Awakening To Spirit

You have probably heard the phrase that states we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience. Have you thought about what this really means? Do you believe it? Have you given it any thought? Can you relate to this idea?

Most of us, when we begin our human lives, are born into families that practice a specific religion or follow some type of moral code. Many, if not most, of us tend to embrace the knowing that if we follow the rules and are good, we will be rewarded in some type of afterlife. These teachings create a structure for the adherents of the belief system - a structure for organizing one's way of life and providing a goal of reaching the ideal state where one can obtain the reward for being a dutiful follower. This is religion and is created to be tribal and protective and safe.

At some point, however, it appears to be built into our DNA to start questioning the rules. Part of our growing up as humans is to rebel so that we may differentiate from our families and tribes. Some of us will be frightened as we experience this process and rush back into the fold. Many eventually make the transition from being 'religious' to calling themselves 'spiritual'. How many people do you hear say - 'I am not religious, but I am spiritual'? Do you just accept this as somebody saying the do not want to follow the rules of a specific religion or do you question what they mean when they proclaim this?

Since I am one of those people that has been known to utter this statement on many occasions, I thought it would be appropriate to explain what this means to me. I do not adhere to the rules of any specific religion but I have a very close relationship with my higher power, whom I will refer to as God or Spirit. The names mean exactly the same to me. I know that a Spark of the Divine resides within me just as it resides in each and every human being. I choose not to pray to God or Spirit, but to merge with the essence of the I AM presence since I am aware that God is in everything. And from that place of merging with God, I know that I am more than the human being I appear to be - I am part of Spirit and part of all that exists. I know that I have walked this planet in other lifetimes in other human incarnations, but at my core, it is Spirit that is inhabiting this human body.

And just as I know this about myself, I know this is true for every other human being - regardless of where they are on the spectrum of belief. We are all here, inhabiting human bodies, following rules or not, learning lessons or not - it does not matter what we believe. It does not matter because we are all from Spirit. And as we come to know this about ourselves, we are then waking up into spirit. We come to know our soul, our path, and our purpose. We know how to stand in the flow of God's Loving and alllow God's Light to shine through our human selves. And at last, we can truly own the reality that we are truly spiritual beings having a human existence and there is no reason to 'try' to be more spiritual human beings.

Namaste!

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!

Getting Unstuck

I have been wondering lately how people get "stuck" in their lives. I used to be stuck in the sense that I hated my job but did not feel capable of finding another. A little over two years ago, I realized that I was keeping myself in a box. My box looked like this: I started in an entry level position, moved up because I was capable of doing much more than entry level work, found that the place I was working was not nurturing to me, stayed where I was because I did not believe I could do any better. I attributed this pattern to the fact that I never pursued or nurtured a career. I married while still in college, worked a short time until my oldest daughter was born, and stayed at home raising my three daughters until I was divorced at age forty. It was a convenient excuse!

My "awakening" about how I keep myself stuck coincided with my realization that the most important thing to me was my connection with God. I began to realize how the job I was hanging onto from a place of fear was not compatible with nurturing my connection with God. My job sucked the life out of me. It left me exhausted and from that place of exhaustion, I found it easy to allow God to slip into the background. As I was becoming more in touch with myself as a Spiritual Being, I found that I was unable to tolerate being in a space where I was not keeping God in the forefront of all I do.

Without going into a lot of details, let me say that I am no longer stuck. I have been able to create a life now where God comes first - I can meditate and feel connected to God as much as I want, I feel happy and sometimes even blissful, I feel free and completely alive. I have been able to manifest this simply by trusting that all I need is God. My spiritual teachers use the phrase, "God first and God only" and I am a believer. I found that from the place of God first - or nothing is more important in my life than my connection with God - everything else falls into place. This meant I had to trust that I would be supported by the Universe as I stepped out of my box into the unknown. That seemed like a lot to ask from a person who was brought up in the energy of fear but the call of God and the Love of God turned out to be far greater than the energy of fear.

It really is easy but I believe we tend to make it hard. We make it hard until we realize that the essence of our choice comes down to Love or Fear. When we choose to stand in Love we are choosing God. When we choose to remain in Fear, we are choosing to stay in our boxes. My words to all who feel stuck is to trust the Unvierse, choose Love and God and from this place, everything else will be as it should. Namaste!