| The Sacred Path (Part 1) |
| The Sacred Path is our Spiritual Path through Life. Whilst our Path starts at birth, unconsciously, it does not start consciously until later Life when we have a miriad of experiences to draw upon and are ready to "awaken". This "awakening" more often than not occurs with a crisis, in Religious parlance a "crisis of faith". I am not aware of any Religious Leader who does not admit to a crisis of faith at some point in her/his life. Similarly we are all destined to have such a crisis be it religious or not. There nothing sinister or mysterious about this. Remember as a teenager, going through the "What's the point?" stage? A stage when there seemed to be little point to anything, including getting out of bed? Well, it's similar to that only this time it's at a more mature level. Having lived life according to the materialistic rules of life we find ourselves governed by, raised the kids etc and got the big promotion we aimed for, we wake up one morning to find that even having got that promotion, we still have something missing in our lives. Something intensely personal and not easily shared with others. We don't quite know what that something is, but we know it's missing! This is the Awakening and the point where we start our search and become Seekers. We Consciously start our Sacred Path. We realise there is more to Life than going through the "motions" and accumulating material things and start to look around us. We take an interest in what is happening in the local community for instance and then perhaps Global Issues. (Psychologist Abraham Maslow calls this Self-Actualization) Still, though, this is not enough. We start to question our very existence. We ask for the second time, What's the Point? What's the point to Life? Now, the Search begins in earnest. We look beyond our own Cultural Beliefs and Morals, we find that Cultures different to our own have very different Beliefs and Morals. We ask, Why? We investigate more fully and discover that Cultures are as diverse as Individuals. We are all Individuals looking for like minded souls to confirm our innermost thoughts feelings and emotions. We discover that, whether we are members of a Culture or group of Friends that we remain as Individuals within that group. We are all searching, but no-one seems to have all the right answers. Why? We are all looking in the wrong place! We have to look Within, within ourselves. Looking With-Out will not provide any meaningful answers. We have to take a right good honest look at ourselves, painful though it may be ( the hardest part of all!),and accept that what we find is what we are. |
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