Spiritual
Activism
“When
you follow these Rules of the Road for Life’s Journey, you will find yourself
in harmony with the Voice of the Creator, and life will flow through you like a
river.”
Words
of Wisdom Website (Rules of the Road: 13 Principles of Spiritual Activism)
This is
a wonderful website for spiritual seekers. It features wisdom from some of the
greatest teachers who have ever lived. But I must tell you how I got there—synchronicity
as usual. I was perusing my news feed and saw an article about how the weather
would make travel difficult this post-Thanksgiving weekend. It told how many
people would be on the roads today, which got me thinking about rules of the
road. Then I wondered whether there might be spiritual rules of the road, so I
googled that, and Voila! Here they are in abridged form:
1. Transformation
of motivation from anger/fear/despair to compassion/love/purpose. There is a Sufi
saying, “Action follows Being.” To the extent that we can replace fear
emotions with love emotions, the more likely we are to succeed at creating a
positive future. The Dalai Lama said, “A positive future cannot emerge from
a mind of anger and despair.”
2. Non-attachment
to outcome. Stay flexible, because if we hold a particular outcome as the only acceptable
one, we will “rise and fall without successes and failures.”
3. Integrity
is your protection. If you live your life with integrity, you will be protected
from negative influences. We speak a lot about “transparency” these days—it’s
an important word. Being transparent in the way you live your life allows the
negative energy to pass through you rather than engulf you.
4. Integrity
in means and ends. This is a hard one for those of us who live in a
capitalistic society. It’s adversarial and competitive by nature. But we’re
talking about your spiritual life here and bad means do not lead to good ends.
5. Don’t
demonize your adversaries. This is going to be the stumbling block for a lot of
us, because we are bonded around our mutual adversaries. Words of Wisdom
suggests we cope with this strong tendency by being perpetual learners who
challenge their own views. Caroline Myss might say, “Call your spirit back from
any behavior that sullies your soul.”
6. Find
and fulfill your true calling. Don’t be concerned with whether it’s important
in the social structure of your culture. The Bhagavad Gita says, “It is
better to tread your own path, however humble, than that of another, however
successfully.”
7. Love
your enemy—at least, have compassion for them. At the same time, do not indulge
lies and corruption for that encourages violence. We must give up our “us vs.
them” mentality no matter how difficult it may be.
8. Your
work in the world is not for you—it is an act of service to make possible a
better life for future generations. Your true work may or may not be what you
do for a living.
9. “Selfless
service is a myth.” By serving others, in whatever way we do,
we serve ourselves as well. It takes both pieces of the puzzle to make a whole,
and both are incomplete without the other.
10. Do not insulate yourself from the pain of the
world. This one is so hard—we are living in a compassion-fatigue state of mind
most of the time. But we must remind ourselves that only a broken heart is open enough for genuine transformation.
11. What
you attend to, you become. Whatever commands your sustained attention is what
is most important in your life. The old adage about “reaping what we sow” applies
here. We are pliable. We can be shaped by whatever we give our time and energy
to.
12. Rely on faith and let go of having to figure
everything out. I am finding this to be an exciting part of a spiritual life. We
have no idea what’s coming anyway, so why not let go and trust that Divine
forces are in control. Trust yourself and trust God.
13. Love creates form. “The heart crosses the
abyss that the mind creates and operates at depths unknown to the mind.” There
are greater forces by far at work in the universe. We are here to fulfill our
purpose and to provide what we can to move humanity to a higher plane.
You can read these
spiritual rules of the road in their full elaboration on the Words of Wisdom
website. It’s worth the effort if you want life to flow through you like a river.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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