Spiritual awakening isn’t a one time event, and enlightenment isn’t about getting rid of the self.
I sought for so many years to have what I thought would occur as an inner seismic event in which I would be struck enlightened and consequently freed of all of the uncomfortable parts of me. It was I guess the adult version of my childhood prayers in which I would get on my knees, squeeze my eyes painfully shut, and then beg for some unwanted condition to magically disappear. More often than not, those unwanted conditions were rejected parts of my personality self. The more I prayed the more virulent those unwanted states of being became. I would end up with tired eyes, sore knees, and an amped up version of what I didn’t want. In retrospect I think I had a notion of a Holy Spirit much like Glinda the Good. I wanted some Divine Force to touch me with a golden wand and turn me into the sanitized self I so longed to be. I was sure that in a twinkling of an eye I would be turned into a glowing avatar that could float through this life with nary a negative thought or human frailty.
Spiritual awakening isn’t a one time event, and enlightenment isn’t about getting rid of the self.
It is now liberating for me to report that as soon as I stopped waiting for Glinda to appear or for a one time seismic event to turn me into something I unconsciously feared I was not life began to open up and awakened moments became more the norm than an exception. There is great freedom in realizing that enlightenment isn’t about a cleaned up personality or a neutralized emotional life. It isn’t about a magical wand or a genie in a bottle granting insolvency from unwanted character defects. It isn’t about being struck Godly. If enlightenment involves time at all it is about a lightened up relationship to the content of the present moment. It is seeing clearly the loveless parts of the personality self and bringing a loving acceptance to those places in need. It is a clear and felt sense realization that it is only the ego self that seeks to be rid of the ego self. The Inner Presence within us all doesn’t seek to be rid of anything. It watches compassionately the struggle and the aversion, the pleading on the bended knee. It knows and knows that it knows that awakening is only as good as the moment It is in. Awakening happens by inclusion, and enlightenment by witnessing simply what is without commentary or interpretation. Looking to the example of someone else’s supposed instant transformation and comparing ourselves to that tale does nothing but create stress and added self-rejection. Self opinion is a slippery slope of willfulness and perceptual misalignment. We do not and cannot know enough in our current state of consciousness
to reject any part of ourselves. We are not privy at the personality level to know what good these unwanted aspects bring to the emergence of the whole. Remaining awake to that fact alone goes a long way to a life of humility and serenity.
Spiritual awakening isn’t a one time event, and enlightenment isn’t about getting rid of the self.
If I find that I have slipped back into the “God fix me once and for all” kind of mentality I gratefully bring myself back into the awareness that what I have fallen into is enough to deliver me back to where my reality truly is: here and now, just as I am. When I am spiritually awake I bring lightness to the present moment. I am not absorbed in what I perceive is in need of fixing. I am alive in the witnessing of life as it is unfolding, and I am faithful that things are just as they are meant to be in this moment. There is nothing to be rid of and in that spaciousness there is peace. In the schemata of sacred emergence it is all good. When I am awake it is all good. When I am accepting myself just as I am it is all good. Gee, maybe Glinda visited me after all.
www.taylorestevens.com
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
NEW WITHIN THE NOW
Maybe it was all of the potent energy and subsequent dynamics surrounding 2012’s prophesies and cosmic rebirthing, of which I was an active and highly engaged participant. For whatever reason, 2013 is certainly not starting out as an “out of the gate” kind of year for me. I felt no compelling drive to ritualize the changing of the calendar, and still feel no strong desire to set specific intentions for the year that is already unfolding before me. It at once feels strange and also liberating. I have for so many years used the beginning of a new year as a time to carefully evaluate where I am in my life and most specifically my sacred emergence, and then to prayerfully allow inspired intentions to come to me and to then inform my actions and decisions for the ensuing months. I don’t recall a December 31st prior to this one that I did not participate in and usually lead a Burning Bowl ceremony. It quite honestly would have felt forced or at best mindless to do so coming into 2013. I have finally and fully embraced the reality that just because something has been meaningful in the past does not mean that I need to continue to engage in it within this present.
I am finding that though much of my life has been about acquiring new awareness’s, knowledge, practices, and skills, I am now at the juncture where I am letting go of more and more that at this point feels only extraneous. I crave quietude and simplicity. I want less of what weighs me down and tends to wear me out. I tire easily of head games and too much information. If it is complicated I will take a pass. Old rituals and practices that once felt nourishing now feel only distracting. No new concepts, please. Let’s just open to the direct experience of what cannot be conceptualized, described, or even ritualized. I am allowing breathing to be my primary sacrament and Presence to be my primary goal. Simple. Now. Intimate. Here. That is my intention. That is my resolution.
I have climbed enough mountains, set enough goals, and thrown enough aspects of myself into the New Year’s fire. I sought until this seeker is quite simply “seeked-out.” If there is something left to achieve in this lifetime it will happen as an organic out picturing of Who I am choosing to be and not as a result of what I am trying to do. There is certainly a place for intention and for action. For me it originates naturally from the authenticity that underlies all the mental plans and schemes. Guidance is in the breath. It is in the heartbeat. It is in the moment that is fully felt and embraced. So if I am not off and running into this year of 2013 it is because there is a deeper knowing within me that the slower pace is the way to flow for now. If there is something else to be known or something to be done it will arise easily within the heightened awareness that comes from open internal space. The only way to be new is to be fully available to the now. And that is what feels most important for the beginning days and weeks of this new calendar year.
To be fully new, available, and open within the now.
www.taylorestevens.com
I am finding that though much of my life has been about acquiring new awareness’s, knowledge, practices, and skills, I am now at the juncture where I am letting go of more and more that at this point feels only extraneous. I crave quietude and simplicity. I want less of what weighs me down and tends to wear me out. I tire easily of head games and too much information. If it is complicated I will take a pass. Old rituals and practices that once felt nourishing now feel only distracting. No new concepts, please. Let’s just open to the direct experience of what cannot be conceptualized, described, or even ritualized. I am allowing breathing to be my primary sacrament and Presence to be my primary goal. Simple. Now. Intimate. Here. That is my intention. That is my resolution.
I have climbed enough mountains, set enough goals, and thrown enough aspects of myself into the New Year’s fire. I sought until this seeker is quite simply “seeked-out.” If there is something left to achieve in this lifetime it will happen as an organic out picturing of Who I am choosing to be and not as a result of what I am trying to do. There is certainly a place for intention and for action. For me it originates naturally from the authenticity that underlies all the mental plans and schemes. Guidance is in the breath. It is in the heartbeat. It is in the moment that is fully felt and embraced. So if I am not off and running into this year of 2013 it is because there is a deeper knowing within me that the slower pace is the way to flow for now. If there is something else to be known or something to be done it will arise easily within the heightened awareness that comes from open internal space. The only way to be new is to be fully available to the now. And that is what feels most important for the beginning days and weeks of this new calendar year.
To be fully new, available, and open within the now.
www.taylorestevens.com
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