Having a Foot in Both Worlds

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

In the early 90’s when I was introduced to alternative spirituality and involved with consciousness groups in New Mexico and Atlanta GA, there was a fantastic quality to life.  Much discussion in the groups was geared to finding ways to escape the mundane, material world.  It got pretty crazy to the point of talk about going to the 39 Parallel to wait for “the ships” to pick us up and carry us away to the galactic command.

About this time the wonderfully satirical book ET101: The Cosmic Instruction Manual came out.  That is, I took the book to be satire and laughed my way through it.  After the adjective awesome got so overused in groups as to be meaningless, I began to have my doubts about the escape plan. Having been concurrently introduced to Earth-Based Spirituality, my grounding exceeded my gullibility in the exit strategies.

Today much of the farther out woo-woo of the New Age has been tempered down a bit. Many of us actually discovered ways to make this material experience more fun and rewarding.  We finally grokked the fact that Earth time can be quite wonderful.  Lots of us got on the pulpit of save the Earth by raising consciousness about climate change and human impact on the environment.  We started to appreciate and enjoy the earth experience. Some of us taught respect of all things in the manifest world.

Somewhere in that shift we also recognized the importance of not surrendering one set of explorations to the exclusion of another.  In better words, we figured out that having a foot in both worlds was the new definition of sanity.  We began to stop being seekers of a spiritual path and consolidated our beliefs to embrace the power of being finders.  That magically lead to a wonderful integration of both worlds and a lot more satisfaction and contentment with our particular lot in life.

One thing that I’ve observed, as an elder, is that reason prevails when we move from extremes on any given continuum to an integrated central.  This posture allows us to meet wide diversity in recognizing similarities and resolving our differences.  I suppose we might say that our mastery leads us to finding that bridge across extremes to a place where all worlds could meet in a deep peace.

With the disparate energies now present of growing violence and turmoil juxtaposed to an expanding spiritual awareness and consciousness, more than ever sanity prevails when we choose to have a foot in both worlds–material and ethereal.  We can recognize that path of humanity that is not working without too much judgment and choose to right our own thought and actions ship towards upliftment, expansion and harmony.

If ever there was a time for individual mastery of thought, word and deed, it is now.  As we are able to embrace the biblical “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” we can serve as way-showers for others on the path of spiritual and material integration.  We can serve as example of a dance of life that has two feet, one in each world, moving gracefully with beautiful symmetry and rhythm. 

As we are approaching a time of celebrating Freedom, it may also be a wonderful period to free ourselves from enslavement to outdated thinking and collective fear/negativity that prevails in our commercial media.  When the proverbial rockets red blare in sky-filled demonstrations, let us see the sparks as new ideas for creating a reality in which personal freedom and collective responsibility reign supreme as we place one foot firmly in each of our magnificent worlds.

Peace be.

[53 Past Blogs are in my book "Shaman Talk" available in softcover and ebook on Amazon.com]