Welcome to Spirit Expressing with Rev. Ed Townley

Do you know what I did last weekend? Wild party? Night on the town? Shopping spree? No, I spent hours simmering a large pot of meat sauce (my mother’s recipe), using some and freezing most in small containers for future meals. I considered buying new shoes, and decided that the dozen or so pair I already have would probably do just fine.

Thrilling, no? No. Not thrilling. But strangely satisfying.

My parents were children of the Great Depression, and they lived their entire lives with a sense of economic insecurity, and with a profound fear of debt. I would say their attitudes were pretty typical of their generation. But we Boomers – and our children and grandchildren – shook ourselves free of those limiting attitudes. If we saw something we liked, we bought it. If we got hungry, we ate out or ordered in. We became so adept at wielding our credit cards we almost forgot what money actually looks like. Instead of living lives, we adopted lifestyles.

It’s been great. We have memories to treasure – along with others we’d like to forget. We’ve learned a lot about what is – and what isn’t – important. We have – with sometimes frustrating slowness – reconnected to the creative spiritual purpose that initially brought us into human form, out of the infinite realm of Spirit that is our true identity, and our true home. Now it’s time to shake free of distractions and party rhythms and return to that creative purpose. There’s a lot of anxiety involved in such a profound shift. And there’s that strange sense of satisfaction as well.

Maybe ‘La Vida Loca’ was never really our natural style, anyway. It certainly has its appeal, and it can be lots of fun to dance to; but as a way of life it doesn’t really work for long.

Which is a good thing, because for all of us not only the song but the philosophy it celebrates seem to be fading into bittersweet memories. La Vida Loca can be fun, but its costs are high. It can be exciting, but it distracts us from the higher spiritual purpose we’re here to accomplish together. And – although we may not realize it when we’re caught up in its infectious music – La Vida Loca is basically boring. It’s hard work just to keep up. It’s even harder work trying to ignore the nagging feeling that the madcap rhythm of the dance is masking a profound sense of unhappiness and frustration.

Not that “livin’ La Vida Loca” is necessarily a bad thing. We are meant to fully explore this human adventure – to enjoy its pleasures and distractions. If we simply moved through a lifetime trying to stay detached from everything around us, what would be the purpose of our being here at all?

But there comes a time when pleasure becomes addiction, when enthusiasm becomes manic, and when La Vida Loca is no longer fun. We aren’t choosing it anymore; we’re trapped in it. We may try to pretend it’s all still terrific, but it’s not. The bill comes due; the consequences of all those apparently carefree choices are defining the very essence of our human experience. We want out. But how?

Breaking free of addictive choices is never easy. Millions of Twelve Step veterans can attest to that. It’s even harder when the choices are not being made by one individual, but by our collective consciousness. The economic turmoil in which we presently find ourselves reminds me strongly of the insane, chaotic and painful early days of my own sobriety. I was not just changing behavior. I was profoundly changing my heart-deep understanding of who I am, and what I’m here in human form to accomplish.

It’s hard to describe how deeply unsettling that shift has been – and still is, many years after the process began. It has demanded that I apply the spiritual gift of discernment to every decision I’ve been called upon to make, in every corner of my life. Yes, it begins with a choice not to drink or take drugs – a choice I initially had to make about 5,000 times a day. But it quickly expands beyond that. I had to learn that every choice – from what to do with my life to what to have for breakfast – either leads me one step back into addictive thinking or carries me further into the energy of co-creation out of which a new, healed and healthy consciousness is emerging.

We’ve become addicted to so much! And each addiction, I think, represents an attempt to settle for sensory gratification instead of the deeper joys of the spirit. We’ve thought we were giving ourselves permission to enjoy life to the fullest. In truth, we’ve been delaying the only true fulfillment we will know – the new spiritual consciousness that we are here to create together – by allowing ourselves to become distracted by lesser pleasures.

This is tricky stuff. We know and affirm that we live in a universe of infinite possibility, that we are expressions of a Source that is a Power of infinite Love, infinite Good – a Source that expresses through us, and in the world around us, according to clear and absolute universal principle. If God is a God of infinite abundance, then why can’t I put that new car on my charge card in full confidence that God will take care of it from there?

The answer lies in consciousness, of course; every answer lies in consciousness. So long as we are choosing from our spiritual consciousness, then indeed the abundance of the universe is ours to enjoy. But too often we make choices that are still rooted in old, negative energies. We’re afraid there won’t be enough, or that we won’t get our share. We’re dissatisfied with what we have, so we want something more or something new. We need to overcome a sense of personal unworthiness by demonstrating ‘success’ in tangible ways. Or – and this is the biggie – we try to distract ourselves from our spiritual purpose by placing our total focus on rewards and dramas in this human experience. It’s the same way that addicts believe that alcohol or drugs or gambling or sex or shopping or codependent relationships offer a sense of identity, pleasure and escape that we can’t live without. In truth, our addictions are blocking us from our true identity as creative spiritual beings, and from the profound joy of living a life that expresses that identity and achieves that creative purpose.

And so, at our deepest soul level, we’ve collectively decided it’s time to break free from these distracting addictions. The result is the economic upheaval that has become the focus of our shared experience in these final days of 2008. A system based on a deep-rooted belief in limited good and inevitable lack has to give way to a new system based on infinite good, infinite love, and the universal spiritual principle of receiving by sharing.

It’s not going to be easy for any of us – and it will be very painful indeed for many. Choice by choice, in large ways and small, we’ll have to release the apparent safety of old attitudes and step into the unknown. It’s scary, and it’s hard, and it doesn’t seem fair. But, at the same time, we’re beginning to feel and share a sense of excitement and satisfaction – just a sense of rightness – that promises a better world beyond the present insanity. It’s not about finding our way back to a time when the old addictions seemed to be working. It’s about moving forward to co-create a world that is infinitely more expressive of our spiritual truth and creative purpose.

And so I relinquish the superficial pleasure of eating at the trendiest new restaurant, and I rediscover the quieter satisfaction of making meat sauce. I choose not to believe that acquiring more things will make me happier, and I take a moment to appreciate the richness that is already present in my life.

Yes, I’m still going to eat out with enthusiasm and appreciation. I’m still going to buy things. (I’d hate to be personally responsible for the collapse of the Borders Books stock price!) I’ll dine out and shop, not out of a sense of need or lack or entitlement, but as I am guided by my heart connection to the energy of appreciation, and my realization of how complete and perfect my life is at every moment.

At some level we had to know this day would come. We’ve been making irrational choices and trying to push the consequences farther and farther into the future. We’ve been – collectively and individually – spending and escaping and ignoring and postponing and justifying. As painful as the experience of early sobriety was for me – and they were the most challenging months of my life – what I remember most looking back was the excitement of it all – the fellowship, the friends, the laughter, the incredible freedom of being able to share my insanity openly, instead of stuffing it deep into the recesses of my mind, fearful that anyone else might see. I was crazy, confused, helpless, hopeless – and I had never felt more alive.

What’s happening now – in your life, in my life, in the world around us – is that we are choosing to be spiritually sober. It’s going to be a wild ride. We’ll need to share and share again as it all unfolds. And we have never, in the entire history of our human drama, been more alive.

Spirit Expressing – the website, the Higher Ground gatherings and the sense of community that underlies it all – is intended as a kind of spiritual recovery program to support us through this challenging and exciting time. We’ll keep sharing, keep laughing, keep expanding our awareness and expressing our creative powers. We thought La Vida Loca was the height of giddiness and joy. Wait ‘til La Vida Sensata catches hold of us all!