Thursday, July 30, 2009

You have a choice, but not really

I discovered this insight first in Neal Walsh's Conversations with God: when your spiritual path starts in earnest there is no turning back. You can certainly delay the process, but you can't reverse it.

As you progress spiritually, your sensitivity rises and your interconnectedness with your environment becomes more obvious. As you can connect the impact of your actions with the resulting outcomes in your life quickly, you cannot help doing the things that are consistent with your spiritual path. Specifically, you find out when you harm yourself (even though it sometimes feels so right on the surface) and when you strengthen yourself (even though it sometimes feels like a bitter pill to swallow). The beauty is that you need no guru, holy book or cultural norms to get there. All you need is common sense and sensitivity about yourself and others.

The question I would have for others: could spiritual progress become exponential as we wander along our spiritual path? You would think that once you have taken the first hurdles of self-discovery and built a foundation for yourself, your awareness and connectivity becomes finer and deeper all the time. Keanu Reeves discovered in the Matrix that after removing a few bricks out of the fabric out of the universe, the entire system was at his disposal. Perhaps we could be in for a similar eye-opener.

1 comment:

sd said...

Hello, my purpose here is to continue a dialogue instead of agree with the inherently positive intent your blog has.

"You can delay the process but not ignore it"

Sure you can. Never say never. We hear and read about those who made it, who crossed over, who attained focus and balance and liberation to use your words. What of all those who try and try but don't get there. They represent the majority among those who do try. Should they stop trying? Obviously not, the path of their choosing is what will feel the most true to them, but it does not guarantee the success you discuss in your comment.

I am positively biased about the following comment you make:

"All you need is common sense and sensitivity about yourself and others."

Yet many are still trying to develop their common sense and to many sensitivity toward themselves and others might not mean much, yet, or possibly ever.

"Could spiritual progress become exponential?" yes.

Still I wonder about the "entire system being at our disposal" -- it seems to suggest an undercurrent of power over things, people etc. and that in itself is a tautological maze out of which few escape.

Even if we were to assume that this new and ever evolving power we achieve via spiritual growth is used toward doing good, what are we really talking about here? becoming a world leader? ending war and poverty and natural disasters? are we talking about being mindful of those around us on a daily basis with no dreams of making BIG good happen?
I bet you'd vote for both and perhaps be delighted if you could be doing good in small ways every day.

I have known many on a spiritual path who alienated themselves from their loved ones not on the same path (and perhaps could not be or never would be or did not want to be). How noble of a path is that?

My belief system with all its quirks tells me that any success I achieve on the back of someone else is really not a success and certainly not my success. I have learned one lesson that works for me. How's that for a balancing act that is hard if not impossible to reach?


Thank you for reading!