Only Day 4? :)

There are only 2 purposes in God's ministry as me - help people to wake up to who they really are and help/inspire them to live their vision. Today I'll just write about what I mean by the first one, waking up, and how I see it applying to motherhood.

Being asleep - in spiritual terms- means we are solely identified with our gross physical body and it's emotional/mental habit patterns. In other words, all that I think that I am is Harriet Hawkins and her story from conception to now.

Then either through a peak mystical experience(s), and/or the suffering 'caused by that sole identity, we begin to learn that we also have an energy (subtle) body, an ideational (causal) body and behind all that, the Ground of All Being, God, Allah, Brahma, The Way (nondual reality). And what's even more amazing is to really understand that we are made in the image and likeness of God, in fact, God is all that we are (if God/Ground of All Being is Infinite, for there to be a place where Allah/Brahma is not, then It would be finite, thus all that is, is The One, thus all that we are is God).

Great! It's much easier to grasp this intellectually, than to actually wake up to our True Identity and live more identified with That then with our human identity. Thus prayer without ceasing, life as a meditation, service, devotion, reflection are ways to assit our finite selves to wake up!

As a Mom, I believe it's important for Julian to be fully grounded in his earthly self (interestingly, the Kaballah - Jewish mysticism - was traditionally not taught until people...well, men...were in their 40's, fully established in structure and life, grounding the growing mystical awareness in a healthy, integrative way...which clearly has some value relative to the image we have of the flakey new ager). At the same time, I continue to do my spiritual practices and talk about Spiritual Truths as very alive and real in our every day lives. My hope is that Julian will grow up grounded in the joy of his physical life and yet also knowing he is more than that and that he is forever connected and part of this vast, loving, infinitely intelligent, Presence

What comes from this intention are some interesting conversations, like the one we has in the car this past Sunday, on our way to the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment in San Jose:

Julian is talking passionately about being a superheroe so he can fight all the bad guys.
I ask, "What about Jesus, is he a superheroe?"
Without hestitation, "yes".
"But you know, he doesn't kill anyone, or fight them."
Again without hesitation, "That's okay, he's a talking superheroe."
"Cool. You know what he does that is super amazing? He not only doesn't fight the bad guys, he loves the bad guys! That's really hard, I can't do it most of the time."
"He LOVES the bad guys? I could never do that! That's really hard!"

Then yesterday, clearly having pondered this, Julian again was saying he couldn't love the bad guys, he'd have to put them in jail. So I said he could put them in the jail and still love them, just like when I ask him to go to his room for not listening, I still love him. He stops and thinks about this, then says, "I got it, I could put them in jail and love them until they're good guys. That would work..Mom, I bet you could do that too!"

Made in the image and likeness of God...

Now the downside of continuing to do my spiritual practices is, sometimes I get in such a deep, blissful place, I get irritable when I am brought back to the very earthly world of a child. So rather than it evoking me to me a more peaceful Mom, the dissonance between the inner peace and the outer noise is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I'm still working on that one...


Oh and...Ken Wilber says that men have their "church" through sports. Going into the zone, pushing physical/emotional/mental boundaries past what one believe is possible (he says what feels like death) - not much different says he, than the states of consciousness experienced on the meditation pillow. If that's the case, wouldn't it be cool if there was a ministry (spiritual not religious) for sports? I haven't quite gotten what that would look like...but it's interesting to ponder the possibilities...