Thank you Jim Palmer for this. I appreciate and resonate with what Jim illuminates and gives us glimpses of here.
It’s my belief and experience that we humans all fall somewhere on a continuum with ignorance, fear, separation, and illusion on the one end and consciousness, truth, compassion, and love on the other. It is humbling to recognize that there is always another vista to see beyond the one we do now.
And it is a courageous journey to seek to see with the eyes of our hearts, remember what we have forgotten, heal and transform generations of ancestral and cultural trauma, gradually emerge from the layers of the fog we’ve unknowingly been immersed in, and increasingly grow into the beauty and wholeness of who we truly are. This, to me, is what a spiritual path, a path of heart, embodies. 💜 Molly
Someone asked me this week what "spirituality" actually is, and if it truly is a pathway to happiness.
People seek happiness in countless ways. Right? Some people seek happiness through success, career, renown and achievement. Others pursue happiness through altruism, service, humanitarianism, and making a difference in the world. Others imagine happiness to be a life of financial independence, adventure, travel, and possessions. Still yet, people seek happiness through religion, spirituality and self-help.
If I were to synthesize all spiritual teachings across a wide spectrum of pathways, and had to put it in a few simple points it might be this:
1. Virtually all spiritual pathways stress the importance of knowing things as they truly are, which is different than the way they seem or appear. Jesus once said, "If the eyes are good, the whole body is good." There is a message in the fact that the most common act of healing attributed to Jesus was the restoration of sight. The meaning of the words and acts of Jesus is that seeing and knowing things as they really are is the gateway to true liberation. Jesus said that when one knows the truth and sees things as they truly are, they are free. The central message of the wisdom traditions is that we have a monumental misknowledge of the way things really are - who and what we are, what the nature of reality is, what is at the heart of all existence. Until that misknowledge is corrected, we will chase our tails trying to find happiness.
2. This second point isn't quite as exciting as the first one, but virtually all spiritual pathways teach the importance of stabilizing oneself in clarity and true perception through practices such as meditation, critical thinking, and self-reflection.
There's an empowering Buddhist concept referred to as "brilliant sanity." Brilliant sanity describes our nature - who we are fundamentally at the deepest level. We are not always in touch with our brilliant sanity, but it is always there and available for us to tap into.
The basic premise of "brilliant sanity" is that we all have within us a natural dignity and wisdom, and that our basic nature is characterized by clarity, openness, and compassion. We may be out of touch with this wisdom and clarity, but it is always present and can be cultivated into our lived human experience.
The surface, flow and tenor of daily life tends to reinforce a false perception of reality, or masks the deeper one. This is why a regular intention or practice to stabilize one in clear perception can be useful. Meditation, critical thinking and self-reflection are a few tools that can be useful in processing life at a deeper level.
3. The third aspect of virtually all wisdom traditions is the necessity of integrating clarity and true perception into our thoughts, feelings, choices, actions, relationships, and endeavors of our daily lived human experience. Rather than think of "spirituality" as an escape from real life, parallel universe, or an add-on to ordinary living, think of spirituality as a different way of being in the world and a different way of being you, a different way of showing up to your life.
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