Reality and Spirituality
Outer chaos, inner calmness, and healing
Master Glenn Tobey
Addressing your emotional response to the pandemic.
April 3, 2020
Today’s topic is reality and spirituality.
About 4 or 5 years ago I was going out to Las Vegas with Master Lin and Debra, and my wife. And a company of Tibetan monks. The task was for the Tibetan monks and Master Lin to meditate 7 o’clock in the morning and 7 o’clock in the evening to bless the land. This idea is how can you bless the whole land by that high vibration of spirituality? It’s really a beautiful experience of spirituality.
But what will you do with the Tibetan monks in between 7 in the morning and 7 in the evening in Las Vegas? We walked a lot around the hotels. In my social conscious mind, I am looking at this opulence, these incredible grandiose things. 6 million dollars to make this floor. Butterflies in the sky. Paint ceilings. It was just incredible. And these monks walked around, going, “Wow, so beautiful! How the artists put the tiles together.” They loved the beauty. My social judgement mind goes, “We can spread this money around. We can have a better way to pay this. We don’t need this luxury here. Why don’t we share?” And they are going, “Life is beautiful!” This happiness about how great the artists are.
When we walked across the casinos, I am going, “Do you know how much the gambling hurts the families because they are addicted to it?” “Wow, incredible how people can out together games together and make creations.”
Here they are this high spiritual level. And I am going, “What about the reality? What about the reality?” And realizing I am trapped in the reality. And they are trying to say, “Here is both.” The reality and the spirituality. I got tired of being with them because I wasn’t used to be so happy. My mouth got tired from smiling all the time because of the happiness.
I had other counteracts with these Tibetan monks all these years.
I have 3 purposes. One is the teacher to share. One is to grow. One is the continuous spiritual development. I read a lot more about the Tibetan monks. I read a lot about China killed a lot of Tibetans. The Tibetans dispersed themselves. Dalai Lama ran for Indian. By following a lot of readings and stories about what happened to the folks, monks, and Lamas, put in concentration camps in the history, and were tortured. Here they are everyday threat to death, everyday threat to death. They put little messages in these little things. They would hide a piece of paper in a certain part of the cell. That had higher power of spiritual message. They always connected to a higher spiritual massage. The ways of sharing things at a blessing level other than the level of the food was rotten, the treatment was horrible. They managed to find a way to balance this spirituality and the reality.
So, with the virus going on, take a look at your life. If you just get caught up in the reality, just get caught up in the reality of death, yes, it’s true. So, the monks and Lamas they were trapped and imprisoned in the concentration camps. They didn’t deny the reality of death. It was true. But they lived also above that. It’s not either or. Either be spiritual or get real. No, they were learning to react to both. That will be my message to you.
Take a look at not getting caught just in reality everything is going on. Find a way to find some sort of message, some sort of higher connection to spirituality, to a consciousness that gives you a deeper understanding at what is going on.
What I said about the understanding. Understanding is a healing tool. At a higher level so that I might heal some of the sufferings, might heal some of the conditions.
Yes, this is reality. But also there is a spirituality. Take a look at it in your life.
Qigong Master Glenn Tobey
Master Glenn Tobey, M. Div., M. A. in Management, is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Duluth, Minnesota.
He has almost forty years of experience in the Human Service field and has worked in both urban and rural settings, and values the collaborative community-based model.
He has also taught at the college level, and conducted numerous SFQ workshops and trainings in various community settings. Glenn continues to teach and to share his knowledge and wisdom of Spring Forest Qigong which is at the center of both his professional focus and his personal passion.
Glenn is a member of the SFQ teaching team. He teaches Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Instructor Certification, and other workshops.