Becoming
Unencumbered
“Coming
to consciousness is not a discovery of some new thing; it is a long
and painful return to that which has always been there.”
Helen
Luke
My
friend, Harry, and I have been facilitating a little spirituality
group on Sunday mornings. Young people in their twenties, they are at
the groping stages of determining their true faith path. So we talk
mainly of the “recovery” process—how can they be true to
themselves and to the faith of their birth at the same time. They
have universally found themselves waking up to the contradictions and
inconsistencies in their faith of origin, and in anger, have walked
away. Yet they still yearn for something real to believe in. Harry
and I are attempting to give them new tools and perspectives for
looking at the same thing with new eyes. And they are giving us their
insights with that crystal clarity that only the young possess. It is
a win-win kind of group.
Over
the course of a lifetime, as we gain experience, as we succeed and
fail, as we grow and learn, and are inspired and disappointed, we
shape our picture of the world. Our faith is also shaped by life. If
we are lucky, we go from being concrete and fundamental, to being
disenchanted, to being appropriately secure and expansive. We see
that there are many paths to the same destination and one or another,
or a combination of several, may be what is right for us. We go from
a child-like interpretation of divine parenthood, to a concept of
unity and universality. A oneness.
The
process, which is difficult for many, especially if the faith of
their childhood was a punitive one, is one of stripping away what has
been layered on by tradition and fear, and finding at the bottom,
what has always been waiting there. It is the spiral movement into
the center; the opening of the lotus or the rose, one petal at a
time.
A
newborn baby comes into the world as an unencumbered unity. And when
we allow our spiritual life to mature over a lifetime, we return to
God with that same unity, only ripe now with the fruits of wisdom and
experience. In between, we learn how to make the journey home.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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