The Essence of the Spiritual Life
Scriptures tell us that in the
beginning, One alone was; and then that One said, 'Let there be
many.' But even then, One alone was; and even now, One alone is. What is
the nature of that One alone? Scriptures tell us that it is unknowable,
unthinkable, but to try to help us, they say, 'It is That which was the
same in the beginning, is the same now and will ever be the same.' And
they say that it is of the nature of existence, consciousness, bliss; or if you
want a simple description, it is 'I'.
That 'I' is
everywhere, manifesting Itself as everything. But in the human being there is a
peculiarity. That 'I' manifests as self-awareness. Unfortunately that
self-awareness is not an awareness of the grandeur, the unknowableness of the 'I', but rather, that self-awareness identifies with a body and mind.
This we call ego. It means we feel separate.
The word hell comes from an
old English word meaning to be walled off from. So hell means to be separate.
On the other hand, the word heaven comes from the same root as the word
harmony. So hell means separation and heaven means harmony. Thus, when the
principle of self-awareness in the human being identifies with the body, it
feels separate, and that is hell. When it identifies with the true 'I'—I am That—it is in harmony, it is in heaven.
The whole purpose of the
spiritual life is to convert this self-awareness in the human being from a
mistaken awareness that 'I am the body' to a true awareness that 'I am That.' How is this done? It is not just enough to discover this
truth intellectually, nor even to feel this truth, we must actually become this
truth. That means we can no longer assert the separate 'I'. The
separate 'I' has to surrender to the true 'I'; it has to
take refuge in the true 'I'; it has to follow the true 'I'.
There is nothing else to the spiritual life, in the final analysis, except
this.
Following the ego keeps us in
hell and compounds the hell. When we repent, which means to turn around and go
in the other direction, we surrender our individuality, our separateness, and
exchange it for harmony with the Whole. This is spiritual life. And if our
spiritual life doesn’t contain this element of surrender, if it doesn’t contain
this movement from separation to harmony, it perhaps explains why we don’t feel
that we’re making the progress we had hoped for.
Therefore, the essence of the
spiritual life is moving from being separate to being in harmony. The ego
doesn’t usually want to do it until it has suffered so much that it sees that
there is no other way. Thus, often suffering can be a great blessing. But we
needn’t suffer if we have the humility to see that the essence of the spiritual
life is in surrendering our individuality and taking refuge in God, that it is in
surrendering our sense of separation, so that we are in harmony.
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