At age 70, George’s appreciation of keys are for the men’s room. “When Nature calls, you GO!”, he said in haste. The key is a tool to get you where you want to go.
I like practical spirituality. Practical spirituality, by my definition, is where I have tools to reckon with the truth about myself. Telling the brutal truth is the first step to sanity for me. But it isn’t the goal. The goal is growing into joy. Demystifying spirituality by using tools is what practical spirituality is. Having the right tools in any endeavor makes a big difference in the success of the process.
Early in the summer, I faced intense loneliness. My old pattern was to lounge in sadness and “delireate” (deliriously luxurate in) depression. But this summer, I went shopping for new tools.
My shopping adventure was to find tools to change myself radically. I never enjoyed being solo but after 25 years of an abusive marriage, I chose solo rather than horror. Heartbroken, yes, but not dead, my Seer shopping was in stores of encouragement and uplift. I tried dating sites and I made one friend. Christian sermons, Meet-Ups, Rabbinical Counseling, New Age thoughts, and Neil Diamond were my new toolings.
A wisdom series that triggered interest but didn’t expect to like was the teaching of Abraham through Jerry and Esther Hicks.
The reason I didn’t expect to like them was because I knew about the Seth experience from the cult days of the 60’s. I feel skeeved by spirit channeling. There’s good reason to be suspect. It’s not that I don’t accept there are spirits; it’s because I do accept there are spirits that I’m cautious. Not all of them are truthful or friendly. I met some ugly guts out in that realm.
It was mighty queer for me to figure out in the beginning who was Abraham when Esther was speaking. I have every right to not buy into all of this. However, what sense they made enlightened me. They proposed the tried-and-true methods of meditation and mental focus as tools to change myself. Their 12 Step version offered me more of what the practical spirituality of the 12 Step Anonymous Programs promised would eventually happen: I would change for the better. Now that I divorced from what was unhealthy for me, I wanted to learn how to direct my life better. I wanted a clear way of ending perpetual loneliness. I wanted happiness.
A major point that I gained from the Teachings of Abraham is this: I don’t own one half-second to suffering my past. I do owe myself the right to live in joy today. Coming out of a Holocaust guilt of never accepting that my life can be happy because so many of my beloveds died horribly had plagued me all my life. I could not shake that guilt of living. Through that guilt of living, I kept dying. But G-d obviously didn’t want me to die. I am alive and well despite what terrible things I did to myself and let others do to me, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
I bought into these new tools for survival. And by what I mean by survival is allowing myself the right to have a life at all. It’s been the hardest concept for me to embrace.
I am ready in my life to accept that G-d loves me. I am ready to accept that love on daily terms. I am ready to accept that I am happy. And that my happiness does not depend on my finances or my relationships. My happiness is because I am willing to look at the world from a perspective of continual growth into joy. That’s what G-d wants of me.
On this Yom Kippur, my biorhythm of Judgment and introspection, I came across this passage from the Teachings of Abraham:
“Do not write your story like a factual documentary, weighing all the pros and cons of your experience, but instead, tell the uplifting, fanciful, magical story of the wonder of your own life and watch what happens. It will feel like magic as your life begins to transform right before your eyes, but it is not by magic. It is by the power of the laws of the universe and your deliberate alignment with those laws.”
What a magnificent new thought! I never thought of this before! I actually get to rewrite the story of my life from the perspective of miracles and achievements!
And I am ready-set to pastel and glob. (blog) 🙂