The current challenge I find myself faced with is how to keep my Spiritual Integrity when faced with those who, in my opinion (or more likely, judgment) are allowing themselves to be run by circumstances outside themselves and beyond their control. There are people on my path who allow themselves to rail at the unfairness of the situation(s) they find themselves and seem to want somebody else to fix things for them. And I want to either cut them totally out of my life or shake them until they wake up and see that the answer is within. Why can't they see that? I certainly can!
So, as I am recovering from several months of chaos in my life, I am finally able to step back and take a look at my culpability in all this. First, I have allowed outside circumstances - a mother in hospice, a daughter's wedding, surgery, a houseguest, and the birth of a grandchild - keep me from going to my source. Not intentionally, of course. Not consciously. It just happened.
So, what does that mean? I think it means that I allowed circumstances outside myself pull me out into a much fuller engagement with duality than I feel comfortable. It means that what I see in others is the mirror of that which is going on within myself. I am judging the very thing in others that I am experiencing. Once again - Darn!
As a Spiritual Being having a Human Experience, I find myself faltering when it comes to Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness - the teachings of my spiritual teachers. Oh, no! Yes, I am human. Just as those people in my life who act as mirrors to me are human. Those that I have been judging really deserve my thanks. Thanks for showing me that every place I go, I bring the same me along. There is no place in the physical world where I can truly escape the human being that I am, but I can raise my consciousness and awareness and learn to be gentle with myself and others. I can learn to accept that my path is my path and not the path of those around me.
I have no business judging where on the continuum of Spiritual wakefulness anybody else might be - for, just as no two snowflakes are alike, no two Spiritual paths are alike. And, as I judge others trying to control the circumstances of their lives to obtain something other than they have, I realize that I must release that part of me that wants to control the circumstances of my life with which I am not particularly happy. The outer is merely a means to an end and no matter where I go or what I do physically in the world to try to change things, the true key is to go back inside where I belong, become still again, and know I am God.
Namaste!
