Why universal wisdom?
Inner Invitations by Lucy Tierney is a universal wisdom guidebook for nurturing inner balance, healing and freedom. An adventure awaits, as you dare to go within and discover the unique-to-you invitations for growth that arise from your deepest Self.
What do I mean when I describe Inner Invitations as a guidebook that draws on universal wisdom?
Lucy Tierney | Author Inner Invitations
The best way to answer that is to tell you a story.
In 2010, I attended the Spiritual Directors International (SDI) annual conference in San Francisco. There were 700 spiritual directors present from many countries.
Each one had been drawn in their own way to the vocation that I had said yes to at age 61 after a 40-year career in education – to companion others on their inner journeys. This accompanying role is not an instructive one, but one of listening and walking with someone as they discern their own inner wisdom and ask, “where is the Sacred present in my life experience?”
In the final reflective moments of this conference, I was enveloped in a sense of expansive wonder. The richness of this gathering of 700 spiritual companions had prepared us to support the tidal wave of longing for spiritual support that was out there in the world, in our communities, neighbourhoods, workplaces, and homes.
An Early Morning Invitation
In my hotel room the next morning, I rose early for a time of inner listening between 3am and 4am, prior to leaving for the airport to catch my 6am flight home to Australia. In the floaty space after my quiet time (when I was still not yet fully awake), an invitation arose from deep within me:
“How about writing a spirituality system?”
This question arose out of a kind of waking-dream energy and held a sense of potency and purpose.
What I heard in the question was an invitation to uncouple the universal wisdom of inner journeying from the religious language and traditional frameworks I had inherited as a vowed religious sister.
This invitation resonated with decades of observation, as a spiritual companion, that spirituality is an intrinsic birthright of being human. This innate spirituality may be expressed in a plurality of faith or wisdom traditions, or none, often existing organically outside of formal structures.
Universal Pillars of Human Spirituality
These days, I don’t know the spiritual background of at least half of the people I companion, and I don’t need to.
The dynamics of spiritual growth are universal.
As I look back, I’m aware that this pre-dawn invitation in a San Francisco hotel didn’t arise in a vacuum. By 2010, I had been a full-time spiritual companion and supervisor for 12 years.
As my practice had expanded, I had named for myself, and witnessed many times over, three pillars of universal reality of how humans find the Sacred in life experience:
There is a common essence of spirituality that underpins all religious traditions.
Spirituality is available to everyone in ordinary, everyday life and living.
The universal reality of spirituality does not need religious language.
Therefore, when this inner question arose from my depths, I sensed I was being invited to suss out this commonality that is the basis of spirituality and express it in non-religious language.
I also knew there was a widespread longing out there for spirituality – not necessarily named as such – that was not being tapped into, and possibly couldn’t be tapped into through traditional religious structures, theologies, and language.
Spirituality as Self-Encounter
I was definitely not interested in more “talking about” spirituality. I am now convinced that the measure of our spirituality corresponds to the measure of our Self-encounter experiences.
My specific calling, as I understand it to be now, is to facilitate others being in touch with their own inner experience and the life-giving energy at work within them.
As a spiritual companion, inner wisdom consultant, and author, I hope to facilitate in others a deepening experiential relationship with their own personal spiritual reality. I want to make spiritual growth more accessible for the average person on the street.
In the years since hearing that invitation to ‘write a spirituality system’, I have been developing processes and practices that make the potency of inner journeying accessible to anyone interested in nurturing inner growth. The invitation has unfolded and evolved in my understanding, and my “yes” has remained constant.
My Commitment and My Hope.
I remain committed to uncoupling inner growth dynamics from the language of creeds and dogmas held within my own faith tradition. While this is so, I also hold in great respect the inner essence that vitalises this tradition as I move freely within and beyond it.
In this book, I seek to enable individuals to access universal wisdom by exercising innate human capacities for inner inquiry. When accessed, this wisdom enables anyone to enjoy the adventure of an inner journey that nurtures personal and spiritual growth.
This book is one fulfilment of the invitation I received in 2010. It makes plain the simple daily practices and processes I have been developing since my San Francisco experience and have been using to great effect with myself, with people I companion, and others I have been teaching in various ways ever since.
I hope that what you discover in these pages will lead you to your own inner core and provide you with simple strategies that enable you to experience the potency of pausing and listening within to inner invitations for growth that are uniquely your own.
Blessings,
Lucy Tierney, August 2023
Inner Invitations Available Now
Available as PDF Ebook below, or as Kindle and Paperback via Amazon.
$AUD25
Inner Invitations: a universal wisdom
e-book for nurturing inner balance, healing and freedom.
This e-book from Lucy Tierney offers potent and practical wisdom for growth. You’ll explore insights and practices to help you find your authentic path for personal development and spiritual unfolding. Learn to exercise your innate human capacities to balance your conscious and unconscious domains in the service of freedom and healing. An adventure awaits, as you dare to go within and discover the unique-to-you invitations for growth that arise from your deepest Self.