Spiritual Consciousness

The Mystery within...

Spiritual consciousness is not easy to define, achieve or maintain but I know I experienced an awakening to a Divine presence in my everyday life. Paradoxically, grief and struggle spawned comfort and affirmation, much of it coming in the natural world.  Feelings of desperation led me to look for and find answers in everyday experiences.  It was the hard work of accepting my pain and disillusionment, learning to be true to myself, and trusting good would come of it that made all of life more clear.  I came to know everything is a both and thing, and its all about forgiveness.

From "God Never Hurries":

"Silence is a both and thing.  It is golden when I curb my ego and silently accept another's shortcomings in the name of kindness.  It is a gift when it leads me to reflect on the messages in my life.  But silence also feeds abuse, and as Anne LaMont writes in Bird by Bird, '…we are only as sick as our secrets."

* * *

"I helped my mother bathe.  I felt my touch asking for her forgiveness.  I saw it in her eyes.  My heart wanted to stay.  My head said, 'Go'; my back said 'Hurry; my soul said 'Leave.'  Things were not meant to change then.  There is a line in Diane Ackerman's book "Deep Play", '…there are truths that can only be learned when you're dancing in chains.'

* * *

"Forgiveness benefits were many and were said to come from the head and the heart and resulted in emotional control.  It was said true forgiveness is not trivial for it transforms who we are.  Freedom and a more real view of life are its fruits.  Forgiveness is also giving up resentment and coming to view the perpetrator with compassion.  Who wouldn't want all that, I thought?"

* * *

"The week had unfolded with everything falling into place for a new infrastructure.  But the next evening when I pulled into my garage, my muscles were again tight.  My mother had been very lucid when I left and her words were clear.  She asked if she could come home with me and spoke of no family care.  But I left her there in the care of strangers and just let pain be pain."

* * *

"In God's valley a gentle shower of fine snow crystals fell from a high cedar bough.  When I lifted my maturing face to them, I felt a gentle blessing."

What if we all knew spiritual consciousness in everyday experiences?