Spiritual Awareness

Doctor of Spiritual Awareness Final Essay
by Justin Oles

Having already completed most of the spirituality courses offered by the Seminary, to include the Master of Spirituality course, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this course.  After all what would the change from “master” to “doctor” actually entail.  I think it entails mostly a more profound, indirect and more open and thought provoking look at the topic.  It also entails more breadth and depth to the topic.  The Doctorate course covers everything from healing and energy use and gathering to spirits, haunting and basic exorcism.  Major tenets of the course listed below.  Firstly, to never do any magical act; whether it be healing, scrying, or helping someone without their permission.  Secondly, advice against the rookie mistake of using your own energy for the purpose of magic, with examples and practicals on how to gather energy from other sources and use it properly.  In addition that our thoughts are what controls things on this plane of existence as well as on the others.  Our thoughts and will are what creates magic, not the fanciful movements of our hands or wands.  Lastly, to be careful with dealing with spirits, while explaining the basic fact that no spirit that will contact you is outside your power to deal with, while some can be tricky and can often put up a fight that requires brains and not brawn to beat.

One of the unfortunate facts about this course is that it presents some ideas that will make no sense if you haven’t taken other spirituality courses.  This is not really an issue since it is listed as a doctorate level course and the implications therefore would be that you should take the masters level courses first.  One complaint along those lines is that while the ascended masters are spoken of in passing throughout the course an explanation of whom and what they are was saved for the final lesson.  While I am sure the author has a valid reason for this it would make more sense to me logically to have an explanation of the terminology before the term is use for the first time, or at a minimum a brief explanation included with the first use of the term.  Once again, having taken many different courses from the seminary previously I had an understanding of the meaning of almost all terms, someone who has less experience or training may find it difficult to become fully engrossed in and truly understand the lessons based on this fact alone.

One good thing about the course was the breadth and depth.  While this is a doctorate level course and I was expected it to drill down more specifically as such it ended up being a good overall view of spirituality with the thought processes of an upper level course but with the specificity and breadth of a primer course.  This worked simply because it was able to make you curious enough to do more research on your own.  The only drawback of this being the author has to give over some control of where that curiosity brings you rather than control the entire journey through the course.

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.
The Universal Life Church offers handfasting ceremonies, funeral ceremonies and free minister training.