Busy Doing Something...

LIFE ON THE SPIRITUAL PATH

Life is not about stockpiling a multiplicity of experiences in a crazy world of neurotic activity: it's about exploring more deeply the most important ones - experiences that will stretch us to new, heightened growth, experiences that will help lead us to some comprehension and appreciation of our beautiful world and our rightful place in it.

Exploring the riches of simplicity, spending time in quiet, reflective solitude and silence will lighten our load, make us feel more relaxed, more at ease with the mind, body and spirit. Then, almost without us knowing, something of a spacious calm will descend and wash away all our pre-occupations around frantic 'doing'. We start to become much more aware, much more mindful of a quieter reality of our existence. Finding this inner serenity, peace and clarity can be disturbing in one sense because once we have found it, once we have tasted its fruits, we know that we cannot do anything more than explore it further. Eventually we start to enter a spiritual territory where we feel the need to 'give up' more of ourselves (similar to Dante after he had explored the worldly plains with Virgil) and to surrender to a higher calling of presence where true humility can surface with the attendant feelings of deep appreciation, gratefulness and gratitude for all that we have been given.

Fragmentary, contradictory thoughts may surface within us, contending with each other but we are bigger than paradox and inconsistency: we are able to accept the supreme insight of our not knowing - the humbling acceptance of a deep mystery and mysticism of that which is beyond our reach, grasp and comprehension. At this point, a profound peace, which we may never have felt before, can settle in our hearts, minds and bodies that will gently encompass and embrace a fuller acceptance and reconciliation to what is.

Mick Lewin