The Earthly and the Spiritual

Spiritual abuse, which is anything in our religious, educational, and child rearing practices that disconnects us from a personal source of spiritual guidance, wreaks havoc within each of us and within our society as a whole. Being disconnected from Spirit leads us to operate from an earthly perspective rather than a spiritual perspective. This causes untold individual and planetary pain. We are operating from an earthly perspective when control over the outcome of events, power over others and greed are our primary motivating factors. We operate from an earthly perspective when protecting ourselves against that which we fear - aloneness, loneliness, helplessness, rejection, being controlled by others - is more important than learning and loving. On the earthly level, our highest priorities are to get love, feel safe and avoid pain, rather than to give love to ourselves and others. Whenever we operate from our false, wounded self, we operate from an earthly perspective.

Most of our major institutions - government, business, education, some religious organizations, many families - operate primarily on the earthly level. As you can see by reading the headlines any day of the week, greed and the desire to gain power over others and avoid pain drive much of what happens in our society. Social problems like crime, violence, racism, substance abuse, child and spousal abuse are all motivated by the desire to avoid the pain of aloneness, loneliness and powerlessness. People achieve this end - or so they think - by attaining wealth and power over others (via crime, racism, physical abuse) or by blocking out the pain (via substance abuse). At the root of all these actions is fear. In fact, fear is both the primary cause and consequence of spiritual abuse.

The earthly level is the material level, the level of the day-to-day struggle for safety and survival. But external safety is an illusion. We can never be totally safe on the earthly level because our bodies can be harmed or killed through disease or injury or accident, and we can never know for sure when this will happen. Our souls, however, are eternal. While they can be wounded, they can never die and are therefore safe from permanent harm. The spiritual level is about creating internal peace and safety through loving, evolving and expressing the soul.

The earthly perspective views situations and events within the context of this lifetime only, while the spiritual perspective views everything on an infinite continuum of eternal consciousness. We all have many challenges on the earthly level, but if we see adversity only on this level, then we can never experience it as an opportunity and a privilege - in fact, a sacred privilege. Difficult events in our lives are here to challenge us to evolve our souls, to become more loving and compassionate to ourselves and others.

We are always being guided toward our highest good in the face of these challenges. If you see painful events such as failures, illness, loss of loved ones or loss of money purely on the earthly level, then you will see life as suffering, a burden to be endured or perhaps ended in a lonely, painful death or suicide. But when you see these extremely difficult experiences as lessons in love and compassion toward yourself and others, you will do what you came here to do - learn to love, express and evolve your soul toward oneness with the love that is God.

You operate from a spiritual perspective when evolving and loving are your primary motivating factors, your highest priorities. When you make the spiritual far more important than the earthly, you experience life on this planet as a sacred privilege.