I feel as though I am between two worlds: one is the world of my past, with my mind deeply entrenched in the material, embroiled in all things dialectical, the highs and lows of being competitive, of winning and losing, of proving my worth. And I cannot deny that winning, achieving, and performing at high levels is still alluring to me.
The other world has been hovering around me for a long time but is coming into clearer focus in the past few years, a world where my thoughts and actions are led by the heart, where the greatest gratification comes from being of service to others. As a result, I have started to get a small taste of a love that has no opposite.
It feels like decision time is coming, that I am ever so gently being guided by the hand away from my investment in the material, towards a life fully grounded in spirit. Of course there is resistance to letting go of the old. But the process is not foreign to me. If there has been one constant in my life, it has been my conviction in the importance of personal growth and evolution. At university back in 1986, I enthusiastically delivered a Masters Thesis that explored the anatomy of self-overcoming in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Today I see even more clearly the role of pain, suffering and loss in the growth process. When my consciousness is high I can look at my own suffering as a gift, that has the potential to help being forth growth and positive change. And so when suffering comes upon me I try to resist it as little as possible. I know in traditional Chinese medicine that pain is directly measured as an expression of resistance to the flow of life energy, whether it be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. I can plainly say that I am very grateful to have experienced what I call the ‘opening of my heart’ as a result of a rather traumatic health crisis that occurred a few years ago.
Still, I recognize the pull to the familiar—rooting for my sports teams, competing against friends in battles of skill, winning debates. This was brought to the fore on a couple of wonderful trips in May that I took to meet friends from way back, where we just picked things up from where we last left off, regaling in tales from the past, rooting for our beloved Montreal Canadiens, and engaging in immersive competition on the golf course.
At a Crossroads?
However, as much fun and joy as it brought to me, I returned home with a touch of melancholy and a heightened sense that I am at a crossroads. I still feel like I have a lot to prove, that I need to justify my unorthodox life path, that I need to organize the massive and interconnected set of ideas in my head about our reality in a way that is of benefit to people. I could feel that my consciousness of the past month had gravitated significantly back to the material, back to duality, and my most recent articles—why certain criminals are not in jail and why free speech is being censored—might be reflective of more of a dualistic mindset than when I started this blog and the Commitment Club.
OK, taking a deep breath.
Perhaps, as I am so prone to remind others, that everything is as it should be. That if I listen to my heart, I will see that my yearnings continue to reach out into the material realm as well as the spiritual. I’ve been told more than once by people well connected to spirit that my mission in this life is to be a bridge, one that helps bring people navigate between the material realm and the spiritual realm. Perhaps I don’t actually have anything to prove to anybody, but only need to be present to my highest thoughts, and be ready to act on them.
Perhaps I can conclude, with hope and optimism in my heart, that I am not so much at a crossroads, having to choose between the spiritual and the material, but rather I need to create and then walk upon a fine line, where my feet continue to touch both the material and the spiritual. Perhaps my focus needs to be continuing to strive towards an inner coherence of my mind, body and spirit, and in doing so, begin to become a light for others that I come across.
Having taken the opportunity to flesh out these particular ideas, I think I’ve answered my own question. Thank you for being here to share it with me.