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Spiritual Longings

The philosopher Yasuhiko Kimura identified five longings of our Spirit. Thinking about these, and the natural values that follow, help to guide your sacred path. These longings, or Noble Truths, are identified in one way or another in most spiritual texts, past and present. These are the Yellow arrows in our image.

1: To Be Free: Your Spirit longs to free Its Light into the world through you. This brings certainty of purpose, peace, and joy with it. If you think about the sun analogy in "Your First Shift" post we can better understand how individually we are rays of light, separate, with our own unique purpose, dancing on different places of the planet, but connected by the same source. The natural longings or impulses it sends through all of us, regardless of our unique path, are the following:

2: To Extend Love: It is the means by which you recognize your innocence, truth, and power; it is the Light in which you see and the springboard for vision. Through extending Love, the world opens before you in new ways. It transforms physical appearances into Spiritual recognition. Requires Trust.

3: To Receive Love: Opens the heart and illuminates the mind. It is a declaration of in-dependence, that you are not a victim, you are held in the strength and power of Spirit that resides in you. Understands that grievances block the way to Truth. Requires Forgiveness.

4: To Contribute: In meaningful ways to the evolution of humanity. This is your work from which your sacred path unfolds. As Buddha said, “Your work is to discover your work and with all you heart and mind, give yourself to it.”

5: To Be Acknowledged: You are a Spiritual Being having a human experience and a human being having a Spiritual experience. You have two points of perspective. Retreating too far into either—into the Light of Spirit in neglect of the world (escape), or into worldly pleasures with neglect of Spiritual impulses (denial)—is harmful to your overall well being. The Hindu salutation Namaste, “or the Light in me bows to the Light in you” is an acknowledgement of this indwelling Spirit. You have to also accept your physical presence as a natural constraint to the wholeness of Spirit; a ray of light with an individualized nature. You have a specific purpose to fulfill with the body you were given.

Everything in S.T.E.P into the Creative aims to reflect those longings, sometimes positively, sometimes in the negative.

Veering from Our Path

Because we are human beings on an evolutionary journey back to Spirit, we veer from our path from time to time. Many of us have been knocked off our path early in life. Childhood abuse—psychological, emotional and physical—are a scourge to the unfoldment of a person’s sacred path. For all of us, moving back toward our path takes hard work. Forgiveness and trust are spiritually misunderstood concepts that become major “trigger” points for many people. This is understandable with the cruelty and grievous ways in which some people have been harmed. There are no easy solutions.

As you take the steps to get closer to the truth of who you are, however, you become increasingly drawn toward your centre, like a water current pulling you in. It can seem dangerous because it feels like you a drawing closer to the unknown. The more you fight or the harder you the struggle, however, more pain permeates your life. The rocks you hit and cling to along the way are fear, guilt, anger.

Holding on to harmful emotions makes us feel like we are being pulled in two directions: Love that wants to extend and fear that holds us back. When we relax, become vulnerable to our inner creative energy, it will carry us along smoothly toward our perfect life path. “Letting go” and “breaking through” happen simultaneously.

Stories and Values

Stories are a good vehicle to bring values into real life experiences. Since the beginning of language people have always learned important values through storytelling. Stories are an excellent way to stimulate and exercise your imagination and shift you into new ways of thinking more in line with your creative spirit.

Metaphorical prose promotes creative visualization, allows the reader to explore different depths of the Self and to see patterns and interrelationships between all things. Identifying links between your Thinking process, Emotions, and Physical presence and bringing them back into orbit around Spirit is key to moving toward realigning your path.

“The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar.” –Aristotle

Metaphors are the jump. They help you to intellectually grasp abstract concepts that are difficult in direct language. Static electricity is a good metaphor to contemplate. Think about the shock you get when static electricity jumps from your hand to a metal handle. The shock will not occur if you (the electrons attached to you) are not close enough to transfer to the positively charged door handle.

Telling a student to live Inward-out and be guided by her inner Spirit is not enough for most people. It certainly wasn’t for me. I’ve studied, trained and taught in shaolin kung fu for over twenty years, wrote three books, and chiselled away at static paradigms, each week, month, and year bringing further insights into my purpose. It continues to be a daily practice.

Reflecting back I can see, even from day one, that this path was guided by my Creative Spirit. It has led me to the lessons that made me stronger to meet the life challenges I have needed to face. Inspirational breakthroughs happened along the way. Even before aligning with my path I recall little flashes of inspiration drawing me back. Most of which I dismissed at first because, of course, I knew better. You have those flashes too. One of those flashes may have drawn you toward this material.

Stories, koans, parables and the like have always helped me to contemplate, connect, and aspire toward my Higher Self. I have come to understand there is no direct route to follow, no logic or step by step plan to breakthrough into Spirit (the step-to-step stuff comes later, once Spirit has illuminated your path.). It requires a jump. S.T.E.P. aims to bring you close enough to see the connection and to make the leap. Developing trust in this energy is key.

A good metaphor (and/or story) jumps like electricity to facilitate flashes of light into your Truth. It flips the intellectual darkness switch to illuminating clarity, mysteriously at times…

So far we've been predominantly exploring abstract ideas. Now it's time to bring some of these ideas together into a story, to deepen understanding. We will examine the Creative Process of bringing ideas, or the abstract, into form in a later post.

For now, read The Movement of Heaven in the next blog to bring together some of the concepts discussed so far.

Spiritual Longings

Brad Hutchinson

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