Yes, there is a spiritual part in all of this, but we’re here in a physical world. And there are certain aspects of moving through this world that we simply can’t afford to ignore.
I like to think of it as an electrical circuit; more specifically, as a circuit powered by a battery. If you connect both ends of the wire to one terminal on the battery, in this case the spiritual or the physical, the circuit doesn’t work; the energy doesn’t flow.
When you stand rooted in both worlds, and you connect one end of the wire to each of the terminals of the battery, then the energy can flow. The energy of the spiritual can enter the world through us and flow out into the world for the service of all.
It’s no lie that we’re living in difficult times right now. Regardless of what side of the political fence you fall on or where your own personal beliefs put you, it’s turbulent. And if you buy into the whole “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality that so much of the Mass Media seems to hold with these days, it’s hard – and it can be a little frightening. Especially if you’re empathic on any level or if you’re in the middle of your own recovery or healing work.
The last couple of weeks have been a real shit show for me. The healing work’s been hard. I’ve been dealing with a lot of old trauma – a lot of old fear, shame, guilt – coming up. Having grown up the way I did, that stuff runs pretty deep. And to be honest, I’ve been exhausted quite a bit.
In the midst of it though, I’ve been thinking a lot about this guy I used to work with, probably thirty years ago. He was one of those guys who was constantly at the gym, and he always had to talk about his progress. I started asking him about lifting one day. I was thinking about working out because I was a trainer and my job was pretty sedentary. I started asking him about what he was benching and so on, and he said to me, “Y’know, man, it doesn’t matter what I can lift. What matters is what you can lift.”
And I’ve hung onto that.
You take your wisdom where you can get it. And so much of that applies to that whole path of spiritual healing and spiritual recovery work.
It’s important to remember that if this work were easy, it would already be done…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about healing, about manifestation, and about clarity.
One of the things that my wife and I often talk about as being a highlight in our lives is the opportunity that we have to gather with our community once a month for ceremony.
We did that this past weekend. And as things usually go, I got out there about an hour before hand and took some time to walk the yard and pray a little bit, to meditate, and to get things ready. While I was out there, I was greeted by absolutely piercing sunlight, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. And with the pristine quality of the light and the openness of the sky, I knew that the intention for our ceremony would be clarity.
Those of us who’ve had a challenging upbringing because we were raised in emotionally turbulent households – maybe with alcoholism or some other form of dysfunctionality, often pray for sanity. But the truth of the matter is, we don’t really know what sanity is. We’ve never really had a good example of it; or perhaps the few examples we have had of it have been fleeting at best.
But we do know what clarity is. It occurs every once in a while. We get to see our wound. Get to see the motivations behind our triggers. Get some insight as to why we act the way we do…
Bonja the Bodger 