When we observe our thoughts, feelings and actions it becomes clear that programs are running us. We spiritual folks aspire to return to the divine God Connection of the olden days when everything we experience is of God and mind that there is this human filter—our ego—that keeps us from experiencing this Flow. We realize—sometimes, not always—that we are greedy, horny, envious, angry, etc., and we want to be different. A big step towards untying the Gordian Knot is simply by acknowledging these cravings in us without fighting them. We become one with the emotions running through us and become aware of an alternative way of living. We discover that love is the Way!
Let’s go through the seven sins one by one and see how a spiritual break-through might occur allowing us to drop them by the Way-side. Starting with pride, it is essentially a way to separate ourselves from others. We may be proud of our upbringing or our accomplishments but besides loving and being proud of what we do, we also implicitly look down on the others. It feels good to be a cut above the rest. The insight that can help us advance spiritually is the vision that we are One and that everyone is on the same level coming from very different angles of life. Pride is not that hard to spot, the challenge could be if our quest for enlightenment becomes a strive to remain special.
Greed is a mind driven affliction. ‘More is better’, is the battlecry of the mind. The more for us is certainly appreciated while it is a bit harder to admit that we may also enjoy when we have noticeably more than others. Greed comes with an underlying thirst that can never be quenched. Sometimes it is the simple realization that the barrel we want to fill is without a bottom when we get off this treadmill. Often though, the change occurs when we realize that the battle to get ever more is getting hard to accomplish. It is life that sends us the necessary feedback mechanism. When the going to get more gets tougher we eventually realize that the battle for more is no longer worth the price.
Lust is a mind-driven affliction that uses the enjoyable feeling of sex to justify its means. Pornography is essentially a greed of the eyes. Greed comes in all shapes and forms and the sexual hunger of the body is an easy biological instinct to abuse. Some accumulate bodies as trophies until they realize how much emotional damage they inflict on others and themselves. For others the sexual instinct leads to a craving of ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’, swapping partners until they finally realize that nothing ever changes. A beautiful Soul wants to be discovered and loved and unless we put in the hard work on this partnership we will never leave the treadmill.
Envy is another form of greed where we look at the accomplishments of others without appreciating appropriately what we bring to the table. The insight here is to focus on our own path and our own accomplishment. Envy is a mix of greed and inability to love ourselves enough and that’s why the grass is always greener on the other side. Like with greed the insight really is that we can do better by focusing on ourselves and more positive emotions will eventually come along. Spiritual folks may suppress this instinct because it is simply to ugly to admit. Instead we may project our anger into those who have more money, more fame, more sex and find a spiritual excuse why to do so.
Gluttony is for food what lust is for sex. We experiencing an inner void and want to fill it by stuffing our face. Alas, our belly grows in proportion to the inner void. The fascinating thing about the seven sins is that all of them are just different expressions of the same inner void. Just discovering this insight can become a transformative event to tackle the void. We stop smoking only to find that we eat more. We try to stop watching porn only to find that we fill the inner craving with alcohol instead. It is a merry-go-around that only stops on the day when we face our inner void and find a constructive outlet in order to heal it.
Wrath is taking the inner void and pain body and projecting it to the outside. Many people suffer from anger management problems and that’s perhaps the area where we spiritual travelers can advance the most. Somehow we get it that everyone is simply our mirror so once someone triggers us we start asking why we are so hurt and what we can do about it. The most challenging problem comes when we start a war of good and evil in defense of spirituality, in areas such as the environment, politics, fighting for equality or diversity, etc., not realizing that we effectively run away from ourselves and that the battle will never stop unless we tackle our inner void.
Sloth is a tricky issue in our spiritual community. Many spiritual travelers are empaths and cannot function in traditional competitive environments and mistake their struggles for lost motivation instead. We also have the uncanny ability to live in the Now, something that our society frowns upon, so they call us drifters and daydreamers, not realizing that our mode of operation is the Way though it seems unproductive to them. Awakening also comes with a degree of apathy. We have managed to let go of many unwanted drives but we are also not yet quite ready to pick up the baton to move ahead with our spiritual mission. Let’s just accept that there is a little Soul searching involved to make it to the next spiritual level and if some call us lazy in this phase, so be it!
We are on a pre-programmed course into freedom so we might as well relax a little and let life see it through. It is ok to grapple with certain aspects of the seven sins, it is not good to beat ourselves up over them. Even if we know better, feelings are a bit slow to come along for the ride. We advance with the help of spiritual insights as well as by dealing with our feelings, cravings and existing pain body every day. Love heals our inner void, and love’s messengers are nearby wherever we are and are encouraging us to let go of the weight of the past. The spiritual break-through can happen every moment. Find the Way to leave the sins of the past behind.
Most of us spiritual travelers still have a homework to complete, a final cut of the cord that keeps the ballon from flying into the stratosphere. No worries, it will come to you in time, the final piece of the puzzle that fills our void and makes us finally whole. Maybe half of the battle is won if we stop beating ourselves up over not being perfect and accept instead that there is still a little more compassion towards ourselves, a bit more self-love needed until the undigested emotions have washed themselves out of our system. Writes Jack Kornfield, ‘Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting’.
A spiritual path is a journey towards love. We can reach the spiritual break-through when the greed for a thing or a status is replaced by our love for working towards it; when lust is replaced with the desire to express our physical love towards our partner; when envy is replaced with our admiration for the other path our friend takes; when the love for filling our belly becomes an appreciation for the food and a desire to share it; when wrath turns into the assertiveness to achieve a situation that works for everyone. It is a process to get to that stage and that’s what spirituality is all about. We discover self-love and self-appreciation and fall in love with people, events and activities.
Love fills the inner void—love is the Way!
1 comment:
Amen, bro:
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