Are we?

My question refers to the latter, not the former.

It has oft been quoted. So often I am not sure it holds much meaning.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

It took me decades to realize the last thing I wanted was to have a human experience.

I was clearly a not-so-human being trying every way I could to have a spiritual experience. Trying to get rid of this bothersome humanity in order to hover over this body and earth as a purely transcendent being of only Light. I longed for the perceived perfection that books and teachers pointed to. I lived a life divided against myself. I thought that if I was doing it right I would experience no darkness, emotional pain, disconnection, or disloyalty to the spiritual being I was here to be.

I wanted to be a spiritual being only having a spiritual experience.

Only love and light syndrome.

Now I realize that I am indeed a spiritual being here to have a truly human experience. A fully human experience. An embodied human experience. A sometimes painful, often messy, usually bumpy human experience.

I am not a spiritual being here to rid myself of a human experience. I am here for the adventure of spirit in fully human form. I am here to be the love and compassion of spirit relating kindly to the imperfection of my humanness. I am here to treat myself and others with equanimity and mercy as we all traverse this rocky realm of time and space reality. I am here to open to the full spectrum of what it means to be human. With a body that sometimes works and increasingly sags. With a mind that tends to overthink and habitually judges and tells troublesome stories that niggle and nag. A humanness that because of its tendency to want to be only spiritual will project its unintegrated humanness onto others and the world and deem it all to be too damn human.

I type these words while looking through increasingly strong progressive lenses with a hip that is throbbing and a vague sense that if anyone even reads this, they will find me somehow not spiritual enough. Too human. Too earthy. Too egocentric. Too wordy.

Did I mention too human?

God, I hope so.

The truth for me is that I am a spiritual being having a spiritual experience. And I am a human being having a human experience. Both. I want to have both. I want to dance as spirit and human. Waltz with divided yet somehow whole. Be fully embodied with all its messiness and misery. Joyfulness and juiciness.

I strongly suspect I will always be spirit. I equally suspect I will not always be human.

I for one do not want to waste this temporary embodiment wishing I were not so. I want to be here, now, as is. Messy, sagging, painful, joyful, human in every way.

I am a human being having a human experience.

And I am glad that it is so