What is the purpose in trying to grow spiritually? It is a difficult road with many twists and turns; and sometimes few rewards. As I look into my soul, I see the hurts from a lifetime of living. It can be painful to really see who I am. Sometimes ignorance actually is bliss.

I have asked myself the hard questions, who am I, why am I seeking so, what am I seeking? I asked myself these questions over and over; these and more.

I am seeking to know God. I am seeking my divine self. The self that is worthy to know God. I want divine union. I want to know non-duality; to really understand it, to live it and to find my higher purpose.

It really has been a difficult road. I am continually faced with looking at my beliefs and myself. It sounds so egocentric and narcissistic to be so busy peering at me. It isn’t really. It is tough. I am faced with seeing beliefs that I didn’t even know I had. It isn’t pretty, a true narcissist would turn away and not want to see his naked truth.

Lately, I am confronted with my own bigotry. I never knew I was a bigot. During the struggles of the sixties, when I was just coming of age, I was in high school. But, I remember the demonstrations, the ugliness when a school was desegregated and how hateful white people could be. I read about lynchings and burning churches and crosses. I wanted to be older to don a sword and join in the battle. I read about Martin Luther King Jr. and he became my hero. Rosa Parks was my ideal. How could I be a bigot? I am not a bigot. I never was, but those were the lessons I learned at my family’s knee and I never knew that I really had learned my lessons well; until now.

But, there it is. I now see how I deal with a white person and how I deal with a black person. It is different, I don’t treat them the same. I am differential to a black person, perhaps solicitous is a more accurate word. I can be rude to white people, but never to a black person. If I was color blind, I would be rude to everybody, but I’m not. I have seen my judgments. I hear that ugly little voice that pops up and says things in my ear. Judgments based in nothing but bigotry. It is an ugly thing.

However, the seeing is necessary to spiritual growth. When that little voice pops up, I tell it to go away. I disagree with it and tell it is wrong. We are all God’s children. We are all God in all our differing colors, languages, creeds, mores and customs. We are God. I tell that voice repeatedly, again and again. I must create a new neural net in my brain that relinquishes the old belief and replaces it with the new one, we are all God.

This belief is a very deep seeded bias that must be rooted out to continue my journey to non-duality. I find it very painful that I could hold such beliefs. But, this is another step towards eradicating the causes of separation from God.

I know the analogy of the caterpillar in the cocoon is over used, but it really is applicable. I am in the cocoon now and starting to break through it. All those silken threads are tightly wrapped around me and I have to break through each one in order to get out of this place. But, it is necessary to see all these threads that are holding me in place if I am ever going to be able to fly. They all must be broken.

One by I one I nibble and gnaw. The taste is bitter in my mouth, but with each old bias and belief that I cut, the closer I am to stepping fully into God.