Read the entire series – Journey To Knowing
Expanding Perceptions and Powers
As we practice our chosen discipline, here in the physical, and extend our explorations in the astral, our experiences seem to sharpen our perceptions and increase the power of our intuitions, most often by clearing out the blockages built by doubt and self-consciousness, leaving us with a clarity that can sometimes be quite shocking.
Maybe we see, or at least glimpse, the dearly beloved grieved by our companion or random stranger, the one who hovers behind the shoulder, saddened and perhaps frustrated by the grief that fences them off. Perhaps ideas, sudden and unbidden, arrive to illustrate the root of someone’s issue or complaint, looking very much like a karmic cause delivering the package of effects unerringly through time and change of costumes. We often see them in a flash, easily forgotten in the stream of conversation and events that tally up the day, the shards of memory popping up hours later to poke and prod. And then we enter the territory of Do I dare disturb? and What if I am wrong? or Perhaps my help might be a hindrance? or Surely it’s none of my business?
Such are the trials of the well meaning aspirant. We become more psychic and sensitive as the vanities and ego-traps fade into the background. We resist the pose of know-it-all, sensing how easy it would be in the land of the blind for the one eyed man to be the revered or mocked or tarnished. After two or three such stings we see how much more useful it is to blend into the background, where offering a hand can be seen as common courtesy.
After a span where spirits and guides seems to always know more we begin to feel that maybe we do too. Again a challenge to our self-esteem, as yet set on ‘low’ despite our advances. Yet it persists until it dawns that many spirits, even though functioning members of that ‘happy dead’ clan, are deficient in the knowledge that you are gaining though your conscious explorations. Higher Selves and Extraterrestrial Visitors are still myths to them, often heretical ones. Many, in fact, still adhere, often with a passion, to the legends and dogmas of their earthly religion, which still categorizes their thought and aspirations for them. That long distance race between faith and knowledge has merely reached a new stage.
Their guides are often pastors, monks or nuns, while yours could be anything from wandering minstrels to maverick mathematicians, hippie stoners, freelancing nomads, forest dwellers and all those clowns and jugglers that populate the fringes just for the heck of it.
This growing tendency to insight and intuition, is, of course, aided and abetted by the embarrassing revelations about one’s own past lives: all those failures of the moral compass, those ethical collapses once conveniently justified, forgotten or denied and now glaringly obvious. Sure, forgiving them in yourself helps in forgiving them in others, while the swapping of judgment for discernment is no small thing.
This trek to insight through the swamps of self-doubt and low self-esteem is one we all take on the journey of knowing and one I can speak of with a certain degree of confidence as I have muddied my own boots many times on the way. One’s assessments can be slightly off the mark but rarely completely wrong. And of course, one learns from one’s seeming mistakes.
I say ‘seeming’ as missteps can often be as useful as correct ones. The dance is there to be danced just as life is there to be lived. One trips and stumbles but picks oneself up and carries on.
As we unfold the various mysteries for ourselves, and therefore others, something like a summation of understanding slips into view. I came across one such glimpse this morning, reading The Spiritual Tourist (1998) by Mick Brown, concerning his investigation of various avatars of divine consciousness in the late 20th century, one of whom was Sai Baba, the Hindu saint revered by millions. The following quote (in a book by Professor Kasturi) really hit home:
“Some of you may feel that it is glorious for the Lord to come in human form. If you were in My place, you would not feel so glorious. For, I am aware of the past, present and future of every one of you. Therefore, I am not moved by mercy. I know why a person suffers in this birth, what it is the consequence of. So I react differently to you; you may call Me either cold-hearted or soft-hearted. I do not cause grief or joy; you design the chains that bind you, both gold and iron.”
Is this where we are headed in the gradual unfolding of the mystery? In this life or the next or the next? Call me crazy but the smart money is on Yes, as far as I’m concerned.
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