Myss Daily Practice

The other day I spoke with a woman who told me that she was concerned that she was doing something wrong on her spiritual path. She came to this conclusion because she remained confused about what she should do with her life, and that confusion continually added to her emotional and mental stress. Surely, she surmised, she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere along her spiritual path, otherwise she would not be in such a crisis. Right?

Earlier I had spoken with a man after a lecture who reported that he, like this woman, had obviously lost his way on his spiritual journey. He said that he began “dabbling” in spirituality a few years ago after his divorce. Finding himself in an emotionally vulnerable situation – aka: he was alone for the first time in years – he believed that spirituality was his way through loneliness. But in spite of all the books on spirituality that he had read and all the workshops he had attended, he declared with a bit of anger that he was still lonely. So, what was he doing wrong? Was he reading the wrong books? Was he going to the wrong workshops? What’s with this spiritual stuff and why isn’t it working, he wondered.

I could provide any number of additional examples of stories from people whose life situations reflect more or less the same confusion about their spiritual path: I’m still unhappy/confused/angry/broke/etc., so did I take a wrong turn on my spiritual path? Most of the stories have a few points in common. First, people assume that something is going wrong “in the heavens” so far as they are concerned because the problems that they want solved or dissolved just won’t go away. Do they need different prayers? Or maybe more candles would help?

Sometimes people begin to despair that they’ve been duped; that is, the problem solving solutions, chants, and mantras they invested in are just not working – or at least not as effectively as they had counted on. One young man actually said, “You know, maybe I should have tried Buddhism. I like that idea about seeing life as a bunch of nothing, ya know? Cuz that makes sense to me.” I thought, “I could see how you and nothingness would get along just fine.”

Many people are a bit stunned to learn that the pain or confusion that often increases when one engages the spiritual path is not an indication that you are doing something wrong, but that you are doing something right. For some people, that information feels like salve on a burning wound. For others, it’s the last thing they want to hear. Because so many people are either actively pursuing their spiritual path or are wading in spiritual waters as observers, unsure of what a spiritual path really is, I thought I’d explore the topic, highlighting the inevitable encounter with spiritual Firewalls.

What the Spiritual Path Isn’t and What it Is

I’ve studied the writings and the wisdom of the great mystics for most of my life. Regardless of whether these mystics come from the Western or the Eastern traditions, there are core teachings of truth that are universal to all spiritual paths. These are the mystical truths and though they may be taught in different ways, positioned to suit particular cultures and mythologies, at their core, they are in harmony. Given that as the background, let’s examine a few common misunderstandings of what the spiritual path is all about.

The spiritual path is not a route to problem solving. Though crises often lead a person to turn to spirituality or prayer, you will not find any authentic teachings in which the spiritual master assures the student that all earthly problems and concerns will be taken care of once you start praying, meditating, or in the contemporary world, going to seminars and reading the latest self-help book. Whether you look to the wisdom of Buddha or the organic mysticism of the Tao, or the sacred teachings of Jesus or the mystical theology of Teresa of Avila, none promise you an end to all problems. Rather, their teachings are directives of how to navigate through the challenges of life, to perceive them as “illusions” (in the language of the Buddha), and to learn – always learn – about how life’s challenges influence your inner conduct with power, most especially your power of choice.

The spiritual path does not indulge your childhood mythologies of God and your place in this universe. Rather, it dismantles them, if not destroys them completely. What do I mean by this? The Western tradition is rooted in a myth that indulges suffering. Suffering is rewarded in our society. When people recover from an illness, they are convinced it’s because they are special and thus, their suffering was not for nothing. I have endless stories of people who behaved as if they were hit with a stun gun because the “heavenly reward” they were waiting for never came. One woman told me that she did everything she was “guided” to do: she moved, she divorced, she sold her belongings, and left her friends. She did all of this convinced that she was following her inner guidance, so, “why isn’t anything working out for me now?” The last thing this woman wanted to hear from me was the very thing she needed to hear from me, “Everything is working out, just not the way you want it to. But what if it’s the way you need it to?”

The spiritual path is not about being given your way, but being shown your way. That’s a very dicey but deeply mystical truth. What does that really mean? And why can’t the Divine be clearer, more obvious, and more direct? You know, the longer I’m in this field of mystical theology and living in my own ups-and-downs, the more the great teachings become almost humorously real, not to mention how truthful they prove to be yet again. The spiritual path is about being positioned on a path that causes you to face your fears, not protect you from them. What good does it do you to be given something – anything – that supports what is weak about you? That makes no sense whatsoever.

St. Augustine told a wise and wonderful story to a man who confronted him about the logic of heaven. “Why doesn’t God make me a rich man? I’ve prayed for money again and again and God doesn’t answer my prayers.” St. Augustine asked him what he would do if he became a rich man. The man replied, “I would have land and I would have people work for me for a change. I would be in charge.”

“And what’s your life like as a poor man?” asked St. Augustine.

“I have my family. I have my friends. We all work hard together. But we’re all poor.”

“Well, I can see why God has answered your prayers with such profound wisdom,” said St. Augustine.

“God hasn’t answered my prayers at all. I’m still a poor man.”

“Not at all. You’re a very rich man. God has simply not given you gold. But by denying you gold, he has prevented you from becoming greedy, abusive, and arrogant. Why would God give you something that would help you to harm the people you love? By withholding gold – and only gold – God has allowed you to be rich of spirit. You are kind, generous, loving and loved.”

The man stared at St. Augustine, then collapsed in tears.

The spiritual path is a path of self-knowledge, of you not getting your way but of you rising up to the path you have been given to walk.

Encountering Firewalls

A Firewall is what we put up when we do not want to pursue a discussion or an inner process any further. You have all had the experience of telling a person; “I don’t want to talk about this any longer.” And no doubt someone has said the same to you. But closing down a discussion, as you well know, does not close down an inner dialogue.

The spiritual path has a “mind” of its own. That is, there is an archetypal map pulsating or guiding everyone’s spiritual life, regardless of their choice of tradition or their personal practices, or even lack of them. Again, all sacred traditions speak of stages of spiritual progression that simply engage once the student sets foot on the inner path. Think of this analogy: Imagine that you are preparing for descent into human life and you decide to fret about how to manage aging. How will you organize progressing from one year to the next? Finally a well-seasoned soul tells you that there are certain organic systems that were long ago put in place that do not require human attention. One is how human beings age: They just do. It happens to them effortlessly, although they will try their best to interfere with the process. It is one of the many systems of life over which they have absolutely no authority.

The same system is in place for the progress and awakening of the human spirit. It will happen as it happens within each human being. For some it will feel like a collision with reality and for others it will feel as if they are arriving at home base. Neither is better, though one does feel a bit better. However, no human being can avoid moving through the stages of soul progression that are inherent to the spiritual path. People can play with timing on their spiritual path but they can never get off of it. Why? The obvious is also the ridiculous: Life is only a spiritual path.

The three stages of the spiritual path are: purge, illumination, and union. You can tell from the sound of the word, purge, that it’s Firewall territory. I’ll define each briefly then return to a more in-depth discussion of the first stage. The first stage, the purge, refers to exactly what the word implies – a cleansing of your inner emotional, mental, spiritual, and psychic debris. This is Firewall territory for obvious reasons.

The second stage – Illumination – speaks of a progression into a more transcendent or what Buddha would call a more detached position of consciousness. Said a different way, an illuminated mind and heart is able to “perceive truth,” to see clearly rather than look at life through a private ego agenda filled with fear, insecurity, greed, and all the other lesser human emotions. Emptied of these, a human being can see into the heart of another person with clarity and compassion or can discern the essence of a conflict with wisdom. To illuminate means to “bring light to bear upon” whatever or whomever you are in contact with.

Finally, the third stage of union refers to a soul achieving profound mystical states of consciousness transcendent of the ordinary mortal mind. A portal to a “cosmic mind,” so to speak, is opened and the mystic falls into union with divine energies the uninitiated human mind is incapable of grasping.

Let me now expand on the Firewall as the stories that I told at the beginning of this Salon were what I would consider to be Firewall stories; that is, both people had reached the extent of one way of thinking. They had, in other words, exhausted one of their mythologies of how God was supposed to operate in their lives: I do this and God is supposed to do that. If I am a good girl and follow my guidance, then having everything turn out just fine should be my reward. And further, I am due a “No More Pain” card because I’ve now had my share of earthly pain.

Myth crises are among the most common Firewalls. Everyone has a myth of God somewhere in their psyche and among the most popular and thus the most powerful are the God of “reward and punishment” and “suffering is rewarded with treasure.” There is no off-planet God that operates according to any earthly game show rules such as, “You do this and I’ll do that.” We operate by those rules and we’ve projected them on to our myths of a God based upon how we would like a God to behave: Just Like Us only bigger and better. That way, we can do what we like to do best, which is control everything, including the nature of God.

The spiritual path is about releasing your myths of God – the ultimate act of surrender. When I said to the woman in the first story, “Actually, your confusion tells me that you are doing everything right,” at first she was baffled. She was standing in front of her Firewall. She wanted her myth of God to be real and to kick in. In her ideal spiritual reality, the result of following her guidance was supposed to be rewarded by obvious opportunities and solutions to her financial and emotional problems. She was actually expecting that someone was going to come along who would provide for her in some way. For her, that represented the answer to her prayers. Not seeing someone on the horizon left her confused and in no better shape than the situation that she had left. Where had she gone wrong?

I asked her if she was willing to examine her mythology about God as her next step. What if she was exactly where she was supposed to be and that her next step was not waiting for someone to come along. What would she have to do next? My conversation with this woman was more involved than this summary, as I hope you can appreciate, but fortunately the result was that she realized that she was holding on to a “dysfunctional myth” that she needed to release. No matter where she would have moved, she would have had to confront that belief. She no longer thought that maybe she had moved to the wrong town or took the wrong job. She was still thinking that the Universe owed “something special” to her because she followed her guidance. Hopefully she finally broke through that Firewall and purged herself of that burdensome myth.

For You:

The spiritual path is a continuum of breaking through our Firewalls, dismantling dysfunctional myths, and becoming clear-sighted about who we are and the governing laws of life. It’s not about finding a path that lacks problems or a way to get more stuff to stash away. All that does is make you want more stuff. There’s no end to feeding that beast.

Here are a few checkpoints for you in terms of your own inner work:

If you consider yourself on a spiritual path, then the stages of “purging, illumination, and union” are in motion in your life. You cannot stop these any more than you can stop the aging process. Therefore, become observant of them. We are purged of fears, illusions, and our shadow aspects. A purging can take the form of repeated heartaches, addiction breakdowns, illness, dysfunctional belief patterns or any other repeated patterns that qualify as Firewalls. Identify your Firewalls and explore breaking through them.
· Spirituality is not about reading self-help books; it’s about praying, reflection on your life choices, and contemplation of moral, ethical, and wise judgments. Your spiritual life is about accessing truth, not running away from it.

A Prayer for our Healing Together

“Give me a candle of the Spirit, O God, as I go down into the deeps of my being. Show me the hidden things, the creatures of my dreams, the storehouse of forgotten memories and hurts. Take me down to the spring of my life and tell me my nature and my name. Give me freedom to grow, so that I may become that self, the seed of which you planted in me at my making. Out of the deeps I cry to you, O God.” From, “Prayer at Night: A Book for the Darkness” by Jim Cotter