Bringing both sides together is important

Religious Views, by Delisa Renideo

In the old song, Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell tells about looking at clouds from both sides. Then she looks at love from both sides and life from both sides. She determines that she really doesn't know clouds, love or life at all. Her lyrics describe the dilemmas facing us as we approach life's challenges.

In Unity, we know we are spiritual beings having a human experience. There are those two sides of life again.

Like the lyrics of the song, we can feel confused as we negotiate between our spiritual self and our human self. And we may end up feeling, as she did, that we really don't know much about life at all.

As we work on our spiritual self, we meditate, pray and learn that we are to be unconditionally loving. We read spiritual books, listen to inspiring speakers, go to workshops, and resolve to live from love.

Then our human self, guided by our ego and facing the practicalities of life finds itself getting fearful about those medical tests that came back positive, our growing credit card debt, our child's recent involvement with the "wrong crowd." This is joined by irritation toward telemarketers, traffic, barking dogs, crying babies, which is joined by anger toward our spouse for bouncing a check, our boss for promoting someone else over us, our children for lying to us, the mechanic for pulling the wool over our eyes as he fixed something that wasn't broken. And all of these are joined by frustration about life and how it gets in the way of our spiritual quest. Is there any way to look at both side of life and make any sense of it? Does our spiritual self really have a place in our day-to-day human life? Is it realistic to believe that our human experience can be guided by our spiritual self?

I sure hope so. I have made it my life's work to learn how to bring these two sides together, and to help others do the same.

Our spiritual practices are very important in helping us to broaden our perspectives to see life from a more ultimate point of view. As we get quiet and get in touch with the Love within us, we are more likely to recognize the spiritual essence of everyone else, too. We learn to let go of our daily frustrations as we center ourselves on the higher spiritual truth. It is essential to practice this so it becomes a familiar place to live from.

However, our spiritual practices must be matched by bringing this higher perspective into our daily lives. It is when facing the daily challenges that we can truly make progress in spiritual growth. When we are feeling fear, we need to remember our experience of feeling connected to our spiritual essence and know that we are always protected by the presence of the Divine within us. When we feel irritated, our task is to see beyond the experience and bring our inner peace into play rather than focusing on what we are irritated about. When we feel angry, we can choose to handle the situation from a place of love and fairness, rather than hostility and revenge.

This is not to say we may not need to take a strong stand, be assertive in making our needs known, or make a change in our environment. But we can do this with respect and consideration for the other person, recognizing that beneath the human appearance lies another spiritual being trying to navigate this very confusing and confounding world.

As we contemplate our lives from both sides now, let's realize that by working at them both, we can make our human experience much more joyful, loving and peaceful.

Delisa Renideo is the Spiritual Leader of Unity Church of the Valley in Wasilla. She can be reached at 373-1526. The church's Web site is www.unitychurhofthevalley.org.