walking the sacred spiral
walking the sacred spiral
I was born an optimist. In college, when one of our older acting instructors fell asleep during the scenes that were our final for that quarter my comment was, “Well, it was nice of her to come and try to stay awake.”
Most people don’t have memories before about age four. I have some that go back to when I was only two, probably because I intentionally remembered some of my favorite times with my father, who died when I was barely three.
One of the things I remember from the time I was very small is how I loved my family members and how interested I was in everyone. I didn’t have opinions about them; I didn’t compare their looks or behavior unfavorably with anyone else. I was a loved child, so I had very little fear of people. It was easy to love them all and to observe them with interest and kindness.
It’s not as easy to do that today. Add experience and learning to the opinions of those same people I loved, and stir in my own quirks and short-sightedness, and it’s easy to see how neutral observations and a naturally loving, optimistic spirit got moved to the background.
Most little children are happy people, unless they witness or suffer abuse at an early age. They learn to be worried, frightened, judgmental or pessimistic. Expecting the worst is based on our interpretations of what has happened in the past, not on the unpredictable future, or even the current realities. We can rationalize that we are just being realistic when we assume the worst is yet to come, but unless we are gifted with very acute psychic abilities, how can we know what is yet to come?
Recently a series of events that weren’t happy occurrences showed up in my life. Even metaphysicians, when confronted with a series of difficult circumstances, can abandon everything we know and feel victimized, down on ourselves and discouraged. We can blame God or other people, and envy those who are doing well, rather than emulating them or getting coaching from them.
A lot of people live their whole lives that way. Metaphysicians have something those people don’t have. We have the knowledge that we are loved; that every experience is here only to bless us, and that we can change the results we are experiencing.
Knowing that isn’t enough, though. We must go further. We need to practice, step-by-step like beginners again. We have to take the time to really examine our sabotaging deeper beliefs, and we need to actually use the practices we know to begin changing them.
It’s tempting to do this half-heartedly and with some cynicism. After all, we already did this, right? But that attitude itself is sabotaging. Remember that as a beginner, you were open to everything changing. You were watching for it. You were almost expecting it, even as you found it hard to hope for. You were available.
For seasoned metaphysicians availability is what’s often missing when things fall apart and we can’t seem to pull them back together again. We have stopped being teachable.
There are lots of good reasons for this. Like a recovering alcoholic who begins to drink again, we feel too embarrassed or humiliated by our obvious fall from grace to start all over again. So we delay our own happiness as we avoid admitting the truth and humbling ourselves enough to get help and begin yet again.
Spiritual masters begin over and over again. They refuse to let their pride dictate the terms of their growth and happiness. When they forget or fall short, no matter how long it has taken them to realize or admit it, they begin again. They open up like beginners to find the threads that will lead them back to center this time. They become teachable again, available again, willing again. They apply persistence.
If you have felt stuck or had a recent cascade of trouble in your life, consider asking yourself these three questions: What do I know about working with my consciousness that I’m not doing? What am I waiting for? Is there someone I admire that I can turn to for help (either in person or by working with their material online or from books)?
As Yogi Berra once said (and as yesterday’s San Francisco Giants World Series win confirms), “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” No matter how long we’ve been wandering, stubbornly pretending we have it all together, or how many times this has happened before, the path back is still the same. “When you come to the fork in the road, take it,” because every road leads home. Ready to start walking?
Every Road Leads Home
Thursday, October 30, 2014