Owing Creator and Living in Transactional Spirituality
Western society equates worth with prosperity.
Prosperity gospel, the protestant work ethic - Christian ideology intimately connects our financial and social status with our 'favour' with God. If we are prospering it is God's will and reward for our obedience. If we are struggling, it's because we've strayed, we are not obedient, or hard-working, we are not favoured or rewarded by god.
This is some fucked up shit.
Failure is seen as a reflection of personal worth and value as opposed to the natural progression of trying new things and simply a signal for course correction.
It is not moral worthlessness. (We can know in our heads something is true, but the idea of financial success equaling value is insidious and ever present in Western society.)
The cross beliefs of spiritual value with personal, physical and financial success are ubiquitos shaming factors that are rooted in western Christian ideologies.
Historically, human communications with spirit have always had a sense of trade to them. Ancient societies in all times, in all places, have had rituals of sacrifice or barter with the realm of spirit. Sacrifice an animal, grain, human, valued thing to the spirit world in return for good crops or prosperity of some kind for the community as a whole. Maybe it was for favourable outcomes in a war or negotiations. Maybe it was for knowledge or new understandings. Deeply entrenched in our psyche and our spirit is this idea of sacrifice for gain - giving to get. The flip-side of this is that if we receive, we are indebted or have earned it through service or "goodness".
I suspect that we may have misunderstood the imperative.
We have misunderstood reciprocity.
I have a deep and twisted feeling of "owing" when good things happen. The belief is something of which I've only just started to become aware, and I have no solutions right now - just questions and an attempt to accept how these beliefs have ruled my life so far.
Everything in our lives that we believe about divinity and spiritual truths and our meaning in the world, was initially created through our childhood interactions with our parents.
Everything that exists is God on Earth… but whatever.
Parents are our first gods.
Our home, family and community are the world. I think we can see already how inadequate it is to overlay our home experiences onto the world at large - but that's just what happens. Experiences in the world will either strengthen or weaken the beliefs about god and the world that we formed in childhood.
In my family, love was transactional. Love was cuddles and words of praise, but love was also physical things and acts of service - all of which came with strings attached, expectations of what should be given in return and/or what behaviours and performances are expected in the world to pay for, or balance what was given.
Ideally, love and gifts are given unconditionally. They are given with both hands open with no expectations of return. Ideally.
Parents are gods to their children, but most parents don't know it. I wonder if that would change how parents interact with their children, if they knew their children understand them as god, at least in the beginning? The majority of parents have not gone to therapy and continue to live from their own wounds and trauma. These traumatic chains of mis-directed belief that are directly attached to love, lead us back, link by link by link through our ancestors to the beginning.
Click the image for the ICU website.
Spiritual Capitalism
Prosperity Gospel is indicative of a transactional relationship to Creator - and one that throws our worth and value for existing into the mix. The whole idea of prosperity as a reward from the Universe is easy to accept because it's been mirrored in our childhood experiences with our parent-gods. I struggle with this and it is coming up powerfully in my own healing journey.
We just did an exercise in relation to our new goal for the year. There are 3 fears that come up for me again and again that I feel are a boss battle in my life. I was going to say it was the "final" boss battle, but I think that's naive, and if I've learned anything, it's that we never stop learning, so there will be more separating beliefs to heal in the future.
These ones in particular have been plaguing me for most of my life and feel like a hindrance to what I am creating here.
Fear of attack/punishment for speaking my truth.
Fear that I am not good enough.
Fear that I am not deserving.
Well. What the fuck do I do with that?
And they're all weirdly nested together.
If I'm not attacked for speaking truth, then I won't be good enough.
If I'm good enough, then I won't be deserving.
Which sounds a lot like being attacked, but from my own self.
Who is deserving?
De-serve in a sense, is the willingness to be treated in the way we serve others. Our feeling of “deservingness” is directly related to our perception of how we serve others. Nothing around worth and value is ever just “objective”. It is always in relationship to our perceptions and beliefs about Spirit, ourselves, others and the world around us.
Paul once said to me that we get whatever we allow ourselves to get. We determine what we receive and in what quantity in our lives. According to ACIM, we keep what we give away.
Spirit is action.
Spiritual actions are the beliefs we bring actively into the world with us and give away to all others we encounter. Everyone and everything is good enough and deserving. Even shitty mean crappy people (and who of us hasn't been a shitty person in someone else's story at some point in our life?), are ultimately good enough and deserving because we exist in this Creation. It is up to me to hold the view of others in the world as good enough and deserving, regardless of the context of their lives - regardless of their reactions to, and behaviours towards me.
Who we are what we say and do are not the same thing.
We are the guardians of one another's spiritual truth in the world.
The spiritual truth is that our existence within the Oneness of Creation alone makes us deserving and good enough.
We are the guardians of the spiritual truth that you and I are Creator meeting each other in the flesh face to face.
We are Creator meeting each other in the flesh, face to face.
It doesn't mean we accept poor treatment or allow harm or victimize ourselves in harmful situations. We can have healthy boundaries and eliminate harmful elements from our life and still hold those people as good enough and deserving. Behaviour is not what makes us deserving. Deserving is in our beingness.
People can be rude and shitty or cruel or irritating or needy or entitled or careless or stupid or dismissive, and we still have the choice as to what part of their existence we will respond.
We can react to their surface level mask that is trying to feel loved and safe and is dealing with their anxious feelings by lashing out, or we can respond to the recognition of our shared spiritual existence together.
I just re-read this and laughed because it is so difficult to expect us to make these distinctions while being emotionally triggered. Two people reacting from their wounds instead of recognizing Beloved Presence in each other. It's a lot to ask - but it is what's needed.
Its a lot to ask until we do the work on ourselves.
What areas of my life do I reject as not good enough?
What areas of my life do I reject as not deserving?
Everything starts with ourselves and our beliefs about ourselves and our own life.
What parts of myself and what areas of my life do I struggle to accept as good enough?
What parts of myself do I withhold from loving inclusion?
I don't think we can do this work very well by ourselves. It's almost impossible to sit in our own shit and find our way out of it on our own. I'm not saying it can't be done, but finding a community of supportive, trans-personal, trauma-informed people to hold space and remind us to get out of our own way is valuable.
What do you think?
I’m building this community and I'd like your feedback. What kind of spiritual community feels loving and nurturing and welcoming to you? In what kind of environments and situations would you feel inclined to participate?
Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. I love you.
If you're on a self-aware spiritual path, retail is a great place to work on emotional triggers. For sure someone will show up who will throw an emotional bomb into an otherwise beautiful morning.