Waking Up
“I woke
up one morning and found myself in a strange place. Instead of waking
up in pain, I felt a new feeling coursing through my veins. I felt
happy, at peace, and excited about being alive. The feeling had come
around before, but never to stay or last. Now I knew that it was mine
for good. It was where this journey had led.”
Melody
Beattie (Journey to the Heart, p.192)
There is a reason to walk
a spiritual path. It is not to sanctify your soul and achieve heaven
when you die. It is to achieve the kingdom within while you're still
alive and well, right here on earth. It requires working through the
junk we carry around all our lives to keep ourselves in the chaos of
unbelieving, and I don't mean in any religious sense. Too many of us
live our entire lives believing that someone else pulls our strings,
that we are hopelessly flawed by the events of our childhoods, that
everyone has more, and is more, than we. Or, we buy into the belief
that a meaningful life requires eternal sacrifice and suffering. One
takes a spiritual journey, not to reach some distant nirvana, but to
open one's eyes to the holiness that is right before us all the time.
If we do the work, if we
bring all of it home to ourselves—our choices, our decisions, our
life—then we have a modicum of control over where the journey
leads. We can choose to accept life on its own terms, and be content
with it, or we can choose to keep on fighting for the way it “should”
be. If we choose to see life as an adventure—one that has all
manner of twists and turns, switchbacks and steep grades--then we
will rise to the occasion with excitement and the energy to take it
on. But if we see life as something that happens to us, and ourselves
as an innocent recipient of the slings and arrows of misfortune, then
we will continue to be in pain.
The spiritual journey—the
journey to see the divine in the mundane—offers a much better
chance of achieving happiness and peace within, but no one can force
us to take it. It's a matter of choice, of mental and emotional
turning about, and most of all, a choice to let go of blame and
shame, and simply accept responsibility, and give thanks, for our own
lives. When we make this choice, each day is inspired, because we see
it through new eyes.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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