Been there, done that, and will definitely try harder next time. Glimpsing the ancient transcendent vision of “life, the universe and everything” can be appallingly inspirational on many levels but remarkably difficult to communicate. Even to say “it has to be experienced”, falls far short. All language and ideation seems insufficient. One begins to see why the Buddha is smiling.
Most discussions of “god” are partial, focusing on one aspect of the divinity to the exclusion of all others. Usually that aspect is the anthropomorphic one, God a person, a very wise and all knowing person, who seems to have set the universe in motion a while back and through some combination of magic and very clever science, keeps it going.
While on the journey, the inner one always unfolding, the situation, of you or the world, can seem out of whack, weighted in favor of the winners, monstrously unfair. The minuses outweighing the pluses in your own account, your faults competing with your wounds for dominance, and the chances for lasting insight, never mind enlightenment, farther than any horizon.
Our journeys through the mysteries of Being and our being within it can leave us quite mystified, somehow simultaneously inspired and baffled. It is sometimes quite the challenge to keep both feet on the ground while one’s head and heart are in the clouds. After visiting ‘there’, with all its charms and joys, coming back ‘here’ can feel drab and quite depressing. Is it all worth it?
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.
At some point on our treks through the valleys and mountain paths crisscrossing the intriguing remains of mystical and esoteric teachings that come down to us from ancient times, many of which managed to survive repression by mainstream religions to be modernized by twentieth century teachers and facilitators into conveniently updated Zen, Vedanta, Magick, Sufism and the like, we come across references to the White Brotherhood, the Secret Chiefs, the Ascended Masters.
As we move along the various paths the inner journey unveils, we begin to examine, out of curiosity or concern, the lives of others. We seem to see them more clearly, now that out own delusions of grandeur have been modified by seeing the untidy and rather tacky aspects of the current ego and some of its past life cousins. The lenses on our vision seem sharper, less muddied by the prejudices of unconscious judgements and more influenced by the discernment conferred by true humility.
The circuit? That’s the one where we return to where we started and see our very own footsteps in the sand that we presumed had washed away in the tides of many incarnations, those passages through personalities and cultures that we assumed had left some indelible marks, but then find, much to our pleasurable surprise, that they can fade to insignificance once we shuck the comfort zones their gates and fences provided. Poverty and wealth, illness and health, ignorance and education, they all drop away as the feathers on Icarus’s wings as he closes in on the sun. Perhaps he dies on that final descent, or maybe he merges with the divine fire, a spark surrendering?
I have previously advised on the practice of patience when those dreaded ‘dry spells’ interrupt the joys of crazy adventures in dreamland, leaving us high and dry with no enigmas to unravel. Certainly, effort, of the strenuous sort, seems not to resolve the blank canvas that upsets us. It’s not pushing ahead determinedly that catches the elusive butterfly in flight, but a unfocused yielding to whatever may come which presses the right buttons. And that yielding, that submission, may take some time to manifest the unseen. You know, days turning into weeks and maybe months before a breakthrough.
They are two different worlds aren’t they? Or are they? One is packed with schedules and duties, commitments and challenge, the other is some kind of magical mystery tour, entertaining, annoying and mostly mystifying. One abides by the rules of making sense and the other most definitely does not. One is lighted and demanding of attention, the other is shadowy, shifty with trickery. One is rule bound with cultural norms, the other operates as though some fun-loving anarchists wrote the guide book.