Keeping It Simple is Not Easy

More and more as I make my way in life, I am guided to 'keep it simple.' As much as my heart resonates with this wisdom, my mental constructs take a different approach. In its longing for certainty and for credit, my mind efforts to fit its stories into what I refer to as my delegated 'column inches' of thought...the imposed borders of my willingness to be present with what is, to work with what's in front of me. The pressured editor in my head has a way of turning my attention away from the power of the evolving nature of the present moment and toward what it makes up about those moments in an all-out effort to medicate its fears of uncertainty as I judge my life through the lens of my existential issues.

It is to this dynamic that my teacher Spotted Eagle speaks when he says:

"There are overwhelming complexities in human interaction, and this is at the heart of our experience of life as we consider our circumstances and place them in context – a context that we can then reflect back to others in our words and actions.

Bluntly put, judgment is dishonest. It cannot be truthful because it is based on distorted and filtered awareness that is rooted in a decision about reality. Judgment says that we are the source of truth and that our decision about reality is what is true. When we indulge in judgment, we are like junkies fiending for a fix. What is our drug? It is the illusion of godlike power to pass judgment on ourselves and others. It is the powerful drug that says, “I know the whole truth!” It is that emotional heroin we call certainty. Certainty is a hard drug and it medicates our authentic pain. Authentic pain is responsible for itself, and [so we think] it is to be avoided at all costs. We blast the force of our emotional charge on our issues onto ourselves or others with a breath‐taking fury. Wrapped in the mantle of our martyred suffering, or riding on the wind with our fiery sword, we are burrowing into the underbelly of all that we decry about man’s inhumanity to man.

So, the question remains: How do we as humans—struggling against intense internal pressure to distort the truth—how do we discern the truth without judging it? How are we to be discriminating in our choices without being hypocritical? How do we stand in our spiritual truth without indulging in the kind of spiritual bigotry that insidiously holds us above those who we deem to be less conscious?

The human creative principle of communication holds the key. This is what informs us that what we see “out there” is really a reflection of existential fear, polarities, and issues that we are projecting onto reality. It tells us that we can witness the affect of this by observing human nature, and that by observing human nature, we can discern things about ourselves that are very difficult to admit. But perhaps, most importantly, when we make this admission, then and only then can we surrender our need to be the source and begin to reflect the true source, divinity as reflected in our own hearts."