Hello Everyone,
I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the best of the holiday season. It’s been a busy time for all of us, I’m sure!
This week, I thought I would share a few of my reflections on being a spiritual pioneer. What is a spiritual pioneer? What do spiritual pioneers want to explore? Where can you find a spiritual pioneer? And in what ways are we all spiritual pioneers?
I have been thinking lately that many of us may be spiritual pioneers, expanding love into uncharted spaces.
From this perspective, I see people as originating from a spiritual “place”—a state of being—filled with love, oneness, and light (lol ☺). In our home state, there is no resistance, no variance or opposition to lol.
Our innate essence is one with love and light. I imagine that we would be curious about places where there is an absence of lol and may want to experience and understand such places.
Being a spiritual pioneer, who courageously ventures into places lacking lol, is like being an astronaut exploring an uncharted planet lacking oxygen. Risky, dangerous, and yet, totally amazing.
This idea of exploring dark places, reminds me of an interesting series of dreams I had in 2003.
In the first dream, I met a large being of light, whose desire was to grant me whatever I wanted. In my dream, I cast my thoughts on all that I had, and I experienced profound abundance. There was nothing that I did not have. Anything I wanted to know, I could know instantly. However, I soon discovered something that I did not know about and was curious to explore.
I asked for an understanding of evil.
The being of light thought for a brief moment and agreed to grant my request. Instantly, I was surrounded by a seething, swirling, cloudy energy that attacked me. I grappled with the fear, anger, and annihilation that this energy created in me.
After a while, it suddenly released me, and I felt a combination of relief and elation, as if I had just finished riding a roller coaster.
The next night, I dreamed that I met the energy of evil two more times.
Each time the energy became more powerful and challenging. The third time, I met evil as I walked down a hallway, and after a long and difficult struggle, I once again overcame it. As I was released from the grip of evil the third time, I thought to myself, “Whew! That almost ended me!"
These dreams gave me spiritual insights that I have never forgotten. I believe that what we experience in life as being dark and difficult (and wish to avoid) is exactly what our spiritual self wanted to learn and explore.
In the midst of a psychiatric session, the thought that the person sitting before me is a courageous spiritual pioneer sometimes crosses my mind. The person may be struggling with a mental illness, or a parent may be struggling to love and support their child with mental illness. In either situation, I respect them for being spiritual pioneers.
I see how their love powerfully overcomes obstacles, transforming darkness into light.
Perhaps I may seem to be an eternal optimist, blind to the realities of life.
On some days, I may agree.
I find, however, that spiritual laws and principles are so paradoxical in nature and so different from the world’s ways that they typically turn our worldly perspectives upside down and inside out.
From the world’s perspective, loss and illness seem senseless and intrusive. Life appears to exist without purpose or meaning, and then we die.
But from a spiritual perspective, those who struggle in the darkest places deserve our respect and help, as they push the boundaries of love and light into new frontiers of being.
Of course, by thinking of others as spiritual pioneers, I become more aware of my own spiritual pioneering activities in life. After a long day of healing, I may feel exhausted, but I also feel more alive and fulfilled. Looking back on my day, I have a feeling of having done something worthwhile. I’ve explored places in the mind and heart where I had not gone before.
In essence: I planted some lol seeds on another barren patch where lol can grow and flourish.
As the holiday season reminds us to bring more love and light into our relationships, let us be spiritual pioneers, not only during Christmas and New Years, but our whole lives through.