~ASPHALT OF SPIRITUALITY~

I am a Unity Minister of 30 years and I have been involved with Unity since I was 24. I love the Unity teachings. A common description of Unity is that it is “spiritual” rather than religious. My definition of someone being “spiritual” rather than religious is that they live from or aspire to live from their true self or higher self. The higher self as defined by Cindy Wigglesworth of Deepchange.com is:

“The part of our selves that is unselfish, loving, and wise; our inner voice of
wisdom and universal concern that sees that there is no absolute distinction between “me” and “others”. We act from our Higher Self when we are inspired by our vision of the Higher Power. Synonyms: inner wisdom, authentic self, spirit self, essence, true self; and from some religious traditions: spirit self, the light of the Divine within me, Christ consciousness, Buddha-nature, Atman”

Unity teaches that we have the Christ spirit within us. The Christ Spirit is another way of talking about our higher self. This is why I was drawn to Unity and after being involved with Unity for only a year and a half, I knew that I would one day be a Unity Minister and 4 ½ years later I became an ordained Unity Minister. I say all of this to let you know how much I love Unity. However, one thing I do not like is the abuse of the Unity teachings. There are at least 3 ways that people abuse the Unity teachings:
1. Pretending that because they are a child of God, they never need look at any painful issues within them.
2. Pretending that the “other’s issues are about something they did wrong and therefore they just need to “change their thinking” to solve the problem, implying that there is something wrong with them or they would not have this issue
3. Believing that because someone is having “negative” feelings means they are in DRAMA!

Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh, this last one makes my blood boil!!!
I am also a Family, Child, Couples and Organizational psychotherapist. I help individuals, couples, families and organizations connect with their true essence and heal what stands in the way of the expression of this higher self. When we are blocked from expressing our true or authentic self, whether it is the authentic self of us individually or in a group, we will experience “negative feelings”. However, I am not going to call feelings “negative” any longer in this article.

Our being is wondrously made and when we experience someone invading our boundaries on any level, our body generates the emotion of anger to enable us to protect ourselves.

When we experience a loss of any kind, our being generates the emotion of sadness to help us know we have in fact experienced a loss and if we are healthy, we will seek comfort from someone who is not afraid of feelings to help us heal from our loss.

When we are around something that could harm us, our being generates the emotion of fear, which helps us “pay attention”, so we can “check it out,” and see if there is something dangerous.

Now certainly, feelings can become toxic, normally, because they are stuffed into the shadow of our being and not looked at. But normal feelings are meant to be examined and in this examination, we can express the feelings and be made more whole by this examination and expression. And, in this willingness to be present to the feelings, they go away!

However, lately, I have noticed on many, many occasions, that people who like to think of themselves as “spiritual”, tell others ( or worse, talk about them to someone else) who are experiencing those so-called “negative” feelings that they are in DRAMA! I have seen and heard the so-called Spiritual person, go into Grandiosity or into a place of “1-upmanship”, and judge the one who is having the feelings. They judge them as less than because they are expressing anger or fear or even sadness. The Truth is the purpose of being on a spiritual path is NOT to get to a place where we won’t experience these feelings. A wonderful result of being committed to a Spiritual path is that we will know how to deal with and how to express these feelings. Granted, many, if not most people, don’t know how to express their feelings without blaming the other. But, if we are on our own spiritual path, we will know how to have a healthy boundary so that we can listen in love to the other and not take their feelings or issues personally.

If we are truly on our own spiritual path, we will know that the feelings are ultimately about the one speaking but the feelings may also be about something we have done or not done that stimulated pain, fear, anger or sadness in the other. If we will choose to put up a boundary and then listen in love to the other, not only will we feel better for not having personalized someone else’s pain, but we may actually have helped the other deal with something that perhaps no one else was willing to. Again, the way to do this is to be willing to not take their issue and feelings personally; and then listen and reflect back what we heard them saying.

The reason I titled this article, Asphalt of Spirituality, is that many people who think they are being spiritual have simply covered themselves over with this so called asphalt of spirituality. This type of spirituality causes one to insulate themselves from their own feelings as well as those feelings from those around them.

Let us recall a part of the definition of our higher self:

“The part of our selves that is unselfish, loving, and wise; our inner voice of
wisdom and universal concern that sees that there is no absolute distinction between “me” and “others”.

When we connect to our higher self, we are able to be lovingly present to ourselves and those around us no matter what is going on and especially if feelings are being experienced or expressed. The Divine within us is greater than anything we humans can ever experience and therefore, the Divine within us is greater than our feelings and can help us deal with them correctly.

If we choose to be on our Spiritual path, we will seek to be emotionally intelligent which means knowing how to deal with feelings within ourselves and in all others. It is this simple. It may not be easy but it is simple.

An easy way to know if you are coming from the Christ Spirit within versus coming from that asphalt of spirituality is this:

You will not be in judgment of the other when they are having a problem if you are coming from your true and authentic and higher self. You will want to listen in love, be present and know that the other simply needs someone to see them and to accept them even if they are having a challenge.

If only a small percentage of us chose to be present to the other rather than to think the other is in “DRAMA”, our world could be restored to a place where we are safe to be who we are and to express the Christ Spirit in a way that teaches that God is greater than any feeling.