There is much discussion these days about the many ways in which spirituality fails to truly liberate us, and instead often entraps and enslaves us. I spent over two decades stumbling into many such pitfalls. Sometimes though I find in the efforts to expose the rot, the ‘Pearl beyond price’ or Liberation, which is the whole purpose of spirituality, can be undervalued, unseen or overlooked.
In my experience it is possible to know oneself as someone with a history (including a psychological history with all its suffering) and a personality – everything we are familiar with as ‘me’ and to know oneself without doubt as the limitless, peaceful, unchanging ground of Being, free from the constrictions and dilemmas of ‘me’. This ground of Being is complete and fulfilled in itself, and from the vantage point of wholeness is able to fully experience, deal with and embrace the often painful, cramped and struggling ‘me’. There need be no separating out from our humanity or our past, our feelings or our body. Being established in this ground which is untouched by any experience that has ever happened to us, good or bad, enables us to embrace all of it, and live all of it from a place of wholeness.
This is vastly different from trying to resolve our suffering from the constricted perspective of ‘me’. And if there is a separating out from our humanness, our wound, our body, then something has gone badly wrong somewhere in our spiritual understanding and comprehension. But to undervalue or underemphasize the possibility of discovering and embodying this fundamental aspect of ourselves which resides in and is available to everyone, is to overlook our most significant and precious potential.