Wednesday, July 15, 2009

OBSESSIVE, COMPULSIVE SPIRITUALITY

Dictionary: SPIRITUALITY: The state of being spiritual, having to do with the church or the clergy. A state of living a heavenly life......

My question to you is this; can one be too spiritual or too holy?

I came up with the question after watching a well known spiritual guru guy on a recent show on public television who made me wonder if anyone truly understands what it means to be “Spiritual”. I won’t mention names here other than to say that this person is very well known and a widely published author of many best selling books. He claims to be a Dao Master, but master of what, repeating quotations? His ability to quote verbatim reams of esoteric quotes from the Dao, the Lao, the Tao, perhaps Mao and surely Harry Caray’s Holy Cow, is beyond question, but can disciplined memorizing of quotations whose real meanings are so esoteric that you have to struggle to understand their intent, bring one to true spirituality or make you more holy, and is spirituality as it is described a necessary or beneficial state of being? Rhetorical question of course and the rhetorical answer is No.

Some monks and clerics sit silently for an entire lifetime, ritually bobbing back and forth with repetitious head nodding and other obsessive behaviors inducing a trance like state, isolated in monasteries on mountaintops contemplating an inner world that most would find extremely limited and unbearable, but to them, they have achieved a spiritual state, albeit a pretty sterile one at best. Which brings up the next question, is isolation and a lifetime of contemplation helpful in achieving spirituality? Again the answer is No. Nirvana and Heaven as your myths speak of them do not exist and it’s a good thing because this idealized final dissolution of identity into a supreme being would violate the original intent of “All That Is” to fragment and disperse itself throughout countless worlds and universes and through doing this know itself in all possible manifestations.

There are the Sunday morning television evangelists who can quote every passage of the Bible and amaze you with their Biblical knowledge while they try to convince you that you are indeed a flawed, damned and sinful creation from birth whose only hope of finding salvation is through giving money to them to support their lavish lifestyles. Of course, spirituality is a personal thing, and who am I to tell you what it is, since it is different to everyone, but if you base your interpretation of true spirituality on the above dictionary definition, you would be making a great mistake. And frankly, if you lived a heavenly life as it is usually supposed, you would be bored to death.

True spirituality does not come from repetition and memory of the writings of someone else, it does not even come from someone else. Spirituality is not something you can learn, it is not something you can study. You can read about the spiritual journeys of others, but your own spirituality will never come from without, but from within and not so much from reading but from living and following your own path.

You look to others for a path to follow, and that’s OK, but in very real terms, you only do this because you have been so indoctrinated in the belief in your sinfulness and the sinfulness of your contemporaries that you feel it necessary to look to others to show you the way to salvation. Sometimes in doing this, you limit your ability to sense the true nature of spirituality which pervades your entire reality system from the lowliest to the most exalted, from the worm to human consciousness, and because you do not sense the goodness surrounding you and the rightness of the natural world and your place in it, does not make it any less valid.

You use an arbitrary system of human imposed laws, sins and judgements to classify and evaluate what you consider good, bad, evil, godlessness and spiritual qualities, while ignoring the evidences also surrounding your very being, of the good and love inherent in even your most reprehensible acts. In a way that you are probably not prepared to understand at this point, the universe could never have emerged from a bed of evil, devils and hate. In a way, you could say that the universe emerged out of a state of love and intense need to be. Hate is simply the lack of love, in a sense it is a negative condition arising from the lack of the positive condition. It is love, turned inside out.

I should tell you that this life of yours, the life that you are living now, is but one story of your life, and you did not decide on this life, which you surely did, with the intent of following gurus and spiritual teachers with bobbing heads and flowery words meant to save you from your individualness. You were born in a wonderful state of grace and NO MATTER what you choose to do in-between in this life, you will leave this life in a state of grace, whether or not someone wearing golden vestments sprinkles holy water on your sinful dying body. You can learn from the words of others, but no others have the power or ability to live your life for you, and if you seek spiritual enlightenment, then search for it within yourself. In a way, the more you try to live your life trying to guard against missteps and acting in a so called spiritual way, the farther you get from the true nature of spirituality. Here’s a hint, if someone looks and acts spiritual, they are not.

You were not born yesterday, and on the day of your birth you did not enter this life with a blank slate, emerging from oblivion into physical life, no one knows nothing, there are however degrees of knowing. You came into this life with a history, with latent knowledge, but if you don’t understand that, you will not look for it, since you don’t know that it exists, and one does not search for something that they don’t suspect exists. I have said this before, but it bears repeating; at this stage of your development as a personality, you KNOW, but you don’t know you know. You are evolving toward a state where you KNOW and you will KNOW you know. There is a big difference In that respect, I do not so much teach you what I know, but remind you of knowledge possessed by your inner self, and help bring it to the surface of ego awareness. That is why you will occasionally find yourself saying “I knew that”. You did, you just didn’t know you did.

Now, spirituality comes from within and without, but until now you have tended to search for spirituality from the wisdom of others and I tell you that you know more about YOUR spiritual heritage than all religious and so called spiritual gurus that have ever lived. True spirituality is the knowing that in the midst of countless universes, systems, planes, dimensions, semi gods and God itself, that you are unique within this abundance and you are indeed at the center of your universe, no matter what anyone tells you. You have not one iota of sin about you, you were not born in sin and you are not living in sin, and regardless of what you do on this journey, you cannot fall into sin since sin as you understand it does not exist. You are special in all of the universe and there is not one other like you. You are an eternal identity/personality. It makes no difference if you walk softly, act humble, speak quietly and lower your eyes in submission or even spend hour after hour repeating esoteric spiritual phrases until you reach a trance state, numbing the intellect beyond recognition.

You chose this life and any behavior that limits your living of life on ALL of its terms will inhibit your spiritual progress since real progress comes from the true life experienced, not from some watered down version of fluffy, erethral experience, but by jumping into your life feet first and learning from your mistakes. You chose a life to learn and that usually comes from dealing with difficult challenges, but no challenge was ever accepted by you that could ultimately defeat you. The answers to all of your life challenges are available within you, otherwise you would not have chosen them in the first place. That being said, it is always more advantageous to the personality to initiate good works rather than bad, but remembering that good and bad are relative judgement calls, and what you consider good, others may consider bad. Always treat others as you would treat yourself, and more importantly, always treat yourself as you would treat others.

The road to true spirituality will never be found looking only outside or only inside, but will spontaneously emerge when you least expect it. You will find it in the morning mist at the seashore. You will find true spirituality in the chill of a first wind driven snow or the sight of a litter of kittens being born. You will find a hint of your emerging spirituality the first time you refuse to kill a bug, a fish, a squirrel, or a human. Many of you have already reached that point many years ago and were ridiculed and prosecuted when they refused to go to war and kill. You are all not at the same level of spiritual development and the reason for that is almost too simple to mention, but I will anyway.

You did not all enter this (Earth) system of physical experience at the same time, nor have you all experienced the same number of lives. Haven’t you ever wondered why some of your contemporaries seem so advanced and others are still living in darkness? In other words, some of you had a head start and because of that, after this life, will leave t his system for other more advanced worlds before the others. I am not sure exactly how to say this nicely, but if you are ignorant in this life, it does not hold that you will automatically be wise in the next, that upon death, you will become all knowing, but you will work through the difficulties and you will learn given enough time and you have all the time that you need.

No one evolves backward although there are some temporary retractions of intellectual prowess from life to life that would make it seem so. Finally, those who try the hardest to be spiritual and holy will usually be the last to find true spirituality, but you will never be able to convince them of this truth, nor should you.

True spirituality realizes the sanctity of ALL LIFE, and although you find it necessary at this time to kill to eat, you will evolve beyond that need. Until then, it is simply the way you chose to evolve your reality system and that need was intended to be temporary. True spirituality understands your connection with every other living thing and respects the right of all life to live a fruitful and value fulfilled existence. Spirituality recognizes their oneness with nature and the environment. True spirituality can be, but usually will never be found in a church or on your knees. True spirituality will be shouted from the mountaintop and whispered alike in the silence of night, and no personality that says “Look at me, I am spiritual” will be spiritual. Spirituality is not something you acquire, it is something you are, it is woven within the chromosomes of your very essence and it cannot be switched on and off. Finally, spirituality is part of every fibre of your self, and all you have to do is to live your life to the fullest, harming no other thing and allowing all other consciousness the same right to life.

A spiritual person follows his own path, allowing full flow of his emotions; to restrain emotions only causes blockages of the free and unimpeded flow of creative energy. Emotions and feelings, even though they may seem aggressive or belligerent are valid feelings and to repress them is limiting of the real nature of the spirit. Spirituality is approached when the individual personality honors his own feelings and emotions and recognized them as a necessary and valid part of his identity. One who never gets mad will never experience true joy. Spirituality is enjoying the joy inherent in life itself, moving with the flow of life easily and understanding your natural state of grace.

Life is easy if you are doing it right. Sure, there will be problems and difficulties that you will seem to accidentally encounter, not understanding that you yourself has created them for your own benefit. You may think that as you evolve and grow and live in worlds and realities beyond anything you can now imagine, that life will be problem free, but you will always have problems to solve and challenges to meet. Reality exists only because of the delicate imbalances that challenges create.

If you were perfectly poised walking on a tightrope, never faltering, securely fixated and balanced, you would achieve something approaching a trance like state. It is only when you begin to fall, that you wake up, come to life, attempt to regain your balance, fight to once again achieve that sought after state of balance. This instability, this state of imbalance and the attempt to regain balance is what initiates within action the original creation of “IDENTITY” and REALITY itself. These challenges will never end if life is to continue in any system.

What I am trying to say here is “live your life on life’s terms, joyfully accept life’s challenges and you will rise above them and you will benefit from the endeavor. Isolate yourself in a cocoon of repetitive dogma and your will only deter your real psychological growth. Life is meant to live, not to isolate yourself and protect by erecting walls of concrete or words. If you believe that you only have one life to live, then all of this may seem quite tragic to you. You do not have to follow the wisdom of a Dao, Tao or Mao to find true enlightenment, since true enlightenment comes from and through all personalities, you just have to recognize it when you perceive it. To that end, here are a few words that I find truly insightful and from the most unlikely sources.

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can. (Will Rogers)
When you come to a fork in the road, take it. (Yogi Berra)
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars. (Garrison Keillor - Prairie Home Companion)
Eighty percent of success is showing up. (Woody Allen)
A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words? (W. Somerset Maugham)

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another beautiful post... I wanted to know your thoughts about -

Prayer.

Meditating on

or

Chanting 'God' or 'All that is' or 'the divine source's' name. Or simply being aware of 'Him', and remembering.

What is the importance of these?

Much Thanks!

W. Allan said...

You should try and remember that God or whatever you choose to call Him, is not anything like the friendly, courtly old man with the white flowing beard, motivated by vanity or human traits. God is an energy essence presence that simply IS. From this Prime Source all realities are born and all identities known. God does not answer your prayers, you do. All That Is has given you everything you need to solve your own problems. Chanting, Meditating and Prayer can have beneficial effects because they are intense forms of concentrated thought and belief, but not because God will hear and answer your prayers.

Anonymous said...

Thank You, but could you please elaborate...?
' God does not answer your prayers, you do. '
Growing up praying every day to him, specially in the hour of need, this concept is a little difficult to grasp...
Thank You.

W. Allan said...

Hello,
May I ask you, how many of your prayers has God answered? How's it working for you?
Not to be cute, and prayer does work, but not the way you think. You create your reality through your beliefs, thoughts and actions. Since the intensity of the beliefs and thoughts govern the strength and intensity of your creations, creations being objects and events in your life, then prayer is a very valuable tool since it is the most potent form of intense concentration. It is GOOD, but no God on high, sits on a cloud waiting to grant or deny prayers. You must set your desires in motion through concentrating on what you want and if your thoughts are intense and lasting, and fall within certain possibilities, they will materialize. This automatic process takes some time to happen, so don't expect results overnight. And continue praying, just understand how it works.
William