In the Garden of Spirituality – Peng Roden Her

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

– Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from an article by Peng Roden Her on “true awakening.” This article was first published in the December 2022 issue of The Edge.

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A true awakening is messy. It’s raw, honest, vulnerable, profound, and not as wonderful/blissful as many make it out to be. . . . It’s a complete take down of the identity you’ve constructed for others to see, in the exchange for who you were meant to be. [It’s a “you” at one with] a higher purpose, a higher calling, a deep and profound awakening.

A true awakening is not changing who you are, but a process of discarding who you are not. . . . It’s a process of unbecoming to become. It is a process of aligning who you are (currently) with who you are meant to be (divinely) – the highest self, divine-self, ideal-self, or eternal self.

. . . No one has the ability to choose you [to be awakened] but you. Your daily actions, habits, and routines determine your capacity for the calling. You choose you (daily) through removing habits which aren’t in alignment with your highest self.

– Peng Roden Her
Excerpted from “Ready for Your Awakening?”
The Edge
December 2022

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Mystical Participation
• Returning the Mind to God
• The Source Is Within You
• Andrew Harvey on Our “Divine Identity”
• From Spiritual Death to Rebirth
• Being the Light
• Awakening the Wild Soul
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Jeff Brown on “Sustainable Awakening”
• Keeping the Spark Alive
• Don't Go Back to Sleep

Others highlighted in The Wild Reed’s “In the Garden of Spirituality” series include:
Zainab Salbi | Daniel Helminiak | Rod Cameron | Paul Collins | Joan Chittister | Toby Johnson | Joan Timmerman (Part I) | Joan Timmerman (Part II) | Uta Ranke-Heinemann | Caroline Jones | Ron Rolheiser | James C. Howell | Paul Coelho | Doris Lessing | Michael Morwood | Kenneth Stokes | Dody Donnelly | Adrian Smith | Henri Nouwen | Diarmuid Ó Murchú | L. Patrick Carroll | Jesse Lava | Geoffrey Robinson | Joyce Rupp | Debbie Blue | Rosanne Cash | Elizabeth Johnson | Eckhart Tolle | James B. Nelson | Jeanette Blonigen Clancy | Mark Hathaway (Part I) | Mark Hathaway (Part II) | Parker Palmer | Karen Armstrong | Alan Lurie | Paul Wapner | Pamela Greenberg | Ilia Delio | Inayat Khan | Andrew Harvey | Kabir Helminski | Beatrice Bruteau | Richard Rohr (Part I) | Richard Rohr (Part II) | Judy Cannato | Anthony de Mello | Marianne Williamson | David Richo | Gerald May | Thomas Crum | Pema Chödrön

Opening image: Michael J. Bayly.