Spiritual Training Curriculum
Awakening to Unity
The Interfaith Seminary honours both the head and the heart as holy ground. We offer a balance between process and study, emphasising the importance of experiential as well as intellectual learning. The underlying purpose of the curriculum is to facilitate each participant's awakening to Unity - within Ourselves, with all of Humanity and all of Life. The Seminary aims to support each student in their own awakening process, so that in time they may support others to do the same. This process of inquiry takes place on many levels, including:
- each individual's psycho-spiritual journey within
- the one-to-one relating between students, mentors and faculty
- within local study groups of 5 - 6 students
- within the whole class group
- in our relationship to all that is beyond the Seminary.
Four interweaving strands
1. Personal awakening. We believe that a minister's effectiveness rests upon his or her own clarity, integration and intention. As students move into a more direct personal experience of the Source of All, their capacity for love, compassion and kindness grows. They are then better able to leave personal prejudices and past negative patterns behind, and to bring their essential Self and natural talents fully into being as the platform for their ministry.
2. Opening to other traditions. This is a dynamic, lived inquiry into the world's major faith traditions, which seeks to challenge radically our received judgments and to widen our capacity for heartfelt inclusion. While gaining respect, insight and appreciation for traditions different from their own, students often develop a deeper appreciation of their own tradition, and heal any wounds in their relationship with that too.
3. Spiritual counselling. An important training strand, this involves developing basic skills and confidence in a simple but powerful form of spiritual counselling. This enables ministers to support individuals seeking their help at a time of difficulty, and to be able to recognise when someone needs to be referred on for more specialist help.
4. Leading ceremonies. Participants practise leading universal worship services, and giving inspirational talks. The training also equips them to conduct weddings, funerals, blessings and other life-transition ceremonies. We do not teach standard 'scripts', but develop the ability of participants to create tailor-made services that reflect the unique needs and wishes of those they provide the ceremonies for - and with.
How the training unfolds
In the first year we work primarily with strands 1 and 2: the process of personal awakening, and the inquiry into faith traditions. Alongside this, our spiritual counselling approach is introduced, as is some exploration of ceremony. This first year is in itself a complete training course that stands on its own merit, making the movement into the second year a choice rather than an assumption.
In the second year the transition to a life of service becomes more explicit, with a deeper focus on strands 3 and 4: learning the art of spiritual counselling, and the capacity to design and hold ceremonies. In parallel, we keep our attention on how this relates to systems of thought and faith that are inclusive, holistic and universal. We develop these skills partly by revisiting our own life's journey with fresh awareness, looking closely into the transitions of birth, childhood and adolescence, partnership and marriage, death and loss, and healing. In healing our understanding of our own lives we develop the capacity to be present to others in ways that are inspired by grace, compassion, humour and trust.
Whether or not graduates use the skills of spiritual counselling and creating ceremonies explicitly as ministers after ordination, these powerful tools provide an inner matrix and channel for disciplined development of the capacity to listen deeply for the voice of the Sacred - and to choose to create consciously, in whatever field of life this is expressed.
The second year experience is further deepened with an invitation to offer service by undertaking a short work placement or creative project, and with the creation of an integrated summation of the work of the two years in the form of a minister's manual.
We intend that the curriculum should provide a framework that is clear in its delivery, free in its creativity, and accountable to the needs of the world, in order to meet each student's unique journey. That we also take this path within a passionate constellation of fellow travellers is part of an underlying commitment to co-creation and the rise of group consciousness.
