Spiritual Cleaning House
Every spiritual text out there that I have read warns about the repercussions of embracing faith. The underlying message is, look out, because things are going to get worse before they get better. That is the peril of therapy or self-improvement. People hit what they consider a bottom and they seek out therapy or faith or both to solve the problem, get some relief, and finally experience some improvement in their lives. And then things get worse.
That experience spurs many to abandon therapy or faith or self-improvement of any kind in the very early stages. It becomes confirmation that nothing works or that we are not worthy of more. What a bunch of hooey, we tell ourselves. Therapy is hogwash. Believing in God is for simpletons.
I liken the initial stages of self-improvement to cleaning house. We could be living in complete squalor, but at least we kind of know where everything is and how to live in it. In order to actually tackle the problem(s), we’re going to have to move some BLEEP around. We gotta get the vacuum behind the couch. There will probably be piles of dirty paper towels and icky sponges laying around while we’re doing some scrubbing. Everything will be in a new kind of disarray, one that is actually less livable and messier than the dysfunction we were living in before. And even once the cleaning is done, it’s going to take time and concerted effort to put things back in the right place. We might even be so brave, after a real house-cleaning, to get rid of some stuff we really don’t use anymore (i.e., a broken pattern or a really dysfunctional relationship), but in order to muster up that kind of bravery, we have to actually get motivated to clean the house in the first place.
I am working on all kinds of things in my life right now and I feel very inspired by having faith. I am incredibly hopeful about the future. I have tried this grand experiment and “failed” before, so I have read enough self-help and spirituality-based books to see the same warning in all of them: things are going to get bad, before they get better.
And, let me tell you, in some areas of my life, the wheels have very much fallen off. I’m not even sure I know where the wheels are right now. But in other areas, it feels very much like I have arrived. That may be because we don’t clean every room in a house all at once. We often clean one room, then move onto another. So, while my professional life feels clean and fresh and new and right, my personal life needs way more than just a once over by the Roomba.
I will say that faith in God or Good just seems to build upon itself. I feel very inspired to just let it keep building, to actually keep believing. It may have to do with a willingness to just let myself believe however it best suits me, to allow myself faith in its simplest form, no matter what. That kind of willingness and allowing has made building faith in God or Good much less mired in getting it “right.” It probably also has to do with all the prayers that have been answered in the last two years fueling a growing willingness to believe.
My point is just this: keep going, keep trying, keep failing, keep going to therapy, keep experimenting with having faith in Good or God or whatever-you-want-to-call-it. I believe there is no wrong way to have faith, just like there is no wrong way to clean a house. Everyone does both a little differently. Things will probably get worse before anything gets better, but if we are focused on having faith, that really is just a sign that we are making progress.