“We imagine that if we become really spiritual, we will never be afraid or angry, or even grieve or fret. We want to live in the world yet be untouched by challenges, projecting a wise and loving Buddha-like veneer, living with perfect peace.
We glorify leaders, artists, and spiritual teachers. Yet they all have aspects that don’t fit our idealization. Like everyone else, great spiritual teachers experience conflict and trouble with those around them. Buddha did. So did Jesus, the Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa. They also get migraines, backaches, diabetes, heart conditions, depression.”
Pychologist Jack Kornfield does, I think, hit the nail on the head when he says that many of us tend to think/feel that to be spiritual we need to be less than human, less prone to the vicissitudes of life, and more able to rise above the emotional responses that come with being a human being! Perhaps we need heroes, people we can look up to and model ourselves after, those about whom we might say “I want to be like Mike,” or “What would Jesus do?” But when we put those people on the proverbial pedestal, it can make it harder to accept our less-than-ideal selves; even if we feel good, we may not feel good enough.
My guess is that most of us are okay being the person we are. We are likely to recognize that some are gifted, talented, accomplished, and brilliant, in ways that are exceptional – they belong on that pedestal! But in the religious/spiritual life, it is important to realize that those people we admire and whom we want to emulate, have feet of clay, and that like us, they are embodied spirits who in one way or another struggle with that fact. It may be disappointing to realize this, but hopefully it is also freeing.
There is always room to improve, to grow, to become more like the “saints” we admire, but when we see their humanity as well as their divinity, their brokenness as well as their blessedness, it can become easier to recognize that holiness/sacredness is not a matter of rising above our humanity, but of experiencing it’s ebbs and flows.
Attuned to Soul 