How can I be substantial if I do not

cast a shadow. I must have a dark

side also if I am to be whole.

          Carl Jung

 

 

We are Stardust, we are golden

And we’ve got to get our selves

back to the garden.

Then I can walk beside you.

I have come here to lose the smog.

          Joni Mitchel

ON BEING WHOLE

Lately, the experience of wholeness has been popping into my awareness. As I go about my daily life it just sort of pops up there inviting me to reflect, question and explore. I did not consciously invite it here; it just came and I am trying to follow it. In this blog I will share some of what I am seeing.

Wholeness is what we are born into. It is our birth right. Wholeness never leaves us. In the moment of our birth we are born whole and in the moment of our death we are equally whole. Wholeness is not achieved through any effort, striving or struggle at personal or spiritual growth. We don’t do anything to become whole other than accept the wholeness that has always been here.

We are born as part of the Whole. Often, we are not aware of this. In Western Cultures, separation and individuality is stressed. We are taught the we are individuals who are separate and unique and it is our life task to develop and express our individual prowess. There is a level at which this is absolutely true. And there is another level at which it is clear this is only half of the story. We are born into the universe, into the entirety of the Cosmos, into all that is. This unity is always there just as the moon is always full though we see it as such only when the earth, sun and moon are properly aligned to reveal its beauty. Just because the angles are not right one evening does not subtract from the fullness that is always there and available to us.

For many of us, it is not just the angle of light. The clouds of our ego and personality can also obscure the moon on any given overcast evening. The clouds of our feelings of inadequacy or unlovability can color the sky with a dull, drab sheet of gray blocking out the beauty of our birth into the wholeness of all the Cosmos.

Wholeness does not erase our individuality. It embraces it. It puts it into the much greater context.

In addition, wholeness involves our whole, entire self; all of our experience, everything we have ever known, done or witnessed. We can not be complete without all of it. Wholeness includes our brokenness. It embraces our wounds, shadow, losses and emptiness. Wholeness includes being partial. Our wholeness is in the middle of events we would give anything to have never had. It includes our emptiness, the void, the scariest aspects of our inner self. These experiences ought not be cast aside. Rejecting these parts involves a dualism that creates an inner fragmentation that disrupts our essential experience of our selves. Certainly, some of the things we have experienced create the feeling of being in the middle of a tornado which feels as though it can rip apart the moorings of our soul. And in these situations, we do not have to stay in the destructive places which feel so devastating. Fortunately, our wholeness also contains shelters which we build with spiritual practices such as meditation, mantra, prayer and chanting. These become the way we build strength to move through the inner tornados until healing calms even these very painful parts of us.

There is a strain of spiritual teaching that believe wholeness comes to us as only when we achieve the higher, purer states of consciousness. This is quite simply a mistake. Wholeness is present no matter what our state of consciousness.

The cosmos we are born into permeates our entire being. The cosmos integrates itself into us and we are integrated into it. We become a vital part of it all with all of our baggage, wounds and incompleteness. There are no inner enemies. There are only places we have not made friends with. The Divine absorbs us, all of us, everything about us into a tapestry of magnificent beauty which empowers us to be more fully who we are.

Spiritual growth is a tightening the threads in this weaving. These threads are a never-ending spiral rising up and down, over and under, in and out of our entire being. Wholeness requires all of us, rejects nothing about us, includes everything. Wholeness is not beyond our depression or misery. It embraces both of these into the tapestry. Wholeness connects us to the stars all of the stars even the one that are billions of light years away and it connects us to every cell, molecule atom, experience, wound, sorrow, grief and pain in our being.

Finally, wholeness includes what we are becoming, what is next, what we are evolving into. It includes our evolution into the soulful beings we are created to be who are less buffeted by the tornadoes knowing that the real shelter is within. The real shelter is the unique particular soul we were born to be.