before and after

I was talking with a friend recently about her decades' long struggle with her body image, and railing against the little voice inside that kept telling her, "When I lose weight, I'll be happy." She has been lucky enough to understand that in reality it's the other way around—that when she's happy, she has a tendency to lose weight—and that having "the perfect body" has very little to do with whether or not she's truly happy in her life.

My big "when/if" assumption has been tied to money and financial security. "When I win the lottery...." "When I'm making $150,000 per year...." Here in the West, money has pretty much become our deity, and we've lost sight of what is of true value in life. We're trained to keep score with money—to use it as a measure of success, a measure of power and prestige, a measure of worthiness, and even a measure of happiness.

It also doesn't help that I come from a family that has traditionally been overly concerned with money—I have inherited my Depression-era grandparents' financial anxieties—nor that I was raised upper-middle class and was trained to expect a basic minimum of affluence that is far beyond the means of most others.

What I've found in my own experience is that all the material stuff isn't nearly as important to me as I was led to believe—and becoming decreasingly significant by the minute—although that need for financial security lingers. It probably wouldn't hurt to tend to my root chakra.

I've been thinking on the following lately:

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

In other words, the mundane aspects of life are here to stay. I'm still working on "being in the world, but not of the world." Not so easy when the heart and mind yearn for something so much more significant and meaningful, while the body still needs to be clothed, fed, and sheltered. (And the dogs need walking.) I am most definitely a spiritual being having a human experience—and it's the human part that is so very frustrating. Sometimes I muse that if I didn't have a body and could just hang out on higher planes all the time, I'd be much better off—at least, life (or something like it) would be easier. Silly, but it has occurred to me.

From Dan Millman's Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior, spoken by Mama Chia:

"Certain mystical techniques and substances have been known for centuries to provide glimpses of the upper floors [of awareness and spiritual evolution]. These are best treated as sacred, rather than recreational, activities; they can be useful as a 'previews of coming attractions.'

"Many well-intentioned, lonely, bored, or desperate people generate spiritual experiences through a variety of techniques.... But then what? What have they got? They return to their normal states more depressed than ever.

"Spirit is always here, always with us, around us, inside us. But there are no shortcuts to this realization. Mystical practices generate heightened awareness, but if experiences aren't grounded in a responsible life in this dimension, they lead nowhere."

Ah, so I'd better stick with my body, then. The heavier, more ordinary aspects of life are pretty much inescapable. Whether or not I choose to view them as tedious is up to me, but I still need to find that harmonious balance between consciousness expansion and making sure there's enough dog food in the house. Chop wood, carry water.

I've mentioned previously that, for the most part, the women healers and writers—pioneering new classes and techniques of healing and release, working to raise awareness, devoting their lives to healing service and spiritual learning—who have served as my role models haven't had to support themselves through their work. Every last one of them has been married to a man with a lucrative income that easily supports them both, allowing her to do her "woo-woo work" without having to worry about earning a living—at least, in the early years of establishing herself.

Others have managed to support themselves, but through painful compromises—such as activating for peace while working defense contracts to pay the bills. So self-sufficiency in right livelihood is not something that I've found to be adequately modeled in the real world. Maybe it's partly my job to do that for others. I'm still working out how to make that happen.

In the meantime, I don't know any other way to be. Once you've outgrown your old shoes, you simply can't wear them anymore as you walk around in the world.