Pass your spiritual tests: 5 examples of not doing it
“Without fail, you will be tested,” said the sage. We believe that how you respond to your spiritual trials in life determines how you progress spiritually and has an impact on your future personal destiny.
Whether or not you are successful with these tests depends on whether you do the right thing and respond with unconditional love, tolerance, and honesty.
But let’s face it, chances are you’ve experienced a situation where you’ve been spiritually tested and failed miserably. Relax, you are not alone, but the sooner you start dealing constructively with your trials, the sooner you will balance your karma.
Here are five common circumstances that may not always seem like a spiritual test failure, but we think they are.
1. After you have your car repaired, you realize you’ve been ripped off; they did not solve the problem. In order for you to fix the problem, you need to deal with the manager of the dealership, and you already know that it will be difficult to deal with that person based on previous experience. Although you may not realize it at the time, this is a test for you to harden your resolve and defend your beliefs. Instead, you choose to avoid conflict and take your car elsewhere for repair.
2. You both cheat in your relationship and are fully aware of it, but pretend it doesn’t happen, while promoting your new book on the importance of lifelong monogamy. Instead of admitting that your relationship is over on a sexual level, you lie and carry on as if it wasn’t. While it could do a lot of good for future generations, by empowering them to realize that strict monogamy is not realistic for everyone or in all situations and that it is acceptable to have alternative arrangements if everyone agrees with them, take the easier way.
3. Two individuals on the fringes of their social circle are overwhelmed by nasty rumors about their integrity. It happens that you discover the truth, that in fact those two people are innocent. Suddenly you have an opportunity to clarify the situation at a party one night, but you just keep your mouth shut while they suffer.
4. You still can’t believe how your ex treated you and you’ve promised never to forgive that person, ever. The problem is that you are only hurting yourself and that by holding a grudge, you are inviting future scenarios in which you will be forced to learn about forgiveness in love relationships, over and over again, until you finally get it right.
5. It is as if the universe is conspiring to push you into solitude, but you refuse to accept it because you cannot bear to be alone even for 30 minutes. She goes out of her way to surround herself with warm bodies, including taking yoga and dance classes, joining clubs, and living with multiple roommates in a big house. Although you rarely manage to be alone, you fail to do the inner work that naturally arises in loneliness, so you continue to delay your spiritual progress.
How are you taking the easy path and avoiding real spiritual progress? Meditate on that. Also, be gentle with yourself, but strive to deal constructively and honestly with life’s trials as they appear on your doorstep to avoid a dreaded replay in the future.
Copyright © Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo