A very long road ahead...


Today seems worse than yesterday, or Saturday for that matter...the road ahead seems long and hard. I decided this morning that I needed to remove my emotional training-wheels and begin reading Callings by Greg Levoy. I had started the book several weeks ago, but in recent days just couldn't bring myself to read it...the experience of what I read this morning was something akin to taking a very foul-tasting dose of cough syrup...
The passage today dealt with the subject of holding onto your core truth...and how that process can be extremely difficult when the people around you are asking you to do something other than what your heart is telling you to do.
Levoy expresses it this way: It's really hard to stand in your own truth when everybody around you is telling you, 'Why don't you just keep things the way they are?' The battle within me today is not about holding onto my own truth, but about letting someone that I love hold onto theirs...I cannot ask a person that I love to do anything other than what their heart requires, and yet, the letting go of my truth in deference to their truth is excruciating.
From a spiritual perspective, it seems like a collision of two equally important principles: self-preservation and self-sacrifice. Any counselor or wise spiritual advisor will tell you that self-preservation is critical for each of us...for without preservation of self, we have nothing whatsoever to offer to others. At the same time, we are sometimes forced to set aside what might feel like preservation of our needs in service of the needs of someone we love. I heard Scott Peck quoted again yesterday in church, "Love is how far we are willing to extend ourselves for the spiritual well-being of another."
Self-Preservation vs. Self-Sacrifice...one of the tougher callings I've confronted in my journey. I hope to be the person who would extend myself for the spiritual well-being of another...particularly when it comes to the people who I love most...but I'll be honest and say that self-sacrifice does not come easy to me, and it's not something I would seek out for it's enjoyable qualities. I am not nearly the person I'd like to be when it comes to relinquishing my own desires, but perhaps this long road will help shape me into a better version of the person that I am today.

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