Tosia H Zraikat

Who do you Serve?

 

"Men have been found to resist the most powerful monarchs and to refuse to bow down before them, but few indeed have been found to resist the crowd, to stand up alone before misguided masses, to face their implacable frenzy without weapons and with folded arms to dare a no when a yes is demanded."

(Hannah Arendt in 'The Origins of Totalitarianism').

 

 

“It is indeed a frightening thought that man also has a shadow-side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foible, but of a positively demonic dynamism” (the will to power). Yet how necessary that he knows, for he likes to imagine himself a fairly decent fellow, “But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only a tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages

(Carl Jung in 'Will to power').

 

Life requires that we think more deeply about who we are, what we believe, and who or what we serve. That we find and strengthen our centre, our resistance to mass-thinking. We don't have to be certain. Doubt is Ok, and so is change. But we need to clarify a few clear core values to hold us steady when we are besieged by the loud, insistent demands of the crowd....So we can stand in our own sovereignty.

Spiritual Core Strength

Much attention is paid to the development of core strength, but having a strong centre, a strong trunk is about much more than fitness or abs. Core spiritual strength concerns our whole being. It is, indeed, the key to living a fruitful, balanced and deeply fulfilling life.

 

 

Just as a strong tree trunk is essential for the wellbeing and functionality of the tree's roots, branches, and leaves, psychological strength is fundamental to every aspect of our being - body, mind, and soul. 

 

 

Without that strong inner centre, our energies cannot help but scatter and dissipate. We cannot help but waste them on inessential, unproductive, and too often, on harmful thoughts, feelings and actions.

 

 

Most of us know what physical core strength is and why it is important. It stabilizes your body, and allows for optimal transfer of energy between different parts of the body so that it can function well. A strong core also is protective, allowing you to move and be active without damaging muscles, bones and organs. Most of us are also aware of different ways to develop core strength: yoga, tai chi, qi gong, dancing and gymnastics, for example.

 

But can you see the parallel between developing and maintaining core strength of your body, and creating a strong psychological and spiritual core?

 

Psychological and Spiritual core strength are just as vital for our overall wellbeing, our fuctionality and wholeness as body core strength is for physiological wellbeing.  A strong spiritual centre provides the same benefits - strength, optimal flow of energy and information, protection - on an even deeper level of being. 

 

Elements of psychological strength include resilience and adaptability; the ability to see things realistically, and to respond appropriately; ability to cope with and eventually resolve strong emotions like hate, anger, passion; taking responsibility for feelings and actions; seeing things from a wider perspective instead of thinking that it's all about us; being able to empathise with others and consider their needs and wants; learning how to listen, communicate and express ours feelings and expectations instead of feeling victimized. 

 

It is, however, a strong spiritual centre that gives us the extraordinary strength, endurance and guidance that enable us to face life's toughest challenges, and to be radically transformed into a higher level of human being. This is where the key to transformation of the world is to be found.

 

A strong spiritual core does not eliminate pain, loss, or despair, for these are part of la condition humaine, the human condition. But it does impart to us the strength to endure and eventually to emerge from even the darkest abyssal experience, not only intact but wiser than before.

 

A strong spiritual centre, religious or not, gives us moral backbone, the courage to stand up for what we think is good and true, to keep our resolve in the face of inner or outer threats, and not to buckle in fear, even when we are afraid.

 

Woman in peaceful confrontation with police in Louisianna.  Image: indianews.com

 

Throughout history, individuals with strong minds and hearts have drawn on their inner divinity, the True Self, to endure the unendurable, to become beacons of hope and peace for others in the very worst of situations. These individuals illustrate for us the enormous sustaining and supportive power of deep psyche, and the capacity in each of us to draw on its spiritual power.

 

 

Image: Courage, Jody Hewgill

 

If you are serious about becoming a Whole, a fully functioning human being, do not treat your spirituality like an addendum, something additional to your life, a cloak you take on and off. It is You, or it is nothing.

 

 Attend to your soul. Look  deep within your shadows and bring them to light. Cultivate a relationship with your True Self which is Life itself, its Light, the is God within, your inner Sun. 

 

Instead of settling into comfortable, feel-good spirituality that asks nothing much of you, do what is required to establish a strong, firm foundation to support your personal growth and transformation. Choose a path that you can commit to and walk it every day.

 

 

Seeing Differently

Judging from how many of us go to books, classes and teachers to learn spiritual truths, we should expect to be well acquainted with Truth and Wisdom, and know how to recognise them. We should find enlightened souls all around us. But we do not. Nor are most of us - no matter how deep our spiritual practice - intimate with the spiritual dimensions of being. Heaven knows, it's not for want of trying.

It's not that we cannot find Truth, but that our usual ways of looking and experiencing do not allow us to see it.

"It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing." – Carl Jung"   (The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung).

“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand" (Matthew 13:11)

 

Wanting and intending to know, and accepting the ideas of the Divine and Oneness might point us to the path of transformation, but they are not enough. We must experience for ourselves, viscerally and intimately, the profound and inner shift to a new level of awareness that transforms our consciousness, and if we are to continue to grow, we must experience it over and over as consciousness becomes more and more refined, more expansive and awake.

"He who has eyes to see, let him see, and he who has ears to hear, let him hear."   Matthew 13:13

What are these “eyes to see” and “ears to hear”?

They are metaphors for awareness, that is, consciousness: the willingness and ability to recognise the reality in which we live ...not our conditioned reality, or the reality that we have agreed upon, not only the small insights that are honestly received and spoken, but the fundamental Reality of our nature, which is both biological and spiritual - human and Divine. 

We like to think we know this Reality, but the majority of us do not. We try to see it, and some of us may even catch a brief glimpse of it, but too often, we fall back into old ways of seeing and thinking ... because we are not transformed. The Truth is right here before us, within us, we are told, but for all our efforts, most of us do not really see or experience it....nor will we until we are change our ways of seeing.

Most of us are like the boy in the Grimm brothers' story of the Goose Girl. In this story, a mis-used princess disguised as a goose girl speaks daily with the head of her dead horse, who laments her suffering. Every
day she combs out her hair which shines as brightly as the sun (symbol of higher or awakened consciousness), and every day when the boy tries to pluck a hair, she summons the wind to blow off his hat and carry it over the fields.

He knows this is strange, yet all he sees is an irritating goose girl. Like all of us who do not know the language of soul, he remains blind to the mystery being revealed to him, and to its invitation to step into greater awareness. 

Fortunately for the princess, the king (symbol of the Self) recognises the truth and marries her. 

“You cannot see Me with your present eyes," Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita,"Therefore I give you divine eyes.”

Just as those who do science must learn to see and experience the world in new ways –that is, scientifically - those who would be awakened must learn to see with more conscious eyes.

Ordinary mind, the mind of the material self, is perfectly attuned to outer reality. Used properly, it enables us to function according to the laws of this reality at a much higher level than we presently do. To experience spiritual reality, however, we must engage spiritual dimensions of mind, with their unique attributes and processes.

We do it unconsciously in dreams, intuition, inspiration, sudden insights, and those numinous moments when we feel totally connected to nature, others and the world - but we can learn to do it consciously. And that requires opening our inner gates of perception, and accepting what enters.

Most of us, though, are easily frightened or angered by anything that doesn't fit our beliefs about what is possible or real, that doesn't come through ordinary channels. Instead of opening itself to the unfamiliar and allowing itself to experience the mystery of the unknown, the conscious mind blocks it out, shunts it into our unconscious to remain hidden.

But eventually, even the most rational, materialistic seeker of Truth might come to a door where sensory perception and reason fail. Often, this occurs in times of crisis, or in those dark nights of the soul when we feel terribly lost.

 

 

(We come to a door that can only be entered by those willing to leave familiar ways of knowing behind).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When this happens, we might try to climb back onto familiar ground where things used to make sense, and refuse the opportunity to see things more truly. But some brave or desperate souls will accept this sacred invitation to accept not-knowing, walk through the wide open gate newly humbled, and surrender mind to the deep mystery of Self, of Being ... asking, Who am I? What is this?

Eventually, if we keep asking, answers will come. And what do we do meanwhile?