“What stands between me and spirit?” I ask.
“I do,” says the glass.
“I carry your fear, your stories
and expectations,
and the fingerprints
of those who taught you how to see.Do not break me.
Some things I obscure.
Some things I protect you from.
But if you look closely, you may recognize
what needs to be cleaned away.
What stands between you and spirit?
There are a hundred answers to that question. Fear. Belief. Habit. Grief. Ignorance. The stories we tell ourselves. The stories others have told us.
These things are not necessarily blocks, but they can limit or even prevent our ability to see spiritual truth. Some limitations are obvious and intentional. Others are so familiar that we no longer recognize them. Some we create to protect or justify what we already believe. Others may come from people who benefit from keeping us from seeing beyond what they want us to see.
But perhaps we should first question what we mean by a spiritual block.
We tend to think of a block as something standing between us and what we want. Something in the way. Something that needs to be removed. But what if that isn’t always true?
Fear can protect us, or it can make us look away. Grief can help us honor what we have lost, or it can consume our attention. Habit can give us stability, or make something invisible simply because we see it every day. Belief can give us meaning and a way to understand the world, or define what we are willing to believe is possible. Even the stories we tell ourselves can help us make sense of our experiences while quietly limiting how we understand them.
Something can serve us and still limit us. The question may not be whether these things are good or bad, but whether they are preventing us from seeing something else.
We may also have learned to look for spirit in certain places, through certain practices, or in certain forms. We may have been taught what a spiritual experience should feel like, what it should look like, or what it should mean. Teachings can open doors. They can give us language for experiences we might otherwise struggle to understand. But teachings can also become boundaries.
What began as a way of helping us see can become a definition of what we are allowed to see. Sometimes those boundaries are created intentionally, or they are inherited without anyone intending to create them, or they simply come from our human need to explain what cannot be completely explained.
We can begin to confuse the map with the territory.
And once we have decided what spiritual truth is supposed to look like, we may stop recognizing it when it looks different.
Perhaps one of the most subtle ways we become unable to see is by looking for something very specific. We may overlook relationship if we are waiting for a spiritual vision, or we may not recognize the importance of silence if we are expecting some message. We also may fail to appreciate the ordinary if we expect something extraordinary.
Our expectations become a filter. They determine what catches our attention and what passes unnoticed. Even our desire to find spiritual truth can become part of what obscures it.
To actively seek the truth is to create a lie, and our effort to find spirit can itself become something standing between us and spirit*. The moment we decide what truth should look like, we begin searching for confirmation rather than discovery. Perhaps truth is not always something we can pursue. Sometimes it can only be noticed.
The truth can only be heard when the mind is completely silent*. But perhaps true silence is harder to find than we think.
This doesn’t mean we should abandon what we believe. It simply asks us to become curious about the lens through which we are looking. What have I already decided I am going to see? What would I miss if I were looking for something else? What if spiritual truth does not always announce itself in the form we expect?
There is another possibility worth considering. Perhaps not every obstruction needs to be removed.
Fear may have something to tell us. Resistance may have something to tell us. Doubt may have something to tell us. Even our inability to see may have something to tell us.
We are often quick to ask, “How do I get past this?” Perhaps a better question is, “Why is this here?”
Maybe we aren’t ready. Maybe there is something we need to understand first. Maybe we are protecting ourselves from something we aren’t prepared to encounter. Or perhaps the obscurity itself is part of the teaching.
There is another measure worth considering. Until we can respond to adversity while hungry, tired, sick, or impaired with the same grace as when we are fed, rested, healthy, and clear, there is still work to be done*. It is much easier to recognize our spiritual nature when conditions support us. What happens to that relationship when those conditions disappear? Sometimes what stands between us and spirit is revealed only when we are uncomfortable, exhausted, afraid, or no longer completely in control.
Our relationships can reveal these limitations as well. We may believe that being spiritual means always giving, forgiving, compromising, or treating others as we would want to be treated. But what happens when that generosity is not returned, or when someone repeatedly takes advantage of it? Reciprocity does not mean every exchange must be equal. Sometimes we give more and sometimes we receive more*. The larger pattern matters. Part of our spiritual work, then, may be learning to discern when to give, when to receive, and when an ongoing imbalance has become unhealthy.
Even our ideas about kindness, generosity, and forgiveness can become blocks if they prevent us from seeing a relationship as it actually is.
There is humility in admitting that we may not be able to see. Not seeing does not necessarily mean that nothing is there. It may mean that we are looking in the wrong direction. It may mean that someone else has taught us not to look. It may mean that something within us is not ready. Or it may mean that there is something about not seeing that we need to experience.
This journey is an invitation to examine what stands between us and spiritual truth. Not to judge it. Not to force it away. Not to assume that every limitation needs to be healed. Simply to become aware.
What do we carry into our spiritual experiences? What beliefs shape what we are willing to see? What expectations determine what we recognize? What fears cause us to look away?
And perhaps most importantly, what if we don’t know what is standing between us and spirit?
We don’t need to decide beforehand what we are supposed to find. We can simply look.
Perhaps we will find a wall. Perhaps a door. Perhaps something we have been carrying. Perhaps nothing at all.
The purpose may not be to remove whatever stands between us and spirit.
It may be to discover how we have been looking all along.
* Insight from Journey-Working group meditation.
This is my journey,
— Nate Long “Owl”
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