You don’t have to fix anything to be here.

This line may need to go over the “doorway” into the Helen Keller Spiritual Life Collaborative.

The metaphorical door to the HKSLC “You don’t have to fix anything to be here.”

To be here, now. Nothing needs to change. To be here as you are, before the face of God/Spirit/Life nothing needs to be fixed, altered, addressed, set right.

Many of us on the spiritual path, in our effort to connect to God/Spirit/Life, become caught up in the effort. We study, we practice, we work to uncover our limiting beliefs, we witness the suffering around us and within us and look for solutions, ways to love more, to stop doing harm, to fix the problems of our inner and outer world.

On some level this effort is beautiful, it gets us going, plants seeds of new life, clarifies our intention and draws us into community with others making similar efforts. But on another level this effort can lead us astray. It causes us to create spiritual hierarchies, stories of what effort is required, beliefs about what we need to fix about ourselves before we can rest, before we can belong, before we can allow God/Spirit/Life to love us fully and completely.

What if we just sidestepped all of that and allowed ourselves to be loved fully and completely right now as we are?

Most conversion experiences are just such moments. I’ve rarely heard of people methodically following the dictates of a particular religion and then right on cue encountering God. It’s drunks hitting rock bottom and discovering that even in that state they are worthy of love. It’s Saul breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples¹ and then having an encounter with Jesus. It’s people in the midst of life as it is, the good the bad and the ugly, catching a glimpse of a deeper reality that then catches them.

For whatever reason, we have all gotten it into our heads that we are in need of serious fixing to be worthy of love, to be worthy of rest, to be worthy of being as we are right now. I would suggest to you that the experience of God/Spirit/Life that you are looking for, that all of us are looking for, is in fact just this simple act of allowing ourselves to fully inhabit this moment as we are and in doing so discovering the deeper life that makes this moment possible.

Now here’s the hitch. The hitch I’m currently wrestling with, and the hitch that motivates me to create a new kind of space for spiritual collaboration.

Once we realize that we don’t need to fix anything to be here we are going to notice so many things that need fixing. Once we realize our divine nature, the power that lives inside of us already whole and complete, the gift of being alive, the blessing of our particular vessel of life, we are going to want to use it!

And this is good, this is holy, this is beautiful. This is Saul becoming Paul and going out to spread the Good News. This is a drunk getting sober and helping others get sober too.

This is good, this is holy, this is beautiful AND in my experience it is also often difficult and scary. While we have experienced an inner change that brings a grounding in love, a flow of inspiration and wisdom, and courage to act we are still human beings with limitations and fears. Some may suggest that after conversion Paul did a lot of good but also flubbed up from time to time. Discovering this ground of love does not make us perfect.

Like the 12 Step Community is there to shepherd people to sobriety, I want to create a new kind of community where we offer encouragement and support to one another in this exciting and mysterious process of living and acting from our inherent belovedness.

My sense is that this exciting and mysterious process of living and acting from our inherent belovedness has the possibility of creating an entirely new world, a new heaven and a new earth as we religious/spiritual types might say.

This will require so much change. AND it will require us to be grounded in the love that does not change. The love that does not require us to fix anything.

1. Acts 9:1-6