Spiritual Solutions

On the spiritual journey, it seems to me that we travel through three overarching phases.

The first is that of the seeker. There is a nudging from within, and a nagging feeling that there is something more to be discovered, so we start on the journey. We perhaps find confirmation and motivation in the words of Jesus, when he said, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Matt. 7:7-8)

Ravi Ravindra, author of Pilgrim Without Boundaries, wrote, “The struggle to know who I am, in truth and in spirit, is the spiritual quest. The movement in myself from the mask to the face, from the personality to the person, from the performing actor to the ruler of the inner chamber, is the spiritual journey. . . . To keep the flame of spiritual yearning alive is to be radically open to the present and to refuse to settle for comforting religious dogmas, philosophic certainties, and social sanctions.”

And, in the words of Thomas Merton:

“In one sense we are always traveling,
And traveling as if we did not know where
we were going.
    In another sense we have already
arrived. . . .
    But oh! How far have I to go to find
You in Whom I have already arrived!

“In another sense we have already arrived.” And the Spirit of God is knocking on the door of our mind, as it says in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; . . .” It is we who have to open the door of our mind and heart, and “if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

Thus we move into the second phase of our spiritual journey, that of awakening.

Lorraine Kisly, editor-in-chief of Parabola magazine, says  “. . . when a moment of awakening comes, it is clear that we are awakened. But to what? And for what? Pir Zia Inayat Khan makes a useful distinction for us. There are two types of awakening, one a sudden glimpse of hidden things which is pure gift and the other ‘a sustained inner capacity,’ an earned state.”

We are awakened to the Truth of God’s presence, the first type of awakening, the “sudden glimpse of hidden things which is pure gift.” Lorraine Kisly says that the gift comes to all without exception. It comes, as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz tells us, as an “awareness of reality, awareness of something that is calling me, ‘Come closer, come closer.’”

The second type of awakening, “a sustained inner capacity,” an earned state, is more difficult, challenging.

Jesus describes the coming together of people into an understanding of God’s presence as a dinner party, a marriage feast. (Matt. 22:1-6) As you will recall, many were invited to the celebration, but not everyone chose to come. And that is true in our lives today, that not all of us choose to come to the celebration, and not all of us come to experience a heightened consciousness of the presence of God. We live in a mundane world and a mundane experience, so we do not come with open, receptive, and responsive minds.

Jesus said, in effect, that one of the hardest things to accept in our lives is a new idea. And he came to bring a new idea, a new idea of the kingdom of God that is available and accessible to us at all times. In fact, in the Gospel of Matthew, he reminded us of the words of Isaiah (6:9,10) when he said, “You shall indeed hear but never understand. You shall indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull and their ears are heavy of hearing. And their eyes have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts, and turn for me to heal them.” (Matt. 13:14-15)

In order to heal, we have to see with new eyes, we have to hear with new ears, and we have to feel with a new heart, a new openness of heart. That means changing, and this is one of the hardest things for us to do, to change. But in all the parables Jesus turns us around, and says that in order for something new to happen in your life you must change the way you look at your world, you must change the way you look at yourself. You must open your ears and your eyes and your heart to a new possibility that is already available to you, that is here now, and not sometime else but right here and right now.

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All of us are called to a spiritual journey, whether we realize it or not. It’s a special calling, and our life is not complete until we heed that call and move forward according to the Spirit. We are guided by God’s presence; we are strengthened by God’s comforting love. Even in the deepest and darkest times, God’s love is always present to uplift us and sustain us.

In the Zen tradition, there is the idea of the sacred ox. The sacred ox symbolizes the wonderful and powerful qualities we have within us which begin to manifest as we awaken to the truth of our being and start on our spiritual journey.

The beginning scene on the scroll is the seeking of the ox. On the scroll there is a man who is wandering through the thickets in the mountains of China or India, and he is looking for himself. He realizes the ox is never lost, but he doesn’t know where to find it, so he is seeking the tracks of the sacred ox.

Behind him in the scene are all different criss-crosses of roads that he has taken – pain and loss and confusion and upset and praise and blame and all of those things we go through in life, all the roads that criss-cross behind him. And off he goes, seeking the tracks of the sacred ox. Finally he enters the forest and he stops to rest. And as he rests and becomes quiet, he looks down and he sees the tracks of the ox.

This tells us that the first steps in all spiritual journeys start with silence, start with moving into the forest in our own being to find that quiet place. It has to start there. And there we have an awakening, which Joseph Campbell called “the awakening call” or “the inner pull.” And I’m sure you’ve felt that pull, the pull of Spirit within you; that’s when you begin to see the tracks for the first time. Then, of course, you want to follow the tracks. So you try to follow the tracks of the sacred ox, that’s the next thing.

Following the tracks is a little different story, because what happens then is you begin to become aware not only of the outer life in which you are involved but you become very much aware of your inner life. You become aware of the vast inner regions of your being and the work that needs to be done there in order to feel whole, to feel that sense of oneness with God and the truth of your own being.

So we begin following the tracks of the sacred ox. Some people warn us not to take it, because when we take that spiritual journey our life is changed forever. Nothing is ever the same again. When we take that spiritual journey it touches every aspect of our life. So some warn against it.

I remember when I first went into ministry, just before I went into ministerial school at Unity Village I’d been accepted and I wanted to go. I’d never been to Unity Village and so I thought I’d better go and find out what’s going on, and I needed a place to live so I thought I’d scout around and see what I could find. So I made an appointment to see and talk with Jim Freeman, a writer and a wonderful man; he was director of Silent Unity for many years and he’d been called the poet laureate of Unity.

Writing had been flowing through me at that time, poetry and all kinds of things in my awakening. I went to Jim and I told him about all this and said, “I need some sense of direction. I’ve applied for the ministry and been accepted. What do you think? ”

“Look,” he said, “If you can do anything else, do it!”

Just like that. “If you can do anything else, do it.” And he said, “As for writing, many people write but not many come out of a cave like Mohammed did with the Koran.”

So anyway, I said “Well, I’m going to go ahead.” And that’s what happens when we’re ready to move to a new level in our spiritual journey; we feel the pull of Spirit.

There’s a story that Jack Kornfield tells about Chogyam Trunpa, the Tibetan monk and teacher. He arrived late at a lecture he was supposed to give in San Francisco. The hall was crowded, and when he arrived he said “Any of you who would like to have your money back because I’m late, you can have your money refunded.” He said, “You know, you who are new here you have to recognize that this is an arduous journey that you are starting on, it’s not all peaches and cream.” He looked around and said, “In fact, if you haven’t started it yet, you’d best not start it.” Then he looked around again and he said, “But if you have started it, you’d best finish it.”

It takes courage to start something, to realize the truth of your being and to step out in the direction and let Spirit lead us. It takes courage also to keep on keeping on. And that’s what he’s saying. If you’ve already started it, it’s best to keep on keeping on. Because you can’t stop in the middle of it. It starts with that quiet place within you, and it ends by going deeper and deeper and deeper.

What happens when we start on that journey is at first we have some tender remembrances and wonderful revelations come to us. But we also experience the stirring of things within us that come to the surface and need to be released, the old beliefs, old habits, old limitations that need to go. So it’s not always a journey of light and life; it’s also sometimes a journey of darkness and struggle.

That’s the spiritual journey. But the thing is that, with every challenge also comes a blessing; with every letting go comes the touch of angels to lighten you up and move you along the way.

No matter what is happening in your life there is the light that is leading us on toward the truth of your being. It’s already there within you. It’s not necessarily a journey toward the light, the light is already there within you. So with that light you can journey through light and dark, you can journey through ups and downs, you can journey through the mountains. And you can know that no gorge is so deep that God is not there, for God is there in all things.

God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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