I just recently returned from a drive to visit my Mom, Norma Hawkins, in Mtn. Grove. It was a rather quick trip as I drove down yesterday and returned this morning. But we had a great visit. I am blessed to have a Mom that I can talk with about anything; and that I can feel totally myself with. Because we almost lost Mom earlier this year, every chance I have to spend time with her is all the more precious to me.
On the way there and back I found myself contemplating "Awakening." Being spiritually aware has been something I have been seeking for what seems my entire life....certainly from the time that I would swing for hours in the tire swing, as a child, talking to and trying to comprehend God.
It was long ago in ancient Greece that Plato, in dealing with the questions, "Who Am I? What Does It Mean," first came up with the concept of a soul separate from the physical body. He also believed the soul was immortal. Since then our idea of the soul has not really changed much at all. Still, in our culture, those who believe we have a soul, see it as separate from the body or separate from the ego. I was thinking about how this plays out in the battle between right and wrong and good and evil. We are constantly fighting the desires of our bodies for the saving of our souls. Have you ever noticed that the more you try to change someone else the more they dig their heels in to defend their present position. Isn't that exactly how it is when we try to stop eating too much or drinking too much, or whatever desire it is that plagues our bodies?
And so, life is filled with this suffering. I do what I do not want to do then I live in fear for my soul. Suffering, fear....are these negative emotions truly part of the path to awakening. Is there a better way of understanding who we are? What if indeed we are whole and perfect, but we just do not understand that we have built a barrier to that part of us that is connected to God and to truth---the soul. I feel that the soul is our true guide, the channel through which the divine can speak to each of us. Our souls speak through our intuition, through that "still small voice." Yet, in our science worshiping culture we do not take this "voice" seriously.
It is my experience that the more I do take this voice seriously the more my life flows.....the less I experience suffering or fear.....the easier, in fact, it becomes to align my body with my soul. If we begin to trust that our souls' are guiding us to what is ultimately best for us in this life as well as the hereafter, perhaps awakening will be just a natural outcome of this process.
