What is Spiritual Counseling?

What is Spiritual Counseling?

Spiritual counseling is a method designed to help a person awaken to the reality of “The One Life Principle.”

This ancient idea says that there is a single underlying power in the universe but the expression of this power takes many forms. Scientists call this power Energy, Nature, the Unified Field, or Consciousness. Theologians call it God or Spirit.

This power expresses itself as you, me and everyone and everything else in the Universe. When we wrap our minds around this simple premise, we realize that because everyone and everything comes from the same spiritual source, we are all spiritual. If we all come from the same spiritual source, then there is no separation — not only between us and God — but between us and anyone or anything else.

Like computers hooked up to a network server, each one of us has access to any and all information stored in the spiritual database of the Universe. As a result, we are inherently able to directly communicate with God/Spirit and all of its creations. As expressions of spiritual energy, we can do and be whatever we want. On the deepest spiritual level, we are not stuck, isolated, alone or being punished.

The goal of spiritual counseling is to wake up to our own underlying divine power and express ourselves as spiritual human beings. The reward of spiritual counseling is realizing that there is no upward limit to what we can experience, do or be.  With this realization, we can go forth in the world with confidence, inner peace, and deep and abiding love for all that is.

Gateways

I was born in 1960 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a hard-working steel town that was still in the process of transforming itself from an immigrant-dominated, working class city to its current status as a well-respected corporate headquarters.

There's something about Pittsburgh that has stayed with me long after I left to go to college in Massachusetts. Maybe it’s the location. Before St. Louis, Pittsburgh was the "Gateway to the West." Only 300 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, Pittsburgh’s three rivers made travel and transport possible between the East Coast and further west. However, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Allegheny Mountains made getting people and goods to Pittsburgh from the East Coast difficult, so Pittsburghers created their own goods to sell which led to the city’s evolution into an industrial “smokey old town.” In some ways, Pittsburgh is similar to other industrial cities like Chicago and Detroit, but as a sort of dividing line between the East and the Midwest—Pittsburgh is unique.

I've now lived in New York City longer than I lived in Pittsburgh and while I am one of those New Yorkers who is deeply in love with the wild energy that is NYC, in my heart I am and always will be a Pittsburgher. I went to my first protest march in Pittsburgh, saw my first opera, heard my first symphony, and got my driver's license there too. I got my resourcefulness and stick-to-it-iveness from the values that emerged from the 'burgh’s industrial history and the keen sense that we're all in this together—no matter what kind of job we're doing, level of education we've received, or salary we're pulling down—from its role as a true ethnic melting pot.

It’s hard to imagine now, but for many years, Pittsburgh didn’t appeal to me. After living in Paris and New York, the city seemed too self-conscious and not nearly sophisticated enough for me. It symbolized everything about my past that I wanted to forget—especially my struggles with my father. My dad was a powerhouse of a man, and to me Pittsburgh belonged to him. In order for me to carve out my own life, we needed to live in different cities. And since New York is a hell of a town, I didn’t think I’d ever need Pittsburgh again. After my dad’s death, however, I felt the need to reclaim Pittsburgh as my own and now I know why.

Like the city of my birth, I am a gateway—not to the west like Pittsburgh—but to the Soul. And after all these years I know how to get there. Come with me and let’s ride the river together. A new frontier beckons.