“There’s one major turning point in your spiritual growth where there’s a total paradigm shift. When you cross over from the beginning point, to that point, your whole life changes. Everything changes. All of your outside work changes. All of your inside work changes. Your entire perception of what’s going on changes. Your relationship to yourself changes. Everything changes. So let’s draw that line and talk about that point. It’s actually very, very simple. It happens when you shift from whether you are living your life and having your thoughts and dealing with yourself from the perspective and point of view of: I want to make me okay. I want to get things, do things, think things, say things - I want everything to be done in a way to take care of me, that makes me okay, that makes me better. That’s one phase of one’s life. It’s generally the entire phase of everybody’s life. The turning point is when you wake up and you realize: I want to do everything I do, everything I say, every experience I have, every thought I have, every single thing: to get rid of me, not to take care of me. Not to get for me, but to get rid of me. That is the crux of spirituality.” Michael Singer
Our enemy is not our self.
When we want to let go of our constant concern of our self, we must turn toward love and a new pattern of what true love means. Our enemy is not our self. The self is only a prison cell that holds us from being Love and inhibits us from experiencing the manifestation of Love in everything. God offers us the key to the door of our “self-prison” that will bring freedom and find our true meaning and purpose.
Love implies trust – a deep reliance on the leading of my life from a source that is not mine to order. It is a deep reverence for the source of our thriving. Trust implies a dependency on others, including God, to guide me into becoming the beautiful and fulfilled person that I was created to be. Trust embraces every experience as a teacher, not an enemy. Love recognizes this connection to all of creation and to every person. Love not only freely receives, but its nature is also to freely give.
This interdependency that I enjoy then, redefines Unity, not as a surrender but as a partnering with all people and all creation. To be a partner with God and with my neighbor embraces my responsibility to become something that is usually seen only as a list of virtues that require self-discipline to fulfill. Instead, my Unity with everything brings me into the experience of patience, kindness, goodness, forgiveness, perseverance, faith, hope, and joy. These become a part of us; they become our identity and our legacy. This is our purpose and the target I allow to work in me. This is what it means to become a spiritual being. This is our “WHY”.
