Spiritual Awakening: So what?

We hear a lot these days about people “waking up”.  Waking up to their spirituality…to their potential…to the idea that what we see around us is not all there is to the universe.

Often, this change in outlook is born of extreme pain.  We’ve tried everything we know of to get our lives on track…like therapy, learning new skills, getting college degrees.  So finally we turn to “spiritual” pursuits in this quest for peace.

Some of us, after checking out all of the various (and seemingly endless) spiritual practices and theories, pick one and go with it.  We simply decide to believe – because someone we admire believes it, or because so many people believe it that it has to be right.  In that case we’ve simply circled back to where many of us started out: we create a “religion” for ourselves and stick to it just because that’s what we’ve decided to do.  The ideas we live by and the beliefs we hold come from someone else.  It’s easy because we don’t need to put anything to the test.  Just believe.  No effort required.

But others of us choose a different path.  We also take a look at the beliefs we’re presented with in all the sundry systems…but with a critical eye.  We respect others’ beliefs; but for our own purposes, we require some kind of validation.  That’s not to say “proof”, necessarily.  There are people whose religion is skepticism – in their case, there will never be enough proof.  There are exceptions to every rule that we can try to apply in our limited human experience, and the skeptically-inclined will always seize on every exception they can find as proof that a concept isn’t valid.  They are as shortsighted as self-described “atheists” (who are simply the flip-side of religious “evangelists”) who are sure they have the ultimate answers.  Ironically, the fact that such skeptics are constantly looking to de-bunk whatever spiritual or paranormal concept they lay eyes on is absolute proof that, at least subconsciously, they desperately want answers.  They want someone to “prove” to them that there is “God”, that they won’t simply evaporate when they die, that there is purpose and meaning to life.  These are often some very sad people.

But what I like to call the “open-minded skeptic” is willing to listen…and is not only intelligent enough to see the subtleties in spiritual concepts, but to recognize when there is acceptable evidence of them in physical reality.  In other words: they can’t see the wind, but when the grass moves, they deduce that there is air, and it is moving the grass.  The unseen is just that…but through the very real effect it has on what we can see, we can know it’s there.  And so we go along, collecting evidence piece by piece until we have the confidence to be able to say, “yes, I believe“.

OK.  That’s great.  We’ve “awakened”.  We can now find comfort in our new outlook…that maybe death isn’t the end of us, that there are forces for good in the universe, that we humans are really all one thing and one with the rest of creation.  Wonderful.  But so what?

We still live alone.  We still can’t quite afford the rent.  We still long to feel powerful and in control, to do big things, to be successful.  We see people happily living what look like perfect lives, and we wonder why that’s not us.

So, having “awakened”, we take solace in the spiritual.  We meditate, and tell ourselves that will make things better.  And it does sometimes bring some peace…and sometimes it just gives us something to tell people we do, and claim it helps.  We visualize, recite mantras and affirmations, slap a happy-face sticker on our lives and pretend that things are just hunky-dory.  But we still live alone…can’t afford the rent…

So maybe we seek help from a psychic.  We have a Tarot reading, have our tea leaves read, visit a fortune-teller, ask a medium what our dead mommy wants us to know.  And sometimes we get some decent information; maybe we will meet that tall, dark stranger in six months.  Perhaps a part of our mother is still with us.  That kind of information can naturally be very comforting.  But again: so what?  Still by ourselves; still got to pay that rent, still working that soul-crushing job spending our days in the midst of a gaggle of colossal a-holes, our evenings basking in the glow of American Idol with no one else there to talk to.  But we’re happy, because we’re spiritual people and we know God loves us.  Right?

I don’t think so.  I think it would be a lot easier to believe in nothing; to simply be the best person we can,  do no harm so we can look ourselves in the mirror without shame.  Why in the world would we bother to go to all the trouble of “seeking” spirituality when we could simply do our best and accept whatever comes along?  Either way, we’re going to end up wherever we will, be that heaven, hell…or total oblivion.  Why bother?  All of that seeking brought us “information”.  But knowing something does not mean that we know what to do with it.  If I knew the names of all the angels in the 8th dimension, it’s not going to make a damn bit of difference when I go out on a Saturday night and spend the evening sitting alone in a corner nursing a beer.

On the other hand: we don’t need to be satisfied with simply having “information”.  All the messages from angels and spirit guides, all the psychic readings aren’t worth a hill of  beans unless they somehow allow us to begin to heal and make real changes in our lives.  Yes, there is a phase of “awakening” that we need to pass through where we’re gathering data and validation for what will eventually become a solid belief system.  But once we’re satisfied that what we’re learning is “real”, we need to then progress to the phase where we actually begin to use that information to improve our physical lives.  We’re here to learn, and we’re also here to live the best life we possibly can.  And that includes whatever good thing we can conceive: a happy relationship, the money to do things that make us happy, a vocation that gives us satisfaction and expresses what we are at the deepest level.

If you’ve done the psychic/Tarot/medium/fortuneteller thing and gotten enough validation…good on you.  But now it’s time to get some healing done and put that information into action.  There’s a very simple reason that some “psychics” will tell you that you shouldn’t pay to have negative energies cleared: it’s because they don’t know how to do it.  Yes, at the most basic level only you can clear yourself.  But, like a doctor who uses the ultrasound to diagnose an illness, an intuitive healer can not only give you very specific  information about the roots of your troubles but also show you the means to do the clearing and healing.

Time for your next phase – time to grow up and finally take real action.  You already know there’s something holding you back.  Time to not only find out exactly what it is, but to have it expunged as though it never existed.  Time to clear the runway and finally take off and fly.