Italo Calvino said: The more
enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.” So what
enables us to become enlightened and why, or does this, create an oozing of
ghosts? To become enlightened is to
develop the ability to give spiritual or
intellectual insight to self, and some would say to others. Being
enlightened is about being present. it is about developing the spiritual
practice of releasing our attachment to the material world and all things which
seek to cling to us or to which we seek to cling. It is about becoming in tune
with all human experience, which enables one to understand our connection to
all of life and humanity.
Perhaps
that is why this image was selected to go with this quote. One can look at this
house and see it as empty and free of anything which might challenge us to
become attached materialistically. At the same time, one can look at this house
and see life being restored, an air conditioner, fresh air circulating through,
rugs to be laid out. Whichever way we choose to look at this house and experience
it is about us. We are free to determine our own lives and our own reality. This
image is nothing more then an image. What we see in it and how we experience it
can affect our understanding of reality. Like with anything else in life, we
can experience things in a way that cause our understanding of reality to
expand and contract. It is like breathing, our lungs expand and contract as we
inhale and exhale.
Read moreThe other day, someone said “this spiritual evolution stuff is hard work. Sometimes I just want to go back to the way I was, it was so much easier.” I had to giggle because I totally agreed with her. It is so easy to just go through life and not think about what we say or do or why. I remember the days when I did not worry about what I did or said and didn’t think about what I really meant by that or the message I was giving off. Or the days when I was not thinking about what emotion was ruling my response? Or whether I was responding or reacting? But then I stop and think about how unhappy I was, how messed up my life appeared to be, how I felt as if I were on an emotional roller coaster. There were times I felt as if I was trapped on one of those revolving doors. No matter how much I said things were going to be different, I found myself doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results. Oh wait, isn’t that what Einstein called insanityJ.
Evolving spiritually means that we cannot zone out through life. We cannot hit the snooze alarm on our lives. We have to remain awake and conscious. When we are conscious, we can listen to our intuition.
Read moreA few posts ago, I wrote about how we needed to stop hitting the snooze alarm in our lives. See the problem with not waking up; the problem with hitting that snooze alarm is that we think it only affects us. It doesn’t. See as long as we are hitting the snooze alarm in our lives, then we are not involved. We are not involved in our own lives, in our own liberation, in our relationships with others, in our relationship with our Higher Power or our relationship with the world. See as long as we are hitting the snooze alarm, we avoid thinking about how the world depends on each of us to wake up.
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