My personal journey to spiritual enrichment.
“You are never alone or helpless. The force that guides the stars, guides you too.” -Shrii Shirr Anandamurti
This story is not mine, it was copied from a social media page. This story is meant to be shared with others.
“I was at TJ Maxx today and heard a loud crash and something shattering. Being nosy, I walked towards the sound and saw some people whispering and looking back to the end of the next aisle. When I walked down that aisle, I saw that an older lady had hit a shelf and many things had fallen to the ground and broken. She was kneeling on the floor embarrassed, frantically trying to clean up. I felt so bad for her. Every one was just standing there staring at her. So I went and knelt beside her and told her not to worry and started helping her pick up the broken pieces. After about a minute, the store manager came and knelt beside us and said, “Leave it, we will clean this up.” The lady, totally embarrassed said, “I need to pay for all this.” The manager smiled, helped her to her feet and said, “No ma’am, we have insurance for this, you do not have to pay anything!” If you have read this far, give me another minute. Wherever you are, close your eyes, and imagine God doing the same for you! Imagine the broken pieces of your mistakes or the pieces of your broken heart from all the blows life has thrown at you all over the floor and you’re there trying to collect all of the pieces and fix them yourself. Now imagine God comes and kneels right down beside you, smiles and says to you, “Leave it all there, I will clean this up for you.”
While I would say I am not a preaching type or religious person, there are moments and stories like the one above resonate with my beliefs. This story had a sudden impact on my heart. Everyone makes mistakes. I for one tend to dwell on these mistake more than is healthy. For years I believed I was broken, never to be whole again after trauma after trauma in my past. The baggage we carry with us might have a part in forming our beliefs and personality, but those experiences do not define us. Leaving ourselves open to healing our hearts, whatever is out there, beyond our physical presence, will take charge to heal us. Whether we give this omniscient presence a name like God or Brahman, or if we believe that the universe itself has the power, the purpose is the same.
We are in a larger macrocosm of existence where the smallest cell or the ground beneath our feet is maintaining balance. The universe seeks harmony without suffering, as our bodies do.
I was raised Catholic, but never considered myself a religious person until one day a woman in a grocery store approached me in an aisle and said she had a message for me. At first, I thought it was a prank, a dare maybe, or even someone slightly unbalanced trying to bring me into their hallucination. The woman knew too many coincidental facts about me, like my mother’s name, or the fact that my father was sick (he had just had a heart attack). The woman said her message was, “everything would be ok.” I was in college at the time and still trying to figure out my direction, my life, and deal with all the family stuff, so the experience shocked and threw me. It is however, something I will never forget. If you are reading this you might think, no it was just someone messing with me, or you might believe I was getting a message from a higher power through a young random woman. I choose to believe it was a message.
The experience changed a few things for me. I started to really open myself up to that world my mother attempted to get me involved with as a child, religion. I did what I do best, studied. It was one of the reasons I became interested in Medieval History. I was fascinated by the development of Christianity and the way in which the world shifted from a majority of polytheistic religions to monotheism. If you study religions long enough you begin to see similarities amongst the most geographically diverse. For example, Roman and Greek gods are comparable to the Tuatha De Danann, or Native American beliefs have similarities with Hindu and Buddhism. I am not saying they are exact, but rather as a human species we live on a wave length that is connected, making it reasonable to believe different cultures form similar belief systems because we all have similar genetic thoughts that dictate our spiritual needs.
In the practice of yoga it is taught that we are all connected by divinity. The divine is in the smallest bacteria and the largest elephant. It is a shared cosmic existence. There is beauty and an overwhelming wholeness feeling to the concept of everything being connected through a shared divinity. As human’s we often fear being alone. But if we embrace the thought of being linked to everything, everyone, we are never alone. Even in Christianity, it is often said “God is always with you.” This is that same concept of the divine being in everything. When we accept that the divine is in everything, including ourselves, we tend to treat ourselves and what is around us with more respect and love.
Love, I would argue, is at the center of yoga practice. Yes, the goal is to seek enlightenment, a higher knowledge plane where the Truth is learned, but we can only achieve that consciousness through the act of love. Their are many obstacles we must face in order to become one with the ultimate divine knowledge. Our own ego being one of them, our own mortality, but most importantly we have to open our hearts to everything around us. If we do not do this then we remain closed off from that incredibly spiritual existence of connection. In order to transcend out own physical being and our ego we also need to love and accept ourselves. I often instruct students in my classes to listen to their bodies and move with love, meaning move with ease and awareness of yourself. If something does not feel right, stop, correct. Do what feels good for you. Yoga is not a competition, but a means to master your body and your mind to find that inner peace that leads to Self-knowledge.
Life is full of cruelty and suffering. Yoga teaches us how to overcome that suffering by changing our way of thinking. Look at obstacles as opportunities.
Probably the most difficult suffering human’s experience is death. Grief over a loved one has a way of changing people, altering them for the rest of their lives.
I lost my brother when I was ten, a week before my birthday. Two months later, my grandmother passed from lung cancer. It was a year full of death, desolation, confusion, and guilt. Over the years I had visited therapists or tried ignoring the emotions. When I began accepting my spirituality and really started investigating what religion meant to me, I began to heal from the trauma. In yoga, accepting mortality as part of our existence is one of the final obstacles we must overcome to achieve enlightenment.
Mortality is a fact of life. Human’s seek to overcome this fact by constantly tweaking medical advances. Anything to buy us a little more time, but at what cost? Are we losing sight of the preciousness that life holds? Our ambitions become lengthier and loftier because we supposedly have more time. We forget to just enjoy what we have in the present.
It doesn’t matter what you believe in, whether there is a Heaven or there is reincarnation, the point is that we all live and die. It is a cycle necessary in the manifested world. However, in yoga there is the ability to have more than just our physical existence, we can transcend our own mortality and become one with the divine in everything in blissful consciousness.
Ultimately, when dealing with grief, it is important to find what makes you accept the truth of the cycle of life. The people we have lost are no longer in pain and have moved onto their next journey. We are left to find the means to come to terms with that fact. For me, it wasn’t the concept of facing my own mortality that ended up blocking my chakras, it was the loss of time with them. The things that were not said, the fact that maybe if I hadn’t been sick that day my brother would still be alive, or just the ignorance and trauma of an event at such a young age. As I grew older, I accepted those deaths as pinnacle points in my life that shifted my decisions. It’s never a good thought to consider someone you loved was meant to die, its morbid and depressing. But if you look at it on a larger scale, we are all meant to die at some point as soon as we are born. That is the essence of mortality. Our time is finite. For my own sanity, I chose to think their was a purpose in everyone I have met and lost in my life so far. The people you know and love always affect you in some way.
I met my husband at a crucial point in my life, where my life could have gone in very different directions. He is one of the best men I know, and that is in part to how he was raised. His mother was a deeply compassionate and loving woman. Two years after her death I still ask myself in situations what would she do, what would she say for advise. People come and go from your life to teach you something valuable. Your experiences give you wisdom to move forward and hopefully come out stronger.
I apologize if this is too heavy, but sometimes in order to work through your own trauma you must visit the heavy stuff. When I began working on my chakras, many past traumas came to light, but the only way to get through them is to stare them right in the face and deal with them.
I have found that I work through things through my writing. I express myself through this blog and my novels. And each time I write about something that reminds me of my past the wound heals a little more.
As I heal I change, as I continue on my yoga journey I learn more about myself. I am constantly reforming my beliefs. As humans we are always learning from our experiences and changing with them. Your 20 year old self probably does not see the world the same at your 30 year old self.
If we choose to accept the idea that the divine is everything, that we share that connection with everyone, then after we shed ourselves of our mortal sheath we enter a realm of pure consciousness where everyone we have ever loved and died has also entered. Maybe there is a truth to Christianity claiming, “we will see them again.” It might not be in the sense of a golden city above the clouds, but a plane of existence where their is just peace. So all those mistakes or the suffering you have experienced melt away with your blissful awareness. If you do not believe in God that is fine. I am merely expressing my thoughts on my own spiritual journey. If I choose to believe their is divinity in everything and the universe seeks to find balance then the suffering we have endured is sought to be counterbalanced by the divine in and around us.
Therefore, as the quote above states, “Leave it all there, I will clean this up for you,” in God’s voice, the divine is taking charge to rectify the suffering with peace.
Ultimately, religion has given people a means to explain our suffering, to give them hope for their future, and put a balm on their fear of their own mortality. Spirituality, however, is found within the individual. You can pick and choose notions from different religions, or choose to not believe in any of them, making your own belief system.
I like the idea of the divine being in all of us because it places us in a beautiful, golden light of cosmic brilliance. In yoga there is no end to our existence only a cyclical metamorphosis. What we do in our current physical life will decide how we come back in our next manifested life and if we are able to reach blissful consciousness then we have achieved our ultimate radiance. Our inner light is shinning with our truth and purity.
“The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love.” -Marianne Williamson
Wow what a beautiful way to view the world Meg. I share a lot of the same beliefs but have never been able to put it into words. You have a gift with words, and I am truly blessed to know you in this life 😊