As I look back on my life I recognize that this so-called spiritual path started at the difficult turning point of my adolescent life. I was 16, was aware of all the pain around me and yet I had managed to be the ’cause of pain’. I was guilty and felt it and wanted forgiveness. So, as one would in total despair, I asked God for his forgiveness, only to realise I hadn’t a clue who I was talking to. I asked him/her to show me and if s/he exists to introduce him/herself to me. 25 years has passed since our initial fascinating introduction and I am questioning just how far did I have to travel to get back here, sitting comfortably in my skin.
I am beginning to see that the love affair with the source of life, the yearning for that love inside and the recognition of this miracle of life – which is at the root of all spiritual schools – is what some of us need as a foundation for self love, as a starting point to enable us to be comfortable with who we are. Of course the source and that self love are one in the same.
With every step on this path, we become more familiar to what others have said and with their terminologies. We learn the complicated definitions and the intellectual concepts about ego, consciousness, awareness, oneness…all these beautiful, meaningful and yet sometimes confusing words which make some people feel ‘they don’t get this spiritual stuff’. All these steps have been necessary for me – personally, but I am seeing more clearly how ‘spirituality’ is not about ‘understanding’ and ‘believing’ concepts. I would not go as far as calling myself spiritual when I feel I have to ‘stop feeling’ good when someone praises me in the fear to feed the monster of the ego. I couldn’t say I am closer to the source when I feel I have to ‘stop feeling’ sad for being rejected, blaming the ego for its persistence. In fact, I would say that any system that wants me to put a stop in the reality of my experience of life couldn’t possibly help me blossom in the being that I am. Whether it is to ‘stop feeling’ good or to ‘stop feeling’ bad, both of these are traps, the having to ‘stop’ what life is creating in my being is me fighting life at its core. This stopping is different from stopping ourselves telling our life stories, that is something we can learn to do, it’s a skill. But wanting to stop to feel ‘anything’ is what can cut us away from life. Forcing detachment is like wanting to create a mental disease on purpose. If you go to any mental asylums (I have been there to visit friends/family), all you see are detached people completely estranged from life. True detachment is natural, automatic and it cannot be done. It doesn’t cut one from life, on the contrary it allows one to be truly involved. It happens when the time is right, when the mind has opened to include, to allow all.
When I pay attention, I hear us speak, saying one thing, in two conversations running in parallel. We say one thing and then judge ourselves as egotistic for saying that. It makes me laugh to see how in the quest to find happiness, we have devoured ourselves from simple straight living.
What spirituality aims to achieve is ‘you’ comfortable and totally at ease with the way you are now, in all aspects of your life. It’s simple to live, but we are very scared to live the life we want. What if I’ll be alone? What if all my friends and family think this or that of me and judge me? What if I do something and then regret it? As if these things: regrets, judgements, disappointments, loneliness haven’t already entered our life! As if, we don’t already know how to deal with them. We live life disappointed while we fear disappointment, lonely because we fear loneliness, scared because we’re afraid of fear. What we are scared of the most, we are already living. Why not live it with authenticity, with ‘true speech’ and ‘true actions’. What is the point in believing we’re miracles, children of the universe, connected to all if we can’t move through life naturally, with ease, according to our truth.
If we can allow this being to naturally act in the world, there won’t be much need for any spiritual books. Although I’d still want to read them all just to see in how many more billion ways can this most simple truth be told: You’re OK just as you are. The underlying hurt in my being comes up when I believe ‘I’m not OK as I am’. Friends, family and everyone we meet who presses our button – and omg, just how many of these buttons can there be??? – they’re reminding us that the beauty of this magnificent show of life includes us and thankfully there is no way out. Can we love ourselves in the midst of recognising our buttons have been pressed? Can we love ‘this’ manifestation of life too? All spiritual schools aim to have you make peace with you; once you’re in peace with you, you’re in peace with the world. Once you know you’re OK to be you, you know they’re OK to be them too and the play continues each doing what we know best.
Oct 2011