Pointer in spirituality are medicine for a particular condition.
Some pointers are more universally helpful. And some are more specific for some people and some situations.
One that’s specific to where I am now is this:
Feel it as a flavor of the divine.
Sometimes, something comes up – a sensation, discomfort, emotion – and my old pattern is to react to it. My mind tells itself that this is not good, it’s not the divine. So avoid it or make it go away.
When I remind myself that this is a flavor of the divine, there is a shift.
I remind myself that this too is the divine. It’s a flavor of the divine. I notice it is the divine. It’s happening within and as what I am capacity for. It’s happening within and as – what the mind may label – consciousness, awakeness, love.
This morning, I woke up feeling material from an old issue – perhaps going back lifetimes if my sense is right and that of others who have sensed into it. It felt very uncomfortable and I did wrestle with it for a few minutes and felt grumpy. Then I remembered this pointer, and it helped my relationship to it to shift. The symptoms are still here but there is no longer any need to struggle with it. I notice it as a flavor of the divine and that makes it much easier.
Note: Some days, and especially when my energy is low like today, it’s hard for me to write in a way that feels half-way right. I wrote the three quick drafts below and none seem to land where it feels right – lack of flow, too impersonal, too personal. So I’ll wait one or two days and see if it flows better then.
Update: Yes, I wrote the final version two days later and it feels more clear and has a better balance between the universal and personal.
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Pointers in spirituality are medicine for particular condition. They may help us notice something at the edge of what we are familiar with. Which, in turn, helps us shift out of old conditioning and consciously be more closely aligned with reality.
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Initial draft…
All pointers in spirituality are medicine for particular conditions. They help us shift out of old conditioning and a “stuck” place.
For instance, we may be in a place where we – in general – recognize all as the divine. When we remind ourselves and look, we notice that yes, this too is the divine. This is the divine experiencing itself.
And yet, in some situations, we are still caught in our old conditioning. We may not recognize, in a lived and visceral way, some of our experiences as the divine.
For instance, when grief, sadness, anger, despair, physical discomfort and so on come up for us, we may “forget” that this too is the divine. We may react to it in our old and habitual way.
Here, a simple pointer can be very helpful: Feel it as a flavor of the divine.
So the “feel it as a flavor of the divine” pointer is helpful if we generally recognize all as the divine. And still don’t recognize – in a lived way – some of our experiences as a flavor of the divine.
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Second draft….
Over the last several years, I have gone through what seems like a dark night of the soul (much lighter now than it was). And one of the invitation in this period seems to be to notice what comes up in – whether it’s grief, anger, sadness, despair, discomfort or something else – as the divine.
In general, it’s not so difficult for me to notice anything as the divine. To notice that what I am is capacity for what’s happening, and what’s happening itself can be labeled awakeness, consciousness, or even love or the divine. And yet, when these emotions and the discomfort comes up, my mind has tended to see them as an exception and revert back to old conditioning and react to it as something terrible.
This pattern is changing, and one of the pointers that has helped me are variations of this one:
Feel it as a flavor of the divine.
The “feel it as a flavor of the divine” pointer is helpful if we generally recognize all as the divine. And still don’t recognize – in a lived way – some of our experiences as a flavor of the divine.
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Third draft…
Any pointer in spirituality is medicine for a particular condition.
Say we generally notice all as the divine. Most of the time, we notice ourselves as capacity for what’s happening, and what’s happening itself is recognized as what the mind may label awakeness, consciousness, or love or the divine.
And yet, in some cases, we “forget”. Some experiences can trigger old conditioning and reactivity, we get temporarily caught up in it, and we forget to see if this too is the divine. This can be physical discomfort or certain emotions like grief, heartbreak, fear, anger, and so on.
That’s how it’s been for me at times during the last few years. (During the dark night of the soul phase.) It seems that one of the invitations here is to notice just this. What comes up, that this mind was conditioned to push away or run from, they too are the divine. It’s the divine experiencing itself as these sensations, emotions, and associated scary thoughts.
A helpful pointer here is:
Feel it as a flavor of the divine.