How Can We Get There From Here

As we move about in this often awkward and complex modern world, a world in which there appears to be too much focus on advocating and advancing small, individuals agendas and too little focus on identifying and implementing real solutions to the serious problems that impact all of us and the common good, we find ourselves wondering if and how we can actually get there from here. “There” being a sane and more sustainable way of life in which the importance of the greater good and the evolution of consciousness outweighs the small, divisive and self-serving objectives that are so often demonstrated in the “here.”

In exploring this possibility some important questions keep coming up for us. How do those of us who call ourselves ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’ really feel about what is going on in our world today or perhaps it would be more accurate to say what is, ‘not going on?’ Are we troubled by this condition of stalemate and all of the narrow self-focus that is being shown? Are we offended that a relatively small number among us have somehow managed to highjack our democratic process and as a result hold the well being of the rest of us in their grip? Or are we so overwhelmed by the individual problems and the challenges we face in earning a living and keeping our lives afloat that that we have neither the time nor the energy to focus on what we can do to make a difference?

Do you ever find yourself asking any of these questions? Are you concerned that the world in which you and those you love are living does not look, feel, sound or certainly smell like it is genuinely committed to greater consciousness or to advancing the primary tenants of your spiritual and religious practices? Do you ever wonder what life would be like if the world you live in did align with the quest for greater consciousness? And do you ever ask yourself what you can do to help humanity get ‘there’ from ‘here?’

We certainly wonder and when we ask ourselves what we can do, one of the answers that come loud and clear is “Listen more in the silence.” Another answer is, “Pay more attention to completing the incompletes that often weigh us down and limit us – the unfinished business er sbr with people in our world – those we say we love and those we sometimes convince ourselves that we dislike; the undone promises and pledges we’ve made to others and to ourselves, and the sometimes unwilling, unfriendly, and unkind interactions we have with those we encounter in our daily lives.”

“Let go and let God,” is yet another answer we get. “Stop trying to muscle life and start surrendering to the natural flow, not the flow that issues from the artificial and manipulated wants of our egos, but the natural flow that arises from rhythm of the self we were born to live.”

So yes, when we have the wit and the courage to ask, we get a number of answers. Many of these are explored in Do Not Go Quietly, A Guide To Living Consciously and Aging Wisely For People Who Weren’t Born Yesterday. And some, of course, are harder than others to put into practice. But in the end, if getting “there” from “here” is important to us; if moving from less to more conscious states of existence is included as a goal of the spiritual or religious path we are on, then do we really have a choice? Alignment or hypocrisy. Truth and trust or some kind of exit or by-pass. But an exit to where?

You see, from our perspective getting from a less satisfying, less fulfilling, less joyful, less grace-filled “here” to a state of genuine balance and harmony seems to be the ticket. That is, in fact, what we believe the Dalai Lama means when he says that many of us in the West have an e-ticket ride in this incarnation.

So what’s your destination – greater consciousness, wide-awake living, fearless aging, and light-filled dying or something else? And if you know your destination, then how can you put into practice more of the fundamentals of the spiritual or religious path you walk to make “there” your reality today?