Spiritual Etiquette, p2 by Suzanne Matthiessen > October 2006

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Spiritual Maturity ...continued
Shouldn’t we be blessing those who are responding to the call to help? Who cares if it isn’t “new and innovative” knowledge? It’s all relative anyway —if you’ve never heard it before, it’s new to you. This really made me think about how we, with all our spiritual knowledge and sophistication can get so caught up in such tight definitions and points of view that we get way too serious about what we think we know. Aren’t some of us, in all of our wisdom, simply missing the boat when we are so attached to defined concepts? We may contain a lot of knowledge, yet, perhaps lack spiritual maturity. If we ever find ourselves using spiritual principles as a weapon or a means to hold ourselves above others, we’ve totally gone off course. If we are fortunate enough to recognize this, or have it pointed out to us, we can have a good laugh and realize we went over some cliff into an abyss. We can get out of the hole we’ve fallen into simply by coming back to what Zen Master Shunryu Suzu called “Beginner’s Mind.” Suzu reminds us how vital it is to our spiritual practice to always come back to basics, simply coming back to our practice with a sense of complete emptiness. We can always, as A Course in Miracles reminds us, begin again. The beginning of deep spiritual awakening is marked by the grace of God/Source/Spirit touching us quite literally. When we reach spiritual maturity, we are no longer self-indulgent or arrogant or lazy or ungrateful in the way we approach life. A few things happen almost simultaneously: a) we suddenly realize that there is no time to waste, b) every thought, choice and action in every moment does matter, and c) we no longer turn away from gifts, opportunities and people that can be our allies in the process of spiritual awakening, even if they bring up “uncomfortable” things to face and clear, Being spiritually mature allows us the humility to admit we don’t know it all. It is recognizing the spiritual path is not all warm and fuzzy feel-good bliss. In fact, as Light brings forth all inner shadows to be acknowledged, healed and ultimately transcended, it can be downright unpleasant, and at times disillusioning. But that’s actually a good thing: losing our illusions is one of the greatest gifts we can be given even if it can be distressing in the moment. When we reach spiritual maturity, we realize it’s not about us on a personal level whatsoever; it’s about the collective populace. We come to understand we are not separate from one another, and therefore, we begin to choose to act in a manner that reflects that. Any thought or action that can hurt another simply drops away; as we see when we harm another in any way we actually are harming ourselves. We see the world with more awakened vision and drop our myopic reference points.	We see that every single moment of every single day matters, we don’t ever “get away” with anything on the spiritual plane, and what was once considered a meaningless choice actually contains intense meaning. For example, dropping a gum wrapper and being too lazy to pick it up and thinking it’s not a big deal really, actually becomes a huge deal as it brings us face-to-face with how much integrity we possess. We see that “walking our talk” contains a massive degree of karmic accountability. Being a grown-up on the spiritual plane means no longer playing small. We drop our superficiality and pettiness, get over our wounds, release our fears and insecurities, abandon notions of entitlement and lose our enchantment with cheap drama. No more games, passive-aggressive behavior, attacking or power obsession. We’re simply just done with it. We cut the crap. We get our heads out of the spiritual books we’ve read for years and go out and live what is in them. We get our hands dirty and do for others, yet never with a sense that we are special for doing so. It just becomes how we approach Life every day, for we know that the hour is late indeed, and our contributions to raising the consciousness level of the planetary populace are so needed. We know that even the smallest efforts we make to bless the world via our own choices toward Light join with everyone else’s efforts, and that no contribution is too small or insignificant. We know that our spiritual practice is in every moment in every day and isn’t tidily kept in some compartment, or only shown to others who we think “get it.” We express gratitude toward others who are also bringing the brightest energy they can embody into every situation—no matter if it’s sending happy vibes while stuck in freeway traffic or respectfully spooning out soup to the homeless or humbly extending our earned spiritual knowledge to whomever many benefit from it. We find common ground with all, despite any differences. Spiritual maturity sees that none of us is “perfect” including ourselves; we can only live by as much impeccable example we can muster up. And so we do just that— grace-fully knowing that maturity means we never stop learning. Suzanne Matthiessen writes, teaches and consults about spiritual growth and behavioral shadow issues. She is in the process of developing a multi-media publishing company based on the principles of Spiritual Etiquette. For more information, please visit spiritualetiquette.com, and her blog, spiritualetiquette.blogs.com.