Do we really want the truth??

I got up early this morning at 5:00 am to start my day with a series of rituals like meditation, reading, and prayer. This ritual, in theory, is supposed to help me start my day and align my intentions with that of the divine, or so goes the theory. What it does do for me in the conscious realm is to get to me to think about life in a very particular way, more contemplative and curious about possibility and also to shine a light on where I am hiding from the truth.

This morning I was reading a chapter in “Anatomy of the Spirit”, written by Carolyn Myss, and a sentence leapt out at me that asked the very uncomfortable question “are you hiding inside your practices”?  The actual statement was “I want guidance, but don’t give me any bad news”, and what she was referring to was the tendency of using practices like exercise, meditation or prayer as a tool to reduce the burden of stress we may be feeling…but never to really want to answer to our problems as it may demand too heavy a price.

I saw this in the fitness industry as many would use exercise as a way “to deal with stress” which often meant a way to reduce the intensity of a feeling we were having around a current event in our lives, but this did not mean we were actively looking for a solution, it just meant we wanted to get rid of the uncomfortable feelings. Once we reduced the uncomfortable feelings, the push to confront the problem was also reduced, which left us no further ahead.

I found this also to be the case in the use of meditation, spiritual practices, yoga, and any other activity we can use to distract ourselves from having to deal with the things, well, that need to be dealt with. Of course, this is not only the reason we exercise, meditate, etc, but it is always a good idea to look at the driver of our behavior to make sure what we are doing is truly moving our lives forward in some positive manner and not just a way to unload some uncomfortable truth about our lives.

Another point she had made is the fear of “surrendering to divine will” as the fear of releasing our will to the will of the divine is that we may be asked to leave our physical comforts, as the parable of the rich man in the bible asking what it would take to get into heaven and being told that he may be expected to leave all his riches behind, he left despondent as he was reluctant to leave all that he owned.

I think the idea was not to surrender all that we had but it was to ensure that we were in “alignment” with the ideal we professed to hold in high regard so that we would not be holding ourselves back from ourselves all that was possible and available to us. There are so many examples we can find in our lives if we were to surrender to …health ~ spirituality ~ love ~ abundance, for example, we would find that part of our life flourish in so many amazing ways. I love this message from Carolyn this morning as it gives me a needed push from wanting more to aligning to opening up receiving more.

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