Spiritual Alignment: The Washing Machine Paradigm™
(The title isn’t actually trademarked.) A while back we needed a new washing machine for laundry, and we got (for our buying range) an above average device that came with all the bells and whistles. Good capacity, good efficiency, a ton of settings and definitions. A shiny digital panel that made all the noises and bleeps when operated. It could connect to the internet. Not that we needed the washing machine to use the internet; but this to say it was a relatively high-tech device.
The issues started as soon it was installed. The technicians gave it a quick spin and swiftly left; as soon as they did the machine started to put out warning sounds on the first proper wash, indicating an error from poor water access or some such. After trying to work out if it was installed correctly, we called technical support while calculating worst case scenarios – only for the machine to suddenly start working correctly when the technician arrives. This first impression made us ponder over returning it, but we were tired from the process and now it seemed to be working. So we kept it.
Most of the time The device worked how it was supposed to, but occasionally it would start putting out warnings of various kinds, halting the washing process when it did. We now know there was nothing wrong with our installation, but still, once in a while a sudden loud bleep would signal its refusal to work. The workaround? Sometimes reducing the load, others increasing it. Sometimes turning it off then back on. Sometimes stopping and restarting certain cycles, or at certain times of those cycles. Sometimes doing nothing at all: the machine would signal an error only to work perfectly soon after.
Asking for professional help can be tricky when the problem is sporadic or difficult to spot. Have you ever tried having the mechanic check your car for a sound only you can hear? While warranty was active, these issues were by and large minor hiccups barely worth mentioning, however, they slowly worsened over time. The task of doing laundry slowly turned into a dance where we always faced the possibility of dealing with random errors just to get the machine to run. Quirks grew to became systemic, taking up as much time and energy than doing the actual laundry. Until the moment came when it beeped for the last time, never again coming unstuck.
After some time we eventually got a new machine – now all we wanted was something efficient that worked. The new one had slightly lower specifications than the previous: simpler, less digital, less flashy. It had a knob and a simpler panel and didn’t access the internet. It worked from day one without a hitch, and for the first time in a while, laundry came out of washing with the “washed clothes smell”.
Now, here’s a few things to get out of the way before moving to what will, eventually, be my main point.
First, I’m not saying we didn’t do something wrong or everything we could in this situation. You could point out we were slow in spotting and reacting to the warning signs, which would be fair enough. It seems safe to assume the first machine came with faulty components that then degraded over time. I’m sure a technician or someone who went through ordeals of this nature would have some idea of what could have been wrong just from the “symptoms” above. The situation dragged because the cost/entropy of calling assistance or taking more drastic measures never seemed to be justified. Unfortunately this meant the situation degraded to the point where eventually the machine created as many problems as the clothes it washed.
There were clues. One was of course the problems that arose the moment it’s installed; another was that the machine’s manual/documentation came poorly packaged and showing signs of being heavily degraded from water or moisture damage. While it’s conjecture, we suspect the machine may have been sitting in storage for an extended period – perhaps due to having been rejected and/or faulty faulty, which would mean its problems may have already been known by the seller. However, it happens that the option of returning the machine was also made difficult, because having the seller take it back hinged on the technician confirming it had problems. Yet the machine started operating correctly when they showed up.
With this you can also, of course, bring up the matter of whether household appliances need to be high-tech, access the internet, and so on. This is peripheral relative to what I want to talk about, but for the record, my take is that utilitarian household devices ideally are meant to perform their primary function well, and simplicity and reliability should be priorities for their design, irrespective of where they sit on the price range. So unless you have a specialized use case where it’s useful for you, or the appliance is meant to be used up on a space station, a washing machine probably doesn’t need to access the internet.
Now, with the above out of the way, here’s where I wanted to get.
Situations in life aren’t black and white, meaning, divided between good and bad; most have a mix of more and less positive elements to them. Indirectly this also relates to the fact human participants in situations, be it the other selves but also oneself, are complex and multi-faceted beings themselves. In practice, very seldomly will you have situations that are 100% perfect; even when something starts out flawlessly – something like the best scenario you can hope for – sooner or later something’s going to give, fail, or degrade. It doesn’t necessarily mean the situation is bad and/or it will fail; only, perhaps, that it require work to maintain. The same way, seldomly will you have a purely bad situation with zero redeeming or salvageable qualities that can be taken from it. If nothing else, something that went as poorly as it could will at least bring lessons and experience that will help you grow, and maybe do better in the future. In short, situations in life are comprised of a certain combination of elements both “good” and “bad”.
But what we can talk about for every situation in life – and especially when you start to seek and bring in a greater degree of spiritual understanding about this – is their alignment, or resonance if you prefer.
The gist of it goes like this.
A situation that is resonant, or “in alignment”, with you will generally be favorable, supportive, and/or easy; in short, it will serve you. Meaning, it will respond to you the way you’d expect and hope, it will be feel comfortable for you as you inhabit it, and it will wield the outcomes you’d want to get. There can be aspects of difficulty or struggle to it, but it will generally provide good return for reduced effort, if not with no effort at all. This situation may contain a number of hiccups and issues i.e. things that are less than positive – as stated, most things in life do – but these will either be the kinds of things that “came with the territory” and you were willing to accept as part of the situation’s nature to begin with; and/or they’ll exist but to a contained or restricted capacity i.e. be there but never reach a point of becoming so pervasive they degrade the quality of the situation as a whole.
A situation that is misaligned with you, on the other hand, will be the opposite. Its core signature is that it is unfavorable to you. It will require large amounts of effort to wield residual gains at most – if any gains at all, where your effort is spent just to keep the situation afloat. It may fit you on paper, and it may promise favorable outcomes, but in practice these outcomes will be delayed, partial, and/or be quickly lost. While most situations have their share of difficulty, this one will be much more difficult that what you can handle in a sustained manner. In it, you’re want to progress, advance, clear obstacles and/or reach goals, and yet you’re barely making any progress, if not even backtracking, with the situation perpetually becoming worse. This situation doesn’t have issues and challenges, it is in itself a whole point of difficulty from top to bottom.
A situation that is in misalignment with you can still “serve” you, spiritually speaking, just not in the sense of being favorable to you, rather in teaching you what something that doesn’t looks like. To say an unfavorable situation serves you spiritually is only valid in that it teaches you through opposites i.e. through showing you how things aren’t supposed to be; but it’s not serving you in the sense of actively working towards your greatest good – if that makes sense. I regard the situation with the first washing machine as a typical, illustrative example of a situation of misalignment, while the second an example of a situation alignment.
Most situations in life generally fall somewhere in this spectrum of alignment, with the two polar opposites described above at either end. This element of resonance or alignment of situations is illustrated in a particularly effective way by the yin-yang symbol: the dark segment with the white dot (yin) represents the scenario that is largely of misalignment, while containing redeeming or salvageable features – growth, learning, experience, etc. Whereas the light segment (yang) represents the opposite, a scenario that is largely of alignment while containing a few features representing difficulty, struggle, lack of light, etc. that are nevertheless not affecting the otherwise supportive and benevolent nature of that scenario.
Note I didn’t get to this insight out of this one story, however I do see it as an almost perfect example to illustrate it which is why I’m using it here. The first machine gave a lot of problems while barely fulfilling its intended function, while the second in stark contrast worked flawlessly from the start without effort or drama. Also note, despite what’s mentioned earlier I don’t want to imply with this example “high tech machines always bad” – you can very well find yourself being perfectly and flawlessly served by a internet accessing high-tech device and feel satisfied by it, and that’s going to be totally fine. Alignment is 100% personal, individual; it’s how something aligns with your vibration and serves you. So what aligns with you might not do so with another, and vice-versa. This example is primarily meant to illustrate the disparity between one situation that was favorable/in alignment with one that wasn’t.
While in life situations will generally fall somewhere in this spectrum, it’s not always the case they’re “split” so disparately i.e. either predominantly of alignment or misalignment. Sometimes things are just a mixed bag with both good and bad in roughly equal measure – or at least appearing and being lived as so. For a while we didn’t clearly discern the nature of the situation with the machine, first because it had been our choice, and because for large portions it worked without issue. It was only afterwards that we established the contrast between the two scenarios, and we realized the first machine had been, if you will, “set up” from the moment it came into our life.
My perception is as the levels of Light on the planet are rising, situations may have a tendency to polarize and assume a predominance of either alignment or misalignment – perhaps more prevalent for those who awaken spiritually and pursue a more spiritually-inclined path. Why? Because, with spiritual awakening you’ll naturally aspire to greater degrees of Light: to be able to express more of their own truth, and for situations to reflect that truth back to them. To live more surrounded by circumstances that can respect, honor, and allow the expression of their truth. In aiming for this, you’re pursuing higher levels of resonance and alignment in your firsthand experience.
As a consequence, life may then respond by starting to showcase choices between alignment or its opposite, misalignment. For example, it may often be the case that as you pursue a goal or objective, you’ll first come face to face with a situation that is predominantly of misalignment. The purpose of this might be to prepare you for your next choice to be one of predominantly of alignment instead. As you’ll be aiming for largely aligned, supportive, and truthful external reality that can serve you and your greatest good, alignment itself starts becoming a relevant spiritual matter; and staying in misaligned or “mixed bag” contexts will gradually be less and less sufficient. This might result in facing more and more choices involving alignment, due to your own developing spiritual priorities – even if that means at points an apparent increase of (or a more adverse reaction to already existing) situations of misalignment.
This is one of the reason why situations in a spiritually-inclined life may start polarizing towards one end of this spectrum or the other, with the goal of facilitating your learning about alignment. So that when you ask things from Spirit, determine your personal goals, and ideal life scenarios – or, if nothing else, you’re choosing the vibration of what/how you want to live – you’ll be able to better discern when something serves you, and when it doesn’t.
Vibration is made of ebbs and flows, and the nature of situations can vary and fluctuate. Further, and generally speaking, while alignment represents how a situation serves your spiritual path, the value/quality of said alignment doesn’t necessarily imply how you’re meant to deal with it i.e. if you should discard, keep, fix, fight it, etc.
For example, a situation that’s very difficult to endure may be kept in place by your
That being said, and by the same token, you may find situations will hardly ever change in terms of how they align with you; rather, it will be your perception and understanding of them that might change and evolve, rather than their nature.
Often, a scenario that starts out in energy/vibration as being fundamentally unhelpful, difficult, contrary, inhibiting, and/or restrictive to you, forcing you to push hard just to endure yet offering very little in return, and what little it offers requiring a disproportionate amount of effort, will likely never shift into being anything different than that, just like the washing machine that didn’t work from the start. And when this is the case, previous considerations notwithstanding, the rule of thumb is the situation might be in misalignment with you, and will serve the purpose of teaching you what misalignment looks and feels like. In doing so, maybe it will allow you the opportunity to choose away from it; but, most importantly, it will allow you to better discern in the future between situations that serve your best interests and those that don’t.
Alignment can apply to all walks of life, and won’t always come in the shape of secondary/peripheral elements like your washing machine. Sometimes it will apply to a relationship, and to whether the other person generally serves your spiritual growth and greatest good in a constructive way, or if they make for an unstable, frail, if not even toxic emotional environment. Sometimes it will apply to a job or even a professional career, and to whether you’re being supported in a constructive way in what you are doing, where, and with whom, or you’re perpetually putting in a great deal of effort for little acknowledgment, return, or progression. Alignment can apply to where you live, with whom you interact, what clothes you wear, what you eat, the clothes you wear, etc. It can even apply to spiritual information, sources, and beliefs you hold. Any of such things can be items that may resonate with you in a positive and constructive way, or not.
When facing persistent circumstances that might be fundamentally opposing or unsupportive of you, whether they’re large, small, or anything in between, if these appear to not change even if you’re trying your hardest to mend or improve things, they may be present just for you to learn and understand when a certain situation just isn’t aligned with you. The purpose of the situation might just be, not for you to fight your way through it, to “try your best”, but rather, fundamentally, to show you what misalignment looks like, how it “works” if you will. So that you may be better informed making your choices going forward.
