Spiritual or Physical...that is THE Question

This is one of the big questions, isn't it?

I was raised in a faith tradition that taught that we are human beings- physical beings- striving for a spiritual experience but after much contemplation, I have come to believe that the opposite of what I was taught is actually true. 

I believe now that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. 

Our bodies are just tools to help our spirits have experiences that lead to spiritual growth. 

(That doesn't mean that we shouldn't still take care of our bodies. I'm sure the connection between body and spirit is very strong- so much so that sometimes it is hard for us to separate the two. And, the better we take care of our bodies, the more we will have them to help us experience the world.)

This spiritual/physical distinction is helpful to me in a couple of ways. 

First: it helps me to remember that what happens to my body does not affect my soul in the long run. People can talk about me and hurt me and I will cry and bruise but my soul will be unchanged. There is nothing anyone can do to me physically that will change the beauty of my spirit. I know that this is a slippery slope I am on because the mind/spirit connection is extremely powerful. Nevertheless, I stand by my belief that what others do to us only has power in the eternal sense if we give the power to them.

Secondly: This distinction helps me to see that everything is spiritual because we are primarily spiritual beings. Therefore, how we treat others, how we spend our time, our money, our talents...it is all spiritual. The way of thinking that makes some things sacred and others profane is really just splitting hairs. It is all spiritual and therefore, all of eternal importance. 

Dreams vs Reality

I am occasionally caught in between my dreams of what I think my life can be and the reality of what I see when I look in the mirror. It is tempting to slide into the abyss of hopelessness that one feels when what they hoped for is not manifesting itself- no matter how much sweat and intellectual exercise has been expended. I believe in the power of mantras to help me create my life. Some people call such words affirmations or prayers. Really all a mantra is, is a circle of words repeated over and over. The tricky thing about a mantra is that it can be a positive thing or a negative thing. Used in a positive way, mantras can help one stay in the moment and listen to the Spirit calling and guiding one's life. Used in a negative way, a self denegrating phrase repeated over and over again can become one's reality.

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,

and his punishment is that he sees the dawn

before the rest of the world."

--Ocsar Wilde

"Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope, perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity."

--Vaclav Havel

The People You Surround Yourself With

CAUTION !   CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC !

I am blessed to have many friends and even more friendly aquaintances.

In most cases, the people I consider my friends have been designated as such because they value the same things I do and have proven, over time, to be dependable. They are dependable as mirrors and as models of a sort. They are dependable in conversation, they are dependable as companions in the activities of life, they ask great questions, they are listeners, and they have the ability to support me without feeling the need to pander to my every whim. They are their own person. I like that kind of friend. The number of people I consider a true friend is actually small considering all the people I know. After all, how many BFFs can one person really have?


There have been a few times in my life when I have unfriended people...and that was way before Face Book!
I have intentionally chosen not to hang out with certain people because I realized, after a while, they were not the kind of human being I wanted to spend time with. That sounds harsh, yes. But I do think that there are times when we allow a person into the inner circle saved for friends and then come to find out that they were not what we thought they were. Maybe their personality and ours just don't jive or maybe we both have not grown in the same ways and now it is time to part ways. Just like seasons in nature, there are seasons in relationships. When we realize this we can either continue to pretend that they have what we need in a friend or we can find a compassionate way to distance ourselves and remove their influence from our life.


I like Face Book as much as any fan out there. FB helps me to stay in touch with all my friendlies. But...in a way, Face Book has ruined the word and even the concept of "Friend." Friendship is so much more than a FB status update and a running total of pictures of faces and icons. Recently a quote has been making the rounds on Face Book: "You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with." I don't know who that quote is attributed to but if it is true, don't you think we need to pay close attention to the people we surround ourselves with the most? I'm just sayin'.

Life's Messiness

"I like someone who is a little crazy

but coming from a good place.

I think scars are sexy because it means

you made a mistake that led to a mess."

--Angelina Jolie

"When we talk about settling the world's problems,
we're barking up the wrong tree.
The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We're not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives."
--Joseph Campbell

The Imperfection of Being

One of my favorites quotes by St. Francis of Assisi is that he wanted to be the keyhole through which others saw God. That is an arrogant and also  awe-some pursuit and I am strangely attracted to his quest.  I believe that we all contain the essence of the Divine...whatever that Divine may be.           (I think we all have different names for the same IS-ness.) So, if we are all part Divine, it would not be unreasonable to think that each of us can reveal a bit of the Divine to all we meet.

The problem I have with this strange endeavor is that sometimes the parts of me I reveal to others are not nice parts and are not, I believe, glimpses of God, but instead glimpses of fear and insecurity. I don't want to reveal those parts of me but since I am human and others have eyes and ears, I give my 'not best self' away often. That makes me particularly sad and angry with myself for failing at being my 'best self' and reflecting fear instead of love.


I can hear you thinking something like this right about now:
"None of us are perfect and sometimes we act out of emotions that are not love and compassion. That is what it means to be human."


Yes, that is the sad fact. We cannot always be our best selves. Yet, if we say we want to be the keyhole through which others see God and others are looking at us expecting to see the love of the Divine flowing through us, and we deliver fear and insecurity instead of that compassionate love, that leaves us in a vulnerable spot. It might mean that, seeing our flaws, those around us realize we are far from perfect...which we already knew but hate to have to acknowledge. What is much more at stake for me is the hard realization that I am an imperfect being who has just behaved in a way that I am not proud of. I have a very difficult time not allowing my imperfections to define me.


Nothing is ever as easy as we want to make it out to be. We do not always exhibit love, even if that is what we intend and pray for. Emotions, feelings, insecurities, fear, doubt, and being imperfectly human gets in the way often and shows up in that darned keyhole instead of the glow of love.


What do we do when that happens? How do we treat ourselves? How do we treat those imperfect others?

Can we allow forgiveness and understanding to guide us? How do forgiveness and understanding play out in our lives?

How do we practice forgiveness for ourselves? ( a particularly tough question since we often find it easier to forgive others that we do ourselves.)

Do we have a support system of understanding friends who can help us to see that being imperfect is okay and give us a view of the big picture of our lives when we are tempted to focus on our transgressions?

What resources have we put in place to help us deal with our imperfections in a healthy way instead of turning to things like drugs and alcohol, violence, or self abuse? 

If we believe in a comapssionate Divine, how do we allow that compassion that surely is there for us to permeate the cloak of shame we are tempted to don and wear for far too long?


Peace Be With Us All as we attempt to live out lives of compassion and authentic love.

Opportunities vs Catastrophes

    photo by Susan Murphy





I began hearing rumors of impending doom last year when the calendar was about to roll over.... whispers about the Mayan calendar and how it predicted that the world would end in 2012. I didn't put any stock in those rumors...I really don't spend energy worrying about the end of the world. I have enough to do to keep me busy and don't need to create any more anxiety in my life than I already have. So....I poo pooed the warnings and put it out of my mind.


On a recent trip to Mexico, a fat travel brochure made its way into my luggage. When I was unpacking from the adventure, I came across the brochure and started flipping through it, reliving some of my vacation fun. On one of the pages I found and enlightening article about the Mayan calendar and the 2012 warning. That article made a lot of sense and is one we should all pay attention to....wise words for the rest of this year and beyond....


2012: The Opportunity for a New Beginning

"According to the Popol Vuh, the Mayan sacred book, time was divied into "Eras." In each one of them, the gods created versions of humanity using different materials, but it was not until the present Era, when they fed their new human creation with grains of corn, that they finally considered their work worthy.

Each Era lasts 13 baktuns (periods of 394 years), adding up to a total of 5,126 years per Era. According to the Mayan calendar, the Era we live in began on August 13, 3114 BC, which means it will come to an end on December 21, 2012 AD.

The Maya always believed that death and endings were merely a natural and necessary step towards a renaissance or renewal. Therefore, this date should not be thought of as catastrophic, as mistaken interpretations of the Mayan Prophecies have done; it is merely the start of a new Era, A NEW BEGINNING.

The ancient Maya believed that the gods gave humans the responsibility to maintain their creation. Thus, today we can understand that human intervention is vital to preserve the world we live in; we cannot avoid this great responsibility. Following the belief that a new man was created in each Era, a creature better than the one that came before, we are now given the great opportunity to renew ourselves and our lives, to turn into a better version of ourselves, so that this new human can re-establish a balance with the planet and with all other living beings.

Mayan wise men said that in the teachings of the past, we find knowledge to live a better future. On December 21, 2012, A NEW OPPORTUNITY BEGINS."
from Map A Pocket Guide of cancun, Xcaret, Xel-Ha; La Voz de México.

                         photo by Susan Murphy

The Big Picture

It is tempting to think that the world would do just as well without us.  An individual human seems so small compared to the whole big earth full of 7 billion people.

On one level, the words of Deepak Chopra seem trite. The world would surely go on if an individual person "checked out." Maybe it's not really about what would happen if one person decided that living wasn't worth it. Maybe the real importance of each human puzzle piece is in the worth of the whole puzzle related to that one piece. 

I guess I have this strange notion that no one is born by accident, even if their birth was not planned, and that each one of us brings important energy that the world needs to keep on going .

What each one of us does affects what others who are in relation to us do. If just one person decides to change their actions and energy to work for peace and true understanding, for example, that will change the world. We may not see it happen for a long while but it will happen.

In that way, each person can make a vital difference in the world. Unfortunately, each person can make the world more hellish as well. It has to work both ways.

“I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason too.”

“Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it’s the same with people.

If you lose your purpose… it’s like you’re broken.”

 Hugo Cabret (played by Asa Butterfield) in the

2011 Academy Award nominated movie, "Hugo"