How much time do you take for spiritual matters? Two summers ago, I remember spending many weekends out on the balcony communing with a greater power than me. I called them “my hot dates with God”. Those were magical weekends. One of the things that I am committed to doing as I live in Mexico for the next six months, are more of those hot dates with God. It’s been awhile and I’ve been missing them. The busyness of life caught up with me last year and I am truly looking forward to more time in quiet contemplation, meditation and prayer. Part of us may wonder if it’s really worth taking the time in spiritual practices. I mean, is there really a God up there that answers our prayers, punishes us when we’re bad and rewards us when we’re good? I don’t know the answer to that one. One of my dearest friends this week just learned that her mother has a brain tumor. She wrote
to me, “Jan, I wish I had more faith in God at a time like this but I don’t. It’s just hard to accept, but thank you for your prayers.”
In times of difficulties, serious illness, relationship crisis or uncertainty
in our life, I think that most of us feel like we would like to turn to someone or something older, wiser, more powerful than us to protect and save us. Religion has done a good job of providing people with something to turn to. However, it also provides a scapegoat for everything that goes wrong.
Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, I learned at a very young age that I was always being tempted by the Devil and tested by God. That makes for a tough life but it certainly explained all of the challenges I faced daily.
Today, I don’t believe that God is testing me nor do I believe that the Devil is tempting me. I do believe that there is a Power Source that I can tap into as much and as frequently as I choose. It’s like having a house wired for electricity but it’s up to you how many appliances and light bulbs you hook up. There is an endless supply of energy for that house just as there is an endless supply of energy for us – if we choose to tap into it.
It’s why it’s important to daily get off the merry-go-round of the busyness of life, stop and talk to God or take time to participate in whatever spiritual activity you choose.
Every successful person whose life I have studied spends some time daily in meditation or another form of spiritual practice. It’s part of their routine and schedule despite the busyness of their successful lives. How about you? It’s easy to think you’re too busy. It’s easy to arrive at the end of the day and see that there hasn’t been one free second to put into a spiritual practice. It’s why I love the analogy of the jar that you fill first with the large rocks of your life, the most important things, next filled in with the gravel, then the sand and finally the water. Your spiritual practices should be one of the rocks if you really want to benefit from tapping into the Power Source on a regular basis.
I have friends who communicate freely with saints such as St. Francis. Others talk to Archangel Michael. Some do meditation or a meditative practice such as Qigong, combining physical movement with their spiritual practice. I have a friend who uses crystals and clients who travel to sacred places such as Machu Pichu and the pyramids of Egypt. There isn’t a right or wrong to this one. What is imperative – from all the evidence that I have seen – is that you do “something” and preferably that you do that “something” daily.
Many people never get beyond the baby food of spirituality. The Apostle Paul in the Bible called it the “milk of the Word”. They never progress to the “meat” or deeper spiritual matters. It’s very nice to talk about easy things like The Law of Attraction or how to create abundance in your life. But have you given much thought lately as to your views on war, politics, your responsibility to the environment, child prostitution, domestic violence or the lack of religious freedom in many countries. Those subjects aren’t quite so much fun as doing a Vision Board or setting your financial goals for the year, are they?
I just finished reading a book called Pandora’s Secret by James Sheridan. It’s a novel written about what is happening in the big business of cancer. Pretty scary reading and if half of it is true, (and apparently it’s all true) every person in North America should be rioting at what our governments are holding back from us. However, most people will read it and do nothing. I know that I am sitting with a great discomfort about being a s–t disturber and getting the word out about it, or sitting quietly on my balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean meditating on perfect health, taking my vitamins and staying quiet. I battle with this dilemna alot. Part of me wants to march with a million people into the UN and demand the end of child prostitution and the other part of me doesn’t want to know how bad it really is. Are you facing a simila r struggle?
My prayer is that by spending more time with God over the next several months that decision will become clearer and the force and energy within me will be sufficient to do my part, however that looks. I marched out of my front door for so many years, proclaiming the end of the world, I find myself reluctant to do so again, even with a much healthier motive. Yet, I also believe that if more of us stopped believing that our spiritual responsibility ended at our front door, the world would be a different place.
I don’t know where you are at with your spiritual practices but I am going to encourage you to look at them carefully and meditatively. Can
you do more to make a difference? Is there something that you are
passionate about?
At the recent Sacred Gifts workshop I attended in November, I smiled as a woman was so passionate about helping the young people on the street. She cried as she talked about having 40 or 50 of them in her home for days or weeks on end through the cold winters. Let me tell you, that wouldn’t be my first place to help out. But helping women and children have a better life or uncovering the true story behind cancer treatments, now that I could get excited about. I’m not going to hug a tree anytime soon, but I am passionate about ending female genital mutilation.
What’s something you’re passionate about, something you would really
like to make a difference about, that could use some fuel, some energy? What would you like to take from a little ember of passion that you sometimes think about, to really doing something pivotal about it? Why not ask for some divine assistance to help you? Why not make enlarging that passion a matter of meditation or prayer?
Take time for your spiritual life. Staying a spiritual babe is not what the world needs right now. Spiritual maturity is imperative and taking time for your spiritual practices is the only way to achieve that maturity.
Dig deeper than you ever have before. Push the envelope and move past what is comfortable. Ask yourself the tough questions. Have the controversial conversations. Look where it isn’t pretty in the world and then ask for the faith, the courage and the wisdom to do something about it. I’ll be doing the same and that excites me.
Blessings,
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