And Then I Was Human
I recently spent seven days on retreat. I walked in the woods. I prayed. I meditated. I read. I sat in silence. I walked the labyrinth. I spent time simply listening. I went there with a sincere desire to become more centered, more aware, more loving, to allow the Christ within me to have a little more room to breathe. And I came home feeling changed.
Then something rather inconvenient happened. I was human again.
I reacted to something. I said something I wished I hadn't said. I found myself behaving in a way that didn't reflect the person I had just spent seven days trying to become. And I thought, Seriously? Seven days of silence, prayer, meditation and spiritual books—and this is what I do?
For a while, I was deeply disappointed in myself. But as I have sat with it, I have begun to wonder whether I misunderstood the purpose of spiritual practice. Maybe we don't meditate so that we will never become irritated again. Maybe we don't pray so that we will never say the wrong thing. Maybe we don't study spiritual principles so that our human side somehow disappears.
Perhaps spiritual growth isn't about becoming less human. Perhaps it's about becoming more conscious while we're being human.
There is a wonderful line attributed to Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield: “After the ecstasy, the laundry.” I love that. Eventually, every retreat ends. We leave the mountaintop. We come out of meditation. We close the spiritual book. And there is laundry to wash, traffic to navigate, relationships to manage, feelings that get hurt, personalities that collide, and people who know exactly where our buttons are. That's where the practice actually begins.
It's relatively easy for me to feel peaceful walking through the woods. It's another thing entirely to carry that peace into a difficult conversation. It's easy to feel spiritually centered while sitting beside a quiet lake. It's harder when I feel misunderstood, frustrated, disappointed or afraid.
Maybe the goal isn't perfection. Maybe the goal is awareness.
There is a profound difference between making a mistake unconsciously and recognizing, That wasn't who I want to be. Awareness gives us a choice. We can defend ourselves. We can blame someone else. We can pretend it didn't happen. Or we can see it, own it, make amends when necessary, and choose differently next time.
That, too, is spiritual practice.
I am learning that the Christ within isn't some perfected version of Bobby who never gets irritated, never judges, never says the wrong thing and always responds with divine wisdom. The Christ within is the presence that calls me back when I forget who I am. Back to center.
Maybe that's why we call it a spiritual practice. We practice compassion. We practice forgiveness. We practice awareness. We practice beginning again. And sometimes we discover that the person most in need of our compassion and forgiveness is the one looking back at us in the mirror.
So today, I am giving myself permission to be both things: a spiritual being sincerely seeking to live from love and a wonderfully imperfect human being who occasionally gets it wrong. One does not cancel out the other.
Perhaps awakening isn't reaching a place where we never stumble again. Perhaps awakening is noticing sooner when we have wandered away from love—and knowing the way home. And then choosing, once again, back to center.
Many blessings, Rev. Bobby
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