Attitude - the Work in the Spiritual
Every single day we go through dozens if not hundreds of situations that we disagree with in one way or another. It may be waking up to a grumpy spouse, a person cutting us off on our commute to work, problems with the boss or a project during the day, the list is absolutely endless.
Yet the vast majority of these negative experiences flutter by us without even a second thought. The smallest of occurrences we barely even notice. If we are uncomfortable in our chair or a drink of water goes down the wrong way, we grimace, adjust, and proceed on with our day.
But every single one of these negative events affords us an opportunity for preparatory spiritual work. This is so because spirituality has everything to do with our attitude toward the Creator. We are told two basic facts. First, there is none else besides Him, meaning that there is no other force in the world other than the Creator, and He is behind every single act, the driving force.
Second, we are told that not only is the Creator responsible for every event that occurs, but each and every one of the situations we experience all day long down to the minutest of occurrences is good. In other words, regardless of whether we feel a negative or a positive experience, the Creator is actually performing an act of love which contains only good. What this means is that every single act that occurs in our lives is an opportunity for spiritual work.
Our attitude toward the Creator is where we begin our spiritual journey. We have three different choices of attitude toward the Creator with regard to any given event. Those are:
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We do not even consider the Creator with regard to the event. This is considered total disregard for spirituality and we are only in our corporeal nature. It is called living as a beast.
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We think to check our attitude toward the Creator and find that we cannot necessarily say that the Creator was behind this act. In other words, there is the Creator as far as we know, but there may be other forces in the world that cause things too, like the act we just experienced. This is known as double concealment.
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Finally the third attitude we can experience is that yes, we understand that the Creator is responsible for every single circumstance in the world, but some of these are bad and cause us pain. This is known as single concealment.
Of course, our goal is to realize that the Creator is responsible for everything that happens and everything that happens is great, perfect, could not be better. But sometimes we get confused thinking that our work is to change our attitude where we feel this way.
This is utterly impossible. For one to think they can change their own nature is proof that they are in delusion. Only the Creator can cause this transformation. But what we can do is to want it, and want it with all our hearts. This last part, to want to be able to do give all the credit for everything to the Creator and to understand that it is all good is the most important stage of our work. It is known as a prayer.
But this last stage requires that we first become accustomed to analyzing any and every event we disagree with that occurs to us as often as we can remember. Remember, our goal prior to entering spirituality is to first analyze our attitude toward the Creator. Then after discovering events we cannot assign to the Creator, or cannot say the Creator’s action was only good – to justify his actions, we should try to want to justify those actions.