On Common Sense and Spirituality

Eva Kroth
On Common Sense and Spirituality

Many years ago, I began to expand my consciousness through spiritual and mystical experiences. I detached myself from known and learned values. I experienced my life not only as my current one, but also as a process of development through many past and future lives. Each one contributed many experiences, interwoven with other people in other relationships. I experienced myself in many different roles, as a victim and a perpetrator, in a complex network of cause and effect.

I had access to the levels of reality where we create our own reality and decide voluntarily, in deepest acceptance and love, for one life, no matter how terrible. I never encountered a punitive authority. The authority that judges, condemns, punishes, or praises was always inside me, in my own heart. The more our awareness expands, the wider our heart grows.

In our current lives, too, only our heart, our deepest core, can decide what is good or bad for us. Our higher self, which knows the sum of all experiences from our many lives, can also lead us to a life of restriction and negativity, because those experiences are ours as well.

To preach only love can lead to double standards or dependency, because who is always able to judge where truth or love is hiding ?

Many esoterically minded people reject an excessively rational approach. They say we should not think too much or question everything, because everything is really easy.

Depending on the culture and the creed, the main goal is love or unity with God, nothingness, abstinence, or similar things.

I also experienced absolute simplicity, or the oneness with everything, in altered states of consciousness, as well as the deep love vibrating in all creatures. I felt, and saw, that all existing matter and all consciousness meld to light-energy on the highest plane. I also felt the love behind hatred and destruction because in the dual world there has to be an opposite pole to harmony and unity.

But for me, life also remains very complicated and I continue to find the spiritual dimensions interwoven with our lives very complex in their infinite diversity.

In questions of spirituality, we need our intellect too.

In our culture, shaped by Christianity, the highest spiritual energy is called God.

Depending on our background, education, and intuition, God represents the Creation in general or everything that we cannot explain. Or God is a moral authority defining good and evil. Or a father figure caring for our souls, who is always with us and promises or withdraws love.

In many spiritual movements, a guru or an other-worldly authority often takes on the role of a father who rules, decides on moral questions, and punishes or praises.

But the so-called Beyond is not a foreign territory, but the continuation and extension of our current life. Nobody can take responsibility for our present life from there.

Nobody should make decisions about us in our current life and no otherworldly figure should have this power either. No extraterrestrial or otherworldly channel, god, or guru threatening punishment can take the responsibility for our life away from us.

We all need people in our lives who give us advice. We recognize that they are valuable for us when they help us take responsibility for ourselves. Do they help us feel strong ? Do they help us recognize our own multidimensional beauty? The knowledge about the powers of subtle energies and their use contains the potential for power and its abuse.

Every spiritual group should have a democratic structure; everyone should be able to act freely in and outside the group. The principle of freedom and voluntariness should be part of this structure, as should the complete absence of threats of punishment, however subtle.

All exercises and rituals should be explained and justified. Nobody can decide whether others may be worthy of holding secret spiritual powers. Here on Earth we need rules and laws. If we are to abide by them, we expect convincing reasons. We carry the responsibility for our own actions.

Our consciousness determines how widely or narrowly we perceive our world or our existence. It is our own free choice whether we wish to live only within the concepts of today’s science, or if we want to expand its identified boundaries.

Scientific limitations have the advantage that we can experience the pleasant feeling of standing on safe ground and operate within generally accepted thought patterns. However, what was unimaginable in science yesterday has become a reality today. Today’s impossibilities can become tomorrow’s scientific reality. If today we leave the so-called scientific common ground and enter spiritual realms, we should always question everything, and inside ourselves remain freely and firmly on the ground of everyday reality.

Then our spirit can fly without losing itself, and we can at the same time remain practical human beings and multidimensional creatures.

We contain both. Both sides want to be respected and integrated. The ability to develop theoretical paradigms, explore new knowledge, find solutions and answers, is one of the most wonderful human characteristics. It nurtures the expansion of consciousness like life itself.

This text has been reproduced on 'Ascension Now' by kind permission of Eva Kroth.

See also (All Articles): Articles by Contributing Authors: Eva Kroth