I got this beautiful Mala as a gift from my dear friend Sofia just when I said goodbye to go to Amsterdam.  I never owned a mala before, but owning one makes you realize how interwoven it is with humanity. In so many different cultures and religions it is linked to the divine. It is not only beautiful, it has a very powerful and soothing energy. I see that everyone likes to wear it. People just pick it up and put it around their neck. On the wrapping it said you should treat it like its is alive haha, and so I do. I put it under my pillow or in my pocket. Wearing it around my neck makes me feel a little too ‘spiritual’ so I don’t do so when I go out.

What a weird concept that is. Too spiritual. Makes me question what spirituality actually means to us and why you wouldn’t want to be associated with it. Isn’t spirituality the nature of everything? The invisible underneath the visible? Is it not the holy connector of everything in our world? And how could we not be connected to that?

It is kind of strange to me to see how spirituality has become so hip and how it is so often used as a way to feel better than others. More aware than others or more special than others. All spirituality has ever shown me is how far I am from the truth and how imperfect and defaulted I am as a human being. It has put the light on all of that. So I never feel better, nor worse, I just feel life in all it’s possibilities and impossibilities. The only thing spirituality can teach you is to accept all of it. To understand that it is about all of it. Not the bliss, not the best and not the most special.

Being human is being complete on the whole scale of bad and good, of creation and destruction, of love and hate. We are here to experience every single color and angle of this magic stuff called life. And everything in our universe is dying for a human body. For the fact that we humans have the senses to experience all of it. Than why cry over things that don’t go the way you want? I am talking to myself here, over and over again. Why yell to the kids and feel guilty afterwords? Why keep thinking of who did what the me? Why keep blaming myself for wanting things I can’t get? Why not accept all that fuzz and focus on what is underneath and use our time and energy for what matters to me? Why bother feeling shame over wearing a bloody mala?

Peace is the allowance of all feelings. Maybe I’ll start wearing my mala a little more to remind me of just that.