You are a dirty glass

The truth is water poured into your glass, and mixes with all your muck. Then you go and tell your family and say “here  have a drink!” and you wonder why they say “ughh yuk”.

The purpose if spiritual work is to stir up the sludge so you can filter the water and give others a drink.

Unfortunately, some of us have made our spirituality an ego experience. We feel good as the muck loosens from our soul but hang onto it, as if it is “we” who are doing the work. As if “being good” is a trade off, from seeing ourselves. We feel  good for bringing the muck to the surface, while our family still only see the mud.  As Gandhi said of some Christians, they worry so much about sin , they become great sinners.

Spiritual work helps us make distinctions between truth hand illusion. What upsets us reveals what illusions we value. All our impulses are ego trying to get back in.

Life offers us a crisis, which we seek to negotiate, and eventually we realise the ego doesn't know but tricks us with stories we tell ourselves that life should be. When eventually we let go to life, and  trust, we experience an epiphany we feel we have touched the face of God. For months, maybe ears, years we feel we are spiritual, we feel we are blessed, that we are “God’s spoiled brat”, but we are still in our ego. 

This is where some spiritual types stay stuck in spiritual pride.  Then suddenly life collapses again. We face our dark night of the soul. The shadows that haunted us return, but on a deeper and higher level. It seems we have lost even God. It seems that every day we need ask “What attachments do I need let go in my life?”

The ego drives the millions of micro decisions we make in unconscious guilt. Ever upset is unconscious guilt we have not released and keeps us from peace. When finally we realise that Spirit is in charge “there is no ego to decide there is anything but love”.

If ever that was possible, the glass would clean, and maybe even the glass would dissolve as flow in the river of life.