But, today, on earth, heavy drug usage is common, sadly seducing users into an attitude of apathy while hopelessly stagnating many - young and old - everywhere except in war torn countries. It seems that those who seek to experience a sense of freedom, expansiveness and a kind of other-worldliness turn to drugs for that experience, rather than untether themselves from all that weighs down their beautiful spirits, and explore the true path to that experience.
Sometimes when we talk about the spiritual life, we describe it in lofty terms of flight and light and expansiveness and joy, love and peace. When we hear a call to enter that realm - that inner realm - it can be almost frustrating if we don't understand how. It's one thing to hear the call but it's useless if we don't understand the practicality of how to do it.
Imagine your spirit is a feather - a beautiful white feather of a seagull. It floats up and drifts wherever the wind sends it, soaring up and away. In a way, the spirit is like that feather. It is very light and it's that lightness that is joyous. We are by nature joyous, loving, gentle, strong, peaceful and incredibly creative and wonderfully relational. Yet, our lives have burdened us so heavily, for so long that we don't even realize how to fly anymore.
So, who wouldn't want to be as free as a bird, soaring above all the heaviness of our world here? The single one thing that weighs our spirits down the most is criticism, condemnation and a sense of isolation and separateness from each other. Usually that pattern of criticism and judgment stems from childhood. We are taught to be self critical and we teach our children to be self critical, measuring ourselves against the peer group, the dominant culture or our traditional culture.
Our nagging worry that we're not good enough weighs us down tremendously. It becomes almost habitual and serves as an unconscious force that sabotages all our joy and peace.The negative opinions of the status quo police also weighs us down. This conspiracy to imprison all our souls to this "consensual matrix" is as old as the human race and is founded on fear. The source of that fear has many faces. Some might say the fear of God is a primary source. Yet, the truth is just the opposite. God has always - through prophets and wise people - called us to be free. God isn't fear. Fear isn't creative, nourishing, uplifting, expansive or life-giving. Fear is stiflying, reductionist, smothering, controlling and diminishing.
God is Love. God is who is calling us to lighten up, lose the fear and have the courage to be true to your own heart, let go of all that anchors you, holds you down, reduces your self esteem and clips your spiritual wings. You may want to do some personal inventory and release all the fear that's holding you down, tethering you to this dark age. We may even be afraid to let go of our fear. We may find it is so habitual and so deeply intrenched that letting it go is a major feat of mindfulness. You can pray for help and the effort will be won.
There's an ancient line that has been repeated on pyramid walls and ancient papyrus that says, "As above so below." That beautiful phrase can be interpreted many ways. But, it suggests that our outer lives are a reflection of what is going on inside our minds. If our lives are full of judgment and condemnation, poverty and pain, that is a fairly good reflection of what's going on in our minds. If your life is calm, free of drama, full of joy and love and peace, creative, your mind is also.
This may be why St. Francis of Assisi welcomed "Lady Poverty" because the simplicity of our singular love of God, each other and ourselves would result in a diminished need to consume quantities of goods. Maybe this is why the great mystics and saints fasted. In emptying themselves, their spirits gained altitude and soared into ecstatic states.
It is letting go of all our fears, all or anxieties, all our self doubt, our perfectionisms, our greed and jealousy, that allows us to slip out of the handcuffs of fear and soar. By letting go of all those negative attitudes that result in conflict, that threaten our free imagination and our sense of personal love of self and others, we can experience joyful surrender and awaken to the awareness that all we need is God and love of each other. True freedom is in that beautiful, bright new awareness that nothing can separate us from each other in love if we are free of all the stuff that had imprisoned our souls.
Maybe the best place to start is to look at what frightens us the most and listen to what's going on in our lives. What does it say about what's going on inside you? The outer world is only a mirror of our inner kingdom. We can't clean up the exterior without first cleaning us the interior.
For each of us, this may be the beginning of a journey that has no end. As we lighten our loads, we will always find more and more inside us that limits our creative freedom and our awesome abundant power to move mountains and cure lepers. It is a process of lifting the veils that obscure the light within. A true warrior of light will be willing to face his or her own inner fears and begin the journey of on-going spiritual evolution. It is the only way to real life and ecstatic joy.
No comments:
Post a Comment