©2018 Cindie Chavez – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
“Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me”…that was the first “vow” I remember taking. It was one line from a Catholic hymn that I learned while preparing for my “First Holy Communion” – a special milestone that happens for young members of the Catholic Church. I was six years old and I was very serious about preparing for this solemn event.
Born to Catholic parents, I was baptized into this particular religious system the day I was born. I was born 3 months premature and my parents made sure to baptize me immediately in case I didn’t live, like the five stillborn children my mother had previously born. I weighed in at 3 pounds, 11 inches long, and somehow I survived.
Fifty years after my first communion, I look back and realize that this single line from this hymn, this profound ideal, has been the one thread that held over the years as my religious beliefs unraveled.
I won’t recount my entire spiritual journey in great detail for this essay, but my path has been a long and winding road that has culminated in a very eclectic practice that seems to fit me better and better as I allow it to unravel again and again and as I remake it over and over selecting the threads that shine brightest for me.
The constancy being a double-stranded thread that focuses on peace and on others. “Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me”. Even at six years old, it wasn’t just my own peace that I was concerned with, but the peace of others, the peace of the world.
Which brings me to my topic today, the idea that our spiritual practices are not just for us. Spiritual practices and beliefs are personal, yes. Often we are born into specific belief systems and taught certain practices when we are very young. We then grow into adulthood and come to a place where we adopt those beliefs and practices by choice. We make them our own, or we don’t – we drop them and choose new beliefs and new practices, and our choices are deeply personal.
But as personal as those choices are, (I cannot choose yours and you cannot choose mine), we still do well to understand why we’ve chosen the specific beliefs and practices that we have.
Why?
I can’t answer that question for you. But I do want to ask it, of you, and of myself.
I’ve traveled a spiritual path that started with being born into a Catholic family, and in over 50 years that path has meandered out of Catholicism, through Fundamentalist Christianity, into Judaism (I made an orthodox conversion), and Buddhism (I made a Bodhisattva vow, so that technically makes me a JuBu – yes, it’s a thing), intersected with Conscious Creation (aka LOA or Law of Attraction – a big part of what I now teach) and Magic (yes, I am a Magician). The way I see it, I’m weaving a beautiful tapestry that fits me perfectly. And I knit a pink hat to match. You may or may not agree with my choices. That’s okay. Weave your own coat and hat. But it’s important to know why you’re weaving whatever you’re weaving and why you wear it and why it fits you.
One thread has remained consistent throughout my journey, and that is the idea that my own spiritual practice is to make the world a better place. THE world, not just MY world. The Bodhisattva vow is a vow to liberate all sentient beings from suffering. A bodhisattva is simply a person who lives in the spirit of that vow, attempting to perfect the qualities of generosity, discipline, patience, enthusiasm, meditation, and wisdom.
There is an idea that is prevalent in many of today’s spiritual circles that basically says that since what we focus on expands, we shouldn’t focus on anything that doesn’t feel good. It is true that what we focus on expands, but it is also true that what we ignore often also expands – and grows and spreads – sometimes to the point where it’s out of control. Weeds in a garden are a fairly benign example. Institutional racism is a malignant example.
Unfortunately here in the United States we are faced with racism and other bigoted philosophies that are growing like weeds and creating atrocities like the family separation policy that is currently causing outrage here as children are cruelly separated from their parents.
Everything I am, everything I stand for, screams against this sort of injustice. I refuse to look away. We must not hide our heads in the sand pretending that it isn’t happening. Hiding in a dark corner is not the way to bring light. In fact, there have been volumes written about how “ordinary people” allowed the Holocaust to happen by looking the other way and continuing to live their lives like nothing was going on.
Does your brand of spirituality tell you to look the other way? Does it encourage you to ignore the reality of systemic racism, or misogyny, or sexism, or xenophobia, or authoritarianism, or child abuse, because “what you focus on expands”?
If that’s the case then I want to suggest that you don’t have to focus on these injustices at all, just be willing to see them, and then – focus on the solutions.
Here are a few ways you can do that:
https://asylumadvocacy.org/donate
https://supportkind.org/about/
https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/bondfund
More by Cindie:
Cindie Chavez is known as “The Love & Magic Coach”. She is the creator of MOONLIGHT™ – A Course in Manifesting Love and she has some great free stuff for you at her website: www.cindiechavez.com
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