19. Brokenness

There are some common words that are used for the work of the Spirit—salvation, deliverance, grace, mercy, forgiveness.  They all have a common basis, that the one receiving the work of the Spirit has a desperate need.  They are in crisis, they are imprisoned, they are beyond their own help, they are desperate, they are separated from their good. 

In our society we are trained to tell people that we are “fine”.  No matter what is going on in our hearts, or relationships, no matter how self-destructive our souls are, no matter what oppression we live with, we are to put on a good face, to display strength.

The Spirit requires three things if we are to receive His work.  One is complete honesty.  The Spirit wants us to be open about our weaknesses, about our failings, about our hurts.  We cannot attempt to hide our true selves from the Divine, because he already knows who we are, to our deepest core, better than we know ourselves.

The Spirit also requires that we take our very selves, our core, and recognize our weakness, our brokenness. We need to look our inadequacies in the face, and admit—if only to ourselves and the Spirit—our brokenness. We are the child who accidentally broke the precious item of the parent.  The child has the choice to hide the broken item, or to admit and bring it to the parent.  It is the admission that leads to the deepening of the relationship.

Finally, the Spirit requires that we come to him with our broken selves and ask for repair.  Just as the child might request, “Can you fix it?” so we come to the Divine and ask for our renewal.  Both the parent and the Spirit looks down on the child and says, “Of course.”  And that is the grace of the Spirit.  He repairs within us what we cannot fix ourselves.

18. Spiritual Exercises

The heart of a spiritual life are the continuous actions we take to connect to the Spirit, also known as exercises.  Intellectual activity (such as prayer, Scripture reading or meditation) by itself, whether belief or analysis does not impress the Divine.  The human race is known to say one thing, but to be committed to another.  The human heart reveals itself in what it commits to through continuous actions.

The thief is not one who associates with thieves, or who talks like a thief, or who talks about doing the actions of a thief.  The saint is not the one who talks like a saint, or who lauds the saints, but is one who does the actions of the Divine on earth.  The Spirit is not interested in the superficial, but in the inner character of a person.  And that can only be revealed through actions.

A single action isn’t enough to declare character, as well (although a single action, like someone dying for another, might dramatically represent a person’s character).  Human are not born evil, but they are born weak and inexperienced.  Activity makes us strong and teaches us life lessons.  Even so, a single action may confirm a life in the spirit world, a connection to the Divine, but it is ongoing action over time that transforms us and conforms us to the nature of the Divine.

For these reasons and more, spiritual exercises are the heart of the spiritual life.  Through repeated action, we receive strength through discipline and become new people, people of the Spirit.

17. Union with God

The final goal of spirituality we’ll be talking about is the big mystic center of spirituality—Divine unity.  Some might think of this as unity with the universe, or achieving Nirvana or, as Pascal succinctly put it, “Fire.”

It’s the goal of many monastics, the calm, blissful joy of complete submission to the Divine.

Just to let you know, I’ve never achieved this goal and I personally know of no one who has.  I’ve read about people who have, and some keep working toward that goal.

That’s great.  It’s quite a goal.  Big stuff.  But it’s not for everyone.  This goal requires a lot of attention and time and discipline.  You don’t have to starve yourself to get it, nor do you need to spend 23 hours a day in prayer.  But it helps if you can focus pretty much your whole life toward this goal.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from striving toward union, but most of us just don’t have time.  And I don’t think the Divine would be very happy if we all sought union and nobody cooked dinner.  It’s a good goal, but it’s for those who have made some pretty good strides in spirituality before that take on that one.

16. Divine Power

The Divine has amazing power, especially for transformation.  The best way to achieve positive world change is through Divine intervention. Only the Spirit has the power to change our negative headlines into positive ones.  World peace, feeding all the hungry, deliverance of the oppressed—these are spiritual goals because only the Divine has such power to achieve these goals.

Not only that, but it seems that only the Divine has made promises like that.  Even the most ambitious politician isn’t interested in making such outlandish promises that he couldn’t keep.  Somehow the Divine doesn’t shrink back from the biggest goals.  As if he really meant to do it.

But the Divine needs a push start, it seems.  So some people want to connect with the Spirit so that the Divine could be encouraged to accomplish what he promised.

Nothing wrong with that.  The Divine encourages it.  Get involved in spirituality to change the world.  There’s just that meddling factor again- the Spirit wants to start with you. Your life.  Your inner self.  

15, Community

Perhaps we are attracted to the people who seem spiritually connected.  We don’t really know anything about the Divine, but there’s a group of people who are really into Him and they seem really cool.  Or nice.  Or they serve a great meal after worship.  Whatever.  So you want to be a part of that group.

Let me tell you, there are plenty of others in that group who are there for the same reasons.  Maybe one guy was after a girl in the group, and he got caught going even after he found out that she already had a boyfriend. Worship feels good.  It can be habit forming.

The Spirit just wants to let you know that he is interested in having a personal connection with you, not just have you join a social club.  Because a church or temple or meditation center is just a social club on the surface.  A group of people with similar interests and lifestyles that enjoy being together.  But that is not a spiritual life.  A spiritual life is a relationship with the Spirit that results in inner transformation.

The Spirit isn’t chintzy, though.  Hang out, enjoy yourself.  Just don’t try to change things to make it a better social club.  That’s not the point. 

14. Strength

For some of us, we are not the people we want to be. We are simply too weak.  We want to be more loving, less angry.  We want to do less evil, to be more pure.  We want to give up our addictions, to accomplish more with our lives.  We are just so weak, we can’t seem to do it ourselves.

So we look to the Spirit for strength.  Not strength around us or supporting us—strength within us to be who we know we should be.  And the Spirit is there for us.  He wants us to be better people, to live like we should.  He will be our strength, our support.

I have to let you know, though, that the Divine is a meddler.  He’s like a visitor who’s a busybody.  Once he moves in, he starts moving things around that you never wanted moved.  Perhaps you just wanted help or strength in this one area—but the Spirit keeps messing with other parts of your life.  Be careful about that. 

13. Spiritual Experience

Some people come to the Divine just for the experience of it.  They are curious, they want to know what the spiritual life is like.  Some are thrill seekers, wanting a jolt to jar them out of their dull, everyday lives.  Some just want to see what this whole God thing is.

The Spirit is open to that.  No problem. Taste and see that the Lord is good, he says.  Try it on for size.

However, the Spirit isn’t about a good feeling.  Yes, the Spirit can give joy, but the real joy, what the Spirit really offers isn’t to be found by the thrill seekers.  They will get a taste and then move on.  The real experience, the true life of the Spirit is found over time and work.

The spiritual life is like exercise.  You might feel really good after a run (if you aren’t like me), and you think you might want to keep it up for a while.  But we don’t get the true benefits of it after a day, but after months and years of performing the same activity.  The real benefits are in endurance training. 

12. Health

Perhaps we are sick, and we just need some help.  Maybe we are sick in our

spirit, or maybe sick in our body. Maybe we suffer with pain, or maybe we suffer with mental anguish.  And we just need healing.

One of the names of the Divine is Doctor or Healer.  He invites any who need healing to come and receive from him.  He promises to deliver.

Just to give fair warning, sometimes when we don’t feel good we go to the doctor and the doctor says, “Well you need to lose some weight and cut out sugar from your diet.  Then, eventually, you’ll get better.  But it’ll take some time and discipline.”  That’s not what we want to hear.  Usually, we want to hear an instant remedy, especially if it takes us no effort.  Doctors don’t always work that way.

That’s the same with Divine healing sometimes. Sometimes the Doctor heals us immediately, and we are free from our ailment.  Sometimes the healing requires a long time and discipline.

11. Hope

For many of us, life is simply pointless.  We’ve tried and we’ve failed and we’ve tried again and we just can’t make it work.  Sometimes we fail because of our own fault, and sometimes it’s the fault of others, but whatever the case, no matter what we do, how we work, what changes we make—we’ve got nothing.

Maybe our inner life is in chaos, or maybe we are having a hard time making ends meet.  But we don’t just need a better present, we need a better future, because it seems that the future we are looking at now isn’t worth the trouble.

The Spirit is there to give us a new future, a new goal for our lives.  And he wants to give us the strength and direction we need to meet that future head on, ready for what’s to come. 

10. Inner Peace

Many of us are in turmoil.  Honestly, it is hard not to be in turmoil in the urban environment that most of us live in.  It seems like every day has its own major crisis and over time we find that we are unequal to the task of living our own lives.  We need peace.

The Spirit wants to assist us in achieving peace.  “Peace” is just another word for “salvation” in the Bible and it’s the self-appointed job of the Divine to save.  The Divine wants more for us than to simply make us feel good about our lives.  He wants to transform our lives.   To give us such peace that is glows within us and radiates out to all those around us.

If you are seeking the Divine for peace, you’re on the right track.

9. Direction

Sometimes we all need a little advice.  Let’s face it, if we go at life on our own, without anyone’s help, then we are likely to screw up.  We want to know that we are doing the right thing.  We want to get some counsel to make sure we are on the right track.  Maybe we just want someone to tell us what to do, because we’re just not smart enough.

The Spirit is up for that.  The Spirit wants to help give anyone wisdom who asks.   He may not let you know where that item was you lost, but you never know.  It could happen.

There’s something you need to know about the Divine, though:  He looks at things all weird.  We may ask something of the Divine, and he gives us a weird answer, or just the opposite of what we were looking for.   The Spirit won’t be mad if we don’t take his advice.  But if we keep ignoring him, then eventually he’ll stop giving us wisdom.  So the Spirit warns us that if we don’t want to listen to his wisdom, then perhaps we’d better stop asking.

8. Truth

There are many who pursue truth with all of their heart, deeply desiring to know more and better the world that is around them.  More importantly, they will seek what is not yet known, the secret reality of life, the hidden message behind our lives.  To seek the Spirit seems like a good route to go.

This is a good thing.  Getting to know more is great, and the Spirit lets us know significant truths. But first, a caution.

Religion is a poor path to finding the reality of physical existence.  If you want to know the origins of earth, the nature of plants or the secrets of the physical universe, you want to go to science.  They have the methods and skills developed over centuries to discover that kind of truth.

The Spirit, honestly, isn’t interested in revealing everything.  The Spirit understands human weakness, and how we get overwhelmed by too much truth and distracted by focusing on the insignificant.  For example, Darwin expresses a lot of good truth in his volumes.  However, his books were misinterpreted to express a terrible lie, Social Darwinism.  That’s what humans like to do with truth, sometimes. So the Spirit doesn’t reveal at least as much as he reveals. 

This doesn’t mean that the Spirit doesn’t lead us to Truth.  The Spirit can open up the whole world to us, showing us powerful, transforming revelations.  But these revelations usually mean more to us than to anyone else.  The Spirit is interested in us, individually, and seeing us be the whole people we were meant to be.  He will work toward that goal.  So he will tell us and not tell us and interpret and reveal and hide what we need to be whole.   We just need to remember that.

And if we want to know what Sarah should do?  Forget it.  The Spirit will have that discussion with Sarah, not with us.  The Spirit isn’t a soothsayer.  He seeks to be our companion, our lover.

7. Honoring the Divine

Probably the most common Christian reason for seeking the Divine is simple gratitude.  We deservedly remember our mothers on certain days of the year because she gave us life and a good start on living.  Even so, most Christians will give gratitude, praise and time to the Divine because he created them, loves them and has died for them. 

Gratitude and honoring those who deserve it is wonderful.  It is healthy and brings happiness to us. It makes us more connected to others.  And it is a great way to begin connecting to the Divine.  We just want to make sure that we don’t end there.

If we go into our father’s study, pop our head in and say, “I just want to say thanks, dad, for all you did for me and my siblings,” and then pop out, it’s cute.  If we do it every day or once a month, it wears on our poor father.  He might say, “Hey, I wanted to hang for a minute,” or “I want to tell you something,” then we have some kind of Cat’s Cradle situation going on here.

Let’s be sure to show gratitude.  And then hang around and spend some time with the old man.

6. Overcoming Fear

Fear has been the most common motivating factor to connect to the Spirit world.  Worshipers of Marduk and Kali have only fear of their god which motivates them to be nice to that god.  Appease the god and the god won’t kill your children, unless, of course, they want your children to appease them. 

Many poor preachers and teachers, representing “god”, tell us that unless we connect to the Divine in the prescribed manner that death, tortures and horrors await us.  We are so sinful, so naturally evil that God just can’t wait to dangle us like a spider over a flame, because we deserve it.  (That’s a quote from Jonathan Edwards, by the way, not original to me.)

If we are afraid of God, then we might be more likely to do what he says, it is true.  Every slave will work a little harder if you whip him when he’s too slow.    But you know what a slave doesn’t have?  An open relationship with his master.

It is interesting that Jesus talked about hell and torture quite a bit, but he never used it to people needed to begin a relationship with the Divine.  Rather, he spoke about hell to people who thought they were already connected with the Divine and were harming others in the name of God.  Hell is reserved for the hypocrites, not the seekers.  We don’t need to really be afraid until we use the name of Love and Mercy for the sake of punishment and hatred.

If you want to connect to the Spirit because you are afraid of what would happen to you if you don’t, that’s fine.  The Spirit will use that and teach you what a real relationship looks like.  The Divine will guide you on the path of overcoming your fear.  But he much prefers to meet you because you desire him.

5. What is Your Goal?

People who have been connected with the Spirit world for many years often assume that everyone has the same goal for relating to the Divine.  Conveniently, that goal is usually in line with what their goal is.  However, there are as many different reasons for connecting to the Spirit world as there are ways to connect to the Spirit world.  We will be talking about a few of them here, to try to give some direction.

Why do we need to determine the reason we want to connect to the Divine?  Isn’t it enough for us to desire the Spirit?  I suppose, but almost all of us have a reason for desiring the Spirit, a hidden agenda, so to speak.  If we know what our inner agenda is, we will be more likely to find the paths we need to meet that desire, and so we are more likely to achieve our goal, whether known or not. 

In other words, the one who aims at nothing usually hits it.  And this is frustrating both for us and for the Spirit.

It is frustrating to us, because if we take the wrong approach, our inner need and desire will not be met.  We have a hidden agenda and then we do not meet it and we give up, because we didn’t know what we were after in the first place.  Then we think “Spirituality is not for me”, and consider the whole thing hogwash.

It is also frustrating to the Spirit.  Remember, the Spirit is a person and has many of the same emotions we do, even though the Spirit deals with them differently.  And the Spirit would get frustrated if we give up too soon, because the Spirit wants to give us something.  The Spirit’s goals are not our own, and He is sneaky about hiding his goals from us until He is ready.  But if we give up too soon, before we receive the Spirit’s gift, then we undermine the Spirit’s desire for us.

So us knowing our goals for our relationship with the Spirit helps us meet those goals and helps the Spirit meet his own hidden agenda.

But supposing we don’t know what our goals are? We have a desire for the Spirit, but we really don’t know why? 

The posts following this present some common goals of seeking spirituality.