This book is an extraordinary course for personal and spiritual growth to begin your own Heroic Journey. Clarify your life purpose, focus your Vision, Energy and Passion, and achieve authentic success.

THE QUEST..EXPLORING A SENSE OF SOUL

If you’re serious about embarking on a spiritual path, acquire the book “The Quest…Exploring a Sense of Soul” – it’s a Whole System Model for Achieving Authentic Success.

The Quest is a practical home-study course for personal and spiritual discovery to maximize health, clarify life purpose, integrate spirituality, and bring balance into everyday living.

The Quest inspires and provokes you to get spiritually fit, take on new life challenges, and embrace life to its fullest.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be stored other than in the personal computer of the original purchaser, nor be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission from the publisher or the authors. Contact: thequestproject@aol.com or www.thequest.org.uk Reviewers may quote brief passages. The intent of the authors is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for personal and spiritual well-being. In the event that you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which it is your constitutional right, the authors and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

The Quest...Exploring A Sense Of Soul by Joycelin Dawes, Janice Dolley and Ike Isaksen is published in paperback worldwide by O Books, UK, US$16.95/£9.99, ISBN 1 903816 93 9". www.o-books.net and www.thequest.org.uk

Explore the nature of The Quest. Fill the ‘gap’ in your life. Through the course of The Quest you will:

• Learn tools & skills for staying in touch with your sense of soul
• Review your individual and unique experiences in life
• Explore your experience of ‘a spiritual dimension’
• Clarify what matters most to you and your sense of purpose
• Integrate your sense of soul into your everyday life
  

The Quest was designed and written by the distinguished Quest Core Team – Joycelin Dawes, Janice Dolley and Ike Isaksen – and originally self-published in partnership with the Findhorn Foundation.

Sign up now and receive your one chapter for free right now. Begin the Journey.

Up until now, most of us who grew up in the West have only had two choices – either accept, lock, stock and barrel, the beliefs and values of the faith we were brought up in, or reject that faith and choose another one.

But choosing between the many different brands on the shelves of the current ‘spiritual supermarket’ is no easy task – Christianity or Zen Buddhism? And what many of us have found is that even in the ‘new’ faith, any direct spiritual experience of our own was often denied.

Now The Quest – Exploring a Sense of Soul offers a viable alternative. It does not try to tell you what to think or believe. But, by giving you some very powerful tools to re-examine, re-appraise and rebuild your deepest beliefs and values – and re-integrate them into your life – it opens up another path.

It does not reject the established faiths but offers you the chance to explore and validate your own direct spiritual experience – your own sense of soul – a faith that works for you and sees you as a unique individual with your own spiritual authority and expression.

You will find The Quest – Exploring a Sense of Soul deeply challenging on many levels. It’s not merely designed to prop up your own world view – you’ll be encouraged to seek out and talk to others on the same path with possibly radically different views. Faith isn’t always comfortable. But we do believe that ultimately, you won’t regret the moment you decided to explore your own sense of soul.

Widely acclaimed for excellence and quality, The Quest...Exploring A Sense of Soul is already in use world-wide by individuals, by people working in small groups, in the community, in churches, and in colleges and universities.

The Quest...Exploring a Sense of Soul

“We are closer to God when we are asking questions
than when we think we have the answers.”
Rabbi Abraham Heschel, (1997)

The one guide you can’t be without on your Journey. Profoundly honest and deeply moving, The Quest is the one book you’ll find yourself coming back to time and again – because it’s the real deal. It will put you on the path to exploring the very essence of your soul. The Quest is a compelling work of self-exploration for personal and spiritual growth. If you’ve ever wondered how to gauge your progress, to see if you’re actually getting somewhere, here’s your master plan.

A practical home-study course for personal and spiritual discovery. “I lit a candle and sat in meditation to reflect on my experiences of using the manual, both as an individual and with a group and to find words to encapsulate the remarkable journey it has led me through.”

Rave Reviews:

“It has become so much a part of my life that I hadn't realized I was doing it. This is about becoming still, centering; observing and reflecting; opening to creative inspiration; and integrating the experiences into daily life, about bringing the sacred into the ordinary.”

"The Quest…Exploring a Sense of Soul … is an Aladdin's cave of personal and spiritual growth springboards."

"The Quest is as practical, non-partisan and comprehensive a view of the spiritual journey as I have come across".

What Is The Quest...Exploring A Sense Of Soul? Unlike other books, The Quest does not tell you what you should think or believe or give you the authors' opinions. Instead it guides you through the labyrinth of questions and challenges that arise on the spiritual journey and every idea, every question is accompanied by activities designed to help you explore your own experience and become clearer about your own answers.

The book is divided into 13 chapters – to match your progress on the Quest Journey - clearly presenting all the themes and topics you will need to explore in your spiritual journey.

CHAPTER 1 Getting Started
An introduction and overview of The Quest, activities that help you take stock and an explanation of the language and images used in The Quest.

CHAPTER 2 Heart of The Quest
Asking such questions as: What does “spiritual” mean? What has felt real or authentic to you? What times, places, activities, people help you to be more in touch with your most meaningful experiences? What kind of spiritual reflection helps you?, this chapter provides a framework for finding your own answers, exploring your sense of soul and trying out skills of spiritual reflection across the traditions.

CHAPTER 3 Developing Your Skills - practises a key example of each of the four skills of spiritual reflection introduced in Heart of The Quest but now encountered more deeply and in forms that are more akin to spiritual practices from across the religious traditions.

CHAPTER 4 Telling Your Story - telling the story of your life, reflecting on themes, patterns, and blocks in your life and recognising what has meaning for you. As you uncover obstacles and hindrances and identify values and core principles, questions asked include: "What has been important in your life? What matters most to you? What has challenged or stretched you? What will help you let go of fear and experience more love?"

CHAPTER 5 A Growing Sense Of Soul - exploring your sense of soul is primarily a search for "your connection with your essence, with others, nature, and a Presence or Ultimate Reality". The Quest uses spiritual experience as an umbrella term for this sense of soul, stimulating questions such as: "What brings me alive? What deadens me? How do I describe my sense of soul to others? What is living life with a greater level of meaning? Have I ever had a sense of closeness or connectedness to a greater whole?"

CHAPTER 6 Changing Faces Of Faith - using faith to indicate a broad conviction that the universe is underpinned by a Source, or held together, in a way not always apparent at the day-to-day level, you unpack what you believe and where it comes from, and encounter the changing nature of our time, through questions such as: "What do you believe? What are the roots of your belief? What has influenced you? What have you encountered that has led you to modify your faith?"

CHAPTER 7 Encountering Direct Experience - the nature of faith is changing: less emphasis on traditional knowledge, recorded revelation, or particular creeds and beliefs - religion - and more emphasis on freedom to encounter and trust individual spiritual experience - spirituality. The questions in Encountering Direct Experience ask: "What is your experience of ‘something more’? What did you encounter? What maps might help you understand this? How can you anchor direct experience of Spirit?"

CHAPTER 8 Passion and Change - some changes bring excitement and joy – passion – and some enter a dark place – pain. However, passion and pain are not separate; joy and grief, elation and distress, march closely together. Seeing them as different aspects of change questions: "How can you be more at ease with change in your life? Does everyone other than you know their purpose? What helps you pick yourself up when you stumble? How can you use what arises in life as a springboard for growth and compassion?"

CHAPTER 9 Dark Nights - in a dark night of the soul, your distress cannot be accommodated within your current understanding of Spirit, and you can hardly come to terms with profound anguish. A dark night may also be a dry and arid time in a spiritual desert. But even in dark nights stars still shine behind the clouds. Pain can facilitate transformation through questioning: "How can I balance dark with light? What kinds of crisis might I encounter? What helps me move on? Does focusing on the change help me deal with pain?"

CHAPTER 10 Wholeness and Connection - in this chapter you consider wholeness and connection, looking outward to your place amidst “all of creation” in questioning: "What is wholeness? How can I understand and experience connection? Are there ideas and concepts that explain reality from a whole and connected perspective?"

CHAPTER 11 Living In A Sacred Way - in this chapter you reflect on the impact that your inner journey of self-exploration has on the way you live in the outer world, focusing on questions of: "What does it mean to live in a sacred way? What ideas and methods might help you live in a sacred way? How can you express your sense of soul in a connected and inclusive way?

CHAPTER 12 Ending - Or Continuing Your Quest? - provides a review of your own journey through The Quest, your sense of soul now and your vision as you seek to play your part in creating the new story of humanity.

CHAPTER 13 Making The Most Of The Quest - “to 'listen' another's soul into life, into a condition of disclosure and discovery, may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another.” (Steere, 1955). While many people follow The Quest on their own, many others find companionship and support helpful; discussion and sharing of your journey and insights can significantly deepen and enrich your own exploration and use of The Quest. This chapter gives tips for finding and starting a Quest group

Throughout the book numerous incredible Practice Guides are incorporated into key Activities to support you in establishing and maintaining your connection with the sacredness in life. The Practice Guides are organized around 4 themes: Stillness and Being Centered, Observing and Reflecting, Opening and Integrating. Examples of the Practice Guides include: Finding Inner Stillness, Visualization, Journaling, Using Intuition, Acting With Awareness, and Living With Paradox.

All in all, you could not have a more complete guide for your Journey

Following are a couple of brief extracts, giving you a taster of the approach and style of The Quest.

“You encounter many questions on the spiritual journey. Such questions include:

• What does “spiritual” mean?
• What has felt real or authentic to you?
• What times, places, activities, people help you to be more in touch with your most meaningful experiences?
• What kind of spiritual reflection helps you?

  
  Finding your own answers to such questions, and developing a way to stay in touch with your sense of soul, are key elements in The Quest. So Heart of The Quest outlines a framework for exploring your sense of soul and trying out skills drawn from spiritual traditions around the world; cultivating awareness is a central aspect of all such skills.”

AN EXTRACT FROM
Chapter 3: Telling Your Story

“In Telling Your Story you begin by telling the story of your life as it has unfolded to date. As you explore your journey, you move further into reflecting on themes, patterns, and blocks in your life and recognise what has positive meaning for you. This is essential work in exploring your sense of soul. You will be uncovering the obstacles and hindrances that stand in your way, and identifying values and core principles through which you express your unique embodiment of Spirit. Questions you will ask include:

What has been important in your life?

What matters most to you?

What has challenged or stretched you?

What will help you let go of fear and experience more love?

YOUR STORY

Experience, your experience, is the starting-point of self-awareness and inner knowledge. As you reflect on events and experience, you become alert to inner perceptions and the way they affect you. Levine (1997) suggests: “The first element is the exploration of what has gone before as a way of clearing the path for what is to come. …the life review goes beneath the surface of past actions to the states of mind from which these acts originated.”

The first step in establishing an idea of who you think you are is telling your story. Initially, it may seem daunting to look back over your life and identify which events stand out for you and why. Some people seem to have lives that contain nothing but memorable or significant events. For others, life seems a blur and they find it hard to remember any specific events.

Generally, there are some experiences and events that you recollect most readily and, as you begin to think about your life, more will surface. Looking through old photo albums, diaries, letters, and other mementoes or a “do you remember …?” session with family or old friends can jog your memory. Or you may feel that you have reviewed your life story so often there’s nothing new to say, that the same things come up again; however, setting out to find a different way to express your memories can stimulate new recollections and new ways of seeing events and experiences.”

 

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