Spiritual Amnesia

In her popular book The Hero Within Jungian psychologist and writer Carol Pearson wrote about a lifelong journey through several archetypes--the innocent, the orphan, the magician, the wanderer, the martyr, and the warrior.  Each archetype teaches us a lesson.  For instance, the Warrior archetype teaches us the spiritual lesson of power, and the Wanderer shows us clarity.

Pearson describes our journey as a wheel, and life takes us through each of these life lessons several times.  During each successive turn of the wheel, we are to master a more spiritually evolved degree of the lesson.  For instance, I believe (I hope!) that I am now ending a turn at the Wanderer archetype. During the first pass through the Wanderer archetype we feel isolation, even alienation.  In the second turn of the Hero's Wheel, we embark on a quest, flee captivity, and find treasure within ourselves. When we traverse Wanderer territory the third time, we discover to be one's Self and to have love and community.

Since these turns of the wheel may be decades apart, at first the archetypical spiritual lesson may feel new and foreign, but my experience has been to fairly quickly recall the lessons that we have already learned as we struggle to master the next level assignment. Passage through each archetype may take months or even years, but I have felt a blinding moment of Truth in which I finally "get it," and then I am free to move on to the next lesson.  And, yes, if we are conscious, there is always "the next lesson" in yet another archetype.

I have certainly experienced what Pearson describes. I can look back at periods in my life and recall which archetypical spiritual lessons I was working on at different times. However, I have also experienced a similar or parallel process.  For lack of something better to call it, let's just describe them as lapses into and out of spiritual amnesia.  I suddenly think that I have had an epiphany: I see some aspect of the world in a different way.  I am awash with spiritual liberation, as if I have just broken free of the bonds of some aspect of ignorance.  In that moment I feel like God has pulled back the veil of the Universe and allowed me to peek at how it all works.

Yesterday I wrote about using Sister Joan Chittister's description of contemplation as seeing the world as God does.  In my meditation I placed myself in the position of looking at me as if from God's perspective where I was able to see my struggle as a device to gain strength for whatever is next.

This morning I took Chittister's wisdom more literally.  As my contemplation continued, as each thought or person bubbled into my awareness, I stilled my mind of its normal chatter and tried to see the person as God would.  Suddenly, I thought: that is the point--to see each person as a child of God. Almost as quickly, it occurred to me that to see each person as a child of God will require continuous contemplation.  My meditation cannot be 20 minutes set aside once or twice a day, but instead it must become a constant exercise of looking at the person in front of me at any time as if from God's eyes.

What a breakthrough, you may think.  Sadly, it is not.  Only a reemergence from spiritual amnesia for the umpteenth time.  Probably the favorite speech I ever gave was about just this practice.  Although I composed the speech in the early 2000s right after finishing The Game Called Life, "The Walk of Faith--Living a Prayer in the Real World" felt to me at the time as an outline for yet another book. "Living a prayer" described the continuous contemplation required to live in complete consciousness.
A few years earlier I had a related epiphany that the only way we as human beings have to know God is through other humans who so reflect the presence of Love that we can feel the Universe through them. During that period I would look for opportunities to visualize myself allowing God to use me as a human vessel for allowing those around me to know that complete feeling of Love that is God. I believe that is one of the most important lessons that the spiritual teacher Jesus was attempting to share with us as he allowed us to know God through him.

These are three distinctly different periods during which I clearly knew different aspects of the lesson that I seemed to discover anew today.  Why, then, can I not seem to remember it? Maybe more accurately, what causes me to forget? Most importantly, how can I assure that I do remember for more than days or months but for the rest of my life?  Sometimes my spiritual learning feels like the movie "Groundhog Day," in which every day was just the same with no forward movement. I am ready to move on from spiritual stuckness.

I ended the "Living a Prayer" speech by saying there is a ribbon of love that connects all of us, heart to heart, around the world.  The ribbon of love can be activated by each of us, but if any of us fails to do our part, a short circuit occurs which stops the flow of love. Whenever someone crosses my path, it is my responsibility to activate the flow of love. For years I've talked about being response-able, which implies being conscious of choosing the response I want to send into the world.  I want to choose love.  I want to have the force of love that is God reflected from me to everyone I meet.