Most highbrow spiritual language evaporates quickly when we are triggered and hurting. We are so scared that who we are is not okay and the world outside of us often seems to reinforce this negative belief. We can feel that hurt little child within cringing, eyes filled with tears and turning away in despair. What would you do if that was your own son or daughter…
Go get that child!
A great and powerful spiritual truth is that there are only two ways of doing anything: From our head or from our heart.
That’s it.
There is no third option.
We are either doing life from the vibration of truth and love or from our egoic mind. This is true about washing the dishes, making love, speaking to our children or filing our taxes. We either do it from our hearts or our heads. If we are not doing it from one we can be absolutely sure we are doing it from the other.
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There is a sharp double edged sword that is in the toolbox of every spiritual warrior: Self-responsibility. It is the sword in the stone that all of us must dare to grasp to realize our destiny.
You and only you can decide to change your life.
Such a statement can feel cold and unfriendly, as if we are being thrown out of a warm place into a dangerous world. But, it is actually the most hopeful message I can think of. Because it means that you already have all you need. You do not have to wait for the right stars to align, you do not have to wait for the right lover, or your parents to be change, or your bank account to grow. There is nothing external to you that must be different so that you can realize your own true nature. Nothing. This moment is sufficient. Nothing whatsoever in the outside world needs to be different.
This naked truth is exhilarating and frightening all at once. There is nowhere to hid from it.
Headed for home…
In each of my mentoring and healing relationships, I always begin by discovering what it is my client truly wants in their experience of being alive. This is always the engine for transformation. Without the faculty of the will no one would ever grow spiritually. The will has too often been identified with the ego, the false self, that trades in fear and insecurity. But this is not so. The will is the faculty of our own sovereignty and when exercised in service of our freedom it transcends the ego altogether.
The path of becoming human is very much like sailing a boat. In order to get anywhere you have to have a clear sense of where you are headed. The winds will blow from many directions and only the one who knows where s/he is going will be able to make use of this energy. You have to deeply desire to know the truth of who you are and what life is. You have to long to learn how to give and receive love. Yes, the winds of life outside of you will blow – sometimes with you, sometimes against you, but the skillful sailor uses each gust to move in the direction of home.
Be curious…
There are many well-known virtues or ‘good qualities’ that are to be cultivated in our path of becoming more fully human and finding fulfillment in our relationships – humility, generosity, gratitude, love etc. – but rarely does Curiosity get its due. For my money, it is right up there with the big guys, especially when it comes to relationships. It is the ingredient that is often most lacking and most called for in many of the couples I work with.
Picture this: Your partner does something, says something, doesn’t do something or doesn’t say something…and you feel upset. This can range all the way from showing up late for dinner to lying. As the belief that we are unsafe and unloved begins to fire in our nervous system, we contract and prepare to fight or run away depending on our default style of conflict.
Curiosity is one of the first things to go out the window as our nervous system heads into trigger mode. But it is also a very effective way to get out of the pattern of blame, which is always disempowered and never gets the results we want it to. Blame creates misery while curiosity opens the door to restoring intimacy.
The spiritual path is about falling in love.
We all know the lengths we go for love. In my own life alone I can think of many instances – driving 1000 miles to surprise my beloved on a special day…stay up all night tending to a sick child…investing hours and hours in the perfect hand-made gift. Were these practices? Yes. Disciplines? Yes. But more than that they were devotions.
In my mentoring work, I teach often about the importance of showing up for our True Self as we know we can show up for an external beloved. Everything shifts when we choose to be present to our own sacred Heart, that pearl beyond price It is the same kind of devotional energy as falling in love. We yearn to know the Beloved, we long to be in communion with the Beloved, we want all separation to cease. This erotic energy is the pith of our spiritual path.
Not too long ago I sat down with Gay Luce, the founder of Nine Gates Mystery School and a wonderfully awake human being, who is now in her 80’s. We spoke of many things and eventually I asked if, given her many years of teaching and practice, she had found one teaching or principle about the spiritual path that seems the most useful and important to impart.
“Relax.”
The simplicity echoed in me with the unmistakable ring of deep truth and I was surprised that I found myself deeply moved. Relax. Could it really be that simple? What about all my striving? What about the discipline and the manifestation and the devotion? I looked at her face, serene and calm and gentle, and her eyes holding mine and I realized again that the true awakening is with the world as it is and myself just as I am.
Today is the day…
The master asked his student how the teachings were working in him.
“Very well,” the student replied. “It is a slow process of course, I am busy with many things and the teachings are challenging, but I feel I am making good progress.”
“You know what the trouble is?” the master said with a smile. “You think you have time.”
The illusion that we can put off our devotion to finding the Truth to some moment in the future is the biggest obstacle for spiritual awakening. It is a trick of the egoic mind, the hiss of the serpent that would keep us bound. The love of Truth cannot wait to be kindled at some more opportune moment because the belief in time is itself not true.
Does your spiritual life inform your relationships?
Does your spiritual life connect you to your body?
Does your spiritual life help you show up fully to the wonder and grief of life?
We have come to a time in our culture where those who are called to wake up are not in monasteries they are in minivans. As the institutions in which we placed our faith and delegated the responsibility of spirituality crumble we look around and see that it is us who have been handed the torch.
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