Sacred Shit: Just Another Name for Compost

After 9/11, it seems that many spiritual leaders issued a statement that re-affirmed the foundational principle of The Course in Miracles that there are only two responses to life:  love and fear.  They believe that you can't hold both states of mind simultaneously and suggested that 9/11 was a failure of love.  Other spiritual and psychological writers critiqued this point of view and I find myself agreeing with that critique.

It sounds so good and clean and simple to say:  Choose love or fear, people!  I don't think such either/or approaches really fit the human condition.  As my last posting indicated, I think evolving humans move away from black/white, either/or, love/fear thinking and move towards some middle ground.  Our task is to be vessels containing both the sacred and the shitty.  This holding of both or multiple impulses at the same time results in unimaginable unfoldings.  Compost fuels roses and weeds, aloe and poison ivy.  We might WISH that our human condition produced only roses and other "good" things, but it doesn't.

It produces fucked up humans as well as enlightened ones.  The grace of it all is in knowing that the enlightened ones are no greater than the fucked up ones in the eyes of the universe or the God.  Love, in other words, is not more valuable than fear.  Each is needed and each needs the other.

This topic is really personal for me.  I have faced so much fear in my life and haven't always had great amounts of love.  This is true for many of us.  In fact, it's a rare person who in the dark of night would say that they have more than enough love. The human condition is pretty dysfunctional.  It is full of corruption, wars, despicable acts by one human towards another, exploitation of the weak for the good of the strong.  But, hey, this is what we have, our sacred shit.

The miraculous thing is how LITTLE love it takes to leaven all the fearful, painful ingredients of life.  That one teacher who recognized your value!  That one man who saw the good in you!  That grandmother or aunt or music teacher or coach.  Those few who knew you as worthy and beautiful and strong--those few turn flour into bread, arid soil into fertile land.

With this awareness in hand, we can KNOW that our own tiniest gift to another is valuable.  Our smile, our helping hand, our NOTICING of another are things we ALL can bring to life.  In this way, we are miracles.  We are grace.    Namaste, Roxie

P.S.  One way that I can notice and give to others is by listening and sharing intuitive responses.  Please email me at anneclarice1@gmail.com for a complimentary coaching session.  

Meet in the Middle

There's a line from a country song that goes something like this:  "You come from your way; I'll come from mine.  We'll meet in the middle at that old Georgia pine."  Meeting in the middle is sometimes a spiritual challenge.  Some days we taste the bliss and serenity of oneness with all of creation.  Some days we spiral away into isolation and loneliness.  While there is spirituality in all of these experiences, finding some balance between extremes is a useful spiritual goal.

Let's look at those extremes.  Bliss.  For me, that happens in a heartbeat when everything slows down and I am present in the moment as if time has stopped.  It happened once when I was saying good-bye to a friend while standing in the doorway of my home.  It was late evening and raining.  I became conscious of the mist, of the cool air, of the sky behind my friend's head, of the street lights shimmering, of the vast darkness beyond.  It also happens sometimes when I'm sitting in my yard after a long day.  In my case, I'm noticing, these moments of bliss occur most frequently in the evening. Maybe there's a "certain slant of light" (Dickinson) coming horizontally through the darkening trees.  Maybe the complete silence suddenly filled with evening birdsong brings it.  Anyhow, that's one end of the spectrum.

At the other extreme is isolation and desolation.  Many of us experience these more than we experience bliss; certainly, that's true for me.  First, let's distinguish between loneliness and isolation (C. Moustakas).  Loneliness is a healthy, creative time of fermentation.  It's being alone with our selves and being content with that.  Isolation is the feeling that we are separated from the human community and the creation, cast aside perhaps, and it comes with fear, shame, and sometimes despair.  So the other extreme of bliss is isolation, not loneliness.

While both extremes bring opportunities for spirituality and while we are still connected with the God, Big Dude, or Universal Good; in the isolation phase, we aren't aware of our connection.  It's there but we don't experience it.

If the divine is present in ALL experience, then why seek the middle as part of our spiritual practice?  There's  an ego-hit that comes with the extremes.  We are self-conscious in an extreme way that can be as addictive as a drug.  The "high" of bliss and the "low" of desolation can become ends in themselves.  We begin searching for bliss, craving it, are disappointed and feel like failures if we can't score it.  Likewise, we become comfortable with isolation and desolation.  They expect nothing of us.  We don't have to DO anything about them.  Poor us.  We're so alone,  ahhhhhhh.  There's a sedation in that state that we find ourselves attached to, preferring it over the slings and arrows of everyday life.

So, we seek the middle.  We seek to live the everyday life.  At first, this may seem incredibly hard or incredibly boring.  Do it anyway.  We ARE in the middle between our spiritual and physical natures.  We live in the sacred and the shitty all the time.  It's the nature of our human condition.  To cling to one side of our experience more than the other may seem safe or wonderful, but it's not whole.  It's not you experiencing the nature of your current life.  It's rejecting the gift of being spiritual beings in a PHYSICAL world.

Wise friends have told me, bring a little of one side with you when you're in the other as a way to start moving into the middle.  When feeling bliss, consciously remember the desolation of another day and bless it.  When feeling desolation, visualize the serenity of those blissful moments.

Meet me in the middle, baby!  Roxie

Free Coaching Sessions Available

I'm studying to be a life coach and I need to do some sample sessions.  My specialty is:  Fears Are Your Next Spiritual Path.  If you would like a 30-minute private phone session that begins to support your movement down your next path, please notify me in the comments section and we'll set up an appointment time.  Thanks so much.  Roxie

All That I Have Met, Or?

Wordsworth wrote:  "I am a part of all that I have met."  For many years, I was reading that to mean:  "All that I have met is a part of me."  Weird, I know, but there it is.  Today, they're both true for me and I'm pondering how both fit into spirituality.

Wordsworth seems to see his connection with the universe as one of being "part" of it.  I tend to agree but would go beyond that and say that I am a manifestation of the universe, a microcosm, if you will.  What are the ramifications of these two ways of looking at our connection to the universe or the sacred?

If you see yourself as a part of the divine plan, the universal energy flow, or whatever, then you are a kind of a pawn.  A universal intelligence plays the chess game and moves you here or there.  If you see yourself as containing the universe--if you see that every molecule or neutron contains the whole shabang, then you are more of an agent of the universe.  If the agency for how things play out in the classroom we call life is partially in you then YOU have a role to play--how your specific metaphysical presence orchestrates itself matters in the bigger picture.  We are both, aren't we?  Yes, there is a Big Dude or higher order that is orchestrating; at the same time, we are expected to create our portion of this picture.  We are co-creators as well as actors in the universal unfolding.

As I'm writing this, I'm thinking:  This is so intellectual!  I realize that I'm being influenced by one of my wonderful readers who has been carrying on a profound dialogue with me in the comments sections of two entries.  It's great to engage with someone and parse out the ways we think and respond to our existence!

Getting back to the way Roxie sees it--sacred and profane or sacred shit.  I've just had several moving and inspirational days with a good friend.   Our togetherness which goes back to my childhood anchors me in my connection to the human community.  Living alone, I can get lost and isolated all too easily.

One of the things we always do together is engage in a spiritual process.  This time we did an exercise from Barbara Marx Hubbard's book Emergence.  A couple of things emerged for me.  Hubbard talks about a kind of chaotic fermentation time that precedes each new evolutionary development not just in the universe but also in the individuals who are growing towards the next phase of growth which she calls the "universal human."    I took about six months off from work to intentionally engage in recovery and growth opportunities.  This time has been terrifying, chaotic, boring, unstructured, and lonely.  And, it's also been profound.

In the exercise with my friend, I realized that I NEED what I'm calling a "no-fire zone."  I need to find an inner safety zone or, in recovery lingo, a strong adult voice inside that grounds and protects me.  This no-fire zone is something we all need.  It is a spiritual, quantum element not bound in space or time.  It protects us from internal, unnecessary pain and negativity; it also protects us from external, unnecessary slings and arrows.

In the exercise, we looked at three elements--need, want, and inspiration.  So, I need a no-fire zone.  I want to give my words, presence, creativity, intelligence, vision, and love to the world.

Best of all, I became inspired.  I am now inspired to showcase MY understanding of the human condition, the spiritual being in a physical world stuff.  The sacred shit aspect of my blog is core to that.  So, here's the total inspiration I came to:  I am inspired to showcase my understanding of the sacred shit/human condition as a source for the accelerating evolution of the human family towards its unfolding potential.  Heady stuff, right?

Specifically, I want to increase my writing on this blog and publish it as a digital book.  I want to finish and publish my novel which narrates the evolution of a human towards her greatest potential.  I want to make You Tube videos featuring Roxie and a more visual/musical/artistic expression of human spiritual potential.  I want to develop a series of workshops that engage other humans in an awareness of the importance of both the sacred and the shitty in their individual and collective development.

I love reader feedback.  What am I overlooking?  What would you add or delete or modify in this vision?  Namaste.  Roxie

The Big Dude by Any Other Name

Fundamental to a spiritual life in our human frame is a belief.  Call it faith, as some do.  Call it an inner sense of something that goes beyond our physical experience.  Call it anything.  A spiritual life for humans sits squarely on an uneasy sense that there is something greater than me.  What you do with that certainty or reluctant truce determines your spiritual life.

When I look at it that way, it seems obvious that there is much that is greater than me. Some things I've learned to trust as greater are:  the wisdom of some recovery groups, the power and peace of nature, and the voice inside that seems to be both me and not me.  Oh my gosh, this sounds so analytic and intellectual.

Let me try again.  I'm what you might call an experiential intellectual!  I have to experience a concept and, indeed, the universal energy (Big Dude, God, or whatchamacallit).  I have to feel it.  Like doubting Thomas, I come to the higher realms with an oh-yeah?-prove-it attitude.

If you've read my blog from the beginning, you know that I waffle and worry and occasionally wax eloquent with inspiration.  It comes and goes.

My earliest sense of the sacred came from nature.  I grew up in a physically stunning geographical setting.  My home was on a river at the edge of a forest and the whole of it was surrounded by water--almost like living on a particularly verdant island.  My home life was a bit chaotic and so I spent as much time as possible in the woods or in the water.  Nature spoke to me already when I was a preschooler.

Eventually, I found myself in groups that seemed to have a magical quality to them, to be places of safety and insight.  I came to seek out such groups and eventually found myself drawn,more recently, to recovery groups.  What are the qualities of the spiritual groups that teach and nurture me?  First, they have rules and guidelines that create safe communication (no cross talk, one person shares at a time, the good of the group precedes the needs of one individual).  Second, they have a framework or set of spiritual principles that all members accept as valuable and aspire to achieve.  Finally, they have a leader whose task is simply to assure    the framework and guidelines are upheld.  Much like a Quaker meeting, members of such groups find themselves moved to speak with an honesty and power that seem to transcend what they could say in other conversations.  As a member of such groups, I find myself experiencing a power greater than myself.

Then, there is that inner voice I mentioned earlier.  This week and maybe one other time, I have found myself able to join my will with a higher power (Big Dude, God, or whatchamacallit) and to literally change my own perception and behavior.  To get real about it.  I was struggling to let go of an unhealthy attachment or false god, you might say.  I had spent the better part of a month worrying over it, crying, sharing with friends and groups, reading, praying, and NOTHING was working.  Finally, in desperation, I decided to take a vacation from thinking about the situation.  I wouldn't let myself worry about whether that was the right thing to do because, hey, I was "on vacation."  Every time a thought or feeling about this thing came up, I would flick my fingers and mentally say, "on vacation."

What happened was amazing!  Soon I found that I could join my intention with Intention, the higher version of my own will.  I began to "hear" a strong voice inside of me saying things like:  "not your problem," or "don't go there" or "not today."  The voice morphed into more profound offerings like:  "You have choice here and I recommend . . ." or "You really dealt with that well; you were detached and loving."

In recovery, people might say I was building a strong adult or reparenting myself well.  They also might say that I had accessed the "higher power of my understanding."  I love what is happening.  I feel like a co-creator of my experiences in league with a higher energy and understanding.  I am in league with the Big Dude!  Call it what you will--a rose by any other name would smell as sweet (Shakespeare). Namaste. Roxie

When You're Weary, Feeling Small

Enlightened people tend to scare us off sometimes.  They seem too good.  They've reached a place that seems unattainable at times.  That's why I like the writings of Pema Chodron who has books with titles like When Things Fall Apart.  She's my kind of enlightened.  Enlightened means to bring light to the human condition.  That's why in meditation, you put your feet on the ground or you sit in such a way that the power of the earth and the power of the universe can both flow through you.

Anyhow, back to the human condition.  I used to post only when I was inspired and that meant long periods would go by between postings sometimes. There's another way to look at spiritual writing, though; you could think of it as an awareness of today's human dilemmas in the light of universal truths.  That's where I'm going in this blog so aptly titled "sacred shit."  Some days it may be mostly sacred with a little bit of shit and some days it may be mostly shit with a little bit of sacred.

In spiritual practice of any kind, it doesn't do to soar above the immediate.  You start with the immediate and become increasingly aware of yourself contained by that.  Eventually, universal forces join you and you experience a harmony or vibration from the union of today's dilemmas with the eternal good.

So, I'm sitting in Maine by the ocean.  I'm feeling particularly lonely and guilty.  I'm feeling guilty of not being "good enough."  Not good enough as a daughter, mother, sister, writer.  This is where true spirituality begins.  As the Simon and Garfunkel song says, "When you're weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I'll dry them all.  I'm on your side."  And, voila, the God joins the human.  The universal good is on our side!

When you think of it that way, it's amazing.  When you cherish the human condition as the starting point of co-creation, when you realize that the divine word, any divine word, becomes real in you, you're on the path.  I can feel that integration as I sit here.  However small I may be feeling, I contain the universe.  Namaste, Roxie.

When in Doubt . . .

When in doubt, go to the ocean.  Any ocean will do.  Go where the deep, deep water stretches farther than the eye can imagine.  Where the waves pound on the rocks even when the wind doesn't blow.  Go where the land ends.  God, by any name, is there.

Here I am on Bailey's Island in Maine sitting on a deck in the rain staring at the sea.  The sky is grey, the ocean is grey.   It's a feast for the soul in muted tones.  The sound of the sea can keep me there soaking wet.  Its unbridled passion swirling and pounding making human illusions of power fade away.  It takes me there on the deck or the rocks or wherever I find it and tosses me into the universe, my soul meeting its Soul, mating, mating.

And yet the ocean's mighty roar and rush to pour itself into any willing container is completely contained by the land, isn't it?  It rushes up and preens itself, giving everything it has to knock over those defenses.  But the land, stands.  Making it safe.

The dragons of life can rear up and howl their ferocious howls.   They seem to tower over us for a moment only to recede with grace, bowing to the steady nature of the earth.

Spiritual life is like this.  Doubt and terror assail us with mysteries beyond our comprehension.  We stand our sacred ground, breathe our universal breath, and the union is complete.  When in doubt, I go to the ocean.  There my soul takes its stand on land.  It takes a knee to the sea.  Roxie