Path to Integration - Part Two: Removing Spiritual Cataracts

In life, we can find ourselves by peeling back the egoic onion of defenses we’ve accumulated over the years from past traumas and wounding. Yet, once the egoic layers peel back, the Essense of who we are is naturally revealed. Once we find our true self, we can create ourself, expand our capacities and grow in new possibilities.
 
One powerful way to do this is to look at the human eye.
 
To see something accurately, we see through the eye's iris. The iris is the part of our eye that is colored and has a hole in the center to let light in or close light out. When the lens of our iris is clear, we see more accurately. Cataracts can form with age and cause a cloudy haze that scues our sight. 
 
In life, we can get spiritual cataracts. Just like the eye perceives accurately through an open lens where nothing can interfere, our perceptions can cloud our mind's eye. What is actually happening can turn into a variety of fears and judgments, splintering us away from the truth.
 
Notice it takes a void to see accurately in the eye. In the heart, it takes spaciousness to see clearly. It also takes conscious awareness to vet if a perception is true or false. 
 
This week I invite you to do a perception cleanse....

When a thought crosses your mind, it is either true or false. Simple. Well, not to the ego. In truth, we may not know if what we think is real or a story. The cloudiness comes in when our ego concludes that our judgments and stories are all the truth, when they may be only a partial truth or untrue (misperception).
 
For example, I caught a spiritual cataract in my thinking a few weeks back. My husband and I were watching "Chosen," a powerful series about the life and Biblical works of Jesus. One of my long-held perceptions is that religious zealots are just out to take your money for their own greed. 
 
We watched a short video by one of the producers. He was talking about how he decided to buy this $15k thing. My mind went straight to "See, they are all crooks. He took all of these donations and bought something frivolous." At that moment, I felt the anger of the perceived injustice surge through my veins.
 
I started ranting to my husband, furious that many people were duped into donating. My husband laughed, saying, "I guess you didn't see the part where that $15k was a donation."
 
"Oh. No, I missed that part." My ego was humbled, and I realized that while some religious people are out to take donations for greed, this man was not one of them. I misjudged. Yet! My body reacted as if it was real. The body goes where the mind flows, which explains why our perceptions can feel so real to us. 
 
During your perception cleanse, I invite you to review true and false perceptions and add another category. It is the category of "I don't know." 
 
"Doesn't I don't know" mean I'm ignorant? Not at all. It means you are exercising wisdom and discernment. There is power in owning what we don't know and not taking an adventure into the land of assumptions. 
 
Try it out and notice what happens and what shifts inside you as you cleanse your spiritual lens and heal any spiritual cataracts clouding your life.

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