Inspiration

I read this today and it is speaking to exactly where I am at. So I figured I'd share it. If it makes you feel better, you can pretend that I wrote it so you can feel like you know someone really intelligent and profound...

What does it mean to feel inspired?

I think the experience of inspiration is the experience of directly knowing that MORE is possible. In the context of spiritual inspiration it means knowing that enlightenment or freedom is possible. We go to a retreat, or take a course, or talk to our spiritual friends and on that retreat, in that course, and with those friends we feel inspired. And then life happens – we have deadlines at work, our children need attention, our house needs repairs and our experience of inspiration fades out of view. The next time we do a retreat, take the right course, or talk to our spiritual friends we reconnect with the possibility of MORE and we feel inspired again. Maybe it has been days, weeks or months since the last time we felt spiritually inspired and we become convinced that we have to find a way to not lose that connection again.

This is fine as far as it goes, but if we are interested in being free we even have to be free of the habit of needing to feel inspired. We have to face the fact that we aren’t going to feel spiritually inspired all the time and that doesn’t mean that the extraordinary possibility that inspired us in the first place is any less possible! In our moments of highest inspiration we realize that real spiritual liberation is always possible. That is what inspires us. It is important to remember that spiritual liberation didn’t become possible only when you recognized that it was possible, it was possible before you recognized it and it continues to be possible even if your attention goes elsewhere.

To me this is what is so liberating about our spiritual episodes. They reveal to us a possibility that is ALWAYS there even when we don’t feel inspired. Sometimes you feel inspired, sometimes you don’t. Freedom is being more concerned about the possibility that inspires you than you are about feeling inspired.

~ Jeff Carreira

If we need to feel positive and inspired in order to act positively then we are not free. Freedom comes when we become less interested in how we feel and more interested in the choices we make. The path of spiritual transformation is one in which we learn to let go of that which we hold onto so tightly.

The hard part is being willing to let go.