So much about spirituality is focused on either going in or going somewhere else. Looking outside the self to a better place, working to release from the physical body with all of its needs and it’s missteps and mistakes and desires and whims so we can be in a perfected state and achieve bliss and enlightenment. To which, on the one hand I nod “yes,” and on the other I let out an exasperated sigh.
Whirled Peas
Not because the concepts are bad. They aren’t. I’m all about it. I too desire world peace or whirled peas, whichever comes first. However, the sigh and a bit of exasperation comes from all of this trying to leave and all this negative press the physical world gets. Yep, war and negativity, and struggle and taxes and poverty and hunger and discrimination and abuse and people who talk in the theater. However, the point of this place is not to lament that it isn’t perfect, but for us to learn from its imperfection and to strive to make it a better place in the face of its imperfections. To bring the world around us and ourselves into harmony and to strive to be our best in every moment. (Irony)
Understanding that this life is not all there is, that we spend the majority of our existence as souls in the Akashics where all is perfected, where everything is love and we experience that in all aspects of our being, where our notion of Heaven is actualized in each instant, there is no need to strive to leave this body to reconnect with that because we’ll automatically have it again once this life is done. And our time in this body, in this life, is amazingly brief (I know, everything is relative, it can feel like an eternity to children and those doing long form division or road construction while to our elders and those living the life they came here to live, it can seem to fly by) and we chose to come here. We were required to come, this isn’t a punishment, it’s an opportunity.
This is why I admire Jewish and Islamic spiritualities because they are focused on the here. Judaism teaches that each of us is one small sliver of the divine light. We come from God, are of God, and return to God in the end. In order to honor, support and nurture that light we are asked to do good works, to live right, to improve the world around us through our unique suchness each and every day. Both Judaism and Islam have their own perspectives on the practices used to support and guide us in our becoming, but both in their non-radicalized, non-fundamentalist forms, focus on making the world here a better place to live. Because it’s not about getting “there” that’s the goal, it’s about bringing the amazing, enlightened, full body knowingness here and living with the joy of it here in this world for as long as we’re in it.
Yes, meditate, reach out, and fill yourself with the eternal and sublime, but then come back to this world and bring a bit of that with you. We can use every little bit we can get. 🙂