What a Calling is Not

Twelve Greatest Spiritual Truths

Caroline’s Blog

Final Salon: Twelve Greatest Spiritual Truths

Hi Everyone,

All good things must come to an end, as they say, and writing my Salon is no exception to that. I’ve been writing this monthly Salon for more than ten years now and it has been a pleasure to share ideas and guidance with all of you. Now I find that my time and energy is drawn more to developing my online courses, most especially in Spiritual Direction. I will write Newsletters instead of Salons, although they may not come out on a monthly basis.

That said, I’ve given a great deal of thought to what I should say in my last Salon. I decided to end by offering you a list of my “greatest spiritual truths” – how’s that? These are the teachings I hold most dear to my heart and I hope they will serve you as much as they do me:

1. Miracles are real. 
However, don’t expect a miracle to do something you can or should do for yourself. Miracles are not for cowards but for brave and courageous people who are filled with an unrelenting faith in the Divinely possible. Anything and everything is possible with God. Lazy, complaining people never experience miracles. People filled with hope who never give up trying or believing no matter the odds are prime candidates for Divine intervention.

2. Kindness and patience matter at all times.

3. Believing you are extraordinary – or that your kids are – is an unnecessary suffering in life.
Of course your children are special to you – but they aren’t to the rest of the world. You were not born to be extraordinary. No one was. Just step up to the challenges that life presents to you and do your best. Doing something extraordinary for others – now that’s a worthy goal.

4. Stop searching for God, for purpose and for meaning. 
If you haven’t found it by now, you should ask yourself, “What the heck am I looking for? Is it attention? Is it success?” God is in the small details of your life, not in how others see you or in big opportunities. The Divine works behind the scenes, not in front of the camera. At the same time, every function of nature is a testimony to the order of the Divine: The laws of Nature mirror the nature of God. Learn the Tao. Learn to live according to the laws of balance. God is balance. God is cosmic law and order. You are the engine of meaning and purpose. Those forces will never show up at your door. Either you generate them or you don’t. You can make anything meaningful. Meaning comes from how you value something. Nothing has meaning or purpose until you are able to generate those graces from within.

5. Look for something special in each day – something new. 
Don’t assume that this something new is going to change your life or do something for you. That something new could be that you notice how much a flower has opened up since the day before; yet, in noticing something so ordinary, you realize the elegance with which life carries on. Life is constantly growing, moving – alive. Life is everywhere. This planet is a huge, alive Being. We are walking and living and sleeping on a huge living creature that provides food and water and shelter for us. That is wildest of thoughts – and it’s the truth.

6. Put your life force into something useful. 
Don’t waste a second of your life on things that are useless – like painful memories or grudges or resentments. What good does that do you? Every day is one less day of your life. In fact, today could be the last day of your life for all you know. Make it a good last day.

7. Dedicate your life to a good cause along the way. 
Make a difference in this world in some way. Leave a positive footprint, not just a small carbon one. Make a difference. Your life should count for something.

8. Take time to pray in your own way. 
Prayer is power – pure mystical power. It’s not rational power and it’s definitely not intellectual. You can’t see it. There is no proof that prayer is “working”. But it does and it is. And praying is not a hobby; it’s devotion. Figure out a way to weave prayer time into your daily life.

9. Feed your inner life. Do things that enrich your soul. 
I believe people need spiritual direction. I believe that many psychological disorders are unrecognized spiritual sufferings. Professionals are still intimidated by the reality of spiritual crises. They don’t know how to treat a spiritual crisis or what to say to someone or how to respond to questions about the reality of the unseen outer – and inner – world. You need to know your soul and you need to know when to reach for spiritual guidance. Drugs will never solve a spiritual crisis – never. Drugs cannot combat darkness or evil.

10. Evil is real. Sin is real. 
A basic definition of sin is this: Knowingly doing or saying something that you know will damage another person’s life OR knowingly/deliberately allowing another person to pay the price/take the consequences for a negative action of yours. The conscious act of knowing that what you are doing is wrong – and that what you are doing is harming another in any way – and yet you do it anyway – is Sin. Done. No getting around it. A conscious negative act against another human being is not just a boo-boo or a bummer. It is a Sin because it is CONSCIOUS and thus an act of CHOICE. It is a conscious misuse of your power of creation – and we are held accountable for these choices. That is why we cannot shake free of such choices. That is why the guilt from these choices sticks to us like gum on our shoes. That gum is our soul connected to the soul of the person we harmed. Never tell yourself that evil does not exist. It does. Every time you easily play with the truth, ask yourself, “How come it’s so easy to lie? What’s wrong with me? Why is telling the truth so difficult? Shouldn’t this be the other way around?” The spiritual path is a path of becoming One with Truth, which means confronting our relationship with the shadow in ourselves. It’s not easy and that shadow meets us around every corner in our life. My counsel to everyone – and the one I practice is to repeat a simple prayer whenever you feel that fragile edge of weakness or compromise-of-self coming on, “Hover over me, God – right now.” Surround yourself with grace. Live in grace.

11. Practice joy, love, charity, compassion, understanding, and healing. 
Share your graces. Be ridiculously generous with your gifts. Don’t listen to people who tell you not to spread yourself too thin. Spread yourself so thin with your graces that you become invisible. Be as loving as you can – you’ll find that you recharge instantly. (Loving by the way is not the same as behaving foolishly. It means holding lovingness in your way of being, in the tone of your voice, in how you approach people, in giving someone that extra second before you get feisty with impatience.) No one should ever say, “I’ve got so much to give and no one to give it to.” That’s just being selfish. All that means is, “All I want to do is love one person who loves me back.”

12. Finally, live a bold life. 
Don’t retire. Die exhausted from creativity, loving, adventure, service, sharing and wonder. It doesn’t take money to make a difference in this world; it takes choice, courage, and your willingness to get off the couch and make a commitment to show up and do the work. Pray for others. Send grace to the places in this world that are on fire with pain – the suffering people of Aleppo comes to mind. Channel grace wherever you go. So long as you are alive, remember that every choice you make is either one that releases grace or withholds it. Simple as that. At the end of the day, reflect on your choices. In those circumstances in which you have withheld grace, figure out why you made that choice and then think about others withholding grace in their choices when it comes to you. It’s an uncomfortable thought, to say the least. But it’s the perfect motivator to make us aware of the power of every choice we make in life.

Thank you again for all the support through the years in being a part of the Salon family and all my work. My gratitude to you is more than I can express. Expect to see me via Newsletters.

I wish all of you a blessed holiday season and a holy and wondrous 2017 – wow, look at that number – 2017. Whew. See you next year, I hope, at a workshop or at an online class – or in my prayers.

All my love,

Caroline

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The Saboteur

From the Broken Heart

Truth

Quote

There, But for the Grace of God, Go I

While most say these words with great reverence and gratitude, they miss the most important point. Those words imply that the Grace of God lies with you, or more in you, than in the poor unfortunate soul you've cast your eyes upon. Who are you to think you're better than that person? Why do you think God has bestowed His Grace on you while withholding it from someone else? Doesn't a Mother love all of her children equally while knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each? How can you think that God does any less? To me, that phrase brings up images of the Pharisees loudly praising themselves in the Temple for being favored by God and better than those poor unfortunate souls out in the dust of the street.

While God bestows His Grace equally on all of us, we may not fully understand what His Grace encompasses. His full Grace and Mercy on me may look very different than His full Grace and Mercy on you.  While winning the lottery is something we all would like to experience, it has been a blessing to some and a nightmare to others who wish it had never happened. It may be that someone worse off, suffering more than ourselves is a stronger person we should respect all the more because God knows they have strength we don't to bear those burdens.

The thing I most object to about that phrase is its statement of separation, of difference between us. It's saying, “thank God I'm not that person.” Jesus and all spiritual teachers have stressed the importance of seeing ourselves in all people, in all things, in treating all women and men as our brothers and sisters.

I have great respect for Caroline Myss, but for me a better prayer is: 

“There go I.”

Caroline Myss:

Except for the Grace of God Go I
06/14/15

“I remember hearing that spiritual prayer of acknowledged gratitude over and over again while I was growing up. And I certainly heard the nuns say it. As a child, I loved the sound of that phrase because it was a phrase that seemed to hide a great jewel of wisdom. It was a type of treasure chest made of simple words that when strung together communicated a powerful truth. ”Except for the grace of God go I.” It was apparent that those words conveyed some sort of profound meaning because I noticed how the nuns would nod their heads in a type of collective agreement after one of them uttered that phrase. Eventually I let go of my mission to crack through the deeper meaning of this phrase and got on with the business of growing up. I was about eight-years-old when I made that decision.

That phrase exploded out of the dust of my mental archives in my early thirties, right on time you might say. It was just one of those days, really, that starts out gorgeous but ends up being a game changer. That day was made for walking. So that’s what I did. After a few hours, I got an iced-tea and sat on a bench to check messages and all that sort of thing. I didn’t pay any notice at all to the guy who sat on the bench a few minutes later. Why would I? But, as I was about to find out, certainly noticed me.

He asked me if I would get him an iced tea. One glance told me he was homeless or en route to that crisis. I asked him if he wanted a sandwich, so long as I was getting him a cold drink. He did. I turned to leave as soon as I gave him his meal but then he said he hated to eat alone and would I mind just sitting with him. I was uncomfortable as all get out – I mean down to the pit of my stomach. But I was in a familiar park and it was day light and I knew I could run faster than him…so I figured, ugh….okay. UGH

He took one bite out of his sandwich, one gulp of his drink and said, “I know you want to get the hell away from me. I know you are uncomfortable as hell right now. You don’t know me or anything about me. I’m a veteran. The war in my head won’t stop. I just try to find quiet places now. That’s all.”

My heart hurt. I could feel the pain in my chest explode. My eyes filled with tears and all I could hear in my head was, “Except for the grace of God go I.” I could have been sent to harm others or to face some type of horror. Or I could have witnessed nightmares early on, but I did not. I sat next to him and felt the whole of my life reshape itself into a simple but deeply meaningful prayer of gratitude and one of grace for the other. It is these moments, these tiny encounters that just show up out of nowhere, that are the purest expression of God in the small and present details of your life. This man changed my life. I have looked for him many times in the park near my home and have never seen him again – not to imply that he was “not of the Earth”. We have yet to cross paths again, but I hope it does happen.

Through him, I entered into yet a deeper mystery about life but with so much gratitude about each day of my life. This is one of my own prayers:
“I never know where I will find You or how You will speak to me. Some days it is through new person and other days it is through a new experience. Each day I become more aware of something I did not understand or realize before. I knew I should be grateful for all that I have but now I realize I should also be grateful for all that I do not have. For I do not have traumatic war memories and I do not have scars from being a refugee and I do not have the fear of a homeless person. I am grateful for all I have and for all I do not have. If I am grateful for having been spared a suffering, give me the grace to help those who are suffering. Amen”
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