Doubting Thomas or Careful Skeptic?

As children, our first few years are pivotal to our future growth. Optimally, our parents or caretakers teach us our alphabet, numbers and social skills, all of which we will continue to use until our passing. These, then, are some of the most important skills we can learn.

We stress to our children how important it is to succeed, to get a good education, a job that pays a salary equal to our skills, build relationships that will turn into a long standing partnerships, and secure our financial future. So, what’s missing in this picture?

Many parents don’t teach about spirituality, although many will attend a church service on a regular basis. Again, we teach our children; often using religion as a format. In my opinion, religion teaches, and spirituality is an inner knowing - a connection that can’t be taught because it is inside us already. Our hard drives are already wired with the spiritual knowledge that we’ll need throughout our lives. The reason spirituality can’t be taught is that each and every person must find within themselves their own connection to the divine. As a parent, or a wise council, we direct our children on how to attain enlightenment, but what you are to learn, you actually already know. It’s an internal knowledge that come built in – it’s part of your hard drive.

The endeavor for intellectual perfection often blocks the spiritual quest for the simple fact that intellect is often our main goal – at least for a major part of our formative years. And spiritual growth, like many aspects of our lives, takes time and work, if that’s what one chooses to pursue. Often one aspect of our life takes precedence, thus pushing to the background what is perceived as less important at the time.

What then happens when a spiritual event happens to us unaware? Obviously, if we’re unprepared we question the validity of the event. We may doubt what we’ve seen, felt or heard because we’ve been taught to analyze, categorize, and logically look for explanations as a means to solve a problem. Here’s where the problem lies… Most spiritual events can’t be solved, or explained in logical terms. Our minds, unable to find a logical solution, dismiss the occurrence as imaginary.

Children are little antennas to the spirit world. They haven’t yet formed the barriers to the unexplained, and take everything literally. It’s often when a child reaches school age when they begin to hear from their peers what they’re sensing or seeing, isn’t real. Whether that opinion is from classmates or from adults, children begin to question their reality. When this continually happens, the child begins to shut down his or her spiritual antenna believing that what they are experiencing is of their imagination. They are then trapped in the maze that is the intellectual world.

As an adult the spiritual events often return to the forefront. From past experience, they may doubt the spiritual events occurring in their lives, and push any question of validity to the background. Although, when the events happen too often to be coincidental, it’s time for him or her to stand back and take a look at the possibilities. They may question their truth. Their belief has changed once again, and the doubt still lingers.

If you’re one of the fortunate individuals who experience spiritual activity on a regular basis, it’s time to take a look at what is actually happening, as well as why. Why do we continue to question the validity of the “messages” being received?

We are trapped by the intellectual voice we were taught to use those many years ago, and you fail to find logical explanations to what you have been experiencing. Having taught spiritual development to hundreds of people, I can tell you that what you’re experiencing is normal. You can now look back at your past, and remember the unexplainable events, and realize that spirit was at work all those years. You may even be able to put two and two together to come to an understanding as to what the spiritual event meant to your life back then.

Yet, armed with the knowledge that you obviously have spiritual assistants working on your behalf, the little nagging doubt lingers. Is the doubt in reality an ego mechanism telling us that if we’re wrong we’re a failure? It’s possible, because we maintain the formative lessons of coming to an exact answer, and when dealing with spirit there really is no “definite” because it cannot be measured like a mathematical equation.

Will we continue to act in this ever-doubtful manner the remainder of our lives? It’s possible. On the other hand, can we accept our spiritual nature and learn from the clues given to us from our spiritual guides and helpers? Absolutely! Like our animal brothers, we too have natural instincts. If a dog growls in an empty room, do we believe him foolish or do we wonder what he’s growling at? If your cat hisses and hits the ground running, do you stop to think about what caused your cat to act in this manner, or do you ignore the odd behavior? In other words, what you may recognize could be invisible to others. Who’s to say that what you perceive isn’t in fact a reality?

Rev. Lisa Bousson
http://www.lisabousson.com