Ever run beyond yourself? You know, where you are running flat out and the rest of you is going faster than your feet and you just keep going until the sudden stop? It’s not tripping and falling. It’s a bit like stopping on ice where you stop, yet you keep going because the sliding doesn’t care about your stoppage? I see people in the spiritual community do this. It’s part of the camel phase of spiritual transformation. First comes the camel where you taken in everything you can like it’s water you’ll need for a very long trip. Then comes the lion phase where you’re idealistic and evangelizing about what you have discovered (no matter what it is, you’ll find a soap box to stand on about it.) And finally comes the human phase where the spirituality becomes practical and lived in or what is termed human. You move from “this is what I do” to “this is what I be.”
People overrun themselves in the camel phase. A door opens for them and it’s not like Dorothy’s yellow brick road where the way is paved for them and all they have to do is manage to follow it. Instead it’s like a firehose of information is blasting at them. You’d think that would be uncomfortable but instead they embrace it and want more. When the firehose starts losing pressure they seek out a way to ramp it back up. Not that they are able to use or make sense out of the tons of information, practices, wisdom and advice they are receiving. There’s too much and all of that would take time. So they stand in the blast in wonder at all of the information, the experience, the inspiration that is coming their way and it lands on the ground and goes back into the world without having done anything other than get them wet.
Now I’m not saying that they shouldn’t stand in the way of the firehose. Sometimes that’s exactly what we need to blast away the ingrained crap that we’ve been so precious with for far too long or that clings so tightly we can’t get it off on our own. Sometimes shock and awe are exactly what we need. But it shouldn’t become the new normal. It shouldn’t become its own way of being. It should be an entre into a new world, a means to an end. It should support us and enable us to stand on our own two feet, become balanced enough that we can bend and flow with the change that is all around us, and help us in our endeavors instead of become the endeavor we have to work through. Sometimes more is just more. If all we’re doing is running harder and faster and further, at some point we’re going to run past our own feet and faceplant on the path. And that’s one way to stop and take stalk of things, but I don’t recommend it.
