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Awakening to Spirit
by Amy Pierce, MA
It is a mid-September afternoon and a weak, skim-milk sun
is doing its best to seep through cloud and rain. I've decided that today is the day to begin an article on the nature
of spiritual awakening. Will I research, then write? Perhaps simply write; write with the hope that you, dear reader, will
find some quickening within, some break in the clouds that allows the silent, sometimes-familiar Knowing of your connection
to what seems bigger than - often outside of - your Self. The sleepy afternoon chooses for me and I see that I've already
begun ambling a path toward the gifts of a road less traveled...
First thoughts revolve around two commonly misused phrases, "awakening the spirit" and "how to be spiritual."
One simply cannot awaken what is a priori; neither can one be anything other than what one already is - Spirit in human form.
What we can do is awaken TO Spirit, then act in ways that allow us to BE, as one of my professors was fond of saying, "alive
and awake to being alive and awake," as good a definition as any of what "being spiritual" means. Journalist
and man of faith Bill Moyers wrote, "Any journalist worth his or her salt knows the real story today is to define what
it means to be spiritual. This is the biggest story - not only of the decade but of the century." Today, more than ever,
the human world requires such an inquiry, burdened as it is with anxieties, fears, violence, and an overall soul-sadness.
And the natural world, inseparable from the human, is deeply, loudly pleading with us to move ever more intentionally into
this soul work of waking to the Spirit that lives in and behind every thing.
When asked by producers of the documentary, "One: The Movie," to define spiritual awakening, Father Thomas Keating
replied, and I roughly paraphrase, "First, it's the realization, not the information, that there is something Other,
capital O, than ourselves. Second, it's the longing to know and connect to that Other. Third and finally, it's the realization
that there IS no Other, that we are It." Awakening to Spirit, then, is an ultimate, deep recognition of Oneness. If Keating
and Moyers are correct, as I believe they are, then how do we actually become alive and awake to being alive and awake? Once
"there," how does our awake-ness inform our living?
Spiritual awakening, while it's defined in large part through the commonality of its elements, often occurs in ways specific
and unique to each individual. My favorite story of awake-ness comes from Ron Miller's essay, "Space for Spirit,"
in "Finding a Way, Essays on Spiritual Practice." He writes, "Whitaker Chambers, author of "The Witness,"
saw his atheism dissolve into faith while watching the oatmeal drip from the ear of his baby daughter. Could such a delicate
instrument as that ear be nothing more than a chance cancatenation of atoms? Suddenly the divine was present in a worldview
that had no room for God." Miller also writes of Jesuit theologian and scholar, Avery Dulles. While a young atheist in
college, "...the sight of the 'new green' of springtime propelled him into an awareness of the Creator." Miller
goes on to say, "If such simple events can constitute a miracle, then what could NOT be a miracle for one with eyes to
see and ears to hear? ...If the door is everywhere, all that is wanting is our attention."
I like to think of discontentment and enthusiasm as the front and back of the hand when it comes to spiritual awakening.
Discontentment can be a sign of an inner call to awaken, a sign that something is "showing up as missing." The restless
desire for something more, something different, is always one's spirit calling out to be heard. In being attentive to the
undercurrent of our discontent, we open to the possibility of responding to that pull toward something else. It is first through
attentiveness, then by responsiveness that we may move into our enthusiasm. To engage with one's spirit is to become enthusiastic
in our living, which is a literal engagement with the Spirit in and behind all things, as the word enthusiasm is derived from
theo (God) and means "full of God."
Spiritual awakening and enthusiasm - we might now call it "en-theos-ism" - both ultimately mean living with
deeper awareness, participation and purpose, and can't help but lead to significant behavioral changes. One particular awareness
that can arise is our realizing the inherent wisdom in all circumstances and events, no matter how things are showing up.
Such consciousness allows a trust in Life to take hold, which leads to being able to participate fully in THIS moment, rather
than live in memory (past) or imagination (future). Conflict and being "right" lose their appeal, as do judgmentalism
and criticism. Feelings of connection can overcome us, as they did Whitaker Chambers and Avery Dulles, and we suddenly know
that Life has purpose, that OUR life is a part of that purpose. Lo and behold, we find ourselves "behaving as if the
God in all life mattered."*
In awakening to Spirit we come face to face with the truth of who we really are. We know our sister as our Self, see our
brother as our Friend. "For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall
I know even as also I am known." Paul's quote from I Corinthians is Father Keating's, "There is no Other; we are
It." The door IS everywhere, my friend. All that is wanting is our attention.
*from Machaelle Small Wright's book by the same name
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