The Starveling Soul
I teach a meditation class once a week here in Denver, and attendance is down. Sometimes I have a great meditation all by myself in that lovely quiet space. I said to the director of the Sanctuary where I offer this service, "Is it me? Is what I teach too difficult? Should I word the teaching differently?" She said "No. It's not you. It's happening with all of us." My experience is that people receive an insight or an outright healing, and they are thrilled! Then they have a Golden Retriever moment, their brain shrieks "Squirrel!", they turn away and never come back. Even people who have experienced a real, honest-to-God life changing blessing. You can see it in their eyes, they sort of gray out and the moment is lost. My spiritual teacher, Dr. and Master Zhi Gang Sha has blessed me with beautiful healing modalities and ways to wholeness, and sometimes it's almost like students and clients don't WANT wholeness, unless it's from that societal "norm", medicine. It's easier to just go get a pill or an operation than do the work of accepting that there's another way, an unseen and powerful way of healing and rejuvenation. It's usually a lot less expensive too.
The obvious reasons would be the changing river of society's flow, television, cell phones, busy life styles, simple lack of interest. That might be partly true, but that is not the reason. The real reason is incredibly sinister, and tragic. Eckhart Tolle, the great spiritual writer has said that the Egoic Mind is actually like a parasite, an alien thing that has taken over human life on earth, and is accelerating us to destruction.
“Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everyone is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.”
The mind is a powerful and marvelous tool, when disciplined. It's a destructive monster when it is not.
It's a common theory that about 15% of the world's population can be considered to be enlightened. Aware of themselves as spiritual beings, able to be still and quiet enough to receive the wisdom of the Divine, of a higher intelligence. Able to perceive the truth of karma, what it is and what it does. Enlightened beings have an elevated frequency, light, and soul standing. It is a strong statement, but we can infer from this that the souls of 85% of humans on this planet are starving to death. Starving for love, for connection, for acknowledgment, for kindness. Starving quite literally to death. How do we pierce this shell of ego that keeps all nourishment at bay?
Ego doesn't want to hear it, doesn't want anything to change, hates the present moment of still awareness because it has no power there.
I have taught that if you want to overcome a sleepless night, start a good long prayer process, a blessing for someone, chanting, a spiritual practice of any kind. The middle of the night is a great time to do this! Everything is quiet, human energies are down, it's dark. Ego does not want you to do this, and will put you to sleep.
Have you ever been reading some deeply interesting metaphysical or spiritual writing, and watch your mind skip over some vital paragraph, over and over? That's the ego. "No no. You don't want that. That's bad for me." says Ego.
Finding our way home to silver light, to knowing, to the wordless state can be a grand adventure. Once you've had a taste, you will probably forget it because your egoic mind does not want you to do that. How can we help ourselves and others to this waking? Hell, I don't know. But I think it probably has to do with love. Not romantic love, mortal ego love, dream state love, but love that is the natural state of God Presence. Love as frequency, as living presence, as a truly un-comprehended and enormous power that is available to all of us. It's available because it really is the life of our being, a conscious state of realized unity that still has the potentiality to save humanity. And we'd better get on the stick, because the dark hand is directly over us now, brought by our own unconscious behaviors, karma, ignorance, cruelty and indifference.
Love is a mighty weapon in the human arsenal now, maybe the only one. Start with yourself. Go to the mirror and look deeply into your own eyes. No flinching away, gazing at the ceiling, thinking about dinner. Look. I did this a lot when I was a hippie, ha ha ha. Being word free comes effortlessly when you are doing this, because a sense of fascination comes in when you stop being self-conscious about it. No one is watching, no one cares but you.
How ravishingly gorgeous is the human eye!
It's complexity, colors, movement, it is the universe. It is you. When you're fully involved with your incredible view, say "I love you." Just that. "I love you." It is lack of love that creates the Starveling Soul. If you can hang in there with it, you will probably feel tears, pain in the heart as it opens a little to you. Be brave. Do it again. "I really love you." Can you feel yourself start to plump up like an under watered houseplant? You might sob, feel terrible regret for how you have beat yourself up, judged yourself, flagellated yourself with thought of unworthiness and anger. Let that drop, just for a bit. Now commit this feeling of absolute love to your memory. Remember what it feels like, how it looks, how sweet it is.
Now go practice on the dog.
I do this all the time! My dogs, and other dogs, other animals. They crave it as much as we do, and respond. Look into their precious eyes and do this practice. Now find a willing human, and do that. Strangers, admittedly, are not good fodder for this practice, except in a silent way, which is also a marvelous practice. Can you imagine what the world would be if we could do this even 5 minutes a day? Drop all the rage, the belief in separateness, the worry, the taking responsibility for other people's stuff, depression, fear. And simply love and embrace ourselves for 5 minutes. The vast relief of it might inspire us to do it more often. It feels GOOD. You deserve it.
