<p> It is well documented that the heart has a particular way of thinking; an intelligence critical to human evolution and, in particular, to a revolution in human consciousness. However, the truth remains: despite humanity&rsquo;s deepening intuition and recent evidence regarding the heart&rsquo;s wisdom, most people in Western cotemporary culture have not been taught how to listen and speak from the heart, let alone how to follow their hearts (Childre, Martin, &amp; Beech, 2000). The Way of Council (Zimmerman &amp; Coyle, 2009) is a process that teaches us how to listen and speak from the heart. The current study investigated this process as well as the lived experiences of people who self-identified as carriers of Council. The study&rsquo;s aim was to portray the carriers&rsquo; reality as anchored by the intention of carrying Council as a spiritual path.</p><p> The narrative participatory approach designed for this study drew upon organic inquiry characteristics to translate the textures of Council Carriers&rsquo; lived experiences into a clear understanding of carriers&rsquo; reality. Between November and December 2014, 12 participants (including the researcher) engaged in a number of activities, such as one-on-one interviews, sharing a space in an online platform for a 3-week period, and participating in 2 online Councils. These Councils served to collect much of the data through the heart-felt sacred storytelling this process promotes. Council&rsquo;s intuitive way of responding to stories was core to the three-dimensional process of analysis that led to the study&rsquo;s findings.</p><p> These findings suggested that The Way of Council reminds people how to relate to others in a heart-centered way and, therefore, to learn to be human beings. This way of relating is facilitated by Council&rsquo;s invitation to tell stories and to follow the heart&rsquo;s soullike, all-accepting energy. While not generalizable, these findings contribute new insights regarding a Council Consciousness and how Council provides people today with a level of experience that bridges the gap between native and contemporary paradigms. These findings also encourage the implementation of Council conversations at all societal levels in order to transform humanity&rsquo;s ways of thinking and relating.</p><p>

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease and nonadherence to medication can lead to new cases, multi-drug resistant TB, or potential death. Additionally, healthcare professionals and individuals with TB’s knowledge of the disease and medication adherence are crucial for successful completion of medication therapy. Patient education is one of the most important aspects of care provided in healthcare settings (CDC, 1994). TB tends to disproportionally affect minority and economically disadvantaged patient populations. The purpose of this mixed method study was to explore the relationship between spirituality, knowledge, and TB medication adherence among African Americans and Haitians. The primary research question was: What is the relationship between spirituality, knowledge and TB medication adherence among African Americans and Haitians? Quantitative data were gathered from 33 questionnaires and analyzed by two ANOVAs and four chi square analyses. The null hypothesis was not rejected; there was not a statistically significant relationship between spirituality and TB medication adherence (p =.208) among the study’s African Americans and Haitians. Qualitative data concerning participants’ knowledge of TB, gathered from 16 individual interviews further informed this analysis. Secondary research questions examined the role of spirituality, knowledge of TB and medication adherence among African Americans and Haitians. Four common themes emerged across both groups to answer the secondary research questions. Interviews revealed the themes: (a) God is in control, (b) stigmatization of TB, (c) lack of knowledge, and (d) fear of death. The theme lack of knowledge about TB was found to contribute to stigmatization of TB patients. However, in this study stigma and lack of knowledge were related to initial denial of symptoms and delayed diagnosis, but not found to be related to TB medication adherence. This study could help adult educators and health educators enhance their educational interventions, develop a better understanding of adult learning, resulting in early diagnosis and treatment ultimately decreasing transmission of TB, drug resistance, and potential death. Educators should be aware that TB patients’ spirituality may be an important part of how they cope with having TB. A larger scale study, conducted at multiple locations should be conducted to extend the findings of this small scale exploratory study. Further studies should be done to better determine what patient, healthcare provider and health care system factors might mediate relationships that may exist between lack of knowledge of TB, stigma and TB medication adherence.

In recent years nursing literature has featured a proliferation of discourse pertaining to many aspects of spirituality in nursing. However, there has been a dearth of research related to nurses' personal spirituality and whether or not it helps to shape their nursing practice. This qualitative study explored how spirituality shapes the practice of community health nurses who work in First Nations communities in British Columbia (B.C.). The twelve participants, purposefully sampled, all had at least 2 years experience working in community health in First Nations communities. Using an interpretive descriptive research design, participants were interviewed to explore their lived experiences of spirituality relative to their nursing practice. The analysis of the interview data identified that nurses' spirituality is essential to their practice in terms of "providing care spiritually" versus "providing spiritual care" interventions to their patients as typically depicted in the nursing literature. Moreover, their spirituality is discussed as a pervasive nursing ethic and motivation for patient care that manifests as respect, connectedness, love, acceptance, caring, hope, endurance and compassion towards patients. Furthermore, the findings of this study suggest the integration of community health nurses' spirituality into their nursing practice may contribute to the wider aim of health and healing within First Nations communities. Four major themes are presented as research findings: (a) spirituality influences nurses' ability to remain self aware, open-minded and accepting in relation to others; (b) spirituality as a reflexive approach to grounding one's own nursing practice; (c) spiritual awareness fosters appreciation of the need for community healing, and finally (d) self-reflection and providing care spiritually as a route to reciprocal interaction. Also, it was identified that nurses' spirituality nurtures their reflexivity and helps them to: (a) foster culturally safe relationships with patients, (b) realize how colonial issues influence health status in First Nations patients, (c) recognize that cumulative work stress and burn out can be reduced and prevented through relational spiritual practices, and (d) work through their own values, beliefs and prejudices in order to practice nursing based on a model of reciprocal interaction, and culturally safe approaches. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

M. Phil. (Personal, Interpersonal and Professional Leadership) / Orientation: Personal experience of the phenomenon of transcendence and a preliminary literature review indicates that the phenomenon of transcendence can be better integrated within the Personal, Interpersonal and Professional Leadership (PPL) framework as well as within other leadership theories. Research purpose: The aim of the study is to conceptualise transcendence within PPL and leadership in general using auto-ethnography research methodology. Motivation for the study: Current leadership literature within PPL does not include the integration of the phenomenon of transcendence as a model towards spirituality and leadership. This gap can contextualise spirituality and leadership through transcendence. Research design: The research approach within this study was based a postmodernist qualitative philosophy. Auto-ethnography was used as methodology and also included a life history of another person to verify the auto-ethnographic data. Main findings: The study yielded an auto-ethnographic story with a rich and varied description of how a person can experience transcendence within the personal leadership field. The analysis of the collected data has revealed themes that can possibly contribute towards spirituality and leadership. Practical implications: The findings of this study might bring insight into the human ability of transcendence despite difficulty or suffering, and that can contribute to spirituality and leadership. Anticipated contribution: The study provides some understanding of how a person can still develop into a leader despite difficulties or hardship. This understanding can contribute to leadership development interventions, which can also be explored further in future.

This mixed-methods study’s purpose was a systematic comparison of contents and aftereffects of near-death experiences (NDEs) occurring in a variety of circumstances with those occurring in combat. They completed an online survey: a demographic questionnaire, the Near-Death Experience Scale, the Life Changes Inventory-Revised (LCI-R), and four narrative response items. Survey completers were 68 participants: 20 combat near-death experiencers (cNDErs) and 48 non-NDErs (nNDErs). The 29% of participants who met NDE Scale criterion for an NDE was comparable to NDE incidence findings from previous retrospective studies. For statistical analyses, significance was set at p < .05, and effect size (Cohen’s d) was calculated. Mean total NDE Scale scores were significantly lower for cNDErs than variety-of-circumstance NDErs from one of two comparable studies (t = 5.083, p < .0001, d = -1.26), possibly suggesting cNDEs may have “less depth” than other-variety NDEs. Regarding cNDE aftereffects, absence of previous LCI-R data made comparison impossible. Cronbach’s alpha analysis yielded acceptable reliability on the total scale and seven of nine subscales, a finding that matched Schneeberger’s (2010); however, factor analytic results did not support the hypothesized subscale structure of the LCI-R. Although cNDErs did not score significantly higher than nNDErs on the total scale or subscales after Bonferroni correction, results indicated a possible trend toward greater absolute changes (p = 0.02, d = 0.74) and spirituality (p = 0.02, d = 0.67) with the latter finding substantiated by narrative responses. Informal analysis of narrative responses yielded several themes.

Suicide is a national public health concern, and college students may be at increased risk. Symptoms of psychopathology (i.e., stress, anxiety, and depression) may contribute to risk, whereas religiosity (i.e., religious attendance, surrendering to God, and feeling forgiven by God) may reduce risk. Students from a rural southeastern university (N=249) completed self-report measures. Serial mediation analyses indicate that attendance and surrender to God are inversely- predictive of suicide risk, both directly and through the indirect pathways of feeling forgiven by God (1st order mediator) and psychopathology (2nd order mediators). In all models, specific indirect effects occurred through feeling forgiven by God, suggesting the importance of relational aspects of religiosity. Our novel findings highlight mechanisms of action linking religiosity to suicide risk, and may provide direction for therapeutic intervention (e.g., psycho- education regarding religious involvement, fostering feelings of forgiveness) to reduce psychopathology and suicidality in the collegiate population.

There is no consensus in the research on how those in a mental health profession should view pornography use. Hence, clinicians have taken various approaches to working with clients presenting with problematic pornography use. For such clients, Brigham Young University has created the Sexual Concerns Groups. Seventeen current, previous, and future group members, along with four group leaders, participated in focus groups for this study. We used collaborative hermeneutic interpretation to understand the experience of participants in these groups, and we identified five main themes: Shift in the Therapeutic Focus, Confronting Sexual Avoidance, Spirituality, Interpersonal Relationships, and Self-Perception. We discuss implications for these groups and future research.

In this paper I explore what Catholic feminist Ignatian spirituality can contribute to the conversation between faith and culture, conversation that is too often muddied by vague and superficial argument and by an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ attitude driven by extremes to which the majority do not belong. The secular and the religious spring from a common past, though they exist now within the nova effect of spiritualities available today in our modern Western or North Atlantic, “secular 3” world. The 500-year-old Ignatian Exercises can be a coherent voice speaking in the cacophony of the contemporary context especially when a feminist lens is used to expand them in a more comprehensive way by applying classic feminist thought on anthropology, names of God, embodiment, and the ontological centrality of relationship to human existence. This application of a feminist hermeneutic helps us explore human reality more fully – a reality that is “irreducibly plural and not merely hierarchically dualistic.” This, in turn, helps us communicate the Exercises and a truer, deeper Christianity, than contemporary conversation typically allows. I map out the basic structure and purpose of the Exercises and offer examples of a feminist retrieval of a variety of meditations and contemplations from the “weeks” of the Exercises to illustrate how this retrieval does not negate traditional interpretation of scripture but expands it for the benefit of all – Christian and non-Christian alike. The Ignatian Exercises address questions we all ask – they help one to “play the game of the truth of existence” and to reach both inward and then outward toward neighbor and world. The bridge I am attempting to build between faith and culture is made up of the Exercises as a grounded answer to the yearning in this unbelieving world that is, nevertheless, still haunted by belief. The feminist lens is the car that drives us over that bridge.

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My diploma work is an installation, made from multiple instances of a device iniciating string resonance via electromagnetic field. These devices along with strings are placed on the wall in geometrical shape. Installation creates loop on multiple levels. Except the fact that installation have a circular shape, position of each string starts at the end of another string. Second, more inconspicious loops takes place in the electromagnetic device resonating the strings, that do that with feedback loop. Strings consist every step of chromatic scale, that repeats itself, just an octave higher. Amplification of the final sound of strings is done purely acoustically, with help of the wall on wich the piece is installed. This piece is in its nature concerned with spirituality in music, not necessarily in sense of evoking a spiritual experience, but rather demonstrating metaphors and parallels, that exists between physical aspects of tonal music and different religious ideas. The symmetrical shape of installation refer to religious and occult visuality, built f.e. in cabal on Fibonacci numbers, that is present not only in nature ( for example, the veins of the leaves grow by these numbers), but also in tonal music system (ancient philosophers were working with this concept, see Plato's Music of the Spheres). Strings in this piece produce drone sound, that is naturally evoking spirituality (most visible in buddhist monk meditation). This sound in the piece demonstrates immutability and constancy, the fact that all the chromatic tones are playing demonstrates wholeness (this fact may produce interesting resonances emerging between chromatic steps), so to speak, the unchangeable laws of physics, or to put it in religious lingo, the god law. The symbol of loop also refers to religion, like the eternal return of the same, the periodicity of history. Strings can be viewed as astrophysical symbol. Everything stated is nothing but my recourse, that should not ultimately determine the perception of the piece by viewer. The goal of the work is to offer experience without need to be put into context