Psychoanalyst Carl Jung said “Modern man can’t find God because he does not look low enough”. This is true of so many of us, even those who dedicate time everyday to spiritual practice like meditation, prayer, manifestation work and ceremony. We take time to worship or praise the exalted aspects of Creation, yet we treat these sacred moments as separate from the rest of our lives.
When the meditation timer goes off or the gratitude list is complete, we resume our participation in the everyday-ness of an all-too-mundane reality.
We forget those truths we recite in prayer— that the Kingdom of Heaven is within each one of us, that it is everywhere on earth. We resume our roles as physical beings confined to a material world that has only some minor and somewhat distant spiritual aspect— when the truth is that we are spiritual beings in a spiritual Universe, having only a brief physical experience.
Ritualizing the everyday really means walking with spiritual integrity. It means letting your Higher Self fully embody your lower self, seeing through the eyes of spirit no matter where you are looking.
In this way we may “behold the world in a grain of sand, and eternity in an hour,” as the poet William Blake wrote. That higher aspect of you recognizes the honor that it is to be physical and the sanctity of even the most trivial seeming activities.
The Higher Self is like our own personal angel, a mighty and powerful link with the universal God. It is to this angel that we submit ourselves for the fulfillment of his will, which at the same time and paradoxically, is our will.
We must take his orders for battle and obey them, not as though he is our general, but as though he is our truest self, and as though his utterances are our most deeply held desires.
We have to learn to how to cease fighting every war with our own brute might, and instead stand aside, looking to this angel, to let this warrior fight within us.
When we let the Higher Self battle within us on our behalf, then it will be impossible for us to strike one blow amiss. Without him, our hearts fill with uncertainty, our minds reel and our senses fail. The battlefield dust becomes a maze of confusion, and we cannot tell our friends from our enemies.
It is a constant challenge to look beyond the three-dimensional reality to the higher dimensional realities, especially when conflict is pressing in upon us. We have been conditioned to hold our focus upon the physical sensations, where our reactions are the most instinctual, impulsive and primitive.
The key to ritualizing the everyday is not so much to withdraw from what-is into the beyond as it is to find the beyond in the nearby.
The earth you live upon is not an inanimate object, but a living being. Our Mother Earth is alive, and she has a body, bones, nerves, glands, and chakras. She has a network of veins and arteries leading to a heart center.
She has a face and lungs, and a womb. The rivers, the forests, the deserts, the oceans, and the Plant and Animal Kingdoms are parts of this one being. Each performs a special function within the whole. The stone crusts inside the earth are the skeleton that holds together the flesh, muscles, and organs of this one being.
You are very much a part of this One Being, too. For that reason, you communicate with all the various parts of Mother Earth on subtle levels, just like the organs within a body communicate with one another.
The organs within a body do not need verbal language to deliver messages, for they are fluent in the language of energy. And the same is true of you, as an organ within the body of Nature. Whether you know it or not, you are communicating with all the other parts– receiving, translating and transmitting energetic messages.
As you recognize the divinity of each moment, you become more sensitive and find the boundary between “you” and “everything else” begins to soften and even dissolve. The more deeply you plunge into subtle sensations, the more you will find that these feelings are not exclusively yours.
For you are not feeling just your own body— you are feeling the body of Mother Earth. You are feeling the other limbs of that One Being you are a part of.
And just as you exist as a limb within the macrocosmic body of the Universe, the reverse of this is also true. This Universe that we live in is holographic— meaning that the very most minor piece of it contains the properties of the whole.
When a part of your own body is crying out, it reflects an outcry somewhere in the plant, mineral, or animal kingdoms. When a part of your Nature is imbalanced, it mirrors an imbalance in the greater ecosystem.
And for the same reason, then– as you clear and balance yourself, you are also clearing and balancing the whole of Nature.
As you purify and heal your emotions, you purify and heal the heart of the earth.
Cleanse your blood, and you cleanse the rivers and oceans. Strengthen your body, and you fortify the forests, deserts, and canyons.
Bring the warring parts of yourself into harmony, and you help bring peace to the imbalanced elements of the ecosystem.
Any shift that you accomplish in any part of yourself, no matter how small— affects the entirety of the whole world.
You’ve chosen a noble road to walk. It is the path of evolution. For, in the end, all evolution is only healing.
And all healing, therefore, is evolution. Everyday.
