Mission Statement
This Fellowship is an inclusive community dedicated to the unfolding spiritual journey of each individual by engaging our minds, our hearts, and our actions.
Principles
- Our sacred celebrations reflect our interspiritual openness and welcoming spirit.
- We affirm that individuals are responsible for their evolution in the search for truth and meaning.
- We respect each person’s spiritual path and spiritual practices.
- We are committed to individual transformation and the maturing of understanding throughout a lifetime.
- We support people in practicing their spiritual values and being a beneficial presence in the world.
- We honor our interdependent oneness by supporting each other within a safe and compassionate fellowship.
- We draw from texts reflecting many spiritual paths, in trust that the wisdom in these sources can help to strengthen understanding of our own paths.
Values
Some of the values that we hold in our facilitation of Authentic Spiritual Conversation meetings include:
- Safety to allow people to express their vulnerability, doubts, frustrations, beliefs without being given advice, preached at, condescended to, told how things should be, or made wrong in any way;
- A listening space where people can try on ideas, feelings, and forms of self-expression without being concerned about having to take care of the listener;
- Respect for the right of each person to be exactly where they are and to have their own perspectives, beliefs, and experiences;
- Self-Responsibility for our own actions, choices, development, and empowerment to meet our needs within the group and in our lives;
- Freedom to change our minds, choose our level of participation, and to decline any suggestion that does not fit for us;
- Taking Action in the world to apply our spiritual values, learn what we are here to learn, and develop the capacity to live in a way that is heart/mind congruent;
- Compassion for the challenges, difficulties, and seeming failures that we all face;
- Sharing what we have learned is an offering to each other when it comes from a sincere desire to share our learning with others and to celebrate the gifts we have received;
- Speaking our truth, for our own benefit, to heal and dissolve the internal barriers we have placed on ourselves in order to be safe and receive love, and to begin to allow the truth of who we are to show up in the world;
- Skillfulness developed through practicing authentic speaking, open listening, and compassionate holding in fellowship with others;
- Humility in thinking that we know the Truth, accepting that we have limited knowledge of other religions and other perspectives, letting go of arguments about our opinions and judgments of others, and giving up insistence on being right;
- Confidentiality as a way to create a safe space. We will not share what is said in the group with anyone else. We will not discuss the content of other people’s sharing even with current or former members of the group. Further, we will not bring up the content of someone’s sharing if we encounter them outside of the group unless that person brings it up first.
For a longer discussion of the guidelines and values we promote for Authentic Spiritual Conversations groups, click on this link.