Holistic Spirituality 101

Brisbane, Australia, 2008 Yudit Cohen-Shoore lives in Jerusalem, Israel, and I, in Brisbane, Australia, but distance is no object when ‘things’ are meant to happen and, almost in the blink of an eye, sight unseen, this person has become my first and – most likely – my only spiritual mentor. l It should be said that Yudit’s guidance is a ‘thank-less’ task if, by that, it is understood that throughout this first year of her tutelage, she did not wish to be thanked by either gifts or money. Not even by little donations. Instead of strings of thank yous, what she appreciates most is the certitude that she is not wasting her time on yet another dilettante student.  I hope time will confirm that I will not disappoint her. What follows is about … what makes sense to me – one year into a journey of transformational discoveries about all that is invisibly real. l Head up: developing a spiritual philosophy that is as free of rituals as it is of spiritual jargon is a very freeing experience, indeed.  Understanding the hype-less, religion-free, ritual-free, guru- free meaning of karma and the relevance of active karma to our day-to-day experiences is our path to personal coherence and emotional resilience. It is incumbent on ourselves – for our own sake and for that of our loved ones – to recognize the damning mindsets inherent to our culture, as we search for meaning – as we search, mostly, for greater control of our ‘life’. Improving our karma is a concrete ‘opt-in’.  It is as practical an option as that of avoiding cracks in the pavement. l When our mind is not cluttered by a myriad of thoughts from the realm of What-if and How come and How dared/he/they and Why didn’t I and What have I done to deserve this? our mind processes what is happening in real time a lot faster – just like our computer works faster once it’s been purged of all the registry errors, shortcut errors, privacy and performance issue s. It also helps to dump files that are no longer relevant to the ‘job at hand’ as they clutter our file manager and clog up our hard drive. l One of the benefits that flow on from a moment-by-moment emotional neutrality is that we are able to handle much more efficiently whatever presents itself in real time – in the moment that is truly under our feet. Emotional neutrality brings about stress-less moments. Each stress-less moment brings about moments of greater clarity and resilience. Each moment of greater clarity brings about healthy emotional detachment. Healthy emotional detachment brings about coherence between heart and mind – which, then bring about personal empowerment. l It is from within ‘that moment of clarity’ that we can train ourselves to respond more meaningfully, more grandly from our true response-centre, the high end, the noble end of our ego.  I, who never ever used to spare a thought for my soul, have come to accept that we do not get a soul in a random way. Rather, it can be said that our soul has volunteered, to get us, to accept us as the new vehicle through which she hopes to process – through our spiritual responses to life – some of the karmic baggage accumulated by her previous incarnations. l Souls pick us to be their upgraded vehicle to karmic evolution – which is why it is tacitly accepted that we ARE able to overcome all and any of the karmic challenges that come our way – if and only if we can tackle them in a spiritual manner which, of course, is not the way our western culture has ever taught anyone to overcome anything. l Through each of our wakeful moments, unknowingly, we add to our karma. Before grappling with the concept of Karma, one must practice being aware in the present, being aware of ourselves within the endless string of random and boring little moments that connect our all major ones, the happy ones and the devastating ones – like the many small breaths that connect each of the ‘big ones.’ l Being aware and awake ‘in the present’ means shutting out the monkey-chatter, the relentless flow of random thoughts that are not a productive part of any problem-solving process – it is about shutting down unsolicited thoughts that invade our brain the minute we stop talking. You see, being a good person, by anyone’s yardstick, is one thing but, though it is essential, it is not the crux of what karmic amendment is about. Western spiritual philosophy and science trap the universe in a network of words, thoughts, equations and emotional crutches, as well as an ongoing confusion of rules, laws, and words. l Sadly, we take in this network and make it rigid. We then use it as so many weapons against the ordered and logical spontaneity of nature. As a rule of thumb, I will say that even as we consider ourselves thoughtful and caring, we are, to greater or lesser degrees, a part of our culture’s worship of individual power and profit and therefore equally, to greater or lesser degrees, removed from our spirit’s energy, from our energy field and the karma that is currently ours to amend. The bottom line is that all of us, absolutely all of us are essentially good. We all care and do good when we want to be good. We feel moved to be good as a reaction to someone or to a cause. Equally, as a reaction to someone or something, we are all able to act pettily or violently. We are only good in response to a tug at our heartstrings – but that goodness is limited in time and in space. It is not ongoing. And it certainly is not unconditional.                                    Karmic amendment is what happens once we manage to actively accept what-is.  It is what happens when we try to do life with a true heart-over-mind approach. l Karmic amendment is what happens once we manage to ’care’ from the bottom of our heart, not from the bottom of our wallet, or when we would otherwise react in anger, in resentment, with indifference, or react pettily, selfishly – because we feel aggrieved and we feel it is our right to temporarily close our heart to the stressor. l Karma is our personal, accumulated, fateful load – our score sheet as inherited from our soul’s previous incarnations, compounded by the karmic balance of what we have managed for ourselves in THIS incarnation, this lifetime. l As far as I’m concerned, developing a spiritual philosophy that does not require us to line the pocket of any self-made ‘guru’ is … empowering. Adhering to a spiritual philosophy that is free of spiritual jargon and free of rituals is … liberating.