Spiritual Practice: The Shema

By on July 9, 2009 in Spirituality

 

If your spiritual path is that of Judaism, this seed prayer of the faith will ease your heart.  
 

When I need to rise above a situation, particularly one in which I feel separated from the people involved, I call on half my ancestry and use The Shema, one of the germinal prayers of Judaism from the Torah. Sometimes called the Shema Yisrael, it hails from Deuteronomy 6:4, and reads,  
 

Hear, O Israel:

The Lord Our God

is One Lord. 
 

This powerful line of scripture reminds me to hear which requires listening which in turn requires stillness and silence. I think of the word Israel as the three aspects of a human being:  
 

   Is = Body, Ra = Soul, El = Spirit.  
 

Our God and One Lord remind me that no matter the appearance, humanity is one and there is one Divine Spirit connecting us all. 
 

If I’m in public and can’t say the whole verse, sometimes I just whisper the word Shema.

 

 

For more spiritual nourishment, visit Dr. Susan Corso’s blog, Seeds for Sanctuary

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Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual author, speaker, and counselor. An omnifaith minister and the author of God’s Dictionary (Tarcher/Putnam 2002) and The Peace Diet, she has had a spiritual counseling practice for more than 25 years. She has been an intuitive since childhood. 
 
Susan’s blogosphere writing may be found at Seeds for Sanctuary, Ode Magazine and The Huffington Post, and Beliefnet. Her website is SusanCorso.com 
 
One of her favorite occupations is writing spiritual fiction. She is the author of The Healing Mysteries of Mex Stone under the pseudonym Shulamith Burton. The audiobook of the first in the series, Oklahoma! Hex, came out in September 2008.
 
Susan is the founder of Sanctuary and ten-year author/publisher of a free e-newsletter, Seeds. As a professor at the accredited College of Divine Metaphysics, she teaches and ordains ministers.
 
Susan has been published in magazines, online magazines and newsletters including Business Ethics, Beliefnet.com, Ode Magazine, Science of Mind, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, New York House, Q-Spirit, Self, and Winning Ways. She is the author of several tape series. Susan also writes for the theatre: The God Show, I Would Never, Fight or Flight, and PeaceWomen. 
 
For many years, Susan was an organizational consultant and motivational speaker guiding nuclear scientists as well as entrepreneurs into their life purposes. Some of her former clients include Westinghouse Hanford Company, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Gila River Casinos, and the American Nuclear Society, among many others.

Today she functions as Chief Spiritual Officer for corporations. She lives in one-sixth of a Victorian house outside of Boston, with her beloved spouse, director/actress/teacher Sheriden Thomas, and the spirit of her familiar cat, Charles of the Ritz. 
 
Her mission in life is peace. 

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