People on the spiritual path tend to have high standards for ourselves and be striving toward some nebulous angelic excellence and perfection.
We're just one shadow away! But the next "shadow" always comes.
There's a term in the spiritual world called navel gazing. It means to always be looking for problems in yourself that you can heal, transform and transcend. You'll find if you go to any spiritual circles of any sort that people are trying to solve problems in themselves and trying to solve problems in themselves and trying to solve problems in themselves.
Never good enough. Never good enough.
Never ending shadow work.
I was talking to my husband the other day about my healing. And he said, "You are healed. You have nothing else to heal." Hmm. Interesting.
Healing has a connotation that there's something wrong with you and you're not well. And the truth is, humanity is really not. But how long can we go on telling ourselves that? At what point do you say, "I'm well now?"
There's a point, my friends, when we just have to get over ourselves.
We humans have a tendency to be quite self obsessed. Are squirrels and deer walking around thinking, "I must change this about myself, I must change this about myself?" The squirrel is a perfect squirrel. And you are a perfect you. You're doing you perfectly. What if you just step aside and let the perfection of you shine forth?
Self awareness is good. Being our best is great. But always looking for a problem within yourself that you can fix and transform and transcend is self loathing and keeps you from a fulfilling life.
This prospect of enlightenment - where you're flying high above it all, untouched by life - if it does exist you're not getting there through excessive self focus on parts of you that are "problems." Human life isn't about perfection. It's about experience.
Navel gazing takes a lot of energy. Make sure you're using your energy to express yourself in beautiful ways, too, and share with the world what you've learned and enrich the lives of others with what you've lived and the beauty and creative fire that's within you.
What about the beauty? Let's not forget about the beauty in ourselves that faaaaar outshines the shadows and traumas.
Friends, I propose that there is no end to shadows. They're alive as much as we give them life. If you follow my work you know that I'm a big advocate for going all the way into our pain so it can move. There is a balance. We don't want to ignore a pain that's very real that's crying out for our attention. But the obsessive self focus part has to go. We're here to live and create and be part of the world and serve our fellow humans. So let's get on with it then! 🙂
Every day I draw a card from one of my tarot decks to help my Steemians be successful, happy, well, on purpose, and their best selves. This post was inspired by drawing from the Osho Zen Tarot deck.
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