Why talk about this?
Through chronic illness for many years, which was really fear-based constant trauma, I found I could connect incredibly easily to a spiritual universal force. I looked for solace away from the complexities of my human psychological and emotional experience. Sometimes we go straight to the spiritual meaning or interpretation in those upper echelons of experience before we've really worked into the meaning of something. For some of us it's easier to transcend pain than confront it, but in many ways this makes us humanly unsteady, censoring (or worse, burying) the power and energy of our emotions.
If this is your natural tendency, then a going downwards in order to fall upwards may be for you. Our ability to climb down the spiritual ladder gives us the renewed energy to go up. It's collecting back our humanity with deep acceptance, sharing what we have learned about hurt, pain and meaning. It's at that point when we have collected all of ourselves that we can let the universe take over. You've accepted that there is this part which isn't truly you or yours but still it needs a kind of wholly seeing. A non-judging look at oneself, a compassion. If instead we always navigate first to what is most inspiring, elevating or comforting, we will never discover our deepest desires, which are covered by the clouds of our emotional weather system. It seems counter-intuitive to dive into the things that are most unattractive to us, but that that is exactly where we need to go for greatest meaning.
The world inside is no different from the world outside. Denied anger will always attract people or situations that ask for it to be healed. Many years ago as an environmental and community activist I was often on the sharp end of that anger in the world of protest and personal relationships. I was in great denial that changing the world had anything to do with seeing myself, so I lived in idealism not dissimilar to spiritual idealism. To not go to that place of the heart is to not go to the world of humanity. We can be dutiful, responsible and caring to others as an ideal or vision, but not be moved by the deeper presence which is unopened in the soul life. Basically we end up moving from the spiritual ego.
This is what happened to me and, while I felt like hell, I was able to bypass and go straight for the great escape. This is often associated with trauma and a feeling that it seems better upstairs, anywhere in fact but here. I was missing the fact that love was manifest in this fragile body, and this fragile earth. I say fragile but could also call it vulnerable. Somehow collectively to acknowledge that no matter how I strengthen my body, form my life, escape insecurities, control and manage people and relationships from the level of the ego, I can't run away from the fact that my small but magnificent body is vulnerable to change, to outside agents, to sensation, feeling, transition, to losing a job, a relationship, a home, and to its experience of dying. To accept this vulnerability is to ground into the body, which means our growth will be integrated in our actual lives. It seems a hazardous journey for some, but when have human beings ever grown without some discomfort and without stepping beyond the zone of likes and dislikes?
So what is the way to address the gap between the bodily self and the spiritual knowledge that disassociation brings? For me I needed to go into the realms of the heart. An ex-boyfriend of mine many years ago told me quite bluntly that 'I didn't know how to love' and he was right to see that in a woman who as a child had been deeply traumatised. So I set about addressing that issue for myself, realising the model for that love I was looking for was in the heart. Love enthroned in the heart has a power far greater than the emotions. It can take us where we literally fear to tread.
I'm so interested that we use the medical terminology of 'heart bypass' to restore blood flow to the heart and somehow it encapsulates the need to restore connection to the heart and its primary function as the organ of greatest spiritual intelligence. The heart contains more nerve connections than the human brain, and is a complex self-organised system in continuous communication with the brain. Our question is, can we connect with this soul-aid that is transmitting its gentle whispers and wisdom to us all the time.
Presently in this culture the answer is no. It's like we've put cotton-buds in our ears to block its divine intelligence and its unique ability to transform our seemingly desperate human condition. The heart is a like a conch to hear with and a power to be reckoned with. It can ultimately transform our pain and give us the unconquerable ability to dive into our humanity and then recognise it in others. To bypass this basic humanity for spirituality has far reaching consequences for ourselves and the world. Unconscious anger and pain becomes coldness or aggression as we search for higher meaning but fail to see or hear the meaning in our raw relationships to each other and to the earth.
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