“Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” A plaque over Jung’s doorway
“…holiness, God, or Nirvana are not found apart from experience…what we seek is what we are.” Jack Kornfield
Life and the spiritual journey, that’s how we usually express it. We often talk about our spiritual journey as something different or separate from our everyday life. We separate soul and science, and regularly use words of duality and separateness: good/bad; right/wrong; male/female; perfect/imperfect; heaven/earth and now, spiritual life versus everyday life. As Ken Wilbur states in his book, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, “…the modern West, after the Enlightenment, became the first major civilization in the history of humanity to deny almost entirely the existence of the Great Nest of Being. In its place was a ‘flatland’ conception of the universe as composed basically of matter (or matter/energy), and this material universe, including bodies and material brains, could best be studied by science, and science alone. Thus, in the place of the Great Chain reaching from matter to God, there was now matter, period. So it came to pass that the world view known as scientific materialism became, in whole or part, the dominant official philosophy of the modern West.” Deepak Chopra, Caroline Myss, Matthew Fox, Joan Borysenko, Ken Wilber, Rupert Sheldrake, and countless others write about the necessity of reconnecting science and spirit. We have read about this concept in the last 5-10 years and it’s become familiar. What hasn’t become familiar, and what we don’t realize, is that we are still echoing the concept of separation with our very words and statements.
LIFE IS THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY! Learning through relationships that what we judge in others, we harbor within ourselves, and learning what truly gives us joy is the spiritual journey. Learning to forgive, love and accept ourselves by releasing resistance and acknowledging our interdependence with nature—this is spiritual. Allowing time for contemplation, learning to give and receive love, and to balance the seemingly disparate aspects of our lives, this is a holy life. It is fraught with meaning! You don’t try to be spiritual; you are spiritual. The journey is simply becoming conscious of this fact: saying “Yes!” to Life (Being) which changes our perceptions.
We give time to that which we value, so when we speak words of separation by lamenting we don’t have enough time for our “spiritual” life, what we are really saying is: I am afraid to take time for my Self, to reflect and become conscious (and so devalue it). We abdicate our responsibility: it’s the fault of too little time and those who demand our time. We deny our power of choice. Life (i.e, Being) is one, infinite, vibrant, steady stream of learning, and we are responsible for our thoughts, words and actions. This is scary to most of us. Yet abdication of this responsibility to the Self always creates struggle. We come into harmony with Self, with Life, when we release our resistance and embrace ourselves in love, thereby finding compassion and experiencing the joy of living in the now moment.
Nuns, monks, priests, rabbis, holy-men and women, gurus—in our respect for this way of life we make the mistake of holding it up as a more spiritual life than our own. This is not so. Fortunately, the gifted of these people provide us with information, guide us and teach us, based on their extensive study of spiritual literature. But only a small percentage may be able to provide us a glimpse into evolved consciousness based on their own experience. Which is to say, a life of celibacy, regimented ritual or being set apart is one way to learn about the spiritual, but is not the way and does not ensure an evolved consciousness that bespeaks the fullness of Life.
My dear friends, your own life is a meaningful, purposeful spiritual journey (and so is your neighbor’s). Your life is the Way.
Mother Theresa won the Nobel Peace Prize because she established help for the poor, sick, and dying, letting them know they were loved and embraced by God. She bespoke compassion and lived her life as a prayer challenging us with reminders of simplicity and purposefulness; we applaud this. It’s also true that everyday in the world unsung people of passion, dedication and love are doing works of equal importance. Perhaps we singled out Mother Theresa as a role model for her selfless work partly because she belonged to a celibate spiritual order, renounced material possessions, and had no psychic associations. If so, it is important to note that these are not prerequisites to knowing God or having compassion. What is necessary is to recognize that the pursuit of material possessions, sex, psychic phenomena and the like as an end in themselves can lead us astray, but they pose no harm in and of themselves. (“Ego as an instrument of spirit rather than spirit as a power of ego,” notes Michael Washburn.) What we are called to is balance, an integration of the dual poles of our psyche and simplifying the clutter in our lives; doing this through austerity is a choice, not a requirement. Your life is meaningful, infused with Spirit waiting to be acknowledged.
Overcoming our identity with dualism and separateness cannot be overstated. As we grow into the knowledge and experience that we are all connected and interact as one, we move out of resistance and into the fullness of Life. Because we have long separated biological life and life of the spirit, we may seek out workshops, literature, religion, and teachers to assist us in bridging the gap. I’m not suggesting otherwise. What I am suggesting is that we not make the mistake of seeing these endeavors as apart from what we learn in the vibrancy of our everyday lives. And further, that we realize that “bridging the gap” is all teaching does because ultimately the worth of any spiritual path or teacher is in their ability to lead us to our Self (inner Christ, Buddha, Goddess, Shakti, Light, etc.), our true teacher and guide. Our creative insights, and information that we discover, must be woven into the fabric of our everyday life, felt in every cell of our body, and grounded in the mundane. In this way our path is personalized, honoring our individual psyche and its heritage. The foundation is laid to awaken to the fullness of Life, to find that “God sings within me and the song that she sings is me.”
© 2001 * Barbara Atkinson
