To Watch or Not To Watch

My New Year’s resolution is one simple, all-encompassing statement:  to increase my capacity to be an instrument of love.  I feel that, in the past two years, I have been incrementally expanding my capacity to do this as a natural byproduct to my spiritual awakening.  Being and extending love has become the central focus in my life.  Of course, I’m not perfect at it, but I have set it as my goal.  Having love as a goal means that I have a measure with which to view my everyday experiences.  I can look at my experiences and ask:  Did I respond with love to the given situation or did I react with an emotion outside of love?  If responded without love, I can work to course correct, such that love is allowed to flow.

I was feeling at peace with the degree to which I had chosen to dedicate myself to love, until a few weeks ago when I was prompted to question my behavior further.  Activities that I had previously felt at peace with engaging in became magnified in my awareness. An inner conflict began to take place as I struggled to reconcile my choice to be an instrument of love with behavior that now seemed to contradict that choice.

Over the course of my spiritual journey, I had read things where contemporary spiritual teachers, like Wayne Dyer and others, encouraged us to withdraw from engaging in movies that showcase violence.  I knew that I wasn’t a violent person, nor was I at-risk for becoming one, so when it was suggested to withdraw from watching these types of movies, I was unwilling to agree.  For years, I had been at peace with this decision, but my choice to partake in violent movies was now under attack.

There was a part of me that believed my commitment to being an instrument of love should require that I give this up, and there was another part of me that clung to my enjoyment of the activity.  It was quite frustrating to go from being at peace with this decision to being at war with it.  The problem was that I couldn’t see how ego was using both choices to create war.  By believing that I should give it up, ego was claiming an identity in being spiritual.  In clinging to the activity, ego was using my perceived attachment to violent movies to keep me from letting them go.  There was not peace in either of these motives—there couldn’t be since they were both of ego.

I saw that other spiritual teachers were giving up things like engaging in watching violent movies, so I thought, given my commitment to this path, that I should do the same, as a way of not only continuing to progress down this spiritual path, but as a person who was attempting to impact others in this path.  The problem lay in the fact that I was trying to force growth, which never works since it only serves to engage our ego.  In ego’s attempt to find an identity in my spiritual growth (something that completely shocked me the first time I realized this was another sneaky way for ego to embed itself), it started to wield “shoulds” over me.

This is a very delicate situation to navigate.  I have found that in the beginning of my journey, the goal was to shift out of basic thought patterns of ego like the desire for more possessions, recognition, validation, etc.  But as I began to shift my thinking away from these types of thought patterns, ego, then, began to find a new identity in the spiritual beliefs that I was beginning to adopt.  That is what was happening in this decision regarding giving up watching violent movies.  Ego was wielding the idea that to be a spiritual teacher (or sharer) that I should give this up.  This is where the energy of feeling forced was coming from.  I had agreed to commit myself to a spiritual journey, so it was easy to fall into the trap of ego’s thought that I should do this.  Now here’s how ego wraps itself around us in situations like this.  If I were to give up violent movies because I thought I “should” versus naturally feeling at a place to do so, ego uses this decision to create judgment against others who do not make this same choice and guilt every time I fail to meet this “should”.  There is no peace in this.  I’m either judging others for not making my choice or judging myself each time I fail to uphold this forced agreement.

We can’t be forced to grow faster than we are ready to grow or than we are being asked to grow, because it becomes a battle of ego versus the path of spirit.  If we feel that we are being asked to grow, but feel that we lack the strength to do so, A Course In Miracles says that all we have to do is say that we are ready and willing to do so.  In this way, we invite the Holy Spirit to begin guiding us.  We don’t find strength through our own will power; we find it through something much greater than ourselves.  This journey, then, becomes our discipline in constantly turning over whatever it is that we are either struggling with or attempting to work through to something greater than ourselves.  It is not about us leading the way as ego would have us believe through all of its “shoulds” and “should nots”.  It’s about surrendering to the Divine timing of our respective plan and showing up when we are asked to do something.

I haven’t been asked to give up violent movies.  I was trying to do so to meet a condition of growth that hadn’t yet been asked of me.  I’m sure it will come, and when it does, the process will feel natural, not forced.  At which point, it will no longer feel right for me to be engaging in watching violent movies.  I was simply jumping ahead, trying to force progress, while at the same time, clinging to what I was not yet ready to give up.

I could run down a list of things that other spiritual teachers do that I have not yet given up and be misled into thinking that my New Year’s resolution should be broken into sub-goals of letting these various things go, but it would only lead to inner conflict as opposed to peace.  The best way that I can meet my resolution to increase my capacity to be an instrument of love, is to allow for it to occur naturally.

As always, the journey continues….

With love,

Shanna

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