What is Spiritual Dimension anyway?

 

Spirituality makes us think about ourselves, our lives and our understanding of others. It allows us to build our future and give a meaning to it.

 
 

Spiritual development helps young people to build a value system, which can be personal or shared with others within a structured religion. It encourages Guides and Scouts to seek their own path.

According to WOSM (“Guidelines on Spiritual and Religious development”),

we can identify some basic approaches to understanding spirituality;

 

 

 

  • Religion as spiritual
  • Spirituality as the development of the individual in a religious context
  • Spirituality as existential development
  • Spirituality as the search for meaning of things and experiences within oneself

 

According to WAGGS (“Discover spirituality - education material for girl guides and girl scouts”, 2000), the opportunity to explore the spiritual dimension within Guiding/Feminine Scouting may be a factor of unity, gathering people open to sharing, to discover and to learn various spiritual experiences, also ready to have the world becoming a more open and more tolerating place.

In Guiding/Feminine Scouting, spirituality allows every one:

  • To think on questions relating to the inside Me

  • To explore relationship with the Other

  • To explore relationship with the surrounding word

  • To explore relationship which what transcends us.

 

Spirituality can be experienced in many ways. Many Guiding and Scouting organisations worldwide have made the choice to live spirituality mostly through religious development.

Others have taken a different path and live their spirituality through activities designed to help us to think about our place in the world.

Unfortunately, too many associations do not fully experience the spiritual dimension.

Either they only partake in rituals without thinking about their meaning, or they do nothing at all.

 

We do not intend to force anyone to choose one way or another, but we want all associations, confessional or otherwise, to question their practices on spiritual development.