, courage, compassion, and other
qualities from the spiritual alphabet.
3. Transformation of consciousness: the peace
that surpasses understanding, pure love,
ecstatic joy, intuitive wisdom, a feeling of
oneness with everything, and other
wonderful expressions of Spirit.
4. Mastery: a state of sustained
superconsciousness
Key Principles of the Ten Steps
Steps 1-3: We want love and safety in an
uncertain world where suffering is inevitable.
 Steps 4-5: We manage our pain poorly and
make it worse.
 Steps 6-7: The wisdom of the ages found in the
worlds great religious traditions offers a solution
to this dilemma.
 Step 8: Religions teach us how to use the
inevitable suffering of life to cultivate peace,
power, and strength.

Key Principles of the Ten Steps
Step 9: Pain is the route to healing if we develop
a spiritual practice.
 Step 10: Spiritual qualities such as love,
compassion, courage, strength, and humility are
the healers: they help us broker and buffer the
pain of this life.
 Steps 1-10: Through a series of painful lessons,
life teaches us that the peace, love, and joy we
seek in the outer world, can and must ultimately
be found within.

Key Principles of the Ten Steps
Spiritual work results in a shift in the locus of
control from the outer world of people, places,
and things to the inner world of peace, power,
and strength
 Skillful pain management (step 8) and spiritual
practice (step 9) lead to the discovery of the
soul and Higher Power (step 7) as the peace,
love, and joy we crave (step 10)
 Step 10 is the Core Drive (step 1) resurrected,
but now we understand that getting the peace,
love, and joy we crave, necessitates a shift in
the locus of control from outside to inside.

The Universal Wheel:
Problem, Method, Quality
The Universal Wheel:
1. Problem: choose any problem or pain
2. Method: choose any one or combination of the
twelve methods
3. Quality: cultivate any one or combination of spiritual
qualities in response to the problem
Example
1. I am anxious
2. I practice mindfulness and meditation
3. I cultivate peace of mind
The Universal Wheel
You can drive any car on this wheel:
atheist, agnostic, spiritual, or religious.
 For many, the universal wheel is:

• least invasive, threatening, or toxic
• addresses the root cause of much of our
trouble.
• necessary and sufficient

For others, this is not enough.
Traction Devices

Some people need theological traction
devices.
• Story, metaphor, language
• Concepts, images, aspects.
• Rituals
Traction Devices
Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence
 The God of Love
 A personal God as Father, Mother, Friend,
Beloved, Teacher, Guide, Protector,
Confidant
 Saints, sages, masters, teachers, and
gurus
 Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, Bal
Shem Tov

Traction Devices
An impersonal God as peace, love, joy,
power, wisdom, or other combinations of
spiritual qualities
 Nature, reason, and the subconscious
 Collective unconscious and archetypes
 The Mystery

Traction Devices
Karma and reincarnation
 Grace
 Mystical experiences: eternal peace, pure
love, ecstatic joy, intuitive wisdom,
protection, guidance, prophetic dreams,
many others
 And more

Inclusion and Individualization
Inclusion: All of the options cited above
are referred to in the ten-step model.
 One person’s traction device is the next
person’s gag reflex.
 Take what you need and leave the rest.
 Don’t let language knock you out of the
game: nuke offensive language and
substitute your own.

Group Rules
We do not promote a particular religion.
 We do promote your individual approach.
 We have respect and tolerance for the great variety of
ways to understand and practice spirituality.
 We do not proselytize.
 We engage in discussion without debate.
 Take what you need and leave the rest.
 We avoid giving advice or trying to fix other people’s
problems.
 We are not here to change others.
 We are here to figure out how to change ourselves.

Three Universal Outcomes

No matter your theology or lack of theology,
with a spiritual practice, you accomplish three
goals:
1. Expansion of the healing power
2. More skillful pain management
3. Spiritual evolution
Three Universal Outcomes

These three non-denominational variables
move together.
1. Healing Power: expansion of the healing
power for body, mind, and soul.
2. Pain management: managing any
physical, mental, or spiritual pain or
problem.
3. Spiritual Evolution: becoming a better
person through the cultivation of spiritual
qualities such as compassion, strength,
and peace.
Conclusion
Healthcare Professionals: The ten-step model
supplements the healing practices of all medical
specialties.
• Healthcare professionals can teach the ten
steps to their patients in hospitals and clinics.
 Self-help groups: The model is suited for selfhelp groups in the community
 Individual study: We do not need a group or
teacher. We can do this work at home, alone.

The Car and the Mountain

The car and the mountain
• The universal wheel
• The body of the car: atheist, agnostic,
spiritual, or religious
• Traction devices
Exercise: Finding Yourself and Your
Patients in the Ten Steps
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is your core drive?
How does step 3, The Compromise, play itself
out in your life?
What are some examples in your life of how
desire led to attachment and a bad habit or
two?
Step 5 describes how the six tools are assets
that become liabilities. Review how each of
these tools presents both opportunities and
challenges in your life.
Exercise: Finding Yourself and Your
Patients in the Ten Steps
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Would you like to be able to control your mind
but don’t know how?
Do you fill your waking life with continuous
activity?
Do you have built-in periods of retreat and
solitude for rest and regeneration?
Describe how your ego gets you into trouble.
Has your suffering led you to search for
meaning and purpose?
Exercise: Finding Yourself and Your
Patients in the Ten Steps
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
What is the meaning and purpose of your life?
Describe how your belief system gives you
meaning and purpose.
What is your concept of soul or higher self?
Do you have a Higher Power?
What is your concept of a Higher Power?
Using the metaphor of life as a school, how
would you describe some of the classes that
you are in at this time?
Exercise: Finding Yourself and Your
Patients in the Ten Steps
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
What lessons are your learning?
Discuss pain as a stimulant for the
growth of spiritual power.
Do you have a spiritual practice?
What spiritual methods do you use?
Would you like to expand your practice?
Review the list of spiritual qualities.
Which of these would you like to grow?
Exercise: Finding Yourself and Your
Patients in the Ten Steps
22.
Build your own car
 Universal Wheel: choose a problem,
method, or quality
 Body of the car: atheist, agnostic,
religious, spiritual
 Traction devices
Where Do We Go From Here


Healthcare professional: If not interested or
don’t have enough time, refer patients to selfhelp books or skills trainers.
Those who are interested can follow the data
from two sources:
1. Scientific studies on spirituality and healing.
2. The scientific method in metaphysics: spiritual
practice leads to direct personal experience.
• These two work together.
Where Do We Go From Here

“Heal thyself”
• Healthcare professionals and consumers,
seekers, individuals in crisis, all people
• Develop a spiritual practice.
• Form study groups.
• Follow the scientific method in metaphysics.
The Scientific Method
in Metaphysics
We can decipher spiritual fiction from fact.
 How to do this without labs tests or x-rays?
 We can put profoundly important questions to
the test of direct personal experience in the
laboratory of life.

• Does compassionate service to humanity give us
peace of mind and strength?
• Does meditation work?
• Do higher states of consciousness actually exist?
• Does the body-temple harbor the God of the
universe?
The Scientific Method
in Metaphysics
Test a theory by practicing a spiritual method.
Assume the agnostic position.
• Do not accept or reject the theory.
• Stay opened and receptive.
3. The body is the test tube.
4. The experiment is on the life force itself, consciousness,
energy, thought, feeling, desire, and behavior.
5. Prove or disprove it to yourself through direct personal
experience.
6. If a method or concept works, we keep it and teach it to
our patients. If not, we discard it.
7. We trust our ability to tell the difference.
1.
2.
How to Use the Book
Overview
The book is an instruction manual for
developing a spiritual practice.
 There are ten steps, 12 methods, and 100
spiritual qualities.
 10 qualities have their own chapter.
 The first 89 pages set the stage for the
rest of the book.
 Chapter 3-6: The Ten Steps

How to Use the Book
Introduction to Spiritual Practice

Chapter 7: Getting Started
• Eight suggestions for starting a spiritual
practice
Chapter 8: The Serenity Prayer
• Will: how to cultivate will power
• Surrender: how to live with what we
cannot change
 Chapter 9: A Universal Spiritual Method

How to Use the Book
Methods

Change your destiny
• Affirmations
• Habits
How to Use the Book
Methods

Morning and evening
program
• Progressive Muscle
Relaxation
• Breathwork
• Contemplation
• Meditation
• Prayer

Daily activity
program
• Mindfulness
• Practicing the
Presence of God
• Service
• Yoga
• The Transformation of
Emotion
How to Use the Book
Qualities
Love
 Peace
 Humility
 Faith
 Courage

Forgiveness
 Truth
 Intuition
 Oneness
 Healing

Homework
How to Use the Book
Step 5: Tools become barriers
 This is the ‘universal problem.’
 Leverage: with any one or combination of the
12 methods, you can get the six tools back in
alignment.
1. Mind: from mental restlessness to positive,
calm, strong, resilient
2. Emotion: from excessive reactivity to
information about our problems and
solutions, issues and strategies
Homework
How to Use the Book
3. Desire: from excessive material desire, bad
habits, and attachments to peace and
contentment
4. Body: from trouble and fear to a temple
housing the God of the universe or higher
stages of consciousness
5. Activity: from compulsive and addictive to
stillness, silence, spaciousness, and serenity
6. Ego: from fear, insecurity, worry, and doubt
to the expansion of soul qualities
Homework
How to Use the Book


When the six tools are back in alignment,
serenity, strength, compassion, joy and a host
of other spiritual qualities slowly expand.
You have unlimited power here but you must
work for it.
• Begin building your morning, day, and
evening program.
• Warm up before work.
• Practice when you are stuck.
Homework
How to Use the Book
Some final advice
 Spiritual work is not easy.
 It takes time to dissolve barriers.
 Quick fixes are usually not real.
 However, if you are patient and diligent,
the rewards are profound.
Homework
How to Use the Book
Some final advice

For most, it takes crisis and pain to start a
practice but don’t wait. Do your homework now.
• Practice one or a combination of the methods
every day.
• Work on cultivating one or a combination of
spiritual qualities every day.
• Even if you are very busy, try to read one or a
few pages every day.
Homework
How to Use the book
Some final advice
 This is a self-help model. You can and
must ultimately do the work alone.
 For those who might want ongoing
support and guidance, consider forming a
study group.
 Above all, remain compassionate, patient,
and gentle with yourself.