Recently, I’ve wanted to deepen my spiritual connection. How
did I arrive at this awareness, for it is certainly abstract? It began as a
small unsettling, a subtle disquiet. It surfaced into consciousness as a tiny
niggling thought, as a yearning for something more – even more than the general
happiness and satisfaction I have in my life.
Where did it come from? I don’t know. What do I do with it? I’m
not sure I know that either. It’s easy to dismiss it and I’ve done that many a time
but this time the draw to deepen is persistent; it keeps coming to mind, and the
opportunities for clarification are springing up all over.
Amma – the hugging saint – comes to town and I absorb her
loving presence; I have dinner with a soul girlfriend and spend a day on Whidbey
with another soul girlfriend. With these
remarkable women, I have the opportunity to open up about the niggling inside.
I get to articulate the abstract, the ephemeral, the cloud of unknowing. And
then in my regular spiritual direction session, I flush out the abstract even
more and I come up with a plan: to read inspiring material, to slow down, to
start the day with intention, to meditate more often. It’s a re-commitment to
what I already know.
I want a deepening. I want that abstract something to become
tangible – I want to feel it, see it, hear it, taste and smell it.
And what if I don’t get it? What if I don’t get there? The
exercise to try to obtain it is a worthwhile endeavor. My search for spiritual connection – that
which binds us all – people, animals, plants, earth, universe – is a lifelong
odyssey: hard to get my arms around but when I experience it in fleeting
glimpses, it’s as real – even more real – than my mundane happy everyday.
No comments:
Post a Comment