Spiritual Awakening: The Dilemma of Its Duty

My life has been/is an up and down path of emerging, of awakening. The awakening has been spiritual in nature, although it is much grounded in the here now ot Terra. For me, spiritual awakening is a superior state of being because it relieves in some degree all forms of suffering, and it fosters both inner and interpersonal peace. I think everyone could benefit from spiritual awakening. I think the whole world needs a lot of spiritual awakening right now. I think that most of our world's major crises are a result of spiritual blindness. Thus, I feel strongly compelled to evangelize spiritual awakening as the foremost prescription for saving our human race from the unsustainable, suicidal path we are currently embarking upon: ecolgical devastation, absurd wars, severe economic and political disparity.

What do I mean by the phrase, "spiritual awakening"? The simplest, most inclusive defintion I can come up with is: having the experiential recognition of the fundamental unity and sacredness of all being. Having this experiential knowing (gnosis) is the foundation for realizing a state of fullness, for releasing greed and hatreds, for being compassionate, and for being motivated in life to work for the benefit of the whole rather than exclusively for the benefit of my small self (ego) and my particular exclusive group/nation/sect.

"All is one. God is Love. The Divine is everpresent." These are meaningful and profoundly true statements for those of us who share in the gnosis of being "spiritually awakened". For the uninitiated, these statements are merely cliches with little or no import, perhaps even considerred as false or delusional notions. I am sometimes dismissed as a naive nincompoop when I speak of unconditional compassion, or this Earth-sphere as a place of almost inescapable beauty and intrinsic paradise, or when I spout radical Christian concepts like loving your enemies and wholesale forgiveness. How can I get those who do not See to Hear?

I wish everyone would wake up. I wish everyone could see as I see, that "God" really is love, that ultimately there is nothing to fear because the fullness of the one Self is infinite. Blaaa, nonsense to the perspective of ego, of separateness and fear-based, dog-eat-dog kind of world that most of us are living in most of the time. "C'mon, dude, how am I gonna stay in the Now when I've gotta worry about how I'm gonna pay my bills this month?" And so for most of us most of the time awakening is elusive. The grand play here in this world remains a grand drama, an epic tragedy of Us the Unawakened, suffering excessively within the collective and capsules of our multitudinous dreams.

It seems, at this critical point in history, that our unawakening is driving us collectively toward a massive collapse, a ruining of all that is and can be so beautiful here. Without a doubt, massive Tribulation is ahead. This is my (stupid) fear. And I want to save the world. My gut wrenches with wanting to wake us all up, to shake the world awake, to show us what we are doing to this planet and each other and to show us that there is another, better way of being, of relating with the world and with one another. But as one little anonymous person I have accepted that I am rather limited in how much I can do to "save the world". In fact, can I even do anything at all? Well, I have determined that there are three simple things that I can do. I may not "save the world" but at least I can know that I am doing my part to live in accordance with my highest visions and my own truths. I can:

Be my truth.
Demonstrate my truth.
Speak or teach my truth.

Being my truth occurs purely at an inner level. It is the practice of deepening and ever more fully integrating my own level of enlightenment. For me, enlightenment is not a product but an on-going process.

I can demonstrate my truth by living in the highest degree of integrity possible, by conducting my household according to principles of earth/enviornmental reverence. I can be compassionalte and work in whatever means is possible for me toward the welfare of others/the whole.

And I can speak/teach my truth by using the potency of language to sing and give poetic explanation and expression to the perspective which is my own truth as best as I understand it.