Sunday, May 5, 2013

Revitalizing Our Spirituality

Reweaving The Cloth

For those of us who began walking our paths many, many moons ago, those basic first lessons are far in the past. They're at the hem of our robes, and as such, perhaps, they've grown worn with the passage of time and the many miles we've walked. Like our robes, they may have worn thin and be in need of repair. How do you repair this? Simply put, you go back to the beginning and start all over, this time, hopefully, wiser and more prepared to learn the lessons of those basics.

You may need to rededicate to your path, beginning again at the very fundamental stage of  learning, as if you were a complete beginner. Of course, you bring with yourself to this endeavor all the many years of  learning and walking your path that you have already. You will be delighted and surprised by the depth of meaning that you find in reweaving the cloth.

Revisiting the simple meditations that so closely resemble those that you may have done years ago, you will find that you are hard pressed to wrap words around the extensive and remarkably rich meanings that you are experiencing during these meditations. So many years ago, these meditations taught us how to focus our energy to do magic. Today they are teaching us to focus on recreating ourselves far more completely than we have ever done before.

We start facing down our own demons. Our fears and prejudices are laid bare before us, without any gauzy shield to protect us from their intensity. Our pain and anger, our bitterness and sorrow, our joy and hopes: all exposed in such a way that we have little choice but to look at them and reclaim them. No more are these intense emotions that we normally tuck away in a safe, dark corner of our soul orphans, left to wither or fester. They are ours. They are a part of us. In reclaiming them, we reweave yet another bit of the cloth.

We thought that the cloth of our path was strong and without flaw for a long time, for we simply chose not to look at the long tattered and frayed hem that we were dragging behind is. We chose to ignore the holes where the briers on our path had reached out and snagged the cloth. We chose to close our eyes to the reality that we were not tending to our own needs as we should, because to do so would be difficult, time consuming and disturbing.

It has been all of that, and more. We struggled with our Charges. We couldn't find the words to speak about our gods and goddesses at first, trying too hard to please others. When we finally *got* them, they came like wildfires in our mind, pouring out of us like water from a chalice. Then we struggled with the essay, because again, we were trying at first to please. Only when we turned inwards and looked at what we really felt, and didn't worry what others thought, did the words come to express what we wanted to say.

We need to focus on revivifying our path, bringing it back to life, though it was never dead. It is refreshing and enlightening to touch upon all of these "basic" tenets once again, this time with all the years of experiences casting their own light upon the experiences. On top of all of this is something else. In the reweaving of the cloth, we will also be healing the wounds to our soul. It isn't always pleasant, to be gentle about it, but invaluable, as we are finally able to move forward, through the pain and sorrow, into the next phase of our life. Our robes are once more whole, without frayed hem or holes. The patches show, but they are marks of the journey so far, and so aren't a problem at all.

4 comments:

  1. Fabulous article Dale. I needed to read this for sure!

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    1. Thanks so much, Jennifer, for stopping by, reading and commenting! I am glad that you like the article and I do hope that is helps you in various ways. :) I look at revitalizing our spirituality like an auto needed a periodic tune-up. :)

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  2. what a beautiful article. i absolutely needed to read this today. Thank you for sharing this.

    Sonia (Lemuria)

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    1. Thanks so much Sonia for dropping by, reading and sharing in comment. :) I am glad that this was something that you were needing to read today. :) I am just glad that the words came to me this morning. Sometimes I get what I think is a block, focusing on what I want to write about, and then suddenly something else different entirely sort of flows through. This was the latter.

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