As the Paradigm Shifts | Spirituality takes a back seat to success

||| AS THE PARADIGM SHIFTS by ROSIE KUHN |||

People come to me for coaching when they are ready for an upleveling in their lives. They may not know what that means. They just know that what they are doing isn’t working. It doesn’t mean they are in crisis. It may mean that they want a different way to look at themselves, their lives and their relationships, so that they experience themselves—more of an authentic and divine expression of themselves.

Rhonda has been on a path of self-exploration for over 30 years. She’s been dedicated to being a success as an actor and writer but has continually found herself never meeting her own expectations. Through our conversations, she, like every one of my clients, reveal exquisite elegance in the way they live their lives, and don’t even know it.

Rhonda is one of those people who is ridiculously on point with much of what she says. Quite often it’s a kick-in-the-head-moment of brilliance. I never saw it coming.

The other day, she said something profound. Though she’s been in a spiritual community for decades she shared that, “spirituality is the consolation prize. I have to settle for spiritual, because I can’t make it to success.” Wow!

I realized the degree to which this is true for so many people. It was certainly true for me. We ignore our relationship with our spirit-self until there appears to be no other door open. Whether the context is health, wealth, power, love, we assume the power and control over the choices, actions and outcomes, until success we think it should be, is not forthcoming. Only
then do we reach out to a higher power—beyond our own abilities to make things happen the way we believe they should.

A woman I know, who worked in Hospice, shared that, most people she sat with during their last moments on Earth, made the most spiritual progress in the last few weeks on the planet.

Where else could they turn when there was no where else to go?

David Hawkins MD, a psychiatrist, struggled with addictions to extremes. He was very close to death, when he reached out and said something like, “God, if you exist, let yourself be known.” His books are some of my go-to’s for understanding spirituality and spiritual concepts. Just sayin’.

Why is it that, for most of us, spirituality is what we reach out for when we’ve tried everything but that first? Even people who are engaged in religious communities rarely know who they are, what they are, or what spiritual or spirituality is. I write a lot about this stuff just to help me make sense of it all. Because most of what we are fed regarding spiritual and spirituality isn’t actually true. And I’m wanting not only know myself as a spiritual being but what that actually means to be spiritual.

Here’s an example of what I mean about this. Rhonda, in our most recent session, was experiencing anger and disappointment. Having to accept the consolation prize—spirituality, she has done everything in her power to be spiritual. “Look how hard I’m working! I spiritualize the crap out of everything! I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing, spiritually, and nothing is changing! WTF!!! No one works as hard as I do, and those MF’s have it good. Me? I’m still less-than-squat! WTF!!!”

Rhonda’s awesome rampage spoke to what so many people feel. The belief is that if we do the right things, spiritually speaking, whatever that means, we will have success. And when we don’t get what we expect by “being spiritual” we get angry, resentful and bitter.

What’s your point, Rosie?

My point is this: Most of us speak about being spiritual beings having a human experience, however we rarely engage or cultivate a relationship with this spiritual being, that we are. We ignore, avoid and distract ourselves from this aspect of ourselves, without which we would cease to exist in human form. How insane is that?

Truth is, most of us grew up without a context that supported knowing and experiencing ourselves as spiritual beings. Those of us who were raised within religions, had a construct of beliefs, yet rarely did those beliefs nourish and nurture our souls.

We are so void of these experiences and the knowings of this nurturing that we are in denial of its importance and existence. Until, like Rhonda, David, me, and countless others, we had to start looking somewhere else.

And, there are a lot of people who are doing spiritual practices for certain reasons but rarely are those reasons to nurture and nourish their own spirit-self. Again, without this spirit-self you cease to exist in this human form.

Spirituality for me is cultivation of a healthy relationship with our spirit-self. It doesn’t have to be anything other than that. I want to cultivate a healthy relationship with my spirit-self in order to know the fullness of my potentiality. I don’t know about you, but I believe that there is great potential within each and every one of us that never gets to be expressed in the world because we ignore our spirit-self.

Knowing the current state of most people’s spirit-self as depleted, malnourished, ignored, shamed, hated, and abused, my job is to support and empower people to begin to acknowledge their spirit-self through everyday experiences—and not wait until they are in crisis with no where else to turn.

To build a new relationship with anyone or anything is daunting—I can attest to that. And to explore the possibility of building a relationship with one’s spirit-self can feel the most daunting of all. I can attest to that as well. However, to experience the divine expression of your true essential nature of your spirit-self is the most amazing experiences of all. I attest to this as well.

I know you have had this experience—perhaps a lot. But to perhaps make this more of a focused intention could bring this process from being a consolation prize to the most exquisite expression of fulfillment known! I’m in the experiment myself! Why not?