Reclaim Spirit: Nurture
written in 2015
Spirit is stronger than all suffering. It reveals itself through a person who is at ease and knows how it feels to be nurtured by love. That is why many who have suffered badly can be a light to many, the embodiment of forgiveness and good will, and why they can smile at others: Spirit is intact in them.
While a different group who had a few hopes crushed (and hadn’t suffered a lot, objectively speaking) will act like they are in trouble all the time and like nothing ever satisfies them. That is a call for spiritual practice (though often mistaken for a sign of their evolving). These people can not teach. They are transmitting an attitude that can infect more balanced people too. Their attitude has aligned itself with consumerism — nothing is good enough, everything can be replaced, nothing is sacred except that person’s desires and ego — ; it is its ally, its salesperson, its victim. Transformation has not taken place here. That person will not offer liberation, but bondage to philosophies that choke Spirit.
Pay attention to your feelings around people. The smiling ones and those who care deeply about the world are the most evolved people on the planet who offer something that the media can not. Whereas those who always seem unsatisfied and keep broadcasting ideas that have no useful application and only have relationships based on power games, strife or heaviness, are followers, followers of a toxic program called consumerism. They are following, not leading. While they are following, they can not be leaders.
Our relations are a reality check and that what manifests from our behaviours and thoughts and, first and foremost, from our love. A person’s energy emanates into her / his surroundings. A person with great warmth leaves a mark of light on others, on the ecology, on the community, on the stuctures around their dwelling.
A person driven by a different motivation than love (which includes the desire for love, i.e., taking love, not giving it) will not spend energy on anyone or anything outside themselves: there is no impulse to be other-directed, as Spirit has not been awakened in them. It doesn’t matter how old they look, what title they carry, how popular they are, what their image is, if they are preoccupied with themselves, their own goals or perfectionism, they can not teach. Because they are followers. They haven’t challenged the program of consumerism within themselves, and sure enough they haven’t overcome it; what they offer is more of the same. And you don’t find spirit in consumerism.
It may sound repetitive. Some things need repetition. To some extent, we all believe that certain objects will give us immaterial blessings, new wellbeing, comfort, serenity, a sense of accomplishment, or a touch of “cool”. After the moment fades away, we chase for the next object that will give us another desired feeling. What we are after are not the objects themselves, but “I feel good” or “I feel great” or “Wow”. It is fine to want those feelings and it is fine to want and use objects that give you joy. But Spirit is not about wanting stuff or wanting feelings. Spirit is about generating the feelings, whether the stuff is there or not.
Now you know the difference. Choose your influences with care.
At the end of a long journey, you might notice that your feelings never led you astray, that the people who taught you most are not those who made you tense, but the people who shared with a smile and from an abundance that may have been invisible. Those were the people who made us question those who made others suffer and who made us pay more attention to positive developments and to our best feelings. This is the outcome of having been loved.
Young children who are still in touch with Spirit and animals that choose to be around humans have an instinct for intent. They can read the vibe in the human. They go toward love. Even after trauma, they go toward love.
That demonstrates that Spirit is something we are born with. Spirit is not something we need to chase, but something we should care to keep. It is easy to lose it, because there is no reward for staying whole and there are too many rewards for buying a program, believing other things than how you innately feel, choose, or are. The attack on your given wholeness (Spirit) occurs early. It is a symptom of a lack of faith in Spirit and of consumerism having replaced Spirit. It is more than a cultural problem now. Most regions of the earth, unfortunately, have been infected by consumerism.
The only way out is through nurturing. So when love is being offered, receive it, enjoy it, and make the effort to give back. Make the effort to give back in a place that is ready to receive, but also send it back to the first giver.
We often assume that the most generous do not need our love at all, and how many times have you heard the term “the person who has it all” or the idea that someone “complete” can not be in any need. All while the problematic brothers and sisters are being showered with care, because they unsettle us and therefore must be (?) outside of their wholeness or lacking… something. What sense does that make?
Do the opposite… for a day. Imagine that the troubled ones are alright, having a ball, and need neither your love nor your anxiety, and that those who go out of their way to be helpful will appreciate your good thoughts, your smiling at them, your gratitude, or a gift they will use.
With this practice you don’t only heal yourself and enrich the love that already circulates and make someone’s day, you also participate in the balancing of thought forms in our world — through gratitude and kindness. And because your brain understands the benefit of supporting the nurturers, you are strengthening the communication between heart and mind too.
Nurturing is: a transformation of all that is unwell on earth right now, the sign of Spirit coming back into you, and the purpose of life.
We have not learned that in school, we may have jarring memories of someone demanding nurturing in a way that made us lose respect, and there is not enough recognition for nurturing to begin with; and yet, nurturing is the way of Spirit and the opportunity to make meaning from the random events you call life.
Nurturing is how we express love when we decide to not just hog it for ourselves. Nurturing is what makes us human and a lover. Not just a consumer.
Make nurturing your core practice. See how you feel after a few weeks. Maybe you will begin to shimmer just like the people you look up to.
