Redefining Spirituality - Embracing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Being Human
What would happen if you were to embrace the entirety of your human experience? Would your whole life fall to shit? What if the exact opposite happened?
What would happen if you were to embrace sickness and go all the way into your pain, reveling in the exhilaration of being a human and experiencing human emotion?
When the time started approaching for me to move out of my parents' home and start my own life, I started wondering about how to do this human life thing. No one around me was doing it right, I knew that much. I had a clear picture of what not to do, and then I would spend the rest of my life finding out how to do it.
This was quite a task. I found teachers along the way through books who helped me immensely like Eckhart Tolle
And then I was hit by a car while riding my bike. And this was the best thing that ever happened to me. Getting hit by this car gave me enough money to buy a truck and move to my dream city, Asheville, NC, and it also put me on the path of my hero, my Chiropractor, Simon Senzon. And Simon brought me deep into my humanity. The healing that we did together stirred up a whole slew of resistance and fear and every scary and shadowy human emotion.
And through Simon... I was introduced to the work of Donny Esptein
What else would you do if you're on planet earth? We're not here to avoid being human. We're here to fucking embrace that shit. This is the new spirituality. The new spirituality is raw. It embraces the grusome and the painful. It invites in the feelings that we feel when we're sick. It invites us to revel in the entirety of our human experience just like we would a roller coaster ride.
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The roller coaster ride can be scary at times. There are twists and turns, and your stomach drops, and there are people throwing up and screaming. It's a thrill. It's exhilarating. And a three minute roller coaster ride in our human lives is exactly what being a human is like for our infinite selves: a brief, exhilarating, scary ride where there's also beauty and fun and you get to hold the hand of your loved one who sits beside you.
I have a friend who's going to be giving birth for the first time in the next couple of weeks. What does she feel? She can't even describe it to you. When she first got pregnant we started manifesting a short and easy birth. But as we talked yesterday, here's what we decided: while giving birth she is going to experience all of the deepest beauty of the essence of what life is. She's going to experience pain. She's going into the unknown. The reality is, people die while giving birth. Your vagina often rips. The baby can come out feet first. You may have to get cut open instead of birthing naturally for some reason. And she's going to embrace every part of it. She's going to go all the way into the pain. What better opportunity do you have to feel and to be what life is? Alllll of the suffering and all of the pain and soooooo much beauty and wonder all intertwined. Because that's what life is. It's beauty and pain all intertwined. There is no beauty without its opposite.
This is extreme and intense, folks, this business of being human. This is one insane roller coaster we're on. You're about to get off before you know it, so relish all the twists and turns and go into the pain with a sense of wonder. Get dirty. Experience being human. The entirety of it.
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Very insightful! Love Eckhart Tolle too. We must stay grounded and bear with it. Happened to be writing along exactly the same lines just now for tomorrow's post. Glad we're picking up the same vibe, may more follow!
Isn't it funny how that always happens? Welcome to the tribe. See you around these parts! ❤️
This 'bout sums up the human condition.
Your friend is about to experience the most intense experience of giving birth and, if opting for natural, has to embrace the pain as you say.
I wish to share a tip that helped me way back ~ ever noticed how excruciating pain is if you concentrate on it ~ rhetorical question as I am sure you have.
When contractions came I focused on my hand which felt no pain and whilst working on my breathe literally pushed the pain away with my hand. Interestingly as soon as I lost focus the pain overwhelmed me.
I wish her well.
xox
I will definitely pass this on to her in case she wants a break from going all the way in to the pain. Thanks!
This is amazing work! Resteemed and upvoted.
Thank you!
@whatamidoing was right, you are a gifted writer, this was a good read, got a bit intense towards the end, but I think you were going for that.
Embracing the ugly, dark, uncomfortable side of being human is a must. I tried to avoid it so long until I was forced to confront it. ME and my girlfriend got pregnant after two weeks of knowing eachother. Let me tell you about roller coaster rides...
There's been ups and downs, but we've worked through the downs, we've fought and yelled because we couldn't communicate with eachother well, and now we're starting to really get eachother and love eachother, it's helped me learn how to be vulnerable with someone which is something I could never do before.
The girl is stronger than anyone I know, and we're raising an amazing baby.
Nice post, got you followed, let's build the spiritual community up!
That's really beautiful. It's beautiful to work through our shit in an intimate relationship with someone.
I have tried to do this during depressions and losses. Practice sitting in the shit and sort of feeling it from the perspective of infinity. I would love to report that I have gotten to a place where i not only accept but some how poetically enjoy it... I have not. I enjoy the contrast of when I feel good again, and I certainly enjoy the trappings around me while I am in the shit (Ie thinking how I live like a queen with tea and a hot bath available to me in my most depressed or financially suffocating moments). Still learning, as always lol
Are you resisting it and condemning it and trying to overcome it? Ask your body where it is in your body and ask it what it needs from you and breathe into it.
Feeling bad will never feel good and enjoyable. But I think we can still embrace it and thus not reject it and resist it so that it can't move.
Depression is stuck energy that's not moving. Get it moving any way you can by breathing into it or doing a tiny Kundalini yoga exercise. Breath is pure energy. A little goes a long way.
I guess I view depression as a hibernation now . I've learned to stop trying to force it to move, and being ok with non-movement. A lot of the frustration from within depression comes from wanting movement where there is none. Tiny is the key word, do a little, see how that feels and if its not ready to move, let it be. But, yeah, the hope that I could view the bad times with the same poetic eye as we do once they are past was probably a bit naive on my part lol ;)
I think "depression" is part of a healthy life cycle. The reason I put it in quotes is because of the bad association with it. I watched a Matt Kahn video that I found incredibly interesting. He talked about the phases of energy. One of these is when we're bringing in new energy, another is when we're integrating this new energy, and the last is when energy is stagnant. In both the integration phase and the stagnant phase, we are resting and don't want to add any new energy in. He encouraged us to see the distinction and know that sometimes what we call depression is actually the integration phase, and we beat up on ourselves needlessly. Just an interesting thought for you. I don't know what your state is like, and I have definitely been at the bottom of the emotional scale myself. I personally have come to value all the phases. Short bouts of depression have become a part of my healing I guess you could say.
totally, I agree with the phases
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