Taking it With You

I had a marvelous conversation last night which brought up many wonderful topics and ideas to think about...I'm sure it will influence this blog for a while to come.  One of the many useful things that came out of the conversation was the idea of taking your spirituality with you.

I have to confess...when it comes to working I can be pretty lackadaisical.  I don't want to get up and go to work any more than anyone else I know.  What I want to do is stay home, meditate, do some yoga, take a walk, read, ponder, write, talk to people about spirituality and basically enjoy my life steeped in a deeply spiritual practice that the outside world does not intrude upon.  When I think from this perspective I see work as the enemy, the obstacle to my deep spiritual practice and if life would just cooperate I could have it.  But no!  I have to work and I leave each weekend resentfully and resistantly coming in at the beginning of each week angry that I have to leave my spiritually centered life and focus on something as mundane as work.  I come in grumpy, short-tempered, seeing obstacles not solutions and in short I'm no good to anyone.

Poppycock!  Spirituality isn't based on a single place or a certain amount of time.  Spirituality, like life itself, manifests everywhere...all around us and is there if we need it.  There's nothing that says if I need to I can't shut my door for five minutes and close my eyes and meditate.  In those five minutes I am in the presence of the Absolute, there is no separation between me and eternity, I am experiencing it.  It isn't less Divine or eternal just because I'm in my office...It, Divinity, God, the Absolute, The Eternal, the Infinite...whatever you want to call it...is right there, it always has been an eyelid closing and breathing exercise away.  It is incumbent upon me to remember that and be aware, not to limit the possibilities of spirituality just because I have attachment to what I think my spiritual life and practice should look like.

As my friend said last night, "Ideally you should be able to meditate while riding a roller coaster."  As a lover of roller coasters and meditation it is an experience I am looking forward to trying...seems like it would be a blast...and ideally my spirituality never leaves me, it is never more than a careful breath away.  The anger and resentment don't serve me, my co-workers or the people we help...but my spirituality does and that is with me always.
Blessings.