Further Reflections on the 2nd Stage of the Spiritual Journey

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE REAL SELF

Some Reflections on our recent Satsang Meeting

Our local Satsang Group ( UK Midlands) met in  Satsang on Saturday 8th March for a Day of Reflection . Our topic or theme was ' Spiritual Maturity - the 2nd Half of Life' .  Our main input for this theme was a video of Richard Rohr addressing this theme and his book 'Falling Upward'

Richard Rohr talked about the main function of the first half of life. He emphasised that this was NOT a chronological journey but rather a journey of developing awareness and growing maturity. The main task of our first half of life was to 'build a container' safe a secure enough to permit us, as mature spiritual travellers, to handle the ambiguities and paradoxes of the mature spiritual traveller.

Now this image of a strong 'container'is in reality an image for building a strong and healthy ego. Spiritual Masters of all traditions stress the importance of a secure base that is founded on a strong and healthy ego. Sister Ishpriya, the spiritual guide of the International Satsang Association, has often spoken about and emphasised this in her many talks or pravachans. 

A strong and healthy ego is formed in our crucial developing early years if we has secure attachment figures who provide us with love, safety, trust, nurture and support. For most these 'attachment figures' are loving parents and relatives. However, for many of us this is not true and thus we either have to find it in others or develop our ego in later years.

In any event, our task in life is to successfully develop a strong and healthy ego and then , as we reach maturity, begin to transcend the natural ego-centricity of our ego. So in early life as we develop our ego this leads to us internalising a strong picture or script of ourself. In psychology, this has many labels - in humanistic terms it is often referred to as either a 'False Self' or ' the Self- Concept'. In reality , although this view contains some truths it also contains 'distortions' and is definitely incomplete.  Our task, as we mature, is to begin to challenge our Self Concept, recognise its truths and its distortions and begin to broaden our awareness of our True Self.

However, in order to do this we must first develop our awareness of the Self - Concept, then lose it or drop it as we mature and broaden our awareness of self, others, our environment and of God or Ultimate Reality. This maturing requires that we develop the skill and ability of ' Not Knowing'. In  other words of sitting comfortably with the ambiguity and paradox of life and the knowledge that most of life's difficult issues are either a mystery or unsolvable. Richard Rohr, in his talk, returned again and again to this ambiguity and stressed that, for him, this ease with not knowing was another way of expressing Faith. !

Our world needs an increasing number of mature adults who are prepared to face both the challenges of developing their sense of self or ego in the first half of life and then, more importantly, moving with courage and faith into the 2nd half of life.  People who were prepared to do this are urgently needed as 'role models' , or in Rohr's term  ' Elders' , in order to show younger travellers some pathways through the 1st stage of life and assist and guide them as they approach the challenge of entering the 2nd half of life.

Our Satsang Group both enjoyed the day of reflection but also benefited from the mutuality of our sharing .