The Spiritual Finger

At birth we know nothing; helpless, innocent –

demanding, hungry mouths screaming for food, comfort, love, sometimes an intangible But always something necessary. Gratitude follows with a smile, a giggle, contentment, or blissful sleep.

Children are smart, but often selfish.  They demand things they do not need and are not always grateful.  Cookies please!  More!  I need more!  No! I won’t clean the table!  No! I won’t take a bath!  More! More!  I hate you!

As adults we struggle within between the extremes, repression, denial.

And , “Oh, no I am NOTHING like that B---- at the make up counter over there!”~  finger waving in a Z pattern. Hello…

  The crazy man at the corner waved his mug at me and asked for a quarter.  I fished into my purse to find one and gave it to him and unconsciously held it out to him with my index finger pointed out.  He said, ‘Don’t you point that spiritual finger at me; you aren’t mature enough”.  I looked at him, offended. 

   Who was this drunken vagrant to tell me I was not mature enough to point a spiritual finger? 

  Yet, who is anyone of us to point a finger at another?  I did not deliberately point, but had he read a subconscious intention or judgment?  Did he have some secret insight?  It ate at me.  Irrational?  Yes.   Soul-searching, nonetheless is never without a harvest.

  I gave to the vagrant in self-righteousness and out of duty.  I gave him my time in exasperation.  I unconsciously pointed my spiritual finger at him in superiority without realizing it.  Now I am mindful that many of these folks are in fact older, knowledgeable in their own way, and fighting battles greater even than my own. So I am now ever mindful of that ‘spiritual finger”.  For as babies we know everything, but as children we know nothing.  This great truth is encompassed in our own initiatory system and was spoken by this very same vagrant.