ShinNa: Spiritual Blog

Let's Be in the Moment One common spiritual desire I often hear is to be in the moment. I believe this to be true, but I think that we often want to short cut the disciplined effort that is required to be able to get there. We often mistake being in the moment as just doing what we feel like doing at any moment. I have participated in many “spiritual” drum circles where people get in a circle and drum “together”. However there often seems to be a problem. Instead of drumming together, people are drumming out their own rhythms and the sound, if you took the time to listen, would definitely take you right out of the moment. You will want to be somewhere else. From a spiritual perspective, I believe that the desire to be in the moment really means that we want to be able to connect to and align with a higher power at any time. We really want to be and do in the moment what our purpose calls us forth to be and do. Did you ever notice that some people in your life just seem to rai...

Spiritual Freedom is Discipline – part 1 In many spiritual circles there seems to be a special admiration for the free spirit.  The people who can just go with the flow and wing it.  The spontaneous ones. They are the people who are supposedly most plugged in to life.  But the question is, do those people truly experience freedom? I have lived a lot of my life trying to be that free spirit, and from my experience, it does not really give you true freedom.   In fact, I was experiencing a lot of stress below the surface because there was nothing I could count on and I was often less prepared to get the most out of myself.  If you think about it, true freedom or aliveness comes from the interplay of flow and structure. Water flows powerfully in pipes and music has both notes and space.   We often mistake structure as something that will keep us rigid, but if used properly, it gives us a powerful way to create. We are amazed by sports figures li...

Spirituality and the Ideal There is an old joke you may have heard about a man who lived in an area where there was a flood that rose to just below the roof of his house.  So he climbed on the roof and asked God to save him.  Soon after, the police came by in a row boat and told him to hop in.  He said “No, God will save me.”  Later, a helicopter hovered over him and he sent it away saying “God will save me.”  After he sent away a canoeist who came to help him, the flood got worse and he started to drown.  He cried out to God, “ Dear God, I have always believed in you, but when I asked you to save me, you never showed up, and now I am drowning.  Why did you ignore me?” And God said, “You idiot, I sent you a row boat, a helicopter, and a canoe.” One way we can trip ourselves up in our quest for enlightenment is that we can hold some ideal of what enlightenment should look like.  I always thought that I would really have arrived when in every se...