Hyacinths To Feed My Soul

 

 Do we inhabitants of Planet Earth know who we really are? Is there more to us than meets the ordinary eye? When we look in the mirror do we ask ourselves, “Is this all there is?” Or do we see ourselves as a spirit-being as well as an earthly-being?

Who are we in relation to the universe and earth time? Do we believe that this life is all we get or does our spirit or some part of us journey on into another life after this one?

How we feel about this question impacts our daily choices and decisions. We can ‘eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die’, with nothingness to follow, or we can project ourselves beyond and think of life going on after our mortal death. If we look at this life as all we’ll ever have, then pain, sorrow, failure and a short life would be a calamity.

We’d think, “If this is all there is, why does it have to hurt so much? Why me?”

But if we see life as an on-going, eternal thing, stretching far into the pre-mortal past and post-mortal future, then everything that happens can be put in proper perspective.

In the Apocryphon of James, Nag Hammadi Library, Jesus reportedly told Peter and James, “If we consider how long the world existed before you, and how long it will exist after you, you will find that your life on earth is one single day and your suffering one single hour.”

Our life is so brief compared to eternity, it’s like being dropped off at a rather tough kindergarten for a day.

“Seen in an eternal perspective, hardships can be an opportunity to develop soul power of eternal significance…strength is forged in adversity. Faith is developed in a setting where we cannot see what lies ahead.” Spencer W. Kimball

If we have an eternal perspective, we won’t make’ instant gratification’ decisions, or at least, not so many! We can afford to be generous with our time, because there’s so much more to follow. As we progress spiritually, in this other world dimension, our sense of belonging, identity and self worth increases.

To take the long view as a dual being, we need to be spiritually as well as physically fed. Ask how long we would last in the desert if we don’t have any water or other liquid to drink. Forty hours, maybe?

How long would our physical body last without food? 40 days and nights? What if we only ate scraps at irregular intervals? Would our body suffer from malnutrition?

We’ve seen pictures of starving adults and children, distended pot bellies mute testimony of Kwashiorkor disease. Now think about our own kitchen. How many hours a day do we spend preparing meals, and eating and washing up after them? How many hours do we spend thinking about when and where our next meal will come from? How much time do we spend shopping for groceries, hauling them home, packing them away, hauling them out and using them? Entertaining friends to dinner? Going out for dinner?

Contrast this with how much time we spend feeding our spiritual self, the other half of our physical self. How often do we sit down and feed our soul, with hyacinths or beautiful music, or scripture study, or other great books, or serving others? Some people feed their spirit by hiking in the hills, or spending hours in their garden, creating beauty, or by going to church and worshipping whomever they believe is the all powerful Being.

Other people feed their spirit by being honest, by being generous when only they know what a struggle it was to part with their time or their money. They serve others when they see a need, or when they are asked.

Some people fast once a month and give the money they’ve saved to the poor of this world. Others try to make a difference in someone’s life, to laugh with friends and to work hard and be dependable.

It is meanness that maims the spirit; treachery and aggression that kill it. A malnourished spirit, if we could only see it, would look like a Buchenwald survivor, or someone on TPN, flat down in a hospital bed, with a drip in its neck.

To be spiritually fed is to have a feeling of self-worth. A truly integrated human being will treat everyone with respect, because we are part of the whole. We must also “treat the earth and all her aspects as our mother. Show deep respect for the mineral world, the plant world, and the animal world.” Code of Ethics, from The Sacred Tree, Four Worlds Development Press, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.

If we can count on ourselves to get through a bad day with good grace; if we can like our own company, if we can feel ourselves learning new things and loving new people; if we can actually lose weight or stop smoking, if we can stop losing our temper, stop putting people down, our feeling of self-worth will increase. All of this is easier said than done, and many of us may not be interested in giving up acquired habits that we enjoy, even if we acknowledge that they are bad for us.

However, earning self-respect is of fundamental importance to ourselves and to our neighbours, whoever they are. Only when our self esteem is healthy, can we ‘love our neighbours as ourselves’.

It seems an incredible waste to feed only our physical self and starve our spirit. In order to ‘fulfill the measure of our creation’ we need to remember that there are two of us, and one of us probably needs to spend more time in a spiritual dining room if we are to make a difference in our own and other people’s lives.

So next time we look in a mirror, let’s look at both of us … because there is much more to us than meets the ordinary eye.

 Pene Beavan Horton

Copyright reserved 2006