I used to separate worldly from spiritual, creating two piles, one quite a bit better than the other.

Did you?

Do you?

There was a time that I focused entirely on the worldly, when survival took all I had. Once life moved me beyond that, the spiritual began to seep into the cracks and crevices of my daily life upending my deep and committed focus on worldly success. Much later, years that seems like lifetimes later, I realized that they are not two. 

Depending on which side of the aisle you’re standing on (and I’m not talking politics although there is a parallel), your patterns may produce completely opposite results. Worldly folk tend to see the spiritual life as a Sunday thing, or a waste of time. Spiritual folk tend to get irritated at having to deal with the worldly and may even let it go entirely. It’s a wide-ranging scale that’s constantly in movement. It’s fascinating to watch, especially in the rearview mirror.

Grokking that there isn’t spiritual stuff and worldly stuff is a bonus.  Going to work, paying the bills, buying groceries, sleeping — while seemingly worldly, aren’t. Sitting in meditation, reading a book on life after death, attending a retreat, aren’t simply spiritual. It looks like they are totally different, but they aren’t. Divide and categorize is part of the dream, the game, the illusion, and not necessary to actuality.

It doesn’t matter if you are deciding on which head of lettuce to put in your cart or consciously taking a dip in the ocean of love, it’s all the same stuff. Some activities appear to make seeing what this is easier, but that’s only because of the shift in focus.

Worldly stuff is easier to shuffle aside, to see it as less important, regardless of the fact that it consumes most of our time. It’s not the new, the unknown (or seems not to be). It’s the has to be, comprised of things that are the same old stuff, nothing but routine, our have to’s.

That’s one reason it feels less easy to access the truth of you, why you seem to lose it, to not be ‘there’ when you are playing your role of world navigator.

Life, and you, are never not what you are, what this is. You only lose sight of the spirit-sense because you have set it apart from the worldly, and you will continue doing so until you don’t feel the pull to divide and conquer your life. There’s nothing wrong or right about it. It’s just what’s happening now. That too, is what you are, what this is. It’s all the things you call worldly, and the spiritual stuff too. It’s the getting lost, finding yourself, and getting lost again. It’s the learning, the growing, the evolving, the falling, the slipping, the sliding, and the climb to the top to start all over again.

Life — just as it is … not with an improved you, not with a fully integrated you, not once you make it, not once you heal or get there. Life — just as you are. Be you. You don’t need to be another version. Who you are is just fine!  Life’s a muddy ride. Slip and slide!