Wait…What?
When my spiritual guide uttered these words, I was totally floored.
For my entire 52 years, I have been a very practical person. I took special pride when many told me how being practical was my biggest strength. Now I had to chuck it…really! It was a big deal for me. Historically, for everything I did, I always looked at it from a practical perspective. Does it have a practical side to it? – that was the prism I always looked through. I always thought that data and logic is all you need to analyze things – and that fueled my practicality. And whether something is feasible, and pragmatic was always on my mind. I believe I have inherited practicality genetically from my late father. But some of it I have learned as well.
How can I even possibly chuck my biggest strength?
What my spiritual guide was trying to tell me was, keep an open mind to things. You do not know everything. And some things cannot be explained by just data and logic. Let go of things and surrender to the ‘Now’ and do not worry about the What, When and How. Let the Universe handle the details. It has infinite organizing power. Solutions will emerge from the chaos. Accept uncertainty.
So, it was a tall order for me to do all that. The analytical person in me always looked for closure – i.e., for everything there are logical reasons to understand the ‘why’ and thus get closure.
The reason I had started on my spiritual journey recently was because data and logic were not enough to help me heal from my several adversities over the last five years. I have started my spiritual journey slowly but surely. And I have come to the conclusion that the only thing certain is uncertainty and that ‘closure is over-rated.’ Although, I strongly believed that ‘being practical’ was the way to go, I started to notice that it was limiting my ability to ‘accept’ things as I was constantly striving for logical explanations. And it was limiting my ‘belief system’ by forming perceptions and hence limiting the ‘potential’ in me. Also, that had led to me to be more judgmental about people, circumstances, and things which resulted me in taking certain actions for which I was also limiting my ability to take responsibility for. What I have started to discover is that ‘letting go’ of things although not easy to do, has many benefits. It helps you to heal from your past, helps you forgive yourself and others, creates positive energy and vibrations within and around you, makes it easier to manifest things you want, helps you to detach from outcomes and ultimately leads to more happiness and peace. I also started to realize that the more I stop constantly questioning “why’ something has happened, the easy it gets to close the past.
So, what does all this mean?
Is it ‘All or nothing’? i.e., either I am practical, or I am not. It is not a black and white thing as I used to think before. There is a grey area. However, the new me has not completely shut down ‘being practical.’ Just that my intense level of ‘being practical’ has come down drastically and I am also no longer that obsessed with it all the time. You cannot just flip off the “being practical” switch and turn on the ‘being spiritual’ switch. It is not easy to reduce the level of ‘being practical’ and increase your spirituality. A lot of hard work is needed to consciously go there. But doing this is certainly helping me further heal my mind, body, and spirit.