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.