The Most Subtle Direction

For the most part, we do not realize that our mind is made up of concentric rings, each ring consisting of thoughts and emotions from different parts of our lives. On the surface, on the outermost ring, are the thoughts of today and yesterday, current, flashing, ringing bells, as insistent to the attention as a television commercial. This ring vibrates with the energy made up of sense perceptions and instinctual reactions, of deep fears and long-held beliefs. Beneath this outer ring is a more subtle layer. It resonates with emotions, those of the moment and those of the past. The ring just underneath this one, the 3rd we'll call it, is the ring of whispers. These whispers are so quiet, so small to and so distant from our attention when it is in the excited, busy state, we cannot hear them. This causes our emotions to not make sense for it is by these whispers that emotions are created. This is getting to be common knowledge, so my intent today is to go a little deeper.

The beliefs that cause these whispers are in the body. Association with physical form has caused every one of them. I'm usually not so absolute, and I'm sure there's a contradiction to come, but I'm being taken on a ride here by my guides so let's listen and roll with it, shall we?

Association with physical form and laws, the beliefs in death, in endings and beginnings, in rules of social interaction long since having lost the connection to the love that spawned them, these associations kill the freedom of the heart. In that heart begins the truth that sets free. That heart because we have another heart of the mind, the assumed heart, the pseudo, artificial heart that beats like a real one, but has limited adaptability and is subject to weaknesses due to its synthetic approximation of life. That heart of the mind will sell itself to reason. Reason is a fine thing, but there is reason based on the assumptions of mind and that based in the wisdom of the heart. The wisdom and reason of the heart is alive, constantly interacting, pulsing with the life around it and ever-adapting. That of the mind is fragile due to its rigidity. It has served and serves a purpose in the physical world, but is further removed from the truth of what we are. We are souls, energy, living beings of will and power. The identity of a physical body with so very many limitations simply does not suit us any longer. It houses fear, fear for the destruction of the body and the mind built of it. When consumed by fear, that energy housed within the mind (your choice, your attention) is limited by it. You go from a powersource to a clogged drain instantly. We forget how so very much our primary perceptions of ourselves effect our capabilities. They define them.

They define the quality of every moment, of the energy we emit. So subtle... the subtle direction of your life is defined by the temple you have erected within your mind. Is the temple glowing with faith? With affirmations of the worth of yourself, of humanity, of the spirit that animates it? Is it clean or full of dust? There is a temple within us all, and the Love that built it in the first place still resides within it. To listen for it, to enter in and allow its resonance to rewrite the rings of your mind is to be freed by its wisdom. This Power is in you now, waiting to be embraced, waiting to rewrite the subtle avenues of mind that put you on the street rather than in the sky. Yours is to see the structure of mind and the resultant consciousness it gives you. Do not be a slave to beliefs now dead and dying; see the truth for yourself; it is your birthright. If you find yourself in a less than liberated state, sit and quieten, sit and listen for the cause of emotion. See the state sprouting like a flower, look at the petals, all the petals of all the constituent emotions of your state, follow it down the stem and observe the roots. Yank it up, knock the dirt off and look at the roots. Smell them, smell the dirt they attached to, the mind they enforced. Feel each tendril with your fingers and admit the communication that happens. Let the information flow into you like brail to the blind one, a flow of information, drinking in like wisdom, knowledge that makes sense of the entire Universe. Feel the roots until the truth is known. Yank flowers of emotional states out of the ground until you realize you are the observer of their petals... until you are the knower of their roots as well. You are not the emotional state, and this exercise will remind you of that. Be free in knowledge of Love.

Just what I needed to hear, hope it was good for you too ;)

Blindspots

I have to wonder sometimes how the final step is made. Spiritual teachings talk of a dissolving of all desire, a death of the flesh, a time when one Sun rises within and dismisses the darkness that veiled our yesterdays. At times this has step has been obvious, seemingly already made. Certain traditions would hold this as the greater truth, everything already enlightened and ours to somehow realize it. All this catching up to do leaves me weary at times, and I am forced into effort. But how to direct it?

"Just wiggle your ear and flare your nose a bit."

"But how do I do that?"

It seems there are many doors atop Olympus, many paths up the mountain and as many portals into the sanctuary. These paths are of philosophies and religions, of enchanted moments and epiphanies, of thoughts and actions. We have a ring of keys showing the doors we have mastered, yet upon entering the temple proper, we are placed in a crucible. The impurities boil to the surface and some are destroyed by the tincture of knowledge we gained in our voyage here, yet the others coalesce into a heavy blemish on the soul. The gods snap their fingers and we are struck with an amnesia, perhaps forgetting how we got there altogether. After several trips, however, the forgetting clarifies into wisdom. We remember the thoughts we thought to reach the doorway. We think them again but they are no use. We remember the feelings which seem closer than the thoughts, yet we cannot reclaim their purity. How are we this person again that feels lost and out of control, who is damned to know the bliss of heaven but is removed in some untouchable way. I'm convinced there are only so many doorways. Forgiveness, the love of acceptance, leaps of faith, steady perseverance, prayer... which for today? The mind can be such a house of mirrors.

To place our attention on the highest form we've known is useful. Upon some idea that elicits the closest emotion to elation and Virtue we've known. Soon the body picks up the pace and lightens, our lens cleared of dirt, the holy becomes easier to see. We become it. The lens drinks in the image and falls in love. Is this the perfect dream? I think so.

The launch from our old mind is like that from a planetary body. There is gravity. At the point of release, gravity begins to end and we become weightless. This is very unnerving and even nauseating. The ground? There is no ground as there once was, and suddenly the urge to fly becomes less important. We like the ground, stability, flatness. Yet this urge to fly... to break beyond. So we revisit the threshold where gravity loses its hold and go a little farther this time. The vacuum takes hold. We feel the skin being pulled from our muscle, the muscle from the bones... and the bones from the soul. There is the quiet promise that something will remain, but it will be utterly different from how it was before. Everything will change. The pantheon of gods will be as a house of puppets and a new Force is realized. We are a part of this new Force, we always were it, always dwelling beneath wrappings of matter. Our voice birthed up through a stack of clay, a shambling mound of moss and earth, yet stifled somehow.

Is it a rebirth we can choose? Is there some proclamation, inward, outward, a decision to end all doubt and fear? I must believe in this, else effort seems unbearable. How many times have I ran from this decision, however? How many times have I failed to give up the fears over others' opinions for pure devotion? So this possibility becomes a curse, knowing it ever possible yet being scared to do it. Attention then turns to the incapability, to dissect it, to solve whatever problem it is within me making me afraid, to rewrite this identity that is incapable of making the choice my cultivated mind desires... the one my spirit craves.

Ultimately the mind's rooms make themselves known. There is one where all knowing of human action and reaction is studied. It is the birthplace of our subjective science of how to be accepted, loved and admired. The entire American culture is a study in this effort. I suppose this aspect always exists in social culture and is perhaps defined by it. Food, clothing, shelter then social acceptance. Yet the goal of which we speak is somehow beyond it. The cause calls us, our own cause, that of a nation, a people or a planet. The old paradigms that served social acceptance, those old rooms of the mind, become obvious. The result of spending time in them becomes evident. We can make every other person happy, and are perhaps quite good at it, but something beyond value is lost. And the death of it we can tolerate no longer. It is the dilapidation and obsolescence of a once useful tool. The old one served a purpose, yet the world in which it was used has changed. As respect for that which is innately human grows and becomes the norm, there is no need to scrape and strive for it from every individual we deem necessary. The practice is outdated, yielding no results, the same as with animal sacrifice and worrying.

The new mind has no sense for fear in social situation. It is replaced with one for purpose. The slings and arrows of judgement are seen as blemish on the face of a personality, one sick with hate and anger. They are signs of a lesser mind, affects of a weaker human. These tendencies will soon show their total lack of worth and those who cling to them will realize their error. The face of humanity will change via the release of those emotions that once shaped it. The soul will remember its own texture and find the feel of God in it, the inescapable Good in it, and that which we need to survive as a planet, will be born.