If it’s hard it may be NORMAL, but that’s never NATURAL
I like to make a distinction between what I consider *normal* and what I consider *natural*.
To me *normal* is a human calibrated value or bandwidth within which it is expected and assumed most people fall.
Some of the vast range of human attributes and experiences that are thus calibrated are body temperature, intellectual ability, body appendages, physical abilities such as vision and hearing as well as 12 years of schooling, *love*, anger, stress, life-span and health and its various markers.
*Natural*, on the other hand, are attributes or qualities and states that are beyond human calibration and which have no corresponding opposites. These include Love, Peace, Joy, Freedom, Consciousness, Awareness and Limitlessness.
Some people may choose to refer to these as *divine* qualities or states and that’s fine. I find the distinction between *natural* and *normal*, however, an important and useful one to make.
Why?
Because too many of us confuse *normal* with *natural*.
The dominant paradigm that governs our meaning making and thus our construction of reality is a Scientific paradigm in which *normal* seems to have become synonymous with *average*.
The problem with this is that while Science itself may not wish it, the common interpretation of average as normal means that things/people found on either side of *average* are considered *abnormal* i.e. not normal.
But we all know that the greatest achievers, the greatest thinkers, the greatest sports people, the greatest humanitarians would have had qualities and experienced states that were far from *normal* thus putting them quite a long way from the position of *average* or *normal*,
Yet, the qualities and states that such giants of humanity would have displayed and experienced are completely NATURAL.
Yes, it is NATURAL for all people to feel and express the power of Love which is the substrate from which all things arise.
It is NATURAL for all people to feel Freedom from fear and limitation.
It is NATURAL for all people to experience Peace and Joy.
It is NATURAL for all people to IMAGINE beyond limit.
It is NATURAL for people to experience PERFECT HEALTH.
It is NATURAL for people to experience ABUNDANCE.
It is NATURAL for people to live EFFORTLESSLY
But as you read down that list of what is *natural*, you can see how not *normal* most of these are to the human experience, at least not for any sustained period of time.
It is so *not normal* that we have learned to accept all other states such as ‘fear’, ‘dislike’, ‘anger’, ‘sense of loss’., ‘lack’,’pain’ and ‘sickness’ as not just *normal* but *natural*. To me they simply aren’t and II can live quite peacefully with that.
However, just because I say that something is not *natural* doesn’t mean I don’t experience it. I certainly experience pain as I do the sense of ‘loss’ or missing someone, or anger or guilt. You could say that I’ve built my expertise on Mentoring based on the enormous experience I’ve had with these *normal* states 🙂
But,what helps me enormously and what I seek to help my clients with is the ability to look beyond *normal* and reach for what is NATURAL.
I can do this because the things that are considered *normal* correspond to a mind or habit of perception and a collective consciousness that we have acquired over millennia.
It is what Buddhism refers to as the *conditioned mind*,
You see, what is natural is not subject to the whims and fancies nor the dictates and manipulations of those who are un-enlightened – those who are so strongly governed by a conditioning of Fear, Scarcity and yes, *Normal*.
And who are these people?
All of us really, to varying degrees.
But perhaps it would be useful to point out how we may be so:
When we insist on war and violence, When we insist on profiteering on the backs of those less fortunate whether they are economically, emotionally or medically so. When we refuse to acknowledge and honour the god-presence in everything. When we insist on *conditional love* (which to me is an oxymoron)..
Nor is *natural* subject to the passage of time. Whereas what is considered *normal* today in such things as fashion, architecture, food consumption and lifestyle would not have been so, if they even existed, centuries or even decades ago.
In other words, what I consider *natural* is timeless or eternal.
Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment – Morihei Ueshiba
We are by nature Enlightened Beings. In several Spiritual traditions, we are told about how we have forgotten our original state, our unborn and death-less nature.
There are rich narratives about how we ‘lost’ our natural state from the Fall of Adam and Eve to the Dreaming story of Indigenous peoples. And despite my Science background, I shall include the *story* of the Big Bang among these :).
If you’d like to know why, you might want to read this,
[Please do not assume this is the only reason why or that I therefore subscribe to a Creationist story – I don’t. I just don’t feel compelled by any of the stories that I know of and am quite comfortable with *not knowing*]
So, thinking in terms of what is *natural* helps remind me of my Enlightened state. It helps me reach deep down to something that I have experienced to be constant, ever-present, all-encompassing and powerful beyond measure.
This, more than anything else, gives me a reliable point of reference and powerful state of being to return to when I have inadvertently and through habit, found myself in the trance of *normal* and in the disempowering company of its unnatural/normal *friends*.
Naturally, Lucy
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