At it's core, World Spirituality rises out of the deep and profound Oneness and non-dual direct experience of our True Nature. Simultaneously arising is a direct experience of our very own expression of Divinity as a Unique Self. Together both are experienced as our True Self. This simultaneous caress of an apparent paradox is rooted in the emerging awareness of our shared essence.

World Spirituality is an emerging 21st-century answer to where our species is evolving on the spiritual plane. Many of us are co-creating this vision that both includes and transcends traditional spirituality and religion.

For starters, we are being invited to embrace the essential teachings of Perennial Wisdom (what they were pointing to) while understanding these teaching didn't go far enough to solve the challenges of our world. We still experience war, dehumanizing actions, poverty, or various forms of intellectual, physical, spiritual, or emotional abuse and inequality. Many of these shadow-elements arise from religious righteousness rooted in a partial acceptance of perennial wisdom teachings, often choosing which aspects of Perennial Wisdom they feel should be embraced to the exclusion or marginalization of others. Cultural traditions and the shadow-needs of their leaders play a large role in these choices.

Next, World Spirituality embraces the great value that arises from the more recent Inter-Faith Movement where various religious traditions learned to support and perhaps even see the value in different spiritual approaches. This still has not been enough to unify humanity under a common umbrella anyone can understand, support, and share; - ending the Shadow elements described above. There is still something missing in this approach that is longing to emerge. What if there was an earnest and sincere effort to engage in much more in-depth sharing and exploration of each other's beliefs and values, along with a proactive search for common, underlying beliefs?

Surrender to something greater has its roots in Perennial Wisdom. This means letting go of attachments that don't serve the greater good. Inter-Faith dialogue and meaningful interaction moves us in the direction of letting go of beliefs that don't serve the greater good -- the good of the entire world.

The primal evolutionary impulse behind World Spirituality is embracing the essence of what it means to "Be" spiritual. This means to embrace both sides of the same coin; the transcendent and the imminent or manifest domains. World Spirituality embraces the traditional enlightenment focus on transcendence; moving beyond our separate ego-self into unity consciousness and non-dual reality. However, it goes further to embrace fully the embodied soul as a Unique Self expression that is equally important and necessary for our species to evolve and our world's challenges faced in a 21st-century enlightened way.

This fresh approach invites us to focus on the common denominators from which all healthy aspects of religious and spiritual traditions have sought to teach. The term "essence" is often used to describe this common denominator.

Another way of saying this is that World Spirituality attempts to bring into greater consciousness what is behind the manifestation into form . It asks the question: "What is the primal impulse that compelled spiritual traditions to transmit often-competing teachings, words, ritual, and dogma?" This naturally invites us to look at the essence of the teachings, and not get stuck on the form. Thus arose Soulwork's focus on activating our essential soul qualities while embracing the universal impetus behind all evolutionary spiritual traditions; the essential part of our True Nature to evolve and wake up.

There are wide and deep examples of spiritual teachings, rituals, and techniques that can help us identify and move deeper into the essence of what it means to be both human and divine.

Examples of ways our True Nature manifests through essential soul qualities are found elsewhere on this website.