Spiritual idealism

Nowadays people are more willing than ever to find alternative solutions to cease suffering and improve their lives, searching more for answers in the sublime world of so-called ‘spirituality’. 

As some masters have said before, I believe we are spiritual beings having human experiences. Nonetheless, coming from highly religious past centuries, fixed belief systems are still pretty rooted in the collective consciousness, making our breakthrough towards an authentic experience of our spiritual nature a real challenge. 

That is normal: as humans, an important part of our being is a product of our time and education. We have been thoroughly conditioned by our environment since early childhood. The way that we were raised and the ideas that we absorbed can play a role even in the most enlightened being. We have the tendency to replicate and apply the structures and beliefs that we learned from past events to new fresh paradigms, many times unaware that they are incompatible. This phenomenon leads to an unconscious transfer of ideas from organised religion to the vast realm of spirituality, causing us to create specific expectations of what ‘true spirituality’ should or shouldn’t look like, even though everything can be potentially spiritual, as everything can be perceived and experienced as part of God (including ourselves). 

Because the ordinary mind needs structure, we have the tendency to pack and label which thing, person or attitude is ‘spiritual’ and which one is not. If we invest too much energy in this encoding, rigidity, fear, attempt to control, and other sabotaging mechanisms appear, opening the door directly to the ego to lead us. Then, the very tools that we have chosen to help us in the way towards the reunion with The Source are used by the ego to create more separation. 

To overcome this situation we may require not only to observe and clear our limiting ideas with patience and compassion, but also to understand that for the call ‘to be spiritual’, you don’t have to abandon any aspect of your humanity, but rather: constitute a new perspective of what being human means. A fresh look free from condemnation is required. 

Ideal vs. Real 

Undoubtedly, in Auroville we have very high ideals concerning what we want to become and, as a small sample of humanity, to manifest for the sake of the planet. Those ideals are noble and beautiful, and certainly the aspiration that we need to keep us working with meaning together, but is important to remember that ideals are useful tools that need to be used with balance, always grounding ourselves into present reality. 

When ideals become standards to measure life, we may be feeding a part of the mind that is more inflexible than creative. Under those circumstances it’s Impossible to feel happy, peaceful and grateful with our lives in the current state. The mind will always find a way to see the “lack” of this or that, the imperfection in this person or that particular situation, the gap between Me and The Divine Version of Me. Unavoidably we will always be going to perceive ourselves as not good (or not God) enough. Isn’t actually the entire point of bringing heaven down to earth to dissolve that illusory gap? 

I’ve observed that in Auroville. It is pretty easy to fall into the feeling of worthlessness just because we are not living in the way we think we should as a collective, or because we are not quite ‘achieving’ the external goals that have been set for us in the experiment. But what may be the most ironic thing is that, even if we have virtually rejected the current consumerist  lifestyle of today’s world, many of us have replaced it by consuming ‘spiritual activities’ or, in this case, ideas of spirituality, instead of resting in the knowingness of being divinely loved already. Is it possible that there’s not so much of us to fix, but rather an inner acceptance and love to come to? 

Emotional Intelligence

I believe a practical spirituality shouldn’t demand that we give up any aspect of our experience on this planet, and certainly shouldn’t start from the focus of how imperfect we are. It should also remind us that we are not purely rational beings (as modern philosophy made us believe), but we are actually mammals. Being part of that animal class, what we have in common (besides producing and drinking milk from our mothers) is the need for touch, physical affection, intimacy, bonding and expression. We can choose to reject those experiences if we want to, but we may be missing a beautiful part of our human-spiritual journey along the way.

For me, spiritual practices make much more sense when they are helping us on the path to deeply love and accept all aspects of ourselves, overcoming denials and providing support to shed light on those things that we may feel afraid of; for example, the intensity of our emotions. In that sense, to deeply feel and navigate feelings may be the scariest, and at the same time, the most necessary process of all. This may be why many people with the excuse of being spiritual bypass a real emotional connection, as it requires a lot of courage. 

However, no matter how painful or pleasurable an emotion manifests, as the word Emotion suggest, it’s just “Energy in Motion”. In that way, it would be better that instead of repressing them or projecting them in others, we take full responsibility for whatever we are feeling, observing and validating the sensation and learning how to administrate that energy in the best way we can. To learn how to do this in a powerful place like Auroville is very necessary, as our progress has been intentionally accelerated from the very foundation and feelings can easily get overwhelming. 

But this is not always an easy task. Many times we have the tendency to judge our feelings instead of accepting them. This behaviour creates much resistance in our spiritual journey. Fortunately, in Auroville we have at hand many practices and healings for our emotional relief and liberation, and it is common to hear a very powerful and simple advice: “Give it to Mother”, or “Give it to The Divine”.

Nonetheless as much as the exercise of surrendering feelings to The Source is completely necessary and produces a great relief, it doesn’t replace the need to surrender yourself to those feelings. 

Perhaps a key shift in perception is acknowledging that emotions are not who you are in essence, and yet are an essential part of the experience that we all are having right now on this planet. They also constitute an important part of our evolution in the path of reunion with The Source. Emotions can also be seen as sacred and not disposable, so every time that we refuse to embrace our feelings and express them for the fear of not ‘getting emotional’, for not showing ourselves as vulnerable, or just because the preconception that emotions are basic, gross, imperfect or ‘not spiritual’, we are also judging a part of The Creation as ‘imperfect’. What if instead of doing that we try to be like the ocean, feeling intensely and letting go each wave naturally? Can we surf the emotional waves with ease instead of drowning? 

Divinely Humans

I think a global crisis of consciousness is also a crisis of self-love and acceptance. What does it take to remember that we are part of God? Certainly, no words can answer that question, because the answer comes through life experience itself, when you allow the plan that The Source has for you, to unfold. 

Words, thoughts, dreams and goals are useful tools if they are used with that awareness: they are tools to serve us, never to enslave us. We can’t figure out life with our minds, but we can surrender to the intense feeling of life flowing through us, and maybe start perceiving that heaven is not so much there in the sky but right here in our human bodies. 

Finally, in Auroville we can’t predict the future nor the results of our efforts towards the collective dream, but we can certainly choose to apply our faith and feel differently about ourselves and our reality right now. Perhaps one of the changes that we can make is to realize that the dream is only possible if every person organise their own Inner self first, removing the blockages that prevent us from feeling spiritual and unconditionally loved.

If we can incorporate that understanding into our everyday perception, maybe one day our point of view about Auroville will also change: there’s not so much heaven to build, but a heaven available to realised, and we are the lucky ones chosen to share that immense awareness with the world.