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Wisdom Story
A spiritual seeker approached a highly esteemed, reclusive spiritual Sage in a cave high in the mountains. After the greeting, the Sage spoke ...
"And why did you come to such a secluded place, friend?"
The man replied, "To seek you, Sir."
"And what from me do you seek?"
"To seek an answer."
"What answer?"
"Sir, to what do you most attribute your success in the spiritual life?"
Replied the Sage, "To nothing."
"Why?" asked the confused man.
"For I have no success in the spiritual life. So how can I assign an attribute to something I do not have."
*Story by Brian K. Wilcox
Comments
There is a recurrently frustrating pattern we set up when caught in the knot of success and failure as regards the spiritual life. We set up internal images of success and failure. These become the references points for our efforts and consequent evaluations.
We start reacting to our spiritual life based on these judgments derived from the internal reference points. This image of success and failure leads pantingly to seeking our image of success and pantingly to avoiding our image of failure. If we meet the image of success we feel good, and even thank God; if we meet our image of failure, we feel guilty, are ungrateful, and try harder.
All this pantingly patterning our spiritual journey on the duality of success and failure is another trap of the false self. This false self lives off internalized images that come from outside the True Self, and are largely derived from those around us. That is, they are not True, of the True Self, they are constructs that remove us from the openness and clarity inherent in our divine Self~in~God, the True Self ~ which has inherent, immediate openness to the clarity and joy of the Holy Spirit. The false self is a mass of patterned actions and reactions blocking the rays of the Sun.
Likewise the spiritual journey leads us away from that "I" demanding success. The True Self seeks only to be True, and social constructs of right and wrong, true and untrue, and success and failure are not priorities, except as they serve the Principles of faith, hope, and love. Being true to Truth, living in Love, and surrendering to Spirit are the priorities. In this Truth, this Love, and this Spirit, the self~in~God needs no claim to success; this one~in~One seeks only to live Union with the Divine and share the fruit of such oneness with others.
Spiritual Exercise
Spend at least ten minutes in prayerful meditation. Any time a thought arises about your success or failure at the prayerful meditation, do one of two things: 1) simply let the evaluation go, or 2) inwardly speak, "Christ, to You, I give this."
See next page for Invitation to writer's contemplative village, purpose of OneLife, data on ordering author's book and upcoming devotionals 2008, and material on citations.
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