Seems that constantly being challenged is part of the awakening process
Someone commenting in a Facebook group
Yes, and it’s also how humans in general experience life. It’s universal. It’s part of life.
It’s tempting to interpret anything as being part of my awakening process. It makes it feel more significant and special. It gives it an extra spark.
And yet, so often, what happens in our life is just ordinarily human. We get sick as all do. We have challenges as we all do. We experience synchronicities, as all humans do now and then.
It’s helpful to be honest about this. What happens in our life is mostly ordinarily human. Even the awakening process and everything part of it is ordinary and universal. It happens to a lot and – most likely – eventually all beings, and the content of process itself is quite universal.
There is an upside to seeing anything happening in our life as part of an awakening process. It may help us make use of it in a more constructive way and see it in a more constructive context.
There is also a downside to it. If we see it in contrast to how most people live their life, we use a story to make our own life seem more special and different. In our mind, we may set us aside from others while we, in reality, are not so different. And we may do it avoid feeling and encountering certain feelings and thoughts in ourselves. That’s OK for a while, but at some point it’s easier and more helpful to meet and befriend it, and recognize that too – the uncomfortable feelings and thoughts – as local expressions of the divine. It’s all happening within the One.
As the awakening process matures and becomes more ordinary, it’s all recognized as the divine. And it’s all recognized as a miracle and ordinary.
It’s a miracle that anything exists at all, and all the amazing ways it exists. It’s ordinary in that it’s all the divine. And it’s ordinary in that all our experiences are ordinarily human, and ordinary parts of an awakening process.
The miracle gives it all a spark. The ordinariness allows us to relax trying to be different, special, and better or worse than others.
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Initial notes….
- Interpreting normal human experiences as part of
awakening process- for some of us, it’s tempting to interpret anything as part of our awakening process
- and it’s true that anything that happens is that, but it may also just be ordinary human experiences
- upside: can make use of it, find gratitude for it
- downside: may add spiritual stories to make it seem more special, add some spark to it
- …..
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For instance, I often see
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It’s the local divine (us) triggered by other local aspects of the divine (our situation) and reacting to or relating to other local expressions of the divine (our uncomfortable emotions and thoughts).