Sign Post #1 – Spiritual Being
I am a spiritual being having a human experience.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French philosopher, paleontologist, and Jesuit priest who thought deeply on the meaning our existence and relationship with the Divine.
This signpost can be a bit overwhelming if we read it and then try to process it through our minds. This is not a mental construct for agreement or disagreement. This idea is something for you to breathe in, meditate on and see if it is your truth.
Remain in my love. John 15:9
The world does everything it can to force our focus on our physical selves. It continues to teach us that we are what we have, and we are what we do. These are changeable. Our body, what we have, and what we do are temporary. Think about it, if we buy into this belief, then, as we age, and our bodies change, or we no longer have or can no longer do then our value and our worth diminish also?
You are so much more than these things. You are a beautiful and perfectly created eternal spirit. Yes, for a time you are in a physical body, take care of it, honor it, accept it, but this isn’t who you are.
Daily, I practice unlearning all that the world has taught me, by replacing it with God’s truth of who I am. It is a remembering and a forgetting. It isn’t so much if I remember or forget (because I will do both) but can I be compassionate with myself along the journey.
This truth is deepened and strengthened as I choose a daily practice of stillness and meditation. It is there that my thoughts decrease, my focus turns inward, and my breath becomes the doorway that I walk through so that I can connect with the deepest parts of my being and God. This has been one of the greatest discoveries of my life. It is allowing the truth of who I am, my spirit, to courageously emerge and to remember that my body and my mind are tools to go through this life with, but they are not who I am. This has made all the difference. It is where I stop struggling and resisting life and start stepping into the flow of trusting, really trusting God.
“As we draw farther from worldliness, we feel closer to our Father in heaven,” Dallin H. Oakes
We are spiritual beings having a human experience. As I start focusing on my spirit first and my humanness second, I begin to gain a better understanding of what it means to be in the world but not of the world. My attention turns from my false self, the physical, to my authentic self, the spirit. I start getting glimpses of seeing myself through the lens of who God created me to be. It is a wide-open acceptance of His perfect vision of who He created me to be. My eye color, genetic blue print, personality, hopes and dreams and, yes, my beautiful spirit are all flawlessly created for God’s individual and ideal plan for me.
It is standing in this, embracing it, accepting it and knowing that God created us because He wants us to live our lives from this loving place of just being who He created us to be. As my outward focus shifted inward, other things changed as well…control shifted to trusting, uncertainty shifted to acceptance and not enough became way more than enough.
“I don’t know how to do this, but something inside me does.”
The more we tune into the world, the more likely we will play its music. The more time we spend with God and His creations, the more likely we will play the unique melody that God put inside each one of us. This is living in the rhythm of His grace.
“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” Matthew 11:29-30 The Message
Now, I am not saying that we do not have to briefly take in happenings around the world or in our community. I am also not suggesting that we sit in a tee pee in loin cloths oblivious to all. I am merely suggesting being aware and intentional of how we are spending our precious moments. Are we doing what we love? Are we on the world’s rhythm or the rhythm of His grace? Do we have the discipline to notice our outward focus verses our inward stillness?
Be still and know. Psalm 46:10
“When you lose touch with your inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.” Eckhart Tolle
Questions for Reflection
- Write a few words or draw a picture describing your true self.
- As you worked on your description of your true self, were there any physical or worldly characteristics, items or ideas that you have come to believe to be part of your true identity?
- What is the lie at the core of the belief that you are the things you see or the things you possess?
- What does it mean to you to be a spirit having a human experience?
- Jesus taught that God is within, and always present. Sit quietly, close your eyes and breathe. Visualize and connect with what it looks like for God to be within you. Take it all in, notice your thoughts, feelings, and your visions. Draw or journal about what you discovered while be fully present that God is in you, for you and with you.
The Practice
This will be suggestions of how to apply these signposts to your life. There is work in awakening and unlearning. Sewing truths to your heart by making intentional and conscious choices is a
daily practice that also becomes a life long journey.
- Carve out some time for yourself in the morning before anybody else is awake, take a few moments to sit comfortably and quietly with yourself and your breath. Walk outside and breath in the fresh morning air, listen to the sounds of the world coming alive.
- Late at night, walk outside, look up, just look up for a few minutes, take this in, spend a few minutes breathing in the night air.
- When you are at a red light, take slow, long, deep breaths, put your hand over your heart and focus your complete attention on your breathe while waiting for the light to change.
- As you are taking a shower turn your complete awareness and attention to the present moment. Be mindful of feeling the water roll off your back, feeling the sensations, of being fully present and alive. As your mind wanders, bring it back to the present moment.
- When you are having a conversation with someone this week and you notice your mind wandering, notice what is going on and fully engage back in the present moment of deeply listening to the other.
“We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.”
― Carl Jung