Tag: Spiritual Impulse

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The Longer Project

Being human, I am a messy jumble of complexity. Capable of unspeakable cruelty and epic heroism. Glorious and profane. Creation’s big bet to see what consciousness would do if given free rein. A shining light on the horizon. A hot mess.

I see all of this in me. I’m part of this long project that has been going on for countless eons. I yearn to see where it is going and to help it along.

I’m a physical being. I acquire and use the material aspects of the world to survive and flourish. I enjoy the sensations and movement of my physicality. I feel secure when I have what I need and fearful when I don’t. These are necessary to sustain my body, but I know the point is not to collect more possessions. There is something more.

I’m a mental, emotional, psychological being. I learn to regulate my internal states and navigate my relationships with others. I create theories and philosophies in my mind. My creative drive spins worlds of artistic beauty from whole cloth. These aspects enrich me. But I know the point is not to curate a life of personal comfort, chasing experiences that provide pleasure and avoid pain. There is something more.

All of these aspects of being human are indispensable. As a thinking, feeling, creative, physical being, I enjoy and participate in them freely. But I have an inner sense that they are not the final ends life is pointing to. They are the platform that allows a larger scene to play out. These first-layer aspects of being human facilitate something more because we humans are also something larger – we are spiritual beings too.

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All of Our Beliefs

All beliefs fade and crack. Some dissolve completely. This doesn’t mean they’re unimportant, far from it. It’s just that we expect them to do more than they were designed for.

One Christmas Eve when I was young, but starting to doubt, I heard a scraping on the roof. There it was – undeniable proof that Saint Nicholas was real. I kept the magic alive for several more years.  

The small town Christian church where I was raised preached the gospel of a loving Christ, which I embraced. My belief was total, and the moral development it provided served me well, until the weight of dogma eroded my certainty.

As a young adult, I rejected my former beliefs and became a devout atheist. I believed the laws of nature explained the world without the superstitions of religion. This worldview was satisfying for a while, but a growing intuition would not let it rest. Something told me this was not the full picture, that consciousness and love were bigger than brain chemistry and social bonding.

And what of my current beliefs – that our basic nature is goodness, that consciousness and love are spread across the cosmos, that we are immersed in a field we can touch through spiritual practice, that our journey is leading somewhere – are these passing fancies that will fade and crack with time? These are as dear to me as the ones that came before. If we learn from our mistakes, I should have learned a lot by now. I like to think my failings have earned a little wisdom along the way.

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Becoming a Master

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of the master. Early in my spiritual journey, I secretly aspired to be one, hoping spiritual practices, would perfect me, honing my skills and erasing my blemishes, changing me into someone worthy of the title. Paradoxically, I was also uncomfortable with the word, sensing my goal was rooted in arrogance and somehow missing the mark.

I had an image of the master as expert, someone who could answer any spiritual question, who could solve the dilemma of how to live a spiritual life in a material world of sense desires and human conflict. That image offered a sense of control, but it was incorrect. It borrowed from the material world, where content knowledge does create experts, answer questions, and solve problems. It doesn’t work that way on the path of spiritual growth, where answers and solutions are not the primary currency. The concept of mastery is very much alive, but less distant and more personal.

In recent years, I’ve begun to use a different term to describe my journey. I think of myself as an initiate, one who is always searching and exploring the spiritual realms as a beginner. This title carries less arrogant weight but retains the commitment. The idea of mastery remains, now referring to the continually dynamic process of mastering myself. I don’t mean this in terms of self-control, which would be another misplaced use of the word “master.” I mean the simple fact that I have been given a unique task that only I can accomplish.

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The Point

What is the point of all this?

I am walking through my life trying to do good, trying to grow into the person I know I can be, trying to touch what is divine along the way. I have griefs and joys, I feel the pain of tragic events, I see the suffering of so many. After all the rising and setting suns of a spinning globe, the walking over leagues of mountains and valleys, I ache to know the Why. What is the point? What is the reason for my walking? I can endure and enjoy anything the human tragicomedy can offer if I can fathom a reply to the Why.

I know I am walking through the world of form, and I know there is more behind the form. I’m a multidimensional being with conflicting goals that somehow work together, weaving a cloth so large I only understand it in the small details. I’m drawn to explore these details across the many dimensions of the question, Why Am I Here?

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Grow and Share Your Gifts

I am drawn to spiritual practices that align with my natural proclivities. I feel comfortable in the verbal world of words and ideas. Speaking and writing come naturally. So, no surprise, I enjoy reading, journaling, contemplating, and discussing religious and philosophical themes.

Paradoxically, I am also drawn to spiritual practices that are the opposite of verbal, or at least its compliment. I seek out mystical experiences where my perception expands, my awareness intensifies, and my connection to others, and everything, swells like the tide. When this state of being takes hold, I am not thinking about expansion or reflecting on connection. I experience them directly, immersed, standing beyond the ability of words to observe and attempt a description.

Spiritual work is personal, different for each of us. We are here as individual lenses, each refracting light into a splashwork of endless shapes and colors, adding to a larger mosaic. For me, as with many, the work of both thinking about and immersing with starts on the inside. But I know that my inner work is only the first half. If it doesn’t percolate out, then the inner work has failed to manifest its beauty. I am, truly, hiding my lamp under a bushel.

Maybe that’s why I write the Stumbling Mystic blog, to hold myself accountable, to witness the changes in my nature, and share what I see along the way. When it’s flowing, the inner and the outer reinforce each other. Another piece is polished and revealed. As an individual, I grow into ever better versions of my natural proclivities. As a collective, we share more and more of our better selves. When we participate, the cycle advances, the world grows with us. When we hold back, the wheel slows.

What are your natural gifts and strengths? What spiritual practices call to you? How do you share the beauty of your ever-changing nature with the world?

These questions are worth your time. Take a moment, feel your breath, and sit with them. When hear a reply rise within you, note it, let it seep into your daily life. The world is waiting to see what you become.

Photo by Getty Images on Unsplash

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What a Muddy Mess

Spiritual growth results from the intentional merging of our physical, nonphysical, and metaphysical lives. External events happen to us, thoughts and emotions arise within us, spiritual intuitions call to us. Growth occurs at this fertile three-way intersection when we can process these exterior and interior dimensions and integrate them to become a more thoughtful, wiser, kinder person.

We use the incidents of life as fuel for growth. That pithy statement looks clean when written on the chalkboard, but growth unfolds so haphazardly that it’s hard to believe it happens at all.

I start as an innocent spark of consciousness wrapped in protoplasm, gifted with my unique DNA and natural proclivities. Through a life history that begins in the womb and continues throughout my life, I acquire a collage of conditioning: traumas, insecurities, neuroses, addictions, biases seen and unseen, fears that are easily activated, opinions firmly held though based on woefully incomplete information.

This is the human vehicle I am given to encounter life, in which I’m expected to survive the turbulence of the physical plane while maturing into a bodhisattva on the spiritual plane. I try to make sense of insensible dilemmas, draw meaning where I can, and make choices that cause more good than harm. But it’s like pouring water through a muddy sieve and expecting the water to run clear.

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We Knew

We knew when we signed up, didn’t we?

We knew a spiritual life would throw us wicked challenges that look too big to handle.

We knew there would be turbulent times when our foundations would be shaken and our mettle tested, that our true nature would be revealed in our response.

We knew we would face dilemmas and confusion, uncertain about where our next steps should take us.

We knew that life in a physical body would put us in harm’s way, encountering the ambitions, fears, and drives of being human (ours and others), enduring wounds, grief, and suffering (ours and others).

We knew the stakes were high.

We knew a spiritual life is a way of being, not a hobby, that we would have to push all our chips to the center of the table.

Somehow, we knew all this, and we showed up for this life anyway. We flew from Divinity as a spark and landed on this holy earth with a purpose – to marry heaven and earth, to be a loving presence, to prove again the light can overcome the dark, to walk with open hearts even when they’re bleeding.

It was never meant to be easy – it was meant to be meaningful.

As bearers of light, we knew we would not let the ugliness drain us of our tenderness, that we would continue growing our capacity to give and receive love. But we also knew that we are not alone, we are aligned with Spirit and in league with many others who are also bringing light.

So let’s be resolved without regret, walking the road no matter where it leads or how long it takes, knowing somewhere up ahead there’s a reconciliation, a redemption, a return, and our work will have been worth it.

Photo by Howen on Unsplash

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The Sacred Search to Understand

“I can calculate the motion of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”

                                                            Sir Isaac Newton

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

William Shakespeare

Humans have always wanted to know the why of things. Curiosity and wonder seem to be wired into our nature, and close behind, the unspoken hope that if we could find the lever at the root, we might pull it hard enough to right the world one small degree.

We watch the parade of human endeavor with all its beauty and virtue, flaws and folly, and we wonder:

Why do we light up and fill with kindness when we see a baby?

Why do we allow people in poor neighborhoods to have higher rates of cancer?

Why does ambition so often degrade into greed?

Why do we stop and stare when struck by the colors of a desert sunset?

Why do we stand speechless at the sight of stars against the blackness?

Why have we not found a way to end the senseless slaughter and devastation of war?

Why do I love my wife? (more baffling, why does she love me?)

Why does the piercing pain of grief swell, break, recede, and return like ocean tides?

Why is there poverty and hunger amid an obesity of wealth?

Why are we capable of both immense generosity and crushing cruelty, yet after all these eons still unable to choose wisely?

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The Ancient Roots of Our Spirituality

The spiritual longing that draws us toward our higher selves and greater connection with Spirit is ancient. It is both intimate and universal. It feels personal to each of us because it expresses our individuality, but its roots stretch back eons.

In the high reaches of Scotland is a stunning example of what I mean. On the island of Orkney, there is a circle of standing stones called the Ring of Brodgar. It is a mammoth structure, larger than Stonehenge and possibly older. Dozens of sandstone slabs, weighing several tons and standing 10 to 15 feet high, encircle an expanse 100 yards across.

Each stone was quarried, shaped, dragged for miles, and set upright into a hole dug in the bedrock. This was formidable work for people in 2500 B.C., whose only tools were made of stone, antler, and bone. For an island of a few thousand people, this would have been a massive undertaking requiring organization and dedication over many years. Something profound motivated these people to invest so much of their lives in this monument.  

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Faith Is the Bird That Feels the Light

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”

Rabindranath Tagore

I feel the light, too. And I am sometimes confused by it.

The light I feel is good. It is goodness itself. I want to be immersed in this light, drenched, consumed. I want to open my chest and let it enter me, to unfold myself in its brilliance and fly or sink to wherever it is going.

I trust the light without knowing why. Without good reason, without proof, even though it makes no logical sense, even though I can’t be certain. But my trust is stronger than knowledge or reason or proof or logic or, most brittle of them all, certainty.

Living in the modern world, I have been taught to believe in the power of knowledge, reason, and logic, and to strive to make things certain. I acknowledge the value of these human capacities and I express abundant gratitude for the many benefits they bring to modern life:  electricity, indoor plumbing, antibiotics, chemotherapy, communication satellites, bridges that don’t fall down. And because my trust in the light is more intuitive than logical, more felt sense than geometric proof, I am sometimes confused that my trust is so strong.

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