Yanika
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I'm starting to think that some of our spirituality is a dead end

7/18/2014

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Shared my previous post, "Quantum Leaping to a Better Place," as a facebook status. Got several responses from friends which were supportive and understanding. One comment, however, really made me think. Noticed myself feel defensive at the first part of the statement, and then noticed myself flood with reactions to the second part of the statement. Here it is:

"What you see around you is nothing but the manifestation of yourself, and all there can be is love, fear only appears when you forget this."

I started typing up a storm. Then decided to just post a short comment:

I mostly agree, but if I were to look at our world and NOT feel fear regarding the death of children, or regarding the secretive motives driving injustice, I would be alarmed at such a manifestation of self. Without acknowledging fear's effects, I couldn't feel compassion. And without compassion, I'd be missing a very important building block towards love being all there can be.

But my essay-long rant stayed on my mind for the whole next day. I didn't want to be overbearing with it in facebook-land. But I decided I'd copy paste it here into my blog, so that I can express my reaction. Even if no one reads it, it's out in the ether, and it represents a new idea formulating in my mind. That all our best intentions at spiritual thinking are leading us astray and keeping the world all screwed up and out of balance. So, here it is: 

      I mostly agree, but if I were to look at our world and not feel fear regarding the death of children, or regarding the secretive motives driving injustice, I would be ashamed of such a self manifestation. It would be like choosing to accept one's own cancer cells and letting them multiply, rather than employing the energy of "fearing" them to motivate oneself to heal and allow the body to thrive. It would be taking away the molecular force of will to generate the process of re-aligning what's come out of balance. And appeasing oneself with a surface understanding of love, rather than the muddy chaotic void-space it would require to actually learn and grow. 
      The world is a living organism, sustained by a balance of growth and decay. I am not the only soul living here, so it doesn't quite all depend on what I forget or not. I remember and treasure love at all times. But it doesn't make me able to brush off bad news about other people's suffering. No amount of esoteric or spiritual logic can take away my human emotional response. Call it ego, or ignorance, or un-enlightenment, but I meant it when I asked, wouldn't our prayers have healed us by now if they worked? 
      I think something in our spiritual complacency is off balance and just continues to allow this shit to happen, as if we need this physical world to be hellish in order to get what we came for. If that's my inner self manifesting, then I have a lot of work to do, as does our world. I am not concerned with just my perception of it, but with how we can all better it together. 
      I believe it's time to step into a new model of thinking, rather than repeating what we've been taught and supposedly discovered for ourselves that 'all is love'… I haven't actually discovered this. Love has taught me that we wouldn't ever understand compassion if we didn't feel fear first. And without compassion, no amount of individualized love and even love for the rest of the world, while feeling holy, sacred, or uplifted by one's spiritual "practice," can positively contribute to the grid of spirit/energy within and surrounding us -  it will just suck from it and feed itself if, it doesn't acknowledge that not everyone is able to uplift themselves in such ways. When the "self" is satisfied, let it take on the work of healing the rest of the cells of the organism, otherwise, what is the point? To begin another incarnation in the same "illusion" and attempt yet again to perfect oneself? To break out of the "cycle" and just float in love forever? Sounds boring and compassion-less, and like a very old myth about what actually "happens." The whole beautiful mystery is that we DON'T know, and the more that we pretend we DO, the more tangled up we make everything. 

      Our seeming progress makes us forget that we don't really know anything. Our experience-based discoveries feel like "direct knowledge," but those are actually influenced by this very world of which we are a part. I think it is the beauty of this world which seeps into our hearts and makes us think we're experiencing something divine. It is divine! And we are just confused! 
      Something is missing and I don't think we'll discover it if we just stay in the groove of all-is-love. What does any personal enlightenment matter if we don't leave the world a better place than we found it? It's not just about the self. There are many billions of us here, and not everyone has the luxury of pure-love-manifestation;  it's often not even one's own fault if that's the case. We just call them "them" and don't feel, compassionately, that "they" actually are our very "self," and thus with all "their" pain, we each carry it within us. Just as they have our love within them. All I was asking is if that love of ours could be even stronger, so that the strong pain that we all carry could be balanced. Even if you've released all pain, and carry none, I still think we each carry some sort of distributed amount of it. Just as each beating heart is emitting the electromagnetic frequencies of the force you call "love." It's almost one and the same. 
I think we need to open our hearts and minds to greater possibilities of how to see love all around us. I will not repeat a mantra that "all there can is be love" when I see that hatred, greed and corruption are clearly something that can also "be." Just closing my eyes to it is not going to make it magically go away. 
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    "Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us, can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that after all is what it's really all about."
    - Terence McKenna


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