Centers for Spiritual Living around the world are doing a series this year on the values of Spiritual Living – and this month’s Value is Spiritual Living as Diversity and Inclusivity
Ernest Holmes said:
The great lesson that Life is trying to teach us is that we are all rooted in God, but each is an individualized center in the Divine Being. We have what Emerson called unity at the center and variety at the circumference.
Last Sunday we discussed the spiritual principles of ONENESS and UNITY
We are all one – we are all connected – We are both human and Spirit, a mashup of Divine perfection and human flaws. We discussed the challenge it can be for each of us to live with this paradox—to overcome and understand the human errors of others –
So This week we discuss examining our own errors or imperfections
And I call this – God Comes Through The Wound
Without exception, all things have worked and are working for our highest good. I find so many interactions on a daily basis – with others – and with my self-talk where I feel less than perfect, where I would love to have an instant do-over. Yet when I step back and breathe, I can honor it all, every season of my life.
There are 3 general concepts to share – with inspiration from my friend Rev David Ault from Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta
The first one is
1) Broken vs. Broken Open
Brokenness is not a destination. It is the inevitable enveloping energy that slaps at the face and pounds at the gut to remind us we are vessels of feelings.
But what do we do with these feelings, with this seeming irreparable mess?
Do we barricade ourselves from their raw presence or do we learn to breathe with them and through them, all the while learning that by allowing them the space to flow through us, we go from someone who is broken to someone who is broken open?
Author Vance Havner stated, “God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume.” (Mary broke the alabaster box to pour perfume on Jesus near the end)
Being broken open revives us. It creates within us a spaciousness that did not exist before. The poet Rumi said, “The wound is the place where Light enters you.” Our brokenness is the place where this leading light can penetrate through us and shine itself upon all the strengths, talents, and possibilities we had forgotten were in us.
I spent the last 3 days in an intensive training on Broad-Based Community Organizing with 125 other mostly Tulsans from interfaith and non-profit institutions and wow! The iron rule of organizing is that we never do for others what they can do for themselves. The passion for organizing and making a change comes from the place of brokenness and the cold/cool anger that fuels the desire for change and improvement – we also cannot heal our own or another’s brokenness without a willingness to experience being broken open!
How many of us have experienced brokenness – and then being broken open? Some of us may be feeling broken right now. What I do know is that you are loved and capable and as brilliant in your brokenness as you are in your healing…
Discussion
Our next concept is:
2) Reconciliation
I am intrigued by the seeming radical teaching style of Panache Desai, bestselling author and guest on Oprah’s Super Soul television series. He would listen to the attendee’s story, discern their universal victim narrative and then ask them to declare out loud, “I am a victim.”
Everyone balked and resisted. Many regurgitated the familiar teaching point that what you put after the words I AM becomes your reality. He countered back by saying, (something like) “No one is denying that. However, what you are telling all of us is how unfair, unmanageable or difficult your life has been up until this point. I’m asking you to own your feelings around all of that so we can move on to the other polarity of the I AM you have been instructed to affirm.”
It was my understanding that he was wanting the audience to understand that what we don’t own, owns us. Far too often we miss teaching this vital beginning step on the pathway of assisting others in changing their teachings.
Brene Brown said:
“We think of vulnerability as a dark emotion. We think of it as the core of fear, shame, grief, disappointment and uncertainty. Things we don’t want to feel…
So what we do is armor up, and say, ‘I do not want to let myself slip into these emotions. I will not let myself be vulnerable.’…
But here’s what I learned from my research….vulnerability is the center of difficult emotion, but it’s also the birth place of every positive emotion that we need in our lives: love, belonging, joy, empathy…
Innovation and creativity are born of vulnerability.”
Pause for discussion –
When we explore the successful steps of every recovery program, there is the 4th and 5th step of creating a moral inventory and speaking it aloud to an impartial witness.
It is much like the confession of sins.
Examples: I am a liar. I am a victim. I am a hypocrite.
Without this uncovering of condemnation within our subjective world, are we simply placing band-aids over ancient, subconscious wounds rather than inviting the wound to the light?
Ernest Holmes in the Science of Mind says”
When we enter this Spirit and bare our souls to Its great light, we lose our troubles and are healed. The confession of sins, or mistakes, helps us to let go of troubles, and to feel that the Universe holds nothing against us. SOM textbook page 501
I just love this whole concept. I am one that can or could quickly skip over the yucky feeling parts of my life and go quickly to the more positive I AM statement – something I’ve learned has a name – Spiritual Bypass. There is richness in the broken openness and one way for me to get there is by first owning the break…
Discuss
The final concept to share this morning is –
3) Kindness/Compassion (towards self and others)
Once upon a time there was a blind girl who hated herself just because she was blind. She hated everyone, except her loving boyfriend. He was always there for her. She said that if she could only see the world, she would marry him.
One day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her and then she could see everything, including her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend asked her, “Now that you can see the world, will you marry me?”
When she opened her eyes to see for the first time the girl was shocked when she saw that her boyfriend was blind, too.
Hating her former blindness, she refused to marry him.
Her boyfriend walked away devastated.
Months later she received a letter, “Just take care of my eyes, dear” he wrote.
We are often behaving like the girl in this story. The Universe acts like the boyfriend, giving to us unconditionally in spite of our frequent rejection of self and Self (Big S Self). As we reprogram ourselves to love the totality of all that we are (our blindness, our shortcomings and failings), all that we are will finally begin to feel the love that is self-existent.
Brené Brown, Author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
Do we – do I – do you do that…?
Summary
Rumi’s poem The Guest House says it all. ~
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
Affirmation
Today I hold myself in unconditional loving arms. Everything on my path has served me.
