By Brandon Alter:
Early in the summer, out in the desert, before COVID hatched again like a swarm of locusts, I was practicing Breathwork on an antique lounger in the dry hug of the late afternoon sun. And this little fly kept landing on me: my foot, hand, even my face. I kept shooing this brazen solicitor away to no avail. It kept coming back. I began to get angry. How dare this fly interrupt my attempt at communion with the Divine! Couldn’t this fly feel how earnest my intentions were? Why was it getting in the way? Suddenly, a bright and sparkling awareness came in: what if this fly is actually part of the communion? What if this fly is kissing me with the love of Spirit? It’s little fly legs blessing me, it’s incessant buzz a misunderstood hymn. You see, this bold little fly taught me that there is no distraction from Spirit. Spirit is everywhere—all the time. It’s here now. It’s not going anywhere. We miss out on it through our own relentless seeking that distracts us from the inherent divinity of each and every moment. You can’t achieve spiritual progress by pushing the process. Enlightenment is not some place you’re going, it’s an awareness of where you already are. I’m noticing in myself a need to achieve in my spiritual seeking, an insidious desire for results—something to show for all this self reflection. Maybe it's this abundance of time and solitude that’s subversively twisting my spiritual practice into spiritual productivity. And this is very dangerous because true spirituality is the antidote to achievement. Turning to spiritual pursuits to scratch the same itch success does distorts the very nature of why we need Spirit in the first place. Spirit doesn’t care how long you can meditate, how healed your inner child is, how aligned your chakras are. Spirit doesn’t pick and choose who it supports based on that kind of shit. Spirit loves you unconditionally, and I deeply and humbly believe that all Spirit really cares about is how attuned you are to it. So when seeking Spirit becomes a distraction from living in Spirit, well that’s how we lose ourselves in the wrong way on the right path.
Thanks, fly.
BRANDON ALTER is a Shamanic healer, Tarot reader, teacher, mystic and writer living in Los Angeles. He is passionate about sharing spiritual tools that have helped him reconnect to the wisdom of his heart. Brandon is a thoroughly trained healer, astrologer and yoga teacher who co-hosts The Spiritual Gayz with his husband, a twice-monthly podcast dedicated to exploring the wide reaches of spirituality, without pretending that it all makes sense. Brandon’s mom took him to his very first psychic when he was seven and gave him his first Tarot deck when he was eleven. Since then he has devoted himself to the study of Tarot, Yoga, Pilates, Reiki, Astrology and Shamanic Skills.
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