Why all this emphasis on the difference between believing and knowing? What is this urgency of discovery? Because while belief often opens the door to experience  and is often the first step toward deeper knowing – it’s still only a limited form of the ultimate truth and can easily be misunderstood and abused. Be careful using all those matches to light all those candles in the alleged darkness because it’s way too easy to go hog wild with the idea of looking into the inner self to find God, the Divine or the High Holy Grand Pu-ba Hot Dog on a Stick of “Specialness.”

Me... Me... Me

It is a natural human expression to go inward but how do you know if you’re becoming too narcissistic? Well, are you becoming too wrapped up in the belief itself while ignoring the actual deeper experience that the belief is supposed to lead to? Are you obsessed with your truth, your path  AND your own inner guidance system/self chatter  so much that it has gotten to the point that you vehemently and easily ignore other important things like basic ethics, sense of community, and relationships with others who are not on your page? Well Bucko, then you had better step away from the spiritual mirror for a while because it’s not working. 

It’s easy to become enamored with what you see in that spiritual mirror; all caught up in the grandeur of the internal process complete with myopic vision. Remember every single spiritual approach has a shadow side so it’s only inevitable that if you venture too far in the dark waters you’ll forget to come up for air. “But I’m only human!” … you protest.  Sure you are. “I’ve read every single book on this subject and know what I’m talking about!” Sure you do. “Don’t bother me with your thoughts and issues, I’m having a hard enough time finding my own damn self and need to meditate now so I can learn how to breathe through my third eye!”  "Leave me be, I am too busy learning how to cast spells that can change the world on Tic Toc." OK … BUT remember what William Blake said in his Proverbs of Hell: “You never know what is enough unless you know it is more than enough.”

Your inner spark is a blessed thing so you don’t need a roaring fire of enlightenment to be able to see your divinity.  If you are paying attention, you might even have a few loved ones or friends who will pinch you once in a while or even give you a swift boot to the derrière to remind you to chill out before you start such an internal fire that it becomes necessary for the Universe to deliver a dreaded cosmic two by four upside your head (which hopefully won’t be too buried up your lower orifice). If you don’t want to listen and if you really need to continue as “usual” making things more difficult and confusing – you go right ahead and make a complete flaming ass out of yourself – eventually you’ll get it. We all get it. There’s plenty of illumination in the indwelling spark. So go get a perception correction and Shine on.