Spiritual Flexibility
One of the qualities I appreciate most in life is flexibility. The word implies, for me, a give and take, a responding to, sort of “dancing” or engaging with life, as opposed to running on rigid self-will.
As we go through life, not only does the body lose its youthful flexibility (unless you’re doing serious yoga!), but we see inflexibility showing up on the mental and emotional levels too. True confession: Few things bug me more than bumping up against someone’s willful stubbornness – which clearly indicates that I struggle with my own stubborn, emotional and mental inflexibility at times, which I do.
Remember, what we reject in others is a projection of what we reject in our self.
On a regular basis, some part of me digs in and refuses to go with the flow of reality. Sometimes, some part of me doesn’t want to let go of old dreams that didn’t work out. Or my mind reruns a “story” over and over, as if that could make it turn out differently. At times, I notice myself not wanting to let go of old strategies that once worked, but no longer fit. Or, I may internally insist someone be who I want them to be, rather than just accepting that person as he or she is. These are all aspects of rejecting “what is, ” as opposed to engaging with it.
To go with the flow of experiences and changes that life continually offers us is to have spiritual flexibility. It is a flexibility of the spirit to adapt to life, to change, to loss, and to evolution itself.
Another word for inflexibility might be resistance, and resistance shows up everywhere! We are resistant to change because we fear it. We fear it because we have suffered a lot of pain in the past, and we base the future on that. We don’t want to feel scared, hurt, abandoned, or alone – which we may have felt as a child.
Ironically, it is our resistance to the flow of life and change that puts us out of alignment with Divine Intelligence (or God, or our Higher Power – whatever you choose to call it.)
When we are not aligned with Source, we feel alone, confused, and perhaps abandoned…the very feelings we were hoping to avoid. There is peace, connection, and grace with acceptance.
As a shamanic practitioner, my work is to allow the Divine to move through me in order to bring back the soul parts of people who resist a traumatic experience. With trauma, this soul loss can happen as a survival mechanism. Reality is spiritually resisted in order to emotionally survive it. This happens to people and animals. A part of their soul had to say a big “no” to experiencing that amount of pain or hurt, so the part takes off to another reality (shamanism calls it “non-ordinary reality”). Psychiatrists call the phenomenon “disassociation.” It creates a kind of emotional numbness. It adds to that sense of isolation. It can barricade the spiritual heart behind a thick wall.
The soul loss, in a sense, served survival successfully at the time of the trauma. After all, the psyche can only take so much and people do what they have to in order to survive. But when trauma ends, a soul part often can’t return on its own volition. The soul part become stuck in non-ordinary reality; stuck in the initially life-saving act of resistance. Ultimately, however, to spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically thrive, we need as much of our spirit as possible to move forward. We need our wholeness in order to keep evolving, to stay flexible, vulnerable, connected, and responsive – to say “yes” to life and the changes it requires of us.
Shamans actually work with the spiritual resistance of deceased people as well as live ones.
