Awake In Spirit

I feel as though I have been very quiet lately in the spiritual sense. Almost too quiet. I believe this is a function of having been too much in the world. It seems as though I have had to try on the “worldly” persona one more time in order to realize once and for all that it does not feel comfortable at all. And I realize now that this persona probably has never been comfortable. No wonder I have never quite felt as though I “fit in” anywhere.

As I see signs in my life that being too much in the world upsets my equilibrium, I find myself trying to find solutions toward restoring balance to my life. My solution has been to go inward and upward toward God – to remember that the most important thing in my world is my connection with God. More and more I am finding that place to be my comfort zone. When I go within, I can feel God’s presence in my being and that feeling is wonderful. In that place, I can release myself from the place where I judge myself and try to figure things out and find reasons for everything. I can understand that nothing other than God is real and that everything real comes from God and God’s Loving.

Now I understand that the reason my equilibrium has been off is that I have been feeling pulled more into the third dimension – the dimension of emotions, duality, and worldliness. This dimension no longer fits me. It is totally uncomfortable. I am connecting more and more with the fifth dimension, which is the place of IAM, unification, and oneness with God. I am feeling very strongly pulled to leave the third behind. The next challenge is to determine how to gracefully create a bridge for myself in order to attain the connection with the fifth dimension I am feeling so called to fully enter.

As I ask this question, the answer being given to me is “go within”. By going within, the importance of the third dimensional, outer world, seems to fade significantly. From this place, I feel my connection to God and let everything else dissolve. I feel the Love of God, the Peace of God, and the Essence of God. And it feels wonderful!

Namaste!

Well a funny thing happened in my life.  I am not certain what to make of it.  Neither am I certain what to do with it.  So right now I am just sitting with it.  On March 23, I began a program called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) with a local hospital.  This can lead to certification as a chaplain, pastoral counselor, or even psychotherapist should I finish all the requirements for four units (eight for certification in psychotherapy).  I started the application process late November and was accepted the end of December.  This has certainly put a crimp in my free flowing lifestyle.  I now have structure and stress in my life.

In my usual manner, I just plunged forward without much planning and a knowing that starting this program would be the end of my unstructured life.  I seem to spend my life following “callings” and then react to the feelings that come up around my actions.  I guess it might not be the best way to do things but this is definitely “my way”.  Now I am two weeks into the program and dealing with a lot of human “stuff” – my human “stuff” – that is coming up around my current experience.  I am seeing that there are many layers to this!

The outermost layer is that of emotion.  I am dealing with fear of being “incompetent” at this, fear of failure.  Well, then, if the duality in my worldview is that of fear or love, I work very hard on countering my fear with connecting with the Loving of God.  This does help but it is sometimes difficult for me to hold onto when I am in the thick of things.  First, there is no formal training or even guidelines as to what direct ministry in the hospital is supposed to look like.  Then, the various chaplains naturally all have their own distinct personalities and ways of doing things and I have received a few mixed messages about what I am supposed to do and where.

The third major hands on thing that has been creating fear for me is the fact that I had to immediately choose one night per week to be “on call”.   The issuses that come up for me around being on call and responsible, again with not much guidance or training but a few instructions that I have no frame of reference for, is probably the biggest hurdle for me right now.  It might even be the one that seems like a “deal breaker”.   This issue in itself has a few layers – in addition to the competence vs. fear of being incompetent piece, I also have touched on issues of whether or not I have the energy to be woken up possibly in the middle of the night, deal with a spiritual crisis, go home, then possibly get called again.  Thank goodness for back up chaplains!

Once I am able to shift into the place of God’s Loving and deal with my fears, I find there are practical issues that are arising.  The biggest one is how to fit in the clinical requirements and fulfill my learning contract which is to learn about three fundamental faiths.  I agreed to attend services, meet with religious leaders, read about the three faiths, and write a three to five page paper.  This is a full time “job” and I have been living the life of a retired person since December 2007.  I miss my freedom and flexible life.

As I have been looking beyond the issues on the outer layer, I have been connecting with some of the deeper issues.  For the past several months, I have been aware of my longing to not be “in the world”.  Ever since the veil between my human self and my spiritual self was shattered last summer, I find myself drawn much more inward and upward as opposed to outward.  This path I am walking right now is forcing me back out into the world.  I want to be inside, communing with Spirit and because I am being drawn away from that place, my Spiritual equilibrium seems to be seriously affected.  It feels as though the ground is being moved out from under my feet.  I am losing the balance I have enjoyed so much being able to know God and be in God’s presence.

Now, I know that God has not gone anywhere.  I also know the veil has not reformed or reconfigured itself and separated me from my spiritual self.  That is an illusion.  Just as my fear in the more superficial aspect of this conundrum is an illusion.  God is constant.  My connection to God is static.   In all of thisl there is a spiritual lesson to be learned and a spiritual truth to be discerned.  My challenge is not really anything about CPE training.  My challenge is about defining my Spiritual Truth.

Namaste!

You have probably heard the phrase that states we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience.  Have you thought about what this really means?  Do you believe it?  Have you given it any thought?  Can you relate to this idea?

Most of us, when we begin our human lives, are born into families that practice a specific religion or follow some type of moral code.  Many, if not most, of us tend to embrace the knowing that if we follow the rules and are good, we will be rewarded in some type of afterlife.  These teachings create a structure for the adherents of the belief system – a structure for organizing one’s way of life and providing a goal of reaching the ideal state where one can obtain the reward for being a dutiful follower.  This is religion and is created to be tribal and protective and safe.

At some point, however, it appears to be built into our DNA to start questioning the rules.  Part of our growing up as humans is to rebel so that we may differentiate from our families and tribes.  Some of us will be frightened as we experience this process and rush back into the fold.  Many eventually make the transition from being ‘religious’ to calling themselves ’spiritual’.  How many people do you hear say – ‘I am not religious, but I am spiritual’?  Do you just accept this as somebody saying the do not want to follow the rules of a specific religion or do you question what they mean when they proclaim this?

Since I am one of those people that has been known to utter this statement on many occasions, I thought it would be appropriate to explain what this means to me.  I do not adhere to the rules of any specific religion but I have a very close relationship with my higher power, whom I will refer to as God or Spirit.  The names mean exactly the same to me.  I know that a Spark of the Divine resides within me just as it resides in each and every human being.  I choose not to pray to God or Spirit, but to merge with the essence of the I AM presence since I am aware that God is in everything.  And from that place of merging with God, I know that I am more than the human being I appear to be – I am part of Spirit and part of all that exists.  I know that I have walked this planet in other lifetimes in other human incarnations, but at my core, it is Spirit that is inhabiting this human body.

And just as I know this about myself, I know this is true for every other human being – regardless of where they are on the spectrum of belief.  We are all here, inhabiting human bodies, following rules or not, learning lessons or not – it does not matter what we believe.  It does not matter because we are all from Spirit. And as we come to know this about ourselves, we are then waking up into spirit.  We come to know our soul, our path, and our purpose.  We know how to stand in the flow of God’s Loving and allow God’s Light to shine through our human selves.  And at last, we can truly own the reality that we are truly spiritual beings having a human existence and there is no reason to ‘try’ to be more spiritual human beings.

Namaste!

It seems that lately many people I know are living in fear.  Mostly they are in fear about the future, particularly their economic future.  Right now, I seem to be one of the few people in my “crowd” that is not worried.  Maybe I should be, but I truly do not think it is necessary.  Fear is a consciousness that one chooses into, or not.  In truth, fear is a spiritual lesson.

In my experience, there really only is love or fear.  We  fear what may happen to us in the future or fear that something from our past may be haunting us.  This consciousness interferes with being in the present moment.   The present moment is really all we have.  We are unable to return to the past to change or redo anything we might regret.  And we do not really know how much future remains.  Worrying about either totally drains our energy and keeps us from enjoying life as it exists for us in the “here and now”.  This process seems to move us away from our connection with God and Divine Love.

How, then, can fear be spiritual?  It would seem that I am saying if we are in the fear consciousness, we have distanced ourselves from the spiritual consciousness.  Fear is an emotion.  When we feel the energy of fear, it usually is not a pleasant sensation.  Something feels off or wrong.  This means that fear is also a signal telling us that something is amiss.  Fear is telling us that we are drifting away from our spiritual centers.  We are choosing to turn away from love.  If we are open spiritually, we are capable of listening to this signal or warning sign that our spiritual anchors are loosening.  So, while being in a place of fear is not particularly desirable, if it serves the purpose of redirecting us back to spirit, then it most definitely serves a spiritual purpose.

From that realization, we can now see that events happening in the outer world that are causing us to react in fear are actually serving a higher purpose.  Although it may seem that our “world” is crumbling around us (particularly economically), it is all an illusion – nothing in the physical world is real  The only reality is our oneness with God and it is Fear that can serve as the catalyst for our moving back to Spirit and our innate connection with our spiritual selves.

Namaste!

A few years ago, the phrase “Tikkun Olam” came into my consciousness.  It is a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world”.   I decided to investigate this a bit more and this investigation led me to an interesting realization and an “aha” moment.

During my search for the meaning of Tikkun Olam”, I was introduced to the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, a 16th century Kabbalist.  Rabbi Luria taught that God created the world by forming vessels of light to hold the Divine Light.  As the Divine Light was being poured, the vessels shattered into countless shards that were scattered into the “world”.  Each shard contains a spark of the Divine Light.  Humanity’s task then became to help God free and reunite the scattered Light, raising the sparks back to Divinity and by doing this, restoring the “broken” world.

What came to me, upon being introduced to this concept, was that each and every human being contains the Spark of Divine within.  We are all those broken shards and once we release the trapped Light, we come to know our Divinity.  We release the trapped Light by repairing our own individual worlds.  We come to know Love.  We heal ourselves and become whole.  When this knowing becomes our consciousness, we are then accomplishing our own individual Tikkun Olam.

I found this to be very exciting because, having grown up Jewish, I was never able to accept that Jesus was the messiah.  In Judaism, we are taught that there will be peace in all the world when the Messiah comes.  What came to me upon digesting this piece about repairing our own individual world is the thought that if we all were in touch with our own divinity, how could we. in our Divinity, possibly wage wars and kill others.  Taking this one step further, I came to understand that once humanity as a whole awakes to the awareness of the Divine in every single being, then the Messiah is here.  We are all messiahs who collectively are The Messiah.  And, since I believe the consciousness of knowing the divine within is the core of Christ Consciousness, then The Messiah is Christ Consciousness.

So, now when I say Namaste to you, not only is the Divine in me recognizing the Divine in you, but the messiah in me is recognizing the messiah in you.

Namaste!