A Spiritually Inspired Moral Imperative (Quote of the Week)
When you begin to recognize that your own presence here in this world is part of something infinitely bigger than yourself, you feel a sense of obligation awakening within you—a spiritually inspired, soul-level moral imperative to evolve for the sake of the future of the evolutionary process itself. The way you respond to that obligation and to that sense of cosmic responsibility is by demonstrating that the process is profoundly positive—indeed, the process is sacred—through your own example, through your own victory, through your own tangible and unmistakable higher development.
Filed Under: Consciousness • Culture • EnlightenNext Editors’ Blog • Evolutionary Enlightenment • Evolutionary Spirituality • Philosophy • Quote of the Week • Spirituality
In dealing with intense phsyical pain for the last two years, I’ve come to realize how deeply true this perspective is. Following pain it becomes obvious that it isn’t mine, it came to me, carrying fear and separation that is more than mine, it has roots in all my ancestors, my friends and fellow humans, and happens to be manifesting in my body at this moment. What it is asking for is to be met by love, cell by cell, moment by moment. Just as the pain that each of us has is asking to be met. Each day it teaches me more about loving, about being truly present with life as it is. That deep sense that it matters how I respond, not just to me, but to all of us, is what gives me the courage to meet each day with as much equanimity as I can muster.
Parallel to the quote, got this more or less from Patanjali: Existence exists (nice of it to do so; in fact, loving) and transformation transforms. Happens for all natural systems step by step from purification to self truth to one-pointedness. So the Earth comes into existence, plus weather, ecosystems, species, and minds. Minds then go back up to species, ecosystems, weather, and planet. For example, a person tired of being a lazy slob, gets hyper, goes to school, gets a job, makes money, turns spiritual, mellows out at some level of wisdom. And that propagates.
When thinking what a the next step could be for the human potential, this sums it up perfectly. Living from this perspective and being a heroic example of truly knowing that you are a process that is ever-evolving, and that the intention behind this process is one big yes beyond any doubt, will create heaven on earth!
I disagree. Obligation has never worked for me. It’s only love that drives my passion to awaken and share my work. Don’t mean to sound airy fairy, but knowing the Love Beyond Concept is the only real motivation I’ve found.
The idea of being obligated scares most of us postmodern individuals, simply because our highest moral standard is our hard-won personal freedom. We feel bounded and even suffocated by any ‘shoulds’ governing our lives.
But what if we could widen our lens so far back that we would be able see our own life in a much bigger context.
Where our personal freedom that has evolved as part of our culture, is not seen as something we keep and use merely for ourselves, but to use this freedom to make a conscious choice, the choice to evolve in order for the process to move forward.
It’s like when having a child that you deeply care for there is an obligation to make sure it grows up to be a healthy, sane and mature being. This gives us a higher purpose for our existence.
Victor, this is all very well-said!I agree completely with your perspective! but would like to add that, when contact with the soul becomes authentic, the “shoulds” no longer come from *without* as moral codes of culture (to be rebelled against to uphold personal freedom, which is an illusion of the narcisstic self),but the “shoulds” come from *within* as an overwhelming clarity that tells one “they must.” This is what Andrew is illuminating for us. Genuine contact with the transcendent only and always will lift one up and out of the illusion that we are here to live only for ourselves, and when this contact is met in awareness, “morality” is one of its main guiding principles. The Fierce Compassion of Spirit must be integrated into the self with this guiding morality in service of others, or the potential for a pathology becomes real and can be taken as “personal power” to manipulate others. This is a “mis-translation” of the lower/egoic self. So the *thought* that morality is a “positive” principle, guiding us in Spirit’s realizing itself through us, is indeed a higher thought than “I don’t do well with moral constrictions.”
Thank You for your wonderfully positive input!
Excellent quote that explains where I currently am in the grand scheme of things.
I think this quote is mostly true. My question is “What is ‘unmistakable higher development’ and who is it unmistakable to. I think higher development often goes unnoticed. Evolution happens whether we know it or not. Is it obligation that drives those of higher development or is it curiosity and the delight of self expression.
He says “a sense of obligation awakening within you”. This kind of obligation would be root-deep, a natural part of who we have become, it would be a spontaneous action that would require no forethought. Since it has become who we are, we express it. As to knowing if we are evolving, I can look back to the person I used to be, and remember characteristics in her, that I no longer possess. Temporary creations that are no longer necessary. The butterfly looks back at the cocoon and knows that it no longer fits. The creature that lived within it is gone.
Hi, Ragini!
I think of the spiritual obligation spoken of as like a calling, where one comes to realize life spent in promoting the betterment or at least the maintenance and wardship of life, the earth and all creation is a personal purpose laid out and assumed if not gladly, then responsibly–like responsible childcare or anything like it, care giving of the highest order.
I share that the meaning of yoga is yoke, at once a collar and a discipline.
Ragini, an afterthougt to the above and your comment:
That responsibility and obligation performed with love is how spirituality’s commitment is carried out with the right attitude. Everything goes better with love involved, the more selfless the better.
The feeling I get it is that the awareness of something bigger than me that It makes Itself made known to me comes with an incredible amount of Love an that is the God that I honor, respect and know by feeling. Alignment is more appropriate for me than responsibility. I feel so humble and so in love and so in my center, present in the now, I know my frequency is in a higher level and all is well from that perspective, no obligation from me. Consciousness does not not need me to be this perfect. As a matter of fact, the peace that comes with it is the perfection.
Hi Carmen, re: “Alignment is more appropriate for me than responsibility”
I’m sharing this beautiful experience I had meditating at the Zen temple, filled with others, and had the moving vision of myself aligned front, back and to both sides to infinity with all the meditators past, present and future. It was very gratifying to have the feeling of being involved in an activity that has such a long historical tradition.
Are you meditating? Your comments have great spiritual understanding.
Best regards, Frank Luke
Hi Frank, I am a Quantum Biofeedback therapist by trade. I work with energy and emotions and reactions and the frequencies of our choices within the understanding that we are in this world to learn about the possibilities of love on earth. I have to admit that when I came across Quantum Biofeedback it was what I was looking for. I was not ready to leave the planet I felt I was not used up yet and I asked to be of service. When I had my first biofeedback session I knew that the illness was the means to bring me to my mission. Imagine observing the energy behind our actions, is like having a statement of your energetic bank account and knowing when and how you make withdraws and when you make deposits, and when you overdraw. I have explored different levels of consciousness through out of body experiences and the big picture comes easier for me and shows me the perfect order of the universe than the idea of a random universe. Meditation? Every morning in the bathtub for about an hour. Mainly my goal is to be in the now and be transparent by coming from the heart.
Hi Carmen,
Your discovering meditation and biofeedback is certainly a blessing. Your experience confirms what scientists are discovering in the research of biofeedback, that it has effective benefits on our physiology. Your bathtub meditations sound wonderful. I’m happy for you, your health improving!
We express who we are every time we act. The more conscious we are, the more we have evolved, the more we will act from love. Love heals, and so when we express love to others in our life, we become channels of healing, and if we will just get out of the way, love will do its good work. We have a responsibility to restrain negative impulses until they pass, we can no longer afford their toxic effects.
Love, obligation, discipline, all great, but let’s not forget fun, the call of the wild, venturing beyond, socially, mentally, physically. Kathyrn above spoke of two years of pain, transcending it, seeing it as information, and why be controlled by information? Well, the other day I lost it on my bike, 22 mph, hard left turn, no helmet, flip in the air, head on pavement, body lying there until someone called 911. I wake up strapped down in ambulance, people asking if I knew my name. At the ER they said nothing broken and I’m supposed to be dead! Apparently not. I’m thinking another chance at life to venture beyond, answer the call of the cosmos. But, of course, wear a helmet, fool!
Suddenly, you come to a point where you do not care anymore about who you are, who you have been and what will become of you. You come to a point that you just want to die , to dissolve yourself into this unbearable Absolute that claims your life for its own,not tomorrow when you are well-prepared,when you are perfect, when your loans are paid and your house is clean… but NOW YOU! with your errors,insufficiencies,unpreparedness…. and in an instant you know in your heart and soul that you have no choice than to accept this “no-deal, no matter what!”
And you are willing to do it, the fire of care ravaging your heart, mind and senses. And despite that fear which titillates your bowels,you are determined to go to the very end for others, for Life, for the regeneration of the human race, for the universe, for this Mystery which is unbearable unfathomable and yet so familiar.
… And you indeed die ….to realize with ectasy that Death and Life are dear friends and for ever bubbling through you and as you.
I submit that (small “e” ego) when let go is transformed into a larger authentic (big “E” Ego) that enables the individual so transformed to assume the commitment of existing in a way that all actions are intended toward life-affirming positiveness that may be seen as an altruistic responsibility and life directive.
I submit that as we evolve, our personality, as it heals, expresses spirit more and more, therefore we shed the flawed parts that were the symptoms of what needed healing. Then as we look back, those flawed parts are seen to be foreign to who we are now. As we climb up from one level of awareness, to the next, we express who we are in the present, and then express who we are at the next level in that coming moment.
Noting a contrast of 50s song “Imagination” and Lennon’s “Imagine”:
Where the 50s song is about self-interested amative love, Lennon’s song could be the anthem for evolutionary enlightenment, no? Pop songs that show we’ve come a long way, haven’t we, baby?
I’d edit one line, “The Brotherhood of Man” > “The Unity of Humankind”. Other than that, it’s beautiful and perfect!
There is nothing and nobody bigger than you, neither is there anything or anybody smaller than you. You are unique and the very idea of comparing yourself with whatever kind of “obligations”, “moral imperatives for evolutionary processes” howsoever “spiritually inspired” and “soul-level” you may label them, the idea of comparing your very being with superficial mind labeling, concepts and other mind junk, is absurd and uggly. Only the Being, only Existence, which “EXISTS”, is sacred. No perspective, howsoever “positive” you may decorate it, can be compared to real life, to the Bieng Here and Now. There is no such a thing as a moral imperative, all morality reveals false and fades away in front of the real light of being, of existence which exists (not the one we are used to think about, but the one which IS).
Aliya, re: “the idea of comparing your very being with superficial mind labeling, concepts and other mind junk, is absurd and uggly”
I find your statement and using the term “uggly” (ugly?) extremely judgemental and distasteful. As someone who purports spiritual truths, this is not worthy of you. Pls temper your judgements and comments, they are off-putting and convey an attitude of only you possessing truth. The rest of humanity beg to differ.
Namaste.
Dear Frank,
Everything false, unreal, man made illusion, which tries to oppress and impose on free being is uggly and absurd. And this is not a judgmental state, it is how Existence “operates”, it is Existence’s fundamental law.
As for the “rest of humanity”, why do not you leave it to the rest of humanity and talk only on your behalf?
If you feel offended of my words, be aware of your ego. Your ego does not want anybody else speaking in here except you and people supporting only you. Ego always rejects the uniqueness of each and every human being and wants only followers, not free and authentic individuals.
Aliya, are you dismissing the point that meditation is a technique and should not have as objective to effect any of the things you are objecting to. Is that your understanding of meditation, of manipulating anything other than clearing the mind so as to go on with life in a clearer-headed clearer-spirited way?
Aliya, it’s not that I’m offended by your remarks but reacting to what I see as a misunderstanding of issues which I hope would cause you to reconsider them. It’s only what you are so intent on in your so contradicting comments.