The Spiritual Blink

However you might view yourself, I know that I am no saint. It’s more likely that I am a cranky old man with some very eccentric habits and ideas. It’s been said (by me, among others) that I would be best off if I lived somewhere off in the country or on a remote island. Who am I to argue?

Life often feels to be excessive and overwhelming in the world of humans. I am not looking for humans. I am looking for the spiritual blink.

Speaking with saints I have known and reading about other saints, even they have days when they feel that life is too much for them. They feel as if the weight of life’s demands are crushing their souls. The world is overwhelming. Saints, like us, feel as though their spiritual and physical batteries are being depleted. The world is too loud, too noisy and, worst of all, everybody in the world is asking more of them than they can possibly give back.

That is when, like saints, we may discover we’ve received the spiritual blink. That something inexplicable that seemingly comes from nowhere, at least nowhere we can describe. It’s not like sitting under Newton’s apple tree. We don’t know the source of the spiritual apple that hit our heads. We only know we’ve been struck.

What we know is that the spiritual blink gives us a respite from ourselves and the rest of the world. In a flash we are spiritually removed from the crashing, crushing madness of the physical world. Imagine receiving a reprieve from the constant busyness of our lives. We ask for nothing. We are given everything.

We are given a break from the stresses and strains of everyday life. The tightness in our chests relaxes. We breathe again without straining. Our self-imposed burdens remain, if we want them. If we feel we can’t survive without them.

Spirituality is the bottom line. It is the foundation of our lives. Our choice is to think we are entirely of the physical, the corporeal realm or to move beyond mere physicality.

We can choose to be willing like women and men of ages past, present and to come. We can accept that we are loved beyond our expectations. It’s perfectly fine not to accept what we were trained to believe about ourselves, our lives and our world. We are trained to think that we are supposed to be forever trying to please other people. As a child if you are eternally watching for the approval of your teachers, your parents and siblings, your relatives and friends, it’s only natural that as an adult you…