There are many troubles involved with whatever you want to call "spiritual development" which I will briefly describe as follows: to become more authentically who we are beyond culture, habit, conditioning and so on. Spirituality fully pursued demands shattering our illusions and our stories (about ourselves and life in general)--not by rejecting them but seeing them as not who we are. My biography or resume is not who I am and does not capture my being or my consciousness. We mainly live fragmented lives and create a fragmented self that reacts to conditions--and certainly that self, known as the ego, is necessary for our survival and orienting ourselves over time and space in this world but it is not who we are. Through socialization we "forget" that this is a veneer and does not reflect the deeper self which, since our culture (for a variety of reasons) is deeply hostile to. We tend to not be aware of our deeper self and we also tend to reject, usually unconsciously depth itself.
I remember reading Plato in my youth and being struck by one of his dialogues where he asserts that beauty actually is the stirring or a memory of when we were at one with God. Every bit of beauty whether it is seeing it in nature, a person, a situation, or in ourselves is, essentially, a connection with God or with absolute and pure consciousness. So Plato showed us that beauty itself is our link to the transcendent and divine.
Now here is the surprise. The good thing about trouble in our lives is that they fuel our awakening. They are the raw material in our lives that can move us off our narrow view of life. My most "spiritual" moments were during times of tribulation. So trouble and our experience of beauty both lead us to the divine or connection with a force that is very deep and essential.
I advise people spiritually and the greatest problem I see is that we can't seem to see the good inside of us due to all the negative judgments we have about ourselves. We get stuck on how fucked-up our lives are because we have failed ourselves and our loved ones. Yet, in many ways, it is the flaws within people that display some deeper more authentic self that may be the coolest thing about them.
To put it another way that freaks people out: maybe we are good just the way we are! Obviously this idea is very revolutionary and most people seem to have a hard time even entertaining the idea. The reason for this is that they would have to unpack all the socialization and conditioning of an entire lifetime. It appears essential that we are "damned" unless we are "saved" either through a religious conversion or working out more, or achieving more. This means something important. We are "schooled", in our culture, to judge ourselves and others. We don't have a "right" to be here--we have to "earn" our right. We have to fit into the highly chaotic and confusing social mores that ultimately seem to come down to status and money but are interwoven with old fragments of traditional virtues often obsolete or irrelevant as fragments whereas when taken as part of the entire set of cultural assumption of a long-past age they make sense. Strict patriarchal values made sense in the age of my youth but today work at cross-purposes with our strange transitional blend of feminism and patriarchy. What used to be sometimes obnoxious way we were taught to deal with attractive women in the past is now seen as "sexual harassment." If I make a comment on a woman on how nice her dress looks or her beautiful eyes, often the result of an artistic way or applying makeup, I risk being rude. So fragments of the old fashioned virtues of opening doors for a woman could be taken as rudeness, or not opening doors may also be taken as rudeness. Our social mores are replete with this sort of confusion so the best policy is just to avoid socialization.
Suppressing our pain, anger, anxiety can be a major problem when we decide, in whatever fashion, to begin a deeper spiritual life. Many will go around being "spiritual" and getting upset with themselves when they stray into negative emotions because most of the "feel good" New Age spiritual paths ignore negativity and want us to transcend this so we think "positive" thoughts all the time to overwhelm our negativity. Actually, we need to embrace our negativity and allow it to transform through the alchemy of love. Affirmations are good only if we are willing to face the internal resistance of negative attitudes and thoughts our egos are reluctant to acknowledge. I'm spiritual and have gone through decades of spiritual practises so after I become furious at something I feel embarrassed and feel I've failed. No, I have not failed--I have allowed anger to emerge and had the golden opportunity to carefully feel and accept my anger and, because I'm not suppressing it I can now more clearly see its origin and transform straw into gold. Feeling I have some image to uphold with not only other people but myself is precisely to be ruled by Satan (the enemy of wholeness). If we suppress that emotion it will come back to us again and again often in very different forms--one day it could be anger over some trivial thing, another day it could be an event or a person in our lives that pushes our buttons. This energy can manifest in any internal or external event until we accept it and delve deeper.
The overall "new-age" idea of spirituality as something you "achieve" is not necessarily a bad thing. Effort is better than no effort when it comes to this sort of work. Creation is saying "yes" to what is--I think the "yes" is actually an act of creation. You create a structure for yourself where there is safety, acceptance--the whole world becomes yours. I say yes to my twisted parts and they slowly relax--shouldn't that be obvious? When a healthy person does something they think they've done wrong and you hug them and accept them--what happens? The person gets heart energy and courage emerges naturally. When we embrace each other unconditionally, when we listen to each other unconditionally that's a little bit of Heaven for both people involved in that moment. That doesn't preclude conflict and hard words but all this is done within the House of Yes which is actually the Kingdom of Heaven--it is Heaven because eternal life is the ultimate "Yes"!
I remember reading Plato in my youth and being struck by one of his dialogues where he asserts that beauty actually is the stirring or a memory of when we were at one with God. Every bit of beauty whether it is seeing it in nature, a person, a situation, or in ourselves is, essentially, a connection with God or with absolute and pure consciousness. So Plato showed us that beauty itself is our link to the transcendent and divine.
Now here is the surprise. The good thing about trouble in our lives is that they fuel our awakening. They are the raw material in our lives that can move us off our narrow view of life. My most "spiritual" moments were during times of tribulation. So trouble and our experience of beauty both lead us to the divine or connection with a force that is very deep and essential.
I advise people spiritually and the greatest problem I see is that we can't seem to see the good inside of us due to all the negative judgments we have about ourselves. We get stuck on how fucked-up our lives are because we have failed ourselves and our loved ones. Yet, in many ways, it is the flaws within people that display some deeper more authentic self that may be the coolest thing about them.
To put it another way that freaks people out: maybe we are good just the way we are! Obviously this idea is very revolutionary and most people seem to have a hard time even entertaining the idea. The reason for this is that they would have to unpack all the socialization and conditioning of an entire lifetime. It appears essential that we are "damned" unless we are "saved" either through a religious conversion or working out more, or achieving more. This means something important. We are "schooled", in our culture, to judge ourselves and others. We don't have a "right" to be here--we have to "earn" our right. We have to fit into the highly chaotic and confusing social mores that ultimately seem to come down to status and money but are interwoven with old fragments of traditional virtues often obsolete or irrelevant as fragments whereas when taken as part of the entire set of cultural assumption of a long-past age they make sense. Strict patriarchal values made sense in the age of my youth but today work at cross-purposes with our strange transitional blend of feminism and patriarchy. What used to be sometimes obnoxious way we were taught to deal with attractive women in the past is now seen as "sexual harassment." If I make a comment on a woman on how nice her dress looks or her beautiful eyes, often the result of an artistic way or applying makeup, I risk being rude. So fragments of the old fashioned virtues of opening doors for a woman could be taken as rudeness, or not opening doors may also be taken as rudeness. Our social mores are replete with this sort of confusion so the best policy is just to avoid socialization.
Suppressing our pain, anger, anxiety can be a major problem when we decide, in whatever fashion, to begin a deeper spiritual life. Many will go around being "spiritual" and getting upset with themselves when they stray into negative emotions because most of the "feel good" New Age spiritual paths ignore negativity and want us to transcend this so we think "positive" thoughts all the time to overwhelm our negativity. Actually, we need to embrace our negativity and allow it to transform through the alchemy of love. Affirmations are good only if we are willing to face the internal resistance of negative attitudes and thoughts our egos are reluctant to acknowledge. I'm spiritual and have gone through decades of spiritual practises so after I become furious at something I feel embarrassed and feel I've failed. No, I have not failed--I have allowed anger to emerge and had the golden opportunity to carefully feel and accept my anger and, because I'm not suppressing it I can now more clearly see its origin and transform straw into gold. Feeling I have some image to uphold with not only other people but myself is precisely to be ruled by Satan (the enemy of wholeness). If we suppress that emotion it will come back to us again and again often in very different forms--one day it could be anger over some trivial thing, another day it could be an event or a person in our lives that pushes our buttons. This energy can manifest in any internal or external event until we accept it and delve deeper.
The overall "new-age" idea of spirituality as something you "achieve" is not necessarily a bad thing. Effort is better than no effort when it comes to this sort of work. Creation is saying "yes" to what is--I think the "yes" is actually an act of creation. You create a structure for yourself where there is safety, acceptance--the whole world becomes yours. I say yes to my twisted parts and they slowly relax--shouldn't that be obvious? When a healthy person does something they think they've done wrong and you hug them and accept them--what happens? The person gets heart energy and courage emerges naturally. When we embrace each other unconditionally, when we listen to each other unconditionally that's a little bit of Heaven for both people involved in that moment. That doesn't preclude conflict and hard words but all this is done within the House of Yes which is actually the Kingdom of Heaven--it is Heaven because eternal life is the ultimate "Yes"!
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