Saturday 6 February 2010

Spirituality is all about.......choice.....

It took everything I had to honour my word and do what I said I would do yesterday. Every fibre of me was screaming to go to bed and not get up for the entire weekend but I know that feelings and thoughts don't produce any results. What produces results is performance and action so I dragged myself out of bed. Forced myself to pack a bag with some kind of clothes because I would be staying with friends for Friday and Saturday night. Dawdled around my room but in spite of all of this blackness I still caught the train that I intended to. Once at my agreement it was picked up immediately that there was something about me that was distant and cut off and the enquiry began. I know that the training I am currently doing to be a bold leader one who listens for and reliably delivers what it is that people care about and what matters to them has nothing to do with being spiritual. So when I tried in my clumsy way to explain how the spiritual Presence which I have grown so used to has now gone it was met with a blank stare. I didn't feel any frustration about this I listened to what was said to me about not dwelling in the past but to create something powerful for the future.

All these were just words for me at this point but I must have put on a good enough show because the attention turned to someone else who was also dealing with something else. I did my agreeement but still couldn't shake the blackness. At the end of the time, a woman who is on the same training course but who I haven't spoken to very much at all came up to me and said 'I can understand exactly where you are at'. I couldn't believe that there was someone who could see' and I just looked at her with eyes wide with surprise and she said yes. And in her lovely soft Welsh accent she explained that as a little girl I had that spiritual consciousness as a gift of grace. I didn't have to ask for it or make a choice about whether or not to have it. It is like a fish swimming in water but doesn't realise the water it is swimming in. With this shift I can now choose powerfully to continue along this spiritual path. I have often written that the spiritual path is solely about choice but the truth was that while I kept my consciousness spiritual I wasn't choosing, I was just hanging onto what I had.

Now...I can choose. I know by choosing it is going to require more generation and creation from me because it is not there naturally anymore. It is only going to be there if I create it. These words of hers said so simply and with such love and joy resonated and I looked at with eyes so full of gratitude. I was also grateful to the universe because in that moment this woman became my teacher. She also explained that the little girl and that spirituality will never fully go. It is that part of me which is going to make it possible for me to move and touch people very deeply but I will also be an adult...steady in everything that is said to me and how everyone is to me. I had never looked at it this way. I had seen the loss of the spirituality I had which I can only compare to being wrapped in an electric blanket as in some way a punishment now I see it as me being asked to consciously choose this path....and I do.....unreservedly.....

What was quite funny and ironical was before I went to do my agreement I was early so I went to my usual cafe to have a white coffee that they make especially for me. I had just been given my coffee when the door opened and in walked a nun and a little girl. It didn't look like the nun was used to coming into the cafe because she flustered a bit with all the cans of drink. Then she ordered what she ordered and then spent ages faffing through all the layers of her robe to find her money. I watched all this happening with curiosity. When she finally produced her £5 with a flourish it wasn't enough and there was a conversation about her returning with what was owed. Then to my horror she took a look around and I saw without any hesitation that she was heading over to sit beside me. She then tried to open the box of ribena she had bought for the little girl who was with her and then couldn't find the straw and I had the realization that if I hadn't shifted would I have turned out like that nun. Is that the product of not growing up....would that have been the ultimate outcome for me if this shift hadn't happened.

I know it doesn't mean anything that this nun came to sit beside me and I could see just how much she struggled with simple practical things and for a moment I could so see myself in her......she was also Irish as is my bood!

No comments: