What does Spirituality or Wairua mean to you?
Spirituality or Wairua has different meanings, it may be religion, a connection with whenua, tupuna, Atua, the environment and so forth. Whatever Spirituality or Wairua means to you, I am confident that it is a place of faith, hope, comfort, strength, love and peace for you.
Spiritual wellbeing means everything to me. I was born into a Christian home, with my mother also being born into the same church and my father being a convert. Therefore, I come from a Christian perspective and would like to acknowledge that there are different ways to interpret Spirituality or Wairua outside of religion.
Personal experience
One day as a missionary in the Philippines I was still learning Tagalog and training a new missionary. We headed out for our day filled with plans and appointments, however, none of them went as planned. After spending many hours out in the hot sun and the evening we returned home. As I reflected and pondered on that day faced with many rejections, I strongly felt the Spirit which reminded me about a personal favourite passage in our missionary guide: ‘You can feel certain that the Lord is pleased when you feel the Spirit working through you.’ God knew the effort that we put in and was pleased with our efforts. I will always be grateful for this experience which taught me important life lessons. One of them being, do not get too caught up with measuring your success based on outcomes and remember the process.
How can we relate this experience to us?
As students we aim for good grades (outcomes), but we must remember the process and our grades are only a portion of what we go through. Even though our grades are important they do not always accurately reflect our time, effort, sacrifices and they do not define us.
As Indigenous and Polynesian people Spirituality or Wairua is integral to who we are. We may have felt the presence of a whanau member who passed on, a near-death experience and so forth. Western psychology is starting to acknowledge more the importance of spiritual wellbeing for our psychological wellbeing. Indigenous psychology has always valued Spirituality or Wairua, it is something that our ancestors before us valued, that we continue to value and that we value to share with our future generations.
Isi Cash
Postgraduate BA Honours Psychology Student
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