The Spirituality of Fear

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!

Spark of the Divine

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!