After being a full-time spiritual teacher/facilitator for almost 3 decades, I want to say this.
Success feels great but you will learn much more from ‘failure’
Strength is great, but you will evolve FAR more through vulnerability
Expansion is wonderful, but in your contractions you gain far more self-awareness
Right-eousness gives comfort, but it is uncertainty that allows humility and open mindedness
Positivity is cool but it may also put a bandaid over inner pain that needs to be addressed
Knowing ‘thyself’ is key, but knowing that which the ‘self’ is birthed from is fundamental
‘Spirituality’ as a field often only champions the ‘light’ side (success, expansion, positivity) over the ‘dark’ (failure, vulnerability, inner pain). However there are not ‘sides’ but one Wholality. Opposite ends of the same ONE continuum.
If you wish to evolve, expand, ‘be’ or gain more awareness then why does mainstream spirituality vilify, ignore, by-pass, or even be judgmental (‘you don’t get it’) about the seeming ‘dark’ polarity? Especially as this polarity embraced, ignites an explosion of evolution.
Both sides are opposite sides of the same one continuum. There is no ‘happy’ without its sister of sadness. There is no ‘clarity’ without its brother of ‘confusion.’ There is no ‘day’ without its night. Not ‘one and the other’ but as my wife Jules says ‘one BECAUSE of the other.’
Authentic spirituality is not about ‘transcending’ the human experience, or being perfect (light). It’s about ‘embracing’ the WHOLE human experience (light and dark as one) and simply being perfect in all our seeming imperfections.
This ‘whole’ unconditional experience finally allows us to simply be human without the self-judgment of ‘getting’ or ‘being’ or transcending’ and in our divine humanness, the heart opens, we accept ALL of us, and finally there is space for the divine to flow through and create miricales in this world.
It is ok to be human. Ok to ‘fail.’ Ok, to struggle. Ok to have inner hurts. Ok to feel lost. It is not just ‘ok,’ it is absolutely necessary and natural. In this wholality we live a more unconditional life, and the universe sings a song of its own totality.
