want a shot of tequila with that halo?
Let’s be real. How many truly spiritual people have you ever met? I mean people who don’t say all kinds of wise and spiritual things then turn around and make you feel like you are small or let out some judgment about what another person eats as if they are completely ignorant and, gulp, unenlightened.
Let me say right now, I am a very spiritual chick. Have been my whole life. And I truly respect most of the spiritual paths and the people who walk them. Having said that…
I’m getting kind of sick of all the “spiritual” people walking around making other people feel like crap. Or making themselves feel powerful and special. I have met a lot of people in my life and I can count on my fingers and toes the really spiritual ones. I mean the people who walk with a spaciousness and love and acceptance of others.
I have been in line at the local co-op and seen the make-up free, hemped-out, bring-your-own-bags, yoga chick look down her nose at the person in line in front of them because they are buying meat. While their basket has eggs and cheese. No more veggies. No holy water. Just food in a different form of animal product. Then, as the carnivore walks away they say something snide in vegetarian-speak to the checker and they both nod as if agreeing about how much better they are.
I am not saying they have no right to an opinion. And bravo to anyone who consumes less animal. Here’s the point. And the point is two-fold.
First, if you are spiritual, you are going to be held to a higher standard because you should be living at a higher standard. You don’t get to wear the robes or the yoga pants or the big cross without walking with integrity and working on the consciousness. Period.
The other is this – in a secular society we are without daily examples of spiritual people. They are sequestered in buildings and up in the bushes in the mountains. So it’s easy to throw on some cotton and pass yourself off as spiritual. And with the availability of books and the internet and globalization you can talk the talk without much problem.
It’s easy to pass as something you’re not. So easy that you might even be fooling yourself into thinking that knowledge=consciousness – “I know a whole bunch therefore I am enlightened” kind of thing.
So I propose this: don’t take judgment, attitude, or a power trip from anyone. I don’t care what they eat, what they say, or how they look. If you are feeling judged, there’s a chance it’s your trip. But there’s also a good chance the skinny bearded guy – or Christian in the nice suit – or me for crying out loud – is looking down their nose at you. And if that’s the case, offer to buy them a nice shot of a Patron and help them loosen up and get real. (If I ever look down my nose at anyone you have my permission to buy me as much tequila as it takes to get me to un-pucker myself)
And if you are in the proximity of a truly spiritual person you probably won’t even notice. You will just feel cozy and maybe a little warm inside. Which is what tequila does except this is a higher vibration you just can’t buy.
Hello,
First: very well said. I agree completely. I find myself quite regularly doing the same thing as the vegetarian you describe; IE: feeling spiritual (in my own way), yet thinking something snide as someone goes by. I have been able to rid myself of quite a bit of this, and have almost completely gotten out of saying anything out loud. I still say things to myself sometimes….although I try very hard to catch myself and ask for forgiveness of myself.
Your thought will further reinforce my attempt to be truly spiritual.
I also really like the way your blog works…quite nice!
I wish you great personal warmth and success!
Bravo for stepping up and owning it! I love this post! (I’m about to shoot from the hip so who knows how much sense this will make)
I think that the spiritual path is littered with imagination about how spiritual people are supposed to act: eat, say, dress, feel…
In our imaginations we create an image of what it looks like when you’ve “arrived”. Generally this image is not built on earned wisdom but on fragments of truth and on ideas and sometimes reactions to things we have an aversion to. So the composite picture is just the illusion of knowing something – it is not alive. And any perspective we have that is not alive kills something of life in and around us.
I think the trick is to live with as much alive truth in yourself as possible and simultaneously cultivate curiosity and humility. Curiosity allows us to not make assumptions that result in being judgmental.It allows us to ask questions and wonder. There are so many paths to God and I don’t think any path exemplifies the one way, no matter how profoundly transformed we are by the perspective that path offers. In other words, no matter how true it is. Beliefs are tricky because we are talking about the knowing in the heart (I am anyway, not about dogma) and when the heart knows truth you can’t un-know it and it is hard for us little humans to let our truth be our truth and not impose it on others. Because it so, well, TRUE.
I think, though, that we often get tricked by time. We think that the one little moment we see/experience someone is actually them. But isn’t our view of someone like speeding down the freeway and glancing out the window? Your eyes focus on a flower or a blown tire and everything else is a blur. Matter is constantly transforming. Life is dynamic. And when we freeze-frame someone + make the assumption we can see them objectively and entirely (isn’t this the basis of all judgment?) then we force an illusion and completely miss the juicy truth.
By humility I don’t mean wrestling with the ego. I mean humility that is just kind of remembering our actual size in the context of the Universe. I think it is impossible for the part to comprehend the whole. And if we just remember that then judgment and “knowing” become pretty irrelevant. (and when one is having an experience of comprehending the whole it is either simply the biggest we have seen and not the whole or the whole that is seeing/comprehending through us)
I will say, however, that I think underneath the belief-driven judgment is love. We want people to be in the beauty of the truth with us, don’t we? We want it for them because we intimately know how wonderful it is and we want that for everyone. If we can just see this motivation underneath all the psycho-drama then we can see that what we really want is for others to have love and peace and beauty. We want to share what we have found!
What’s wonderful about this is we can just go straight to that – we don’t have to insist that everyone take the road we took. We can bring the destination with us. It’s easy to love people. It’s hard to get people to not eat meat.
Thanks for the gift you have given of this conversation Robert. I look forward to talking more.
Yeah, I think it was Eckhart Tolle I was reading that mentioned and described the Spiritual Ego. I’ve been guilty of it without really even noticing, but I’ve been accused of it too only because at being excited to share knowledge or information I was passionate about made the other person feel inferior..so it can go both ways.
I mean judgement, to me, is the glue holding the illusion in place so it’s never too late to let go of that. IF ya love yourself who cares what anyone thinks anyway.
I have also realized that I judged people as not being as spiritual as me only because I was afraid to share my spirituality with others ya know? So I sorta boxed myself into a corner thinking I’m the only one that really believes in this higher power stuff and doesn’t hate Jesus, just because the Christians labelled him as a spokesperson for their power doctrine.
Us spiritual folks need support from each other.
So thanks for doing this blog and putting yourself out there Sadee!
Thanks for the comments Bill.
Yes, we absolutely need support from each other! We need to be mirrors, celebrators, encouragers, supporters, b.s. caller-out-ers, challengers, and absolutely spacious givers of love.
Man, I could write a whole blog post just on one sentence you wrote “I’ve been accused of it too only because at being excited to share knowledge or information I was passionate about made the other person feel inferior…”
This, again, gets back to the illusion that there is an end point to get to. That we freeze-frame people and compare them to how we think things should be.
I think we really need to approach one another with more curiosity and more openness. Like the person who accused you of being soap-boxy could have said:
“When you say that I notice that I got all tight in my shoulders and had the thought that you were being really judgmental come up in my head. Was that your intention?”
And you could have said:
“Not at all! I just get really passionate and am an intense guy about this stuff.”
but we don’t talk like that to each other. It’s too honest and most people would feel waaaay too vulnerable. But it’s not hard to do from a logistics stand point and brings so much clarity to everything!
Curiosity and communication are great cures for being judgmental.