email to Luana

July 1996

Spiritual Protection in Accelerated Times

There are many reasons to be drawn to a spiritual path. Sometimes it is from hitting bottom and wishing to surrender to a Higher Intelligence. It can be a way of bringing action to our words: helping Spirit to bring opportunities to us after we have asked or prayed for help. Sometimes it is simply a desire to pursue Truth.

For many, somewhere in the mix is a desire to be protected from pain and suffering by an all-powerful God-force. So much of what is offered through religion and spirituality offers the message, subtly or blatantly that if we are a "good" and spiritual person, that we will be saved, protected or otherwise shielded from the difficulties of life.

Anyone who has dedicated themselves to a spiritual path over time knows intellectually that this is not true, but emotionally we continue to pursue the safe haven.

Sometimes in our search, we may uncover the reality that we have an attachment to living a painless life. When life brings us loss or anguish, we resent it, struggle against it, feel it is unfair. Even for those who have studied spiritual philosophies and endeavor to embrace the whole of Life, the shadow and the light together... we fall back on defining the painful as "bad," and somehow separate from the wholeness of Spirit. We regress from a belief in the Holistic Reality, back to a perception of Dualistic Reality. (i.e.: good vs bad, light vs evil, etc.)

By defining something as bad, evil, separate from God, we often empower it with our fear. So many spiritual teachings tell us that what we are attached to we will push away, and what we fear we will draw closer to us. And yet, we can be so adamant about defining our difficult challenges, our most intense lessons, as fearful and bad experiences.

When we know these higher truths spiritually and intellectually, it may be experienced separately from what our emotional and physical selves feel. A traumatic experience may split us into these two aspects having very different judgements about the reality of the situation. It is important to acknowledge the experience of the emotional/physical selves as real, as opposed to denying it through spiritual cliches and platitudes.

Having gone through the loss of my baby daughter recently, I can speak from within that experience. I am grateful for the foundation of my spiritual belief, and I know those Universal Truths on an intellectual level, but that does not diminish the need for the body and emotions to go through the grief process. The emotional self has gone through all kinds of questioning about reality, God, and my ability to create a positive reality. At the bottom of it all is my spiritual foundation, and it gives me the freedom to explore all the questions, anger, fear and despair that come up during my grief process. It gives me a container to open the Pandora's Box of grief within. It gives me a reference point, no matter how far I may wander in my journey to resolve this event which has happened in our family. I do have moments of peace, and a sense of the resolution I am working towards; and yet I also have moments of great sadness that are often triggered without warning.

In order to embrace the experience of death and loss, I have been turning more and more to Eastern philosophy, particularly Buddhist teachings and the writings of Krishnamurti. As much as I have learned to embrace loss and suffering as vehicles for growth throughout my life, I have never been challenged in this way to live my beliefs. The peace I have come to recently is simply to stay in my process, and let it bring me back to my spiritual foundation in its own time, in its own way. I have had to let go of all attachment to how long it will take, who I will be, and what I will believe in when I get there. I have a glimpse of being in a place that is less about belief, and more about being. For those who have difficulty observing my process, I have been challenged to stay within the rhythm and flow of my own experience, and to let them have their own experience separate from my healing process. Some people have moved unexpectedly closer to me, and some have distanced themselves from me. I try to stay detached, to just observe the dance, and know that it is not over yet.

When we go through great changes in life - when we become different people with different values and priorities in the process - it can scare those around us. When we walk through the darkness to explore the shadow side of ourselves, it can be unnerving to those who are denying their own shadow work. We have all had times of walking through the shadow, and have come out eventually on the other side, knowing so much more about the totality of our Being. Sometimes this can be viewed as a Healing Crisis: an opportunity for growth that cannot be denied any longer. It is helpful to have a facilitator, mentor, or support group to keep us grounded in reality as we explore these parts of self. Sometimes those who are close to us - friends, family or spouse - may not be the most appropriate facilitators simply because they cannot be objective. It is important to keep them informed on our process however: otherwise they may feel alienated or threatened by the things we are exploring within ourselves.

There are some who explore the darkness who never come out. When we hear of someone who has disappeared into a well of grief, depression or self-destructiveness, it is threatening to us. We want to explain it, control it, or deny it. We want to label it, as if that will protect us from it. Mostly, we have a tendency to see it as "bad" or even "evil", without knowing or understanding the karmic history of the individual. Sometimes we want to blame someone else for the demise of our loved one. We may actually help to create or empower the negative energies around the individual, by fearing and labeling it as "demons", "possession", etc. The question to ask ourselves is - why are we so invested in knowing the how's and why's of the situation? What is the button in us that has been pushed? What part of our shadow is surfacing to be observed? Are we helping them by labeling their shadow, or are we limiting them in their exploration of the wounded or damaged parts of self? Would we be more helpful by just sitting with the feelings that come up as we observe their process?

During these times that we live in, as the energies intensify and our karmic challenges accelerate exponentially, we must think about how to support each other with compassionate detachment. We must commit to accepting the whole of each other's Being, even when we see others walking in their shadow. We must hold our gaze on the perfection of each others Being, without trying to define or understand what that perfection is. Perfection is not always happiness, beauty and joy. Sometimes perfection is experiencing suffering so that we may expand our ability for compassion. Sometimes the most perfect thing is to lose something so that we will recognize our attachment to it. Sometimes we must see ugliness to appreciate beauty. Eventually, when we come to accept all parts of our reality as the perfect creation of God, then are we able to experience a transcendental joy which is not reliant on the events of our outer life. Having said that, we must also release our attachment to achieving that ecstasy, lest we slow our journey towards it.