What if even this is spiritual experience?
Today I woke with that ever-familiar feeling. That feeling that has creeped its way to greet me in the rise of the morning so many times before. The feeling that comes into my body after those familiar circumstances that I choose to walk through. That feeling of guilt, under-whelming only in that it has been lurking underneath the surface of my awareness, seemingly just waiting for the right circumstance to surface and whelm me with its vibrant presence.
The feeling of guilt is something I have been arm-wrestling with for years. It was a coping mechanism offered to me as an invitation to submission from a religious experience I had growing up. The guilt became so familiar and such a useful tool for driving better and more righteous action. However, what it actually ended up driving me to every time I felt it was a disconnect from my own self and a connection to judgement.
As I rose this morning with the feeling of guilt, I began the familiar dance with it that I have learned to be in for so many years. After all of these years, it still surprises me that it still rears its ugly face, after all of the coaching and counseling, and time separated from that “righteous environment”. The intensity of the feeling of guilt has significantly lessoned, however, it still exhausts me that it even continues to linger.
However, today while simmering in the aftermath of an evening of indulgence in circumstance once deemed “un-righteous”, I had a thought, a divine thought for sure, pop into my head. What if even this is a spiritual experience? And then I began to soften into the tender holding of allowing all experiences, ALL OF THEM, to be a spiritual experience. To allow absolutely everything that I do and say to be a spiritual experience teaching me and guiding me. This thought, even just this one thought, softened everything inside of me! It felt like my heart opening up and arms reaching out and enveloping me in their warm and tender embrace.
To see through the lens of everything that I do is a spiritual experience, it shifted how I viewed everything, and I began to see everything differently. To see the music I listen to as a spiritual experience, the things I eat and drink, the way I dress, the way I talk and speak, the things I do and the ways in which I do them, all a representation of my spirituality. To allow myself to experience every moment as spiritual began to change everything for me.
I now see that I was offered an invitation to release changing circumstance, but rather get to the heart of what I FEEL in each circumstance. I know that everything is energy, and everything is neutral. Therefore, anything I feel about something is not because it is an absolute truth but instead because of something I have chosen, either consciously or unconsciously, to believe about the circumstance. Well, if everything is neutral, then I can allow every experience to be a spiritual experience. When I allow myself to embrace this, this is the feeling I choose to have, very consciously. I no longer need to fear circumstance, things, or people, for I am the holder of my own sovereign truth and light.
I am a spirit being. I am a sentient being. It is who I am, it is who we all are. Therefore, how can we do anything that isn’t spiritual when it’s our every nature to be spirit. To fully and completely embrace this is to allow ourselves to always be connected to our own spiritual self. To always be connected, connected to ourselves, our spirit, our source, our love, and our light.
Once I allowed myself to always be connected to my own spirituality, in all I do, I began to notice how feeling guilt and judgement is an experience of being separated from spirit, separated from my own true self of spirituality and love, separated from my own light. Guilt and judgement became an experience of unplugging myself from my own light!!! Therefore, the guilt and judgement serve absolutely no purpose at all.
Once I was able to apply this new awareness and establish a new softness around these circumstances, I began to observe the layers of healing that have been needed around these old beliefs. I have had to heal for many years, doing a lot of work, and this work has been able to create space. The space is what allowed for a new perspective to come in. A new belief, one that is more aligned with who I am now. What was so interesting to me is that I had heard several spiritual teachers remind me that I am a spiritual being and that every experience is a divine offering for my spiritual evolution. I knew this as a soul truth but there were still moments where human beliefs would still take precedence.
I now see this convergence of beliefs as a necessary part of the spiritual evolution. Eventually the old belief, for me it was guilt and judgement, needed to surface in order for it to meet the new belief. The new belief is stronger, it is a higher energy, more aligned with pure love, therefore, it instantly diminishes that old paradigm of thinking. The convergence of beliefs creates the opportunity for the anchoring in of the belief and truth that is of our choosing. As always, it is a choice point. I am not so naïve to believe this guilt won’t surface again, it will, it is now part of the healing. I see it like squeezing ALL of juice from the orange, you keep squeezing to get even just one more drop, and there is often a little more in there to get out. Now I trust that when I get squeezed again, I will choose to align with this new remembrance that whatever comes out of me is an essential part of my spiritual evolution and it was just another spiritual experience. Because I am a spirit being and all I am capable of experiencing is all that I AM, the spirit of love and light.
I stand strong as a spiritual being, allowing myself to experience what there is to experience in the mortal body as a teaching experience. I choose what I want to put in by body and experience based solely on how it feels to me. I surrender the past expectations and judgements I once bought into for I no longer need them. I have my spiritual connection guiding me, the connection I am now ALWAYS lovingly plugged into, to be the guidance of my own sovereign choices and experiences.
I stand strong in the tenderness of my commitment to my own spiritual journey. I stand as me, with open heart and loving embrace. Never, ever, to be undone.
I choose the soft embrace of acceptance of my own spiritual sovereignty.