The Great Disturbance

The Pathway to Wholiness

I’m at a remote monastery last year for five days of phone-free silence.

All of us have committed to this silence.

I’m meditating by myself in the church.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been meditating. Time seems to have disappeared. I would guess it’s been for over two hours straight now.

I’m having one of the deepest and most profound spiritual experiences of my entire life.

I feel like I’m communing directly with God.

The ecstatic infinity of this inner stillness is exquisite, and it just keeps getting better!

I’ve been waiting my whole life for this. I never want to leave this state.

I’m beyond excited to discover what this meditation will bring me.

I hear footsteps and an indiscernible chatter.

Suddenly a hand taps me on the shoulder.

I hear a voice say, “Excuse me.”

In that moment, a surge of anger rushes through my body.

Like a fork in the road, two possibilities open.

Part of me wants to pick him up by his collar and slam him up against the wall, tell him this is a silent retreat and how dare he violate that rule and disturb me while I’m praying silently with my eyes closed in a church.

I open my eyes and there is a very old man looking at me.

“Are you the priest from California?” he says.

I look at him closely. He looks very feeble, disoriented, lost and confused.

My heart fills with compassion and love for him.

There have been times in my life when I’ve felt very feeble and confused myself.

I get it.

“I’m not,” I respond to him with kindness.

“I’m so sorry,” he says and quickly walks away apologetically.

The great irony is that this meditation did in fact give me the greatest revelation and exactly the lesson I needed.

It just wasn’t how or what I expected.

That simple moment was the most profound life-changing moment of the entire retreat.

So much of my life had been chasing spiritual highs as a self-centered pleasure pursuit.

While those who are religious can too often fall into dogmatic concepts without any direct experience, traveling the world chasing spiritual experiences is all too common in the modern “spiritual but not religious” scene.

Instead of becoming outwardly attached and identified with material things, we become inwardly attached and identified with accumulating spiritual experiences.

The choice was very clear to me in that moment.

I could selfishly choose the pleasure of my own spiritual experience and the anger of its disruption, or I could choose to treat this elderly stranger with compassion and kindness.

What would Jesus do?

What I’ve learned is that spiritual experiences, or spiritual revelations, are great when they come, and yet they are not what’s most important.

What’s more important is our relationship with others and how we treat them.

Our kindness and compassion to others is the mark of our wholiness. Not how many spiritual states we’ve had.

It’s clear God brought that old man out of nowhere to disturb me at the high point of my meditation for a reason.

And it’s for that disturbance that I am grateful.

— Brian Piergrossi

=========

Message to inquire about personal coaching packages.