Shortcuts on the Spiritual Journey #24

by Tom Stine

here is no such thing as special. Period. I know it is supposed to be a good thing tell children they are all special boys and girls, but when adults tell themselves and others they are special, look out! There is a world of trouble brewing.

It is so very simple: all is One. There is the appearance of separateness, the appearance of me different from you, but in fact all is exactly and unalterably the same. One, one, one wherever you look. So how is it possible for there to be a special person, a better person, a unique person who is different from and superior to all the rest?

I’m sorry to inform you, but if a spiritual teacher is as awake as he or she claims, then he knows that he is completely lacking in any sense of specialness. He knows he is as ordinary and simple as anyone and everyone. He can’t help but know it because it stares him in the face everywhere he looks. He can’t avoid it, he can’t escape it. To be awake is to know beyond question that one is the same.

So, when you look around the spiritual world, you have a quick and dirty test of all spiritual teachers. The real ones never claim anything of themselves. They often have a humility that is startlingly refreshing, not the awkward shy kind of humility, but the kind that comes from a depth of Silence that needs no boasting.

In a world of spiritual specialness and enlightened beings and holy ones, remember that they are, in the end, no different from you and me. We are just One, always and forever One.

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