30 Apr Overshopping Consciousness
Last week, I went shopping for groceries. I was extremely hungry. I was also very tired at the end of a long day. And I bet you can guess what happened … I bought WAY too much food!
In my head, I was absolutely committed to cooking something delicious for dinner that night, and a whole bunch of meals over the next few days. Naturally, by the time I got home I was far too tired and hungry to actually COOK. Dinner was crackers and hummus.
A week later, most of those delicious meals still hadn’t materialized, and a whole bunch of produce was rotting in my fridge. What a waste!
The funny thing is … I see this exact same issue happening in the spiritual development community ALL the time. And the consequences are much more far-reaching than having to toss out some old asparagus.
We are hungry … hungry for more self-knowledge, hungry for a deeper understanding of our purpose and how we create our experience, hungry for higher levels of consciousness.
We are also very tired. We KNOW we are Divine Beings in this human experience, we know we should be able to create the life we want with ease, we know that we are just at the very edge of our potential … and yet, our lives may look not-so-Divine. We’re still struggling with money, with health, with relationships.
And so, we head to the “grocery store” of spiritual development and look for the consciousness that will help us improve our lives. We meditate, we take classes, we get a healing session … and for a while, we feel better. We have clarity, we feel focused, motivated, we are ready to step up to our Divine potential.
In other words … we are committed to turning our new consciousness into a delicious “meal” that we’ll cook, just as soon as we get home. The “meal” may be a new business, or a new exercise plan, or a new career goal. Except when we get back to “real life” we are tired, or busy taking care of our family, and every day life takes over. We tell ourselves we’ll get cookin’ on all that new-found consciousness tomorrow. Next week for sure. Soon. Really, really soon.
And all that consciousness that we expanded? It’s now sitting in the vegetable bin at the bottom of our mind’s refrigerator, waiting for us to use it. And waiting. And waiting.
And then … life slowly starts to get a bit … stinky. Our current life “diet” – our job, our relationships, our exercise routine – takes on a weird and dissatisfying aftertaste that leaves us unfulfilled. We feel guilty about not cooking that meal we were so excited about.
You see, new consciousness changes our perspective of aspect of our lives. It will highlight what you’re tolerating, the obligations weighing on you, the boundaries you’re reluctant to set, the grand vision you’re too scared to act on, the dream that you’re too unmotivated to pursue.
Unlike asparagus, you can’t throw out new consciousness once you’ve acquired it.
Yes, you can ignore it, tucked away in a little corner of your heart and mind … but it will sit there, nagging at you with a constant whisper of discontent.
New consciousness, when not acted upon, can make us miserable. It makes us feel bad, having it just sit there. It reminds us of the actions we were unwilling to take on our own behalf. It highlights the gap between our potential and our current reality in an uncomfortable way. We tell ourselves it’s no longer “good,” that the “meal” we were once so excited to make isn’t what we wanted to eat, after all.
And all too often, we go back to the spiritual development “grocery store” again and again, just to make ourselves feel better about not cooking the meal we dreamt up the last time we were there!! Obviously, we just need more NEW consciousness … except then we’re still hungry and tired, and don’t cook that up, either.
The result?
We end up with overwhelming amount of consciousness in the “fridge” of our minds that we never cooked up, never turned into anything, never acted upon. We have enough consciousness to cook up a whole banquet!! But we’re still tired and hungry … and the idea of finally, finally creating that entire banquet is exhausting. And so we wait some more.
We tell ourselves there will be a better time to make our grand vision a reality. When we’ve paid off our taxes. When the kids are in college. When we’ve taken just one more class or program or gone on one more retreat.
This is where a lot of spiritual seekers find themselves after a lot of study and spiritual practice … with very few real results to show for all of their efforts.
There’s just one thing to do.
Start cooking. One meal at a time.
Consciousness never goes bad, never gets stale. It also doesn’t go away. You can’t undo consciousness.
If we expand our consciousness, we have both the power and the responsibility to ACT on that new consciousness.
If you have done the work to acquire new consciousness … you must use it. Action on your part is required if consciousness is to do it’s job and nurture you via the “meal” you’ve always wanted. It’s not going to just happen. YOU have to make it happen.
To your abundance,
Andrrea Hess