Opportunities
to Practice
“Spiritual
growth is about the point at which you start to feel your energy
change. For instance, somebody says something, and you start to feel
the energy get a little strange inside. You will actually start to
feel a tightening. That is your cue that it's time to grow. It's not
time to defend yourself, because you don't want the part of you that
you would be defending. If you don't want it, let it go.”
Michael
A. Singer (The Untethered Soul)
If
you take on the work of spiritual growth, don't expect to walk around
in rapture everyday. Don't expect the divine finger to touch you and
your life be rosy and placid from that point on. Unfortunately, it
may be just the opposite. Once you make a conscious decision that you
want to grow spiritually, and by that I mean move from a fear-based
to a love-based way of being in the world, you will be given many,
many opportunities to practice. With some of those, you will fail
miserably—believe me, I speak from personal experience. It's not a
one-and-done kind of thing. It's a
practice-until-you-get-better-at-it kind of thing.
Life
gives us lots of opportunities to practice noticing when our internal
barometer swings toward fear—emotions like anger, envy, resentment,
jealousy—come storming into our body/mind and upset our perfectly
good mood. Walking a spiritual path does not help us become less
human, it just helps us to manage the dark side of human emotions a
little better. When that guy at work, the one who's always
kissing-up to the boss, says something snarky to you, or insinuates
that you have no idea of what you speak, you will feel your blood
pressure bump up just a notch. Then, you begin to gnaw on what he
said, and heat rises up and up inside you. The other alternative,
when you feel that snarl begin to curl your lip, is to stop, take a
deep breath, and walk away. Continue taking deep breaths until you
feel calm, and the energy changes back to normal. Shutting down the
internal dialog that escalates the bad mood is key. You will not
change “that guy,” but you may reach a point when you appreciate
him for giving you an opportunity to practice.
Every
time we practice, every time we meet a challenge by staying with our
self and not being drawn into fearful emotions, we get better and
better. Sometimes the summons to practice is extremely difficult,
such as when people we love say hateful things, or go down a path
that we know leads to pain. There will be times when we falter and
fail in our efforts to not allow fear to win. But practice anyway.
Life is simply happier when we do.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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