05-17-2017, 09:36 AM
Welcome fellow seeker! Thanks for sharing your story.
Maybe I can give you some perspective, because I feel like I really understand where you're coming from but from the opposite side. I've been interested in metaphysics and spirituality since I was a pre-teen--but I had parents who were into it and made it a normal thing. Not sure I'd have ever been open to it were it not for my upbringing, although who knows. I remember distinctly going to a Course in Miracles study group in college, and all the 40-60-somethings complementing me about how "advanced" I was.
I still made all the stupid, venal, confusing mistakes, ALL OF THEM. I still struggle mightily. I have several atheist, worldly friends who I find to be much more balanced spiritual teachers than I could hope to be, not because of what they know but because of who they are. I don't feel I got a head start at all on any of the parts that really matter and that seem to enrich my life so much now. The reason is that all the information in the world about our greater reality matters very, very little if you don't have the experiences that allow you to ground the information in your actual life. The path is not one that we simply think; we also feel it, and depth of feeling is a hard won prize that nobody simply "figures out".
What are those experiences, those lessons I speak of? Suffering. Disappointment. Despair. Loneliness. Heartbreak. The list goes on and on when it comes to things you are so much ahead of me on, the things in life that really teach, the things that we say build character but what I really am starting to see are the things that release your character and inner nature.
In a way, waking up strikes me as kind of a bummer in one sense: now it's one's responsibility to consciously push oneself forward, instead of simply letting the current of life teach you. Now one has to make decisions about how one is to feel and think, instead of just reacting. And one is still in the dark; one simply knows of the possibility of a candle. You have so much raw material to work with! I feel I am only in the last blip of my 38 years starting to take genuine ownership of my evolutionary track.
Do not feel like you have missed anything, because it takes all of us as long as it takes us, period. There's just no other sane way to think about spiritual evolution in my opinion, because we don't see clearly enough to make optimal decisions that we could possibly hold ourselves accountable for. The scarce time is that between opening your eyes in the morning and closing them as you fall asleep. Any greater span of time is impossible, I think, to really reason about in a manner that confers any genuine spiritual agency, and guilt is just a lesson to work through.
Quote:If you had asked me several years ago whether I would do any of these things, I would've said you were crazy. I awakened quite late in life at the age of 54 and, sometimes, I feel like I was gypped. It seems to me that it would have been so much easier to seek when I was younger and it would've given me more time to reach the magic number of 51%. I don't dwell on that, though, and keep on, keeping on.
Maybe I can give you some perspective, because I feel like I really understand where you're coming from but from the opposite side. I've been interested in metaphysics and spirituality since I was a pre-teen--but I had parents who were into it and made it a normal thing. Not sure I'd have ever been open to it were it not for my upbringing, although who knows. I remember distinctly going to a Course in Miracles study group in college, and all the 40-60-somethings complementing me about how "advanced" I was.
I still made all the stupid, venal, confusing mistakes, ALL OF THEM. I still struggle mightily. I have several atheist, worldly friends who I find to be much more balanced spiritual teachers than I could hope to be, not because of what they know but because of who they are. I don't feel I got a head start at all on any of the parts that really matter and that seem to enrich my life so much now. The reason is that all the information in the world about our greater reality matters very, very little if you don't have the experiences that allow you to ground the information in your actual life. The path is not one that we simply think; we also feel it, and depth of feeling is a hard won prize that nobody simply "figures out".
What are those experiences, those lessons I speak of? Suffering. Disappointment. Despair. Loneliness. Heartbreak. The list goes on and on when it comes to things you are so much ahead of me on, the things in life that really teach, the things that we say build character but what I really am starting to see are the things that release your character and inner nature.
In a way, waking up strikes me as kind of a bummer in one sense: now it's one's responsibility to consciously push oneself forward, instead of simply letting the current of life teach you. Now one has to make decisions about how one is to feel and think, instead of just reacting. And one is still in the dark; one simply knows of the possibility of a candle. You have so much raw material to work with! I feel I am only in the last blip of my 38 years starting to take genuine ownership of my evolutionary track.
Do not feel like you have missed anything, because it takes all of us as long as it takes us, period. There's just no other sane way to think about spiritual evolution in my opinion, because we don't see clearly enough to make optimal decisions that we could possibly hold ourselves accountable for. The scarce time is that between opening your eyes in the morning and closing them as you fall asleep. Any greater span of time is impossible, I think, to really reason about in a manner that confers any genuine spiritual agency, and guilt is just a lesson to work through.
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