Amazon has no shortage of self-help books, the online shopping giant selflessly promotes books from authors such as the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Rhonda Byrne and others -- all of whom are well-known authors in the spiritual communities -- all three write about compassion, love, consciousness, and positive thinking.
When picking up book such as The Art of Happiness, Perfect Health, or The Secret, we are immediately exposed to a new dictionary of words. Some may call them 'New Age', 'Occult', and other names, but most commonly they're known as spiritual terms.
Though, once learned, they represent less the spiritual, but more the common understanding.
Pick up any page on a book, magazine, or a blog post that writes about spiritual topics, and you will inevitably stumble upon one of the following spiritual terms. I'm going to depict some of the most common ones, to give you a broader understanding of each of the terms, and their meaning.
Awakening -- an awakening is usually described as an experience where the person suddenly realizes and/or becomes aware of a part of himself that previously wasn't there. This leads to an increased desire to understand yourself and the world more. Awakening to a higher state of consciousness is a popular term used in books that discuss meditation, yoga, and ancient spiritual practices.
Awareness -- a term that's used to define the state of awareness about particular things -- mental and spiritual -- in one's life. For example, the awareness of bad habits. The awareness of one's existence in the wide Universe.
Enlightenment -- for Buddhists, enlightenment means the completion of suffering, and the achievement of eternal tranquility. In other forms, enlightenment can mean a thorough understanding/knowledge of a particular topic, field of work, and have the required set of skills to better oneself, and those around you with this knowledge. Interestingly enough, you will find that some religions also call Enlightenment; the Awakening.
Divine -- a divine deity, divine powers, divine love, and divine understanding. Most commonly, these will be used to explain something within the context of pure love, pure understanding, and total purity over one's being. The Higher Power is also often associated with the Divine.
Soul -- the word Soul is often used to describe the essence of each individual human being. While a domesticated and conditioned society might believe that personality/character is the only way to define a person, Soul is ultimately what makes each of us unique human beings. It is believed that Souls evolve over the course of existence.
Healing -- the word healing can be found quite often in spiritual writing. It's a word that's used to associated many ranges of topics, and to define many areas of spiritual interest. There are practices such as Reiki Healing, a technique for doing energy healing from one human being to another, but there is also 'psychological healing', where we are in a state of healing trauma from the past. Healing means that we allow ourselves to give time for everything to fall back into place, with grace and humility.
Practice -- authors will often use the word 'practice' to explain or describe a particular spiritual practice that one can follow, or explore more. Common examples are, a meditation practice, a yoga practice, the practice of loving-kindness, and countless others.
Meditation -- an ancient practice of cultivating stillness in the mind, for the purpose of cultivating awareness, consciousness, and higher understanding about life. Meditation has proven to be one of the most successful techniques for relaxation, cultivating compassion, and observing oneself that has ever been available on the planet. Arianna Huffington is very open about meditation (especially Buddhist), and the effects it has on a person.
Shadow -- the shadow side of ourselves is the part of us that we have a difficult time accepting. It's the part of us that tends to be negative, angry, impulsive, confused, temperamental, and so on. Anyone with prior experience in a spiritual practice of any kind will know how quickly such 'shadow aspects' become observable in your own life experience, and with time you're able to completely get rid of them through the practice of self-investigation.
Self-development -- a lot of spiritual terms begin with the word "self", which basically means that you are coming back to refer to yourself, to your own life experience as an individual. Self-development is used when the author, or a situation, implies the requirement or necessity for self-development to be carried out. A meditation practice can be considered self-development because of the effect it has, or things like cultivating good habits can also be considered self-development, ultimately you're working on yourself to become better, and stronger, not caught up in low-vibration activities.
Chakras -- a term used to define the human energy centers. Very popular concept used in countries such as India -- a spiritually magical place on Earth. Each of the energy centers holds vital life force called "prana". Chakras can clog up and cause distress in parts of our emotional and spiritual, but also physical bodies, while certain practices can be practiced to help keep our chakras cleansed. Deepak Chopra is one of the many authors who openly discusses topics related to human energy, such as the energy centers.
Join me in addressing the most common spiritual terms, what ones did I miss? With so many New Age and New Thought books coming out, it can sometimes be tough to keep up with all the spiritual terms that authors are using.