I met two ladies this week who are facing similar intense pressures though in quite different circumstances. Each has chosen their own strategy towards survival.
One has chosen to fight her way through, the other glimpses another path. I dedicate this revisited blog post to my two friends as they tackle their personal ‘storms’.
A Transpersonal Crisis should be welcomed when it appears rather than fought against. It’s the Divine’s means for wakening us from our delusional slumber into a deeper level of awareness.
The so-called ‘Born Again’ experience of Evangelical Christians can be such an event but not the only one in our lives. We don’t experience a ‘new birth’ and then put up the shutters waiting for the promised pie in the sky.
As Lady Julian of Norwich, the Medieval English mystic, claimed: ‘All is well,all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well’. It takes a gift of faith or trust to see life and what it brings along in this way.
A dualist approach that interprets life as one long battle, empowering the ego, is the enemy of personal and spiritual growth. At least that’s been my experience so far!
Writer Dylan Morrison 
“A dualist approach that interprets life as one long battle, empowering the ego , is the enemy of personal and spiritual growth.”
Well said!
I love that quote also!
I have found that by embracing all of what I discover in my nature, not shying away from what I see or feel inside me, has given the maturity and confidence to travel through the storms.
There is no condemnation towards me from God, but neither do I condemn myself.
-Connie
Thanks Michael and Connie for your comments. Yes, when we understand that the ‘shadow’ within is part of our wounded ‘Self’ we are more compassionate towards ourselves and those without. When I was a charismatic Christian I was permanently on a war footing – a very stressful form of spiritual suicide.
Dylan,
E-gads! I think we may be long-lost twins! But I think I’ve said that before . . .
” . . . permanently on a war footing.” Indeed! But what do you do when you’ve been raised a “warrior”? I’ve been so quick to judge. Even now, the faint (or not so faint” echoes of running commentary/discernment run through the backwaters if my mind. Not sure what this may have to do with your original post, save that the dualistic approach seems to encourage such a slant.
Please, pray for my healing!
Michael
I think we might be related, having the one Source but having been brought up in a dysfunctional warlike family.
As the long eared Yoda would say, ‘Strong is the dualism and its restlessness’. I still believe in a form of discernment, but it’s not based on preprogrammed religious ‘teaching’ in my head, but on the quiet still small Voice of Spirit Love deep within my spiritual gut.
Listening to this and for a time moving away from those strongly into dualism, sadly most religious believers, does help the judgementalism ‘God’s with us but NOT with you’ wither away. It really is like being ‘born again’ again but this time baptized in the waters of all embracing Love and not the bitterness of self righteousness.
Blessings
Dylan