Spirituality is Engagement
It’s hard to define spirituality, but a lot of us have a sense of it anyway. It’s calmness; it’s openness; it’s play; it’s love; it’s wanting to connect; it’s giving; it’s receiving gracefully; it’s gratefulness; it’s ease. My list goes on. Yours could look like mine, or it might be different. Doesn’t matter.
On the flip side, my list of what could be considered nonspiritual looks like: passive-aggressiveness, selfishness, darkness, fear, addictions, manipulation, depression, domination, violence… You know, the things we distract ourselves with, feel bad about, believe we have to do, or try to hide.
Disengagement
I’ve lived in that darker, nonspiritual side most of my life with refreshing forays into the lighter side. When I felt the light, I felt engaged with reality. I was aware of what was going on, sometimes hyper-aware, and accepting to the point that the decision to accept wasn’t even there. I simply saw and felt my heart expand.
Sometimes I acted from that place of love and wanted to engage with others, connect with them, get to know them, let them know they weren’t alone in how they felt, help them feel better, and somehow be of service. But sometimes when I found that place of love, I didn’t act but rested in it, grateful for it. I felt engaged with reality, with God, and that’s all I needed.
When I lost that high and sank back into my familiar, darker, depressing outlook, I immersed myself in my usual MO — I avoided life. I hid, I distracted myself with TV, movies, drinking. I avoided confrontations; I avoided people; I didn’t speak much; I let opportunities slide by; I lived in denial about the things I didn’t want to think about, or I flipped and created way too much drama.
Recently I realized that the theme in all those is disengagement. I didn’t engage life. I didn’t connect. I didn’t want to connect. I spent most of my time distracted, waiting for life to be over. (Yes, I’m going deep here, but I think most people have felt this at some time.)
You’re not alone
When I felt disengaged, I felt alone, and I think that’s the agony. I believed nobody else was going through what I was going through. Nobody else felt the way I felt. Nobody thought about themselves what I thought about myself. Bullcrap. We’re all basically the same. Different stories but the same emotions and the same concepts.
So, if you’ve gone through something upsetting, chances are, many others have felt the same way. You can start engaging reality by engaging those people. Ask for help, offer help, do something kind for them or someone else, listen to someone more than you talk to them. You can even do it in the smaller moments. You don’t have to let rudeness go unanswered; you can state how you feel to that person with the intent of resolution. Once you find resolution to your satisfaction and theirs, you’ve made a connection with them.
Even when you are alone, though, you’re not really alone. At any time you can shift your perception from dwelling on your story to fascination with the simplest things. Strip meaning away from anything and simply watch — clouds floating by or a bug crawling or the wind blowing leaves or your dog dreaming, anything. It’s then when I feel a connection to God and everything else in existence. I share its skin, so how could I ever be alone?
Engagement and connection
When I’m at that place of connection to what’s greater, it’s much easier to smile at someone for no reason or to like someone even when I know they don’t particularly care for me — to try to connect with people because I feel so connected to God and want to keep living there when I resume my daily life.
In writing this now, I feel that connection. I feel good and open and expansive. But I’m having a hard time at work, so I know I’ll float back down to feeling stressed and deflated a lot of the time. The climb back up isn’t about escaping what’s uncomfortable with people or at work but in engaging my life — all of it. It’s about bringing the greater connection I know I can feel to my relationships and how I handle myself when faced with those darker emotions. I want to live as that link between the greater whole and my smaller experiences, and help myself and everyone else rise. I can only do that if I engage.
If you want to read more about my ideas and experiences, read my book, a guided journal called The Hunger for Home. It’s available at Amazon.
