Life’s a Bitch, With a Wagging Tail

Life’s a Bitch, With a Wagging Tail

Sometimes I feel so opinionated. That phrase, “Life’s a bitch, and then you die” may be funny, but I think it’s bad and wrong. “Life’s a bitch and then it has puppies” is more to my liking.

Those ones that recommend I live each day as though it were my last, I think those are just irresponsible. I mean, I’m not sure if I knew that today were my last day, that I would go to my Clark Kent job, which is a fine job, but not where I would want to spend my last hours. I wouldn’t wash my clothes, or dishes, either.

The sayings about living in the moment, those get me, too. When I live in the moment, I have a tendency to get a little reckless. I tend to make choices that support me in the moment, but not so much my future self, and she needs some care, too.

I prefer to be present. I prefer to be engaged in what I’m doing. I prefer puppies to gloomy predictions.

I believe in heaven and hell. I don’t believe in them as afterlife. Even with all the mystical experiences I’ve had, I think we can only know about life, we don’t know what happens after death and all the stories are stories to make us feel stuff about being here.

I believe that we create heaven and hell here, in our daily lives. We create sacredness from our hearts. Holiness is an attitude of love and respect with a dash of awe at the amazingness of life, and the world, and people’s capacity for kindness.

I like sacredness. When I practice my qigong, I create a sacred space, and step into it for a little while. I create a sacred space when I sit on my porch, in bitter cold weather this week, and notice the birds and the bunny, and the traffic.  I create a sacred space when I write to you each day.

Spirit nourishes us, in a way that food and drink can’t. It’s mysterious, which is how religions come about. We like to explain stuff, so the folks who did that explaining in the biggest way, get followings. Faith, by its nature, is choosing to believe without proof, So if you are feeling some spiritual hunger, go inside and see what you need.

One of my teachers gave me the phrase, “spiritual 9 volt battery.” That’s the idea; recharging our spiritual life quickly and easily, like changing the battery. And that begs the questions:

How do we keep our spiritual life rich? Why do we feel nourished by our spiritual life? Why do we feel profoundly connect in our sacred spaces?

In our natural state, this is exactly how we feel. Because we feel profoundly connected, even the act of paying a bill, or taking out the trash, the act of sitting in our favorite chair, or drinking a glass of water, becomes significant. We have the sense of being nourished by spirit with our very breath.
We get there by asking good Creative Questions, “How do I feel when I feel spiritual?” We get there by choosing to let go of the ideas that things are hard, “Why is it so easy?” We get there by deciding we will live our best life, “What makes me choose a nice life?” We open our hearts, we release negative judgments, we are gentle with ourselves as we stumble, and celebrate when we get back up.

How have I changed from feeling empty and sad to enjoying the richness of my spiritual life?