SPIRITUALITY

53. Spirituality ~ 161 ~ reach such a low ebb mentally and emotionally, that, spiritually, they become incapable of making progress. Life’s experiences for both the spiritual and the nonspiritual are like the grasping of a rosebush. On each branch are beautifully shaped and coloured blossoms whose scent refreshes from afar the weary in body and spirit. But also on each branch are the inevitable thorns. The spiritual individual will carefully avoid the thorns in order to take possession of the blossom, or if by accident, his hands are pricked by the thorns, he dismisses it as a trivial matter. But the unspiritual person, in his unseemly ways will rudely grasp both thorns and flowers, and will recoil in anger and dismay, baulked of his prize, and burning with resentment. Where spirituality makes the best of life’s experiences – although there is no rose without a thorn – the lack of spirituality makes the worst of them. Where spirituality implies elevation of the soul, the lack of it implies the baser instincts of jealousy, greed, selfishness and exploitativeness.