Eckhart Tolle’s book on “The Power of Now” is very good and very powerful. But it is very hard to grasp some things and even with a genuine aspiration to do so, we still fall on our feet of clay. Well, I do. Sometimes I can have really spiritual moments, even days and grasp the ungraspable but to be such a guru or approaching that level as a norm is quite beyond me.
Happily, I really do not think that it is necessary to feel inadequate or incapable when life’s material presence intervenes and drags us back down again; when we feel like we have totally missed the point so we might as well give up.
There are many saints who have grappled with the struggle between what I want and what God wants or what we think God wants. Those normal, everyday feelings when we feel anger, bitterness, jealousy, desire, selfishness (and witness these things from others and actually enjoy them) and plain can’t be bothered will keep intervening because it is normal and human. Our addictions to whatever substances, our cravings for certain circumstances for a bit of a jolly, a bit of respite are part of who we are. Whether ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in whoever’s perspective they are part of who we are. And most saints were not aware that they were saints, remember; this title was given many years after their death, after deep consideration of their lives by other people, many years beyond their life.
I really do find the company of people with acknowledged and embraced shortcomings and vices far more comfortable and even elevating than the company of people who seem to have no vices at all. The reason for this is that they are more likely to accept you as you are, with your vice or shortcoming. To be with someone who seems to have conquered all desire, all attachments to this world whilst you struggle on can be daunting. I am not saying it can’t be elevating and create aspirations but after a good read through a chapter of The Power of Now, I would still like to pour out some wine and have a cigarette to reflect on it. Well, I haven’t got very far with letting go then have I?
Probably not.
But I do believe that a very practical way of moving forward at all, is to live from where we are right now. We cannot possibly start from anywhere else can we? As the Irish man said to you when you asked the way from here to there: “well, if you want to go there, I wouldn’t start from here!”. But where else can we start from? Indeed, do we want to go anywhere at all?
Realisation over the years of times of grace, enlightenment, some visions, signs, dreams, ponderings and changing perspectives within the context of the very hard reality of every day life and how I fall short most times, including creating very difficult circumstances within that context, actually helps me just try to be content with who I am right now, in the present reality including what I think it is, which might, indeed, be wrong. But it is all I have. And I shall start from here even if I get stuck.
Like any multi-faceted stone, a diamond, some facets are highly polished and some are very rough and dull but they each make up the whole. We are like a diamond; there is a desire to live through the highly polished facets and appear to be all that way. But outsiders will see those other facets too, even if we refuse to and that is arrogance. I know all about arrogance, selfishness, cowardice, haughtiness, lack of compassion as I have them all in huge measure. That’s a lot to come to terms with but maybe whilst I am doing that, I will leave other people’s shortcomings alone. Perhaps by trying to address the huge plank in my own eye, I shall not endeavour to take out the splinter in someone else’s. And a diamond is for ever, remember.
It’s a start anyway. The power of being not quite there is quite substantial, in itself.
Labels: Contemporary Life, Modern Spirituality
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