THE GOOD ROAD:
THE JOURNEY ALONG A SPIRITUAL PATH
LOUIS F. KAVAR
All Right Reserved | Copright 2000 | Louis F. Kavar
eBook edition | Smashwords edition | 2010
No part of this publication may be reproduced, store in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Request for information should be addressed to lou@loukavar.com
Cover Photo by Marc Tule. Used with permission.
The printed version of The Good Road is available on Amazon.com.
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Dedication
In gratitude for the coyotes:
the house-yokes, pups, and dancing coyotes,
always changing form,
who have scampered into my life
with stories, tricks, challenges and opportunities.
Indeed, coyote magic is powerful medicine.
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Table of Contents
How to use this interactive e-book
My New Publication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
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Part One: A Map for the Road
~ Chapter 1: The Spiritual Path
~ Chapter 2: The First Step in Walking the Path
~ Chapter 3: Staying on the Path
~ Chapter 4: The Terrain along the Spiritual Path
~ Chapter 5: Roadblocks on the Spiritual Path
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Part Two: Travelers Making the Journey
~ Chapter 6: Darlene Begins the Spiritual Journey
~ Chapter 7: Dwayne: Re-Discovering Self on the Good Road
~ Chapter 8: Tony: The Process of Inner Healing
~ Chapter 9: The Story of Marilyn
~ Chapter 10: Beginning the Journey Along the Good Road
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About the Author
The Rev. Louis F. Kavar, Ph.D., is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. A member of the faculty in psychology at Canella, Dr. Kavar holds a Master of Arts in spirituality from Duquesne University and a doctorate in counseling from the University of Pittsburgh. He has lectured in six countries and published other books and articles including The Good Road: The Journey Along a Spiritual Path.
Dr. Kavar is on many social networking sites. Be sure to follow him on:
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How to use this interactive e-book
This e-book is fully interactive. You will find discussion questions at the end of each chapter. You can access the online discussion board to share your thoughts with other readers of this book.
Dr. Kavar also provides feedbacks and leads discussion sessions on the online community.
Click here to access the online community for The Good Road.
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My New Publication
My latest spirituality book - Stumbling into Life’s Lessons: Reflections on the Spiritual Journey, is now available as hardcopy, paperback and eBook.
Stumbling into Life’s Lessons is a collection of essays written as I moved from a face-paced life in administration to a life characterized by more focused spiritual practice. The essays explore a variety of themes including the challenge of leading a slower pace of life as a professional; integrating spiritual practices in the rhythm of a professional life; understanding spirituality based on ecology and environment; and the role of spirituality in personal growth.
The essays, originally published various newspapers and journals, explore my intentional transition while living in the Sonoran Desert. The brief essays in Stumbling into Life’s Lessons invite the reader to reflect on the integration of spirituality in daily life and how changes in the way one organizes life can have a profound effect on the quality of life.
For more information, visit the book's website at stumbling.loukavar.com
You can also visit the blog on my weekly spiritual journey at blog.loukavar.com
Sincerely,
Lou
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Acknowledgements
A book is never the enterprise of one individual but depends on the experience, work, and sharing of many others. While this book is based on the lessons learned and shared with countless individuals, I am particularly grateful to those who have assisted in the reading, editing, and preparing the original manuscript: Jon T. Armstrong, Joe Bentley, Franklyn and Patricia Bergen, Lori D. Carrico, Dane D’alessandro, Dawn A. Mills, OSB, and Valerie Stark, OSB. Their assistance and support have been invaluable to me. Their friendship has helped to make this part of my life journey a very good road to travel.
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Introduction
We were hanging out at my apartment, talking. My Native American friend, Houston, stood in front of the bookshelves looking through the titles. “You have a lot of books about spirituality,” Houston remarked. “How come so many people talk about spirituality? What is it, anyway?”
I was somewhat surprised by Houston’s question. Given the pride he takes in his heritage, it seemed to me like an odd question. Many people think of Native American cultures as being inherently spiritual. I asked Houston to explain what he meant. “I just don’t understand spirituality, or what you mean by it. Just seems like lots of words. Tell me what it is.”
I have to agree with Houston. There are times when spirituality just seems like lots of words. The words are often confusing. With all the talk and the variety of books, there is little agreement about what spirituality asunder the heading of spirituality, people talk about religious experiences; twelve-step programs; readings with tarot cards, crystals, and runes; channeling the spirit of a person long dead; past-life regression; or things as simple as a hike in the mountains.
When many people talk about spirituality, they are usually referring to spiritual experiences. A spiritual experience can come in any form. A spiritual experience could be a time of prayer in a church, synagogue, or temple when you believed God was present with you. Or it could be time outdoors, while hiking or looking at the stars when you felt connected to nature. Or maybe you had a spiritual experience while reading a book or talking with a friend and you found that you were really inspired. There are many different experiences that people consider “spiritual.”
What makes an experience “spiritual” is that it touches our spirit, the core of our being, and empowers us to feel connected to something more than our ordinary awareness. That connection may be to a sense of a Divine Presence, an awareness of the cosmos being alive, or of deep communion with another person. Ordinarily, a religious service is just a ritual; a hike in a canyon is just time outdoors; and a discussion group is just people talking. Each of these things becomes a spiritual experience when our inner-most self is touched by something more than what is evidently present in what we are doing. It’s the transcendent dimension of something “more than” the activity itself that makes an experience spiritual.
Spirituality is a quality, dimension, or capacity in human life that enables us to live with a transcendent awareness of something more than the actual activity we are engaged in. Spirituality begins with the experience of being part of a larger whole or in communion with something greater than ourselves. Spirituality builds on these kinds of experiences to change, shape, or transform our lives with a greater sense of meaning and purpose.
Many people confuse spirituality with spiritual experiences. For some people, the spiritual experience is an end in itself. However, spirituality is much greater than just an isolated experience. After all, spiritual experiences are like other experiences: you can have them and keep them to yourself and it doesn’t have to make much difference in the rest of your life. However, when we take spiritual experiences seriously and pay attention to what they mean in our lives, they offer us a greater awareness of our lives and everything else around us. Their real power is that they evoke a greater sense or depth in life itself. Living our lives from this greater sense of depth is what spirituality is really all about.
“It’s really about the way you live your life?” Houston asked. “Yep,” I replied. “Oh,” he said with a dismissive gesture, “That’s easy. You either live your life the good way or you don’t. Indians always knew that.” “I’m sure that’s true,” I said, smiling to myself.
Living life the good way, or as some Native Americans call it, walking the good road, is what this book is about. It is meant to serve as a basic field guide for the journey along a spiritual path. The path you follow is your own. I share from my experience on a spiritual path but don’t assume that anyone else will travel the same path I do. The journey you take on the good road is your own and no one else’s.
The road is good not because it’s easy. It is a good road because through all the twists and turns, the traveler is brought to a deeper realization of life, its beauty and truth, its wonder and resilience.
This book is divided into two parts. Part One presents an introduction to spirituality, spiritual paths, and basic spiritual practices. Simple exercises are included to help you put into practice the concepts contained in this section. A chapter is also devoted to roadblocks on the spiritual path common in Western culture. The combination of information and exercises is meant to help you chart a spiritual path that is right for your life. Part Two presents the stories of people who are walking their own spiritual paths. These chapters will help to illustrate the concepts contained in Part One. Their progress in the spiritual journey will help you to understand the nuances of your own journey. However, it’s important to note that the people presented in Part Two are illustrations and not real individuals. Their stories are composite sketches based on the work I’ve done assisting others on the good road for the last 20 years. The resemblance to particular individuals is coincidental.
Walking the good road of the spiritual journey is a lifelong process. It really is about the way we live. The spiritual journey teaches us how to live our lives in union and communion with the goodness of life that can be encountered in everything around us. That’s indeed what makes the road “good.”
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Introduction Discussion
Are there ways you could be more aware of a spiritual dimension in your life today?
(Click on the questions to access online discussion broad.)
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PART ONE
A Map for the Road
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Chapter 1: The Spiritual Path
It was a little after 7:00 PM.I had just finished watching the evening news. I turned on the computer and signed on-line to check for e-mail. There was a note from my friend, Tom.
Tom and I began corresponding a few years ago. We discuss by e-mail several issues, including spiritual practices. Tom is Native American, Lakota by heritage. I, of course, am Christian. Both our similarities and differences make for interesting correspondence.
In the context of our discussions, I wasn’t really surprised to get this note from him:
I consider myself to be a spiritual person and I think you do, too. I also think that we consider each other to be spiritual people. Yet we follow very different paths to spirit. So the question is simply, "what is a spiritual person?" (easy question, not easy answer I think)
I do agree with Tom’s assessment: the question is easy, but the answer is more complex. What is a spiritual person? Is one person more spiritual than another? Aren’t all people spiritual?
To answer these questions, I need to take a few steps back and ask another, more basic question: What is spirituality? By understanding more about spirituality itself and how a person becomes spiritual, the answer to these other often interwoven questions may become clearer.
Think for a moment about a time in your life you would describe as spiritual. Perhaps you were sitting on a beach, watching the waves roll in toward you. Or perhaps you will be walking at night, looking up at the stars in the sky. Perhaps you were listening to a piece of classical music or watching a performance of dance. You may have been taking part in a religious service or ritual or in a time of personal prayer or meditation. Or perhaps you were witness to the awesome moment of the birth a child or sat with a person who passed from this life. Stop and recall a moment you consider spiritual. What was it like? What was happening?
No matter what the actual event may have been, whether praying the rosary or standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, spiritual moments have a certain quality about them. Spiritual moments stand out from our ordinary experience of life because somehow, in spiritual moments, we experience a connection with something more than our ordinary experience. During spiritual moments we reach out beyond our day to day life and touch something that we don’t really know or understand. Moments are spiritual because in those moments we make a connection with something beyond us.
It is not the thing that we are doing that is spiritual in itself. All of us know that on occasion doing something can be boring or routine. Yet, at another time, doing the very same thing can be alive and rich in meaning. The vitality or richness in meaning that we often call “spiritual” has to do with what happens to us, as individuals, at that moment. In a spiritual moment, we awaken to the possibility of connecting with something that is more than the simple action we are doing. In a spiritual moment, we become aware of a kind of union or communion with something more than ourselves.