Spiritual Connection in Daily Life: Sixteen Little Questions That Can Make a Big Difference

Spiritual Connection in Daily Life: Sixteen Little Questions That Can Make a Big Difference

How often do you find moments of deep peace and satisfaction in your day-to-day life? How often does connection with other people, the divine, or nature make you feel more alive? How often are you touched by a sense of awe-inspiring beauty, compassionate love, or pure joy? For many of us, these kinds of experiences tend to be fleeting and all too rare. Fortunately, new research is suggesting that a regular practice of paying attention to experiences like these can help any of us find them more often and cultivate richer, deeper, and more satisfying lives.   In Spiritual Connection in Daily Life, Lynn Underwood introduces her Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES), which is comprised of sixteen simple, multiple-choice questions that invite us to become more attuned tothese extraordinary experiences in ordinary life. The DSES is the definitive set of questions for measuring the experience of spiritual connection and has been used in hundreds of studies, translated into over twenty languages, and used around the world by counselors, therapists, nurses, social workers, clergy from multiple faiths, and business leaders.   Spiritual Connection in Daily Life offers a step-by-step guide to using the DSES to improve our abilities to sense the “more than” in the midst of our days. Embraced by people from many different cultures, religious traditions, and professional backgrounds, the DSES doesn’t require any extraordinary experience like hearing divine voices or embarking upon a dramatic religious conversion. Nor does it belabor the exact definition of “spirituality .” Rather, it simply invites us to focus on aspects of our daily lives such as deep peace, sense of inner strength, longing, and compassionate love. The sixteen questions also provide a common, nonpolarizing language for communicating with others about the role of the “more than” in our lives.   Adherents of all faith traditions, as well as people with no religious leanings whatsoever, have experienced profound and lasting benefits from having these experiences, including improved health behaviors, better relationships, decreased stress and burnout, and improvements in daily mood. Now all of us can reap these same long-term benefits with just a little bit of self-reflection and Dr. Underwood’s expert guidance. Drawing on a lifetime of experience, reflection, and research, Lynn Underwood invites the reader to look at daily life with new eyes, to see signs and sources of spiritual growth that might otherwise be missed. She brings her heart to this book, along with her scientific rigor, personal vulnerability, and down-to-earth wisdom. If you want to deepen your sense of the spiritual in your life, and share such experiences with others, this is the book for you. — Parker J. Palmer , author of Healing the Heart of Democracy, A Hidden Wholeness, and Let Your Life Speak I think this fine book will be invaluable to an awful lot of people! Religious folks have been told what to see instead of how to see, which only calls forth a lot of inner resistance and nonseeing. There is nothing to resist here, but a lot to appreciate, enjoy, and see--for yourself. This is good! — Richard Rohr , OFM, Center for Action and Contemplation This is the best book available today for anyone of us who feel the need to transform our lives. Over many years, Lynn Underwood quietly developed what is now internationally renowned as the most thoughtful and valid measure of spirituality available today. The reader will find opportunity for deepened self-awareness and spiritual growth in responding to each question, and will find that this spiritual classic and powerful self-assessment tool opens up new horizons of serenity, hope, joy, and vision. Its scientific grounding is impeccable. — Stephen G. Post, Ph.D. , professor of preventive medicine, Stony Brook University Lynn Underwood’s Spiritual Connection in Daily Life is a welcome and valuable contribution for caregivers, professionals, patients, and ordinary people. She creates a pluralistic approach rich in stories and examples from around the world, yet grounded in research. The author encourages readers to explore their experiences of love and connections to people, the universe, and God (or the holy or divine) and to use her questions as a starting point for discussion and reflection rather than a conclusion . —Rabbi Robert Tabak , staff chaplain at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Spiritual Connection in Daily Life introduces a remarkable concept known as the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale, which consists of sixteen multiple-choice questions measuring among other things your daily life connections with others, divine providence, your inner spirit, and nature. This scale helps us find the “spiritual connection” in one’s daily life and one’s sense of compassion, love, joy, and inner peace. An excellent tool. — Dr. Alwi Shihab , Islamic scholar, trustee, University of Indonesia, Jakarta and H