Throwing out the baby with the bathwater/Preciousness

Dear Friends. Through these past months we have focused on the ways many of us got injured by religious institutions, religious ideas and religious teachers.  We have explored the many ways the superego sneaks  into sacred language, into our most precious longings. We become numb, or we leave; we accommodate and become dutiful church members. Many of us became disillusioned by the hypocrisy of church leaders or spiritual teachers and  we walked away, looking for other paths or simply giving up. And yet we are here. Perhaps we are called by some intuitive feeling that there must be something real in all this religious stuff. Or perhaps it is a quiet longing and a need to find some depth. Some of us are facing life challenges or have been beaten down by difficult past histories, and we  long for a safe way to connect spiritually. Some us came because we are drawn to inner work  with fellow travelers  Whatever your motivation for participating in this circle it means that you are turning away from something, and are turning towards something, drawn by some mysterious longing, by some insistent pull. This turning is crucial. It is the journey back from our spiritual wounds, all the disappointments and betrayals. It is not about fixing all of those wounds, but about an inner discovery of something that maybe at some level we knew all along.

Over these many months we have focused on how our particular spiritual or religious  circumstances hurt us. Last Monday we explored how in order to protect ourselves we walked away, and what we lost in the process. For me, the turning began with my anger that somehow fundamentalists had taken over sacred language and distorted it so much, that for me, it had become a language of judgement and fear. The language and the  spiritual practices had become dead skeletons and lost the power of living truth and wisdom. My own journey has taken me on a deep archeological dig through time to recover the essence of this language. It has been a thrilling five year journey  of deep study, reflection and contemplation. And along the way living presence has opened up and now these sacred texts, these teachings both contemporary and ancient, are alive. Not all by any means and not all the time, but something is emerging as the living word, rather than the dead, boring, word. At the beginning the fuel was anger but along the way the fuel became an abiding curiosity and love.

Sometimes it is anger that wakes us up. Or it maybe grief of what we left behind, what we threw out with the bathwater. Sometimes it is the press of fear that time is short and there is an imperative to get beyond the superego and all the ways it permeates  all that is sacred. This loss of presence is inevitable, it is occurs choicelessly through our early years. Layer upon layer of ego arises as self protection but also as a way to adapt and function in the world. By the time most of us go to school we have lost contact with our living presence. This is the initial turning away from presence. We don't decide to do this. It happens gradually. In someways this is the deepest wound. By necessity we all betrayed our divine nature. We had to. But the pain of losing the connection is very deep and painful. When we begin to see and feel what we have lost it can bring forth deep grief. This grief is not so much  about the missed opportunities in life, the risks not taken, the mistakes made. This grief is more fundamental, it is the loss of what is most precious to us. 

This is a necessary crisis  and it is what brings us to spiritual work. People who are comfortable, secure enough most likely won't  even consider this kind of journey. It is not journey for the faint of heart. We are on a mission to recover what is most precious, what some have called the pearl beyond price. We are drawn to this because we love what is precious to us. Often we project the preciousness onto our beloved, our children, our homes, our clothing, our pets, our special places. And they are precious to us. But what we don't understand is that this preciousness which seems "out there" is really a reflection of our own inner preciousness. Living presence is so, so, so precious; it is who you are, always have been. You are the preciousness. This face of precious presence lives mostly in the unconscious hidden away until the time is ripe. And when it is time the turning inward begins. You have all begun. And the turning never stops, as long as we keep coming back to this moment, this moment, this moment.

Last Monday's questions: Tell me something that is precious to you? Tell me a way you walked away from what is precious to you? Explore what it means to reclaim and recover what is precious to you in the midst of your wounding?

Alison Hine, LMSW
734-668-0475
Psychotherapy and Spiritual Guidance