Doing Good and Feeling Good: The Balance

Doing Good and Feeling Good: The Balance

It is important to do things for ourselves that “feel” good. Play, physical joy such as making love, eating, meditations and Yoga are all food for the Soul for sure. Getting and giving complements, affirmations, and support are also good, and they feel good, both giving them and receiving them. “Doing good” for others, working at a soup kitchen, cleaning up trash, all of these activities can also be good for the Soul. However, as in all things on Earth, balance is key. The pursuit of happiness, out of balance, can become a habit to avoid deep issues, personal growth, Spiritual Evolution. Life on Earth is duality, Spirit encased in flesh, Yin and Yang, light and dark. Growth is always paired with violence and destruction. The seed shell cracks for the baby plant to emerge, the female has contractions for a baby to be born, the caterpillar sheds its skin at least five times before turning into soup inside of a chrysalis to emerge with not yet working butterfly wings that need to be pumped with effort in order to expand and get solid enough to work and then to fly. If you give up or back off of all of the activities and practices that tell you “it doesn’t feel good” and the result is Soul death, death of the being, and sometimes of the species.

Doing Yoga, prayers and meditations to feel calm, to help another kick addiction, stay out of jail, stop a suicide etc. has it benefits. Out of balance these practices can morph into methods to become self-absorbed, or a way to medicate feelings, albeit these are healthier choices than weed, alcohol, overeating, over sexing etc.  In the field of psychology, many people drawn to that field are wounded and use their education and clinical practice to mitigate their own wounds, healing by proxy. New Age and typically Western spiritual seekers often do the same seeking out one “practice” after another as a way of avoidance or a way to feel better about their wounded self.  Unfortunately in both of these fields, psychology and spirituality, emotional and spiritual healing by proxy doesn’t work.  Go to a healer or empath who tells you they have removed your Karma for you, and see how long that lasts. If Great Spirit cannot or does not or will not remove your Karma, no matter what spiritual practices and prayers you have tried, what makes you think a human can?  And pity the poor human that thinks s/he can do what Spirit cannot. Given the “technology” of spirituality, kundalini yoga, neurolinguistics programming, the (so-called) Secret, and all the hundreds of practices that have been around literally for thousands of years, if humans were meant to “instantly” erase Karma and pain, we all would be living in Heaven on Earth. And we are not. Healers can help. Spiritual Practices can help, like having scuba gear to dive or mountain climbing gear to hike. Healers and Spiritual Practices are tools, not bulldozers. You incarnated here to evolve through effort, struggle as well as surrender, contemplation, meditation and acceptance of the Path you chose to Travel in this life, a Path YOU designed, with your Guides, with Spirit, before you ever became an egg and sperm joining forces.  Why, once you are here, would you want to remove your Path or change it? That is like you having a dream of going to the Himalayas and once you are there deciding they are too big, too challenging and decide to dynamite them or tunnel through rather than getting a Sherpa and good gear and having Faith that the trip will be worth it. The choices of avoidance will exponentially increase the difficulty of your Path. You will get through it all, no matter what your choices. Your choices will determine HOW you get through it all.

How do you know if you are in avoidance rather than self-care with all your “feel good” activities? There is no one answer. Everyone is different and every part of your life will be different. Sometimes you are in recovery and you need a few years of just feeling good, healing, and fun. Other times you might be avoiding the “next step” in your Journey. Be Mindful in your Journey and work with a Teacher/Healer who is not invested in only making you “feel good”. Use your Spiritual Practices to listen to Spirit, rather than as a way to seek or demand “answers” and explanations. That will allow you to access a Higher Guidance. Learning to Listen should be the focus of your Spiritual Cultivation, not trying to control your life through so-called intentions and “manifesting”. Balance is a way of life and if you are not used to living with balance it will, at first, feel strange and unusual. It is difficult to even know what balance is or feels like if you are used to living with dysfunction, wounds, denial, or avoidance and you will not be able to learn this on your own. When you are out of balance you can often make choices from your Wounded Self rather than risk something that feels unfamiliar. A True Teacher, a good therapist, 12-Step programs, and authentic Spiritual practices can become your doorway to a new way of living with balance. Typically friends and family cannot because awakenings and healings are messy. Spirit can send you someone or something, but will you have the courage to take the offering?   Life will take you where you planned to go, no matter what. Slow down and pay attention to your choices. If you feel scared or threatened, wait.  Breathe. You may be running away from a healing, back to the dysfunction that feels normal to you. Pray for Guidance. Then Listen. Awakening is a choice.

Journey On.