Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Recurring Dream

Usually it's happening on a subway train, with a couple of stops before I must get off. Bags are on all different benches, waaayyyy too much baggage, as I am extremely apprehensive about being able to gather everything up and get it out in time before the train doors shut... it fails every time and then either I wake up or the dream just spins into another web of unconsciousness.

In retrospect, I see the subway is a tunnel leading to a destination, via the train, away from this earth and departing from this life for good... hopefully to someplace higher or more holy than the last. I never quite get to that next destination because I'm weighed down with too much baggage, terrified of leaving it on the vehicle of transport. When this life ends one must ready, in an instant, to drop everything and move forward. Also in life, to live one must regularly be free enough to let go and risk the possibility of loss, knowing nothing really essential is ever really lost. That leap of faith is essential, both in living and in dying.

So while the previous post illustrated a block (or inner wound) in my kinetic energy flow... that which is active, creative & expressive, this is taking it one step deeper providing a needed clue as to what's behind it. The inability to let go (of all that is past) makes it impossible to move forward (in the present, towards the future), be it physical or emotional baggage and/or anything we think we cannot live without... this body being the first thing coming to mind, and all the pleasures, memories, cherished beliefs, ideas and images that accompany us astrally on this grosser physical plane. To live is to die, to die is to live...

Joel

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Clarity in Action

Clarity I am quite blessed and well equipped with... even after dumping alcohol and other toxins into my body; yet that clarity at present is far from fully enlightened because my action and decision-making processes (though not at all weak) have been blocked and obscured... of course intoxication has affected me negatively in this way, frustrating the already existing inner affliction all the more, but the root of it goes way deeper, and that is where healing is needed... not in my intellectual nor spiritual being but in my kinetic active expression, and in practicing what I know (or preach).

The why, the understanding, the vision needs to expand, and that is why we don't just sit around all day and think. Action is imperative in life, as is thought and emotion... each needs to function efficiently so to prevent the whole circuit from breaking down. As the proverb (yogi tea) goes "A man is as vast as he acts"... so be it that clarity is an ever expanding awareness of the relatively and ultimately real, requiring individual action to be made manifest... to be truly victorious!

JDZ

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Freedom to Inquire

Freedom implies, does it not, that you must not follow anyone? You must be free to inquire, not accept, not look to a guide, to a system, to a saviour, to a guru. Freedom implies that you must have the capacity to inquire, not into what others say, but to inquire within yourself, to investigate, to examine the whole structure of a human mind—that is, our mind, your mind.And any form of conformity, imitation according to a pattern, a mould, does not allow free inquiry. And what we are going to talk about demands that you be free to listen—not only to the word but to the meaning of the word, and not be a slave to the word, not accept whatever the speaker says, or deny what he says, but listen to find out.
J.Krishnamurti Reflections on the Self, p 182

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Higher Self

In contrast with our lower self, our higher self, or intent (what William Butler Yeats termed "Mask"), has nothing whatever to do with our body. Most people in their daily lives rarely operate with higher self. This is the purpose of magical training: to operate with higher self in one's everyday existence.

In most people's lives higher self only surfaces now and then, in response to emergencies and sudden, unexpected events. Higher self surfaces to save our lives; to pull us back from the brink; and to warn us away from certain people, situations, and places. Higher self sees an opportunity and grasps it without hesitation or doubt of any sort.

When we operate with our higher self, we are mentally clear, coldly efficient, pitilessly detached, and utterly determined. We no longer feel like our(usual, lower)selves – trapped in our petty little moods and concerns. Rather, we are exhilarated and free; we become one with the Spirit.

When our higher self surfaces it brushes aside all our doubts and fears. We no longer fear death, and we never say die. Indeed, it is our higher self which survives the death of the physical body. This is why we don't fear death (or anything) when we act with our higher self.

In a manner of speaking, our higher self is actually the same thing as our death. When society teaches us fear of death, what it is teaching us is fear of our higher self. Our higher self is a state of unfettered limitlessness, just as our lower self is a state of crabbed dissatisfaction and torpor, symbolized by the prison of the body.

Our higher self acts from the gut, not the mind. Indeed it often befuddles our thinking minds. Higher self doesn't operate on social conditioning – at least not in our decadent, self-indulgent society. Higher self was the basis of conditioning in warrior societies which existed on this earth in ancient times. Even as recently as a century ago humans were more robust, self-reliant, and daring (closer to higher self) than we self-coddling, citified moderns are.

Our higher self acts on our true feelings, not on our thought forms. It acts on inner certainty rather than on the way we have been taught to act by our parents and society. As a result, when we act with our higher self, our own behavior often surprises or embarrasses us.

Our higher self can be quite audacious: sexual, defiant, or disruptive and contemptuous of social consequences. When our higher self takes command it takes our breath away. It numbs our lower self – our thinking mind – which feels somehow left out, embarrassed, guilty, or puzzled by our own actions. Our lower self may try to backpeddle, or make amends, or undo whatever social damage our higher self has perpetrated. It is at these moments that we can become conscious within ourselves of the division between our lower and higher selves, since at such times they are both operating at once, at cross-purposes.

(Copyright © 2009 by Bob Makransky. All rights reserved).