The Greatest Secret: Collective trauma and civilization

There is still a Great Secret out there. One that is not really a secret. But, at the same time, it is.

It is so secretive it is hidden in plain sight. It is such a big secret that you can visit public buildings in many major cities of the world and see evidence of it. It is such a big secret that many people have heard about it at some point in their life. It is such a big secret that you can find it on the Internet if you know what to look for. It is such a big secret that there have been wars fought and atrocities performed to keep it hidden. It is such a big secret that it is the subject of one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of humanity.  It is such a big secret that it threatens the very foundations of Western civilization.

Great secrets are kept because their overturning would set the world as we know it afire. Those who participate in the keeping of these secrets understand fully that it is impossible to hide truths. The attempt to conceal a truth only works for a while. But after a truth becomes readily available to those who seek it, instead of trying to conceal it again, all attempts are made to discount it, distort it and deny it.

Great secrets must be kept because their revelation throws everything else into question. Once a great secret’s truth is accepted, the individual and group is then forced to confront the fundamental assumptions that underlie their perception of truth and reality as they know it. The greatest secrets threaten the philosophical and spiritual underpinnings of a society and, once revealed, point the way to a larger conception of reality and a broader understanding of what the world really is and what their place is in it.

But this is exactly why great secrets are kept. For the purpose of control.

In the current times, it is impossible to keep any secret whatsoever, let alone a great secret. Everything that has ever been done in the dark is now being seen in the light. All of the minor secrets subordinate to the greatest secret are being revealed. As a result, Western society is coming closer and closer to being forced to accept the greatest secret as pure, unadulterated truth.

The ramifications of this acceptance hold grave consequences for the plans of the currently in-fighting Elite factions and their minions; those who have invested in the suppression of the Great Secret. The investiture of belief and support into paradigm-changing secrets is tantamount to giving your life to the secret. Therefore, once the secret is revealed, the life based upon it dissipates, leaving the individual so invested bereft, left drifting upon an ideological, philosophical and spiritual raft rapidly breaking apart beneath them.

Movies point to the Great Secret. Television shows of all types. Books do also. Religion, spirituality, the manifestations of culture and society all are signposts pointing the way to the revelation of the Great Secret. Language itself reveals the Great Secret. The mechanics of dreaming and astral travel. The Great Secret is the key to unlocking the gateway to the soul.

Once a Seeker has caught the scent of the Great Secret their pursuit of it will lead them down the rabbit hole and even beyond, as the rabbit hole must eventually end and the Great Secret is boundless. Speaking about the Great Secret to family and friends will often elicit either amusement or shock, depending upon their state of consciousness. But because the Great Secret is nearing the surface of mass, popular awareness, every whispered question, every triumphant discovery of a heretofore unknown fact, every answer found that brings up multiple new questions affects the awakening process of the collective.

Once the Great Secret becomes widely known and irrefutable by any dastardly machinations of an embattled Elite or disempowered NWO technicians society as we know it will crumble and a new form of society and interpersonal interaction will take its place. This new form of society will be more egalitarian, based upon Divine and Natural Law, not the corrupted and pyramidal form of law currently institutionalized by the Roman Cult.

Collective trauma will be one effect of the revelation of the Great Secret. It is unavoidable. Some will be unable to accept the truth. These individuals and groups will deny it and potentially engage in violence in order to repress it. For others it will be too much and they will commit suicide. Truth dispels lies and some will not be able to live with their life-long complicity. That truth, once known irrefutably is like water in its purifying and cleansing aspect, remorselessly dissipating any weak or false constructs until all that is left is the pure essence of a thing.

The revelation of the Great Secret will destroy the institutional edifice of formal religion. It will destroy the institutional bedrock of the political, legal and economic systems. It will even draw the wind from the sails of those who consider themselves on an alternate path, especially those who have not challenged and overcome their most basic assumptions about reality.

These individuals, in particular, will be among the hardest hit mentally, emotionally and spiritually as they are forced to reevaluate their version of reality thereby coming to the unavoidable conclusion that they were really invested in the system the entire time they thought they were not. Being so compromised their karmic responsibility is the same at those they previously decried as being asleep, or sheeple, when they, also, have been locked consciously in vested ignorance.

The Great Secret is simple. All Truth is. The Great Secret is all-encompassing. It is the pass-code that unlocks every other secret that has been kept to maintain the control system for hundreds and even thousands of years. The absolute revelation of the Great Secret will even blow away those who consider themselves open-minded. Even now, every single person in the world, no matter their position in life, their wealth, their possession of power of any sort, is enslaved by a system of belief and corruption absolutely dependent upon the mass acceptance of the illusory reality.

Even those who have already been exposed to the Great Secret only really understand it intellectually. They believe it. They think they know it. They hope it is true. But there has been no unassailable evidence produced as of yet. No smoking gun. And once its truth is unquestionable, even their sense of reality and truth will morph and transform.

Until such time as public revelation of the Great Secret occurs, it remains contentious. If I wrote it here, now, you, the reader and your logical mind still has the space – and is heavily programmed – to deny its validity. You have been trained to reject it automatically from the time you first began to explore your world.

I will end by telling you that you are exposed to the Great Secret daily. Every one of you. If not in your home then out on the streets. You see it on the internet or in the movies; you can watch it on television or hear it on the radio or your ipod. You learn about it from grade school to college. You see it at the heights of social acclaim and at its dregs. You may feel pity when you see it. You may feel anger or hate. Or you may love it without really knowing why. You may distrust it and look away from it or you may embrace it and attempt to move closer to it.

The Great Secret is inside of us and it is out in the cosmos. You can look both outwards and inwards and find the Great Secret looking right back at you, singing to you, laughing with you and crying with you. It engages your deepest fantasies and embodies your most private fears. The Blackness within your mind reveals the Light.

You know the Greatest Secret.

Really.

You do.

The Rules of Capitalization: The spiritual lies we live

It is often difficult for people to handle the Truth. We all have our “little t” truths, but when it comes to the “big T” Truths that speak to aspects of “big S” Self as opposed to “little s” self, we often do not want to hear it. People can go an entire lifetime running from Self and Truth. In fact, even understanding that there is a difference between self and Self, truth and Truth can be too much for many to handle. Here are two examples of “little t” truth versus “big T” Truth:

Money will make you happy. That is a “little t” truth. Money will give you the capacity to pay your bills, to buy gifts for people during birthdays and special celebrations, to get things that you desire and think you need in your life.

More money, more problems. That is a “big T” Truth. Money will not only allow you to take care of the material things in your life that you need, it will also allow you to engage in behavior that you may desire, which is not the same as need. Indulging our desires is the quickest way to find out who we truly are and, sometimes, that is not necessarily a good thing.

Now here are two examples of “little s” self versus “big S” Self.

I’m an individual. I like certain things and dislike other things. This is an example of the “little s” self. There are things that happen in life that make us happy and sad. Naturally, we like the things that make us happy and we dislike the things that make us sad. Our bodies react to our thoughts by sending a cascade of chemicals out from the hypothalamus (neuro-peptides) that suffuse our cells, changing their state, which we call having an emotional reaction. Being happy, being sad, etc. Chemical reactions which are imminently controllable, if we so choose. Our emotions are powerful and they are often an important factor in the decisions we make in our lives.

We are One. We are all a part of God.  This is an example of the “big S” Self. Also called the Higher Self or one of the 72 Names of God, we are, individually, like cells in a human body or like droplets in the ocean, a part of something larger and beyond our individuated consciousnesses. Being such, we are not our egos or personalities, we are the silent stillness of Awareness that lies beneath the thoughts that often course remorselessly through our minds. This Awareness is our connection to our Higher Self and to that higher Divinity which lies beyond. This is who we really are. The core of our BEing, that which is aligned with the Eternal and Infinite.

Coming to understand these differences between self and Self, between truth and Truth is coming to terms with the reality of the holographic matrix within which we live and carry out the conditions of our lifetimes. Our “little t and s” truths and selves are the ego-bound, personality-driven, limited almost mechanical constructs through which we view the world and our interactions. They are the product of our upbringings, our family values, our societal mores and our conceptions of dualistic existence. It consists of our likes and dislikes, our rights and wrongs, our goods and bads, our positives and negatives.

Our “big T and S” Truths and Selves are our connection to each other, to the world and to the cosmos and the Infinite and Eternal beyond even that. They are our resonant response to the thrill and joy of existence, to the contradictory and yet supportive conditions of a limited material existence and an unlimited immaterial existence. The contradictory understanding that we will die, and yet we will live again. That we have only a short while upon this earth, yet there is no end to what lies beyond.

A general response to these Truths that lie beyond the ken of too many is an immersion within the daily grind. A concentration upon minutia. An over exaggeration of our physical bodies to the detriment of our spiritual bodies. An elevation of the emotional and personal entrapment to the exclusion of a greater form of emotional and personal detachment. We often desperately hold on to the “I”, to the “me”, so that we don’t have to admit the existence of a greater “We”. The contradictions of our existences demand this willful blindness to the Truth in favor of our truths.

To enjoy material life in the Western cultures is to celebrate the “I” and the “me” over the “We”. To live within a capitalist culture is to celebrate the “I” and the “me” over the “We”. To continue to internalize the inherently separative qualities of our culture, we must create a virtual battlezone within ourselves between self and Other, the Other in this instance being everyone outside of self, to include family members and friends. This results in the fundamental schism of a lifetime, when considering the fact that, in order to alienate others, we must first create division and separation within ourselves. This division and separation comes at the cost of the greater “We” and often occurs at a very young age.

The journey of a lifetime then becomes a reclaiming of the innocence of childhood; an innocence that recognizes the Truth of Oneness and a resonant, compassionate understanding in the collectivity of BEingness. We are alike, we share more in common than may be immediately obvious, your good fortune is mine, your happiness is my joy. Being happy for your sister because she is happy, celebrating your friend’s good fortune because it is also yours, honoring the stranger because you have also been a stranger before and know how it feels.

Awakening to the necessity of piercing the “little t’s and s’s” is one of the first steps along the journey of reconnecting with your spiritual and greater Self. Controlling your emotional states and the inner dialogue, finding out who you truly are within and living life in the Present and not the Past and the Future are all attainable goals, if and when you decide to embark upon that path. Going within to meet your Inner Child, seeking to heal her or him and send that part of yourself on a journey of re-connection with your Higher Self will lead to sustained and constant spiritual growth and a more joyous and connected experiential journey through the days of your life. This is the goal of an incarnation, at heart. Not money, not security, not happiness. These things are ephemeral and do not last. Only what is within and reflected without, lasts, and only what is within and reflected without, is Truth. Only what is beneath the inner-voice, beyond the thoughts, is Self.

Learn to recognize the Rules of Capitalization. Then live your life seeking to internalize them with eyes and hearts wide open to experience.

Love and Life

 

I wonder sometimes, what Love truly is. How it feels, and if what I feel for others, is truly Love.

Coehlo’s seminal text, The Alchemist, last came into my life at a particularly fortuitous time period, as I dealt with issues of a crossroads nature in all aspects of my personal world. The tale is wonderfully drawn, clear and an excellent primer for many of life’s more esoteric vistas. The book begins with the relation of the story of Narcissus, and his death by drowning in a beautiful Lake. The Lake, feeing sorry, did not realize Narcissus was beautiful, but only saw its own beauty, reflected by Narcissus’ eyes. The book contains a lot of gems thus far along the read; gems that I’ve read elsewhere before, and have also realized of my own experience.

Is what we love about others, that which we love about ourselves? There exists also the truism that what we hate about others is what we hate about ourselves, so why should not its opposition be true as well? And, if that is the case, what does that say about the nature of Love? Closely related to these questions, is the realization of the magnitude of the statement and biblical verse, (1st John, 4:8) God is Love. Again, working in opposition, Love is God.  So, if what we love about others is what we love about ourselves, and Love is God, then what we are truly loving is the Divine that we find in the reflection of our own perfection manifest through the medium of dichotomous existence, the  manifold illusions of separation, distinction and differentiation. Do you feel me?

God is One (God being in this conception the manifestation of the All: Omniverse), All is One, Love is the vital force that permeates all of Creation, that allows the atoms to bind together to form molecules, that keeps the neutrons and protons eternally separate and yet immersed within their elemental dance of attraction, the very core of physical Creation itself. At larger scales of aggregation we find the divine harmony of ecological evolution, of biological niches where families of chemical distinction resonate and engage in symbiotic relationships of harmonic convergence, existing as one part of a larger ecosystem, all working in tandem to create a larger whole. The Butterfly Effect exemplifies the chaotic nature of symmetry, within which order lies – despite all appearances to the contrary – and what, pray tell, could better exemplify our current thoughts and beliefs about the vagaries of love, moreso than chaos theory and the realization that order does indeed flow from a primeval source into our lives through the medium of attraction, through the medium of desire, through the medium of Love?

God is Love. Within us, seeds of God lie, in many dormant as the Ego lives our lives, working super-consciously to keep us sub-consciously unaware that there is a Cosmic Order and meaning underlying every single instance and expression of Love in our lives. The Ego is wily, will do everything in its power to keep the illusion of Maya intact. But, beneath every argument there is a reason, there is a manifestation of Divinity, an expression of Love. Beneath every war, a yearning for completion, and holism. The instantaneous nature of attraction – the pheremonic soup of synchronicity and opportunity that sometimes results in lifelong connections and, at other times, only a fleeting-but-memorable explosion of interest and consumation – is the crux of our dilemma, and comprises the entirety of the facade of coincidental correlations that many use in order to deny the fated nature of the times.

Is the reflection of me that I see in you the totality of my commitment to the reality of Love? Or, is there more to the equation? Does compassion play a part? And, if so, what is compassion and how is it expressed as a value of Love?

Compassion is defined as the desire to decrease the suffering of others, which, as the Hindus and Buddhists say in the Four Noble Truths, is one of the mandatory elements necessary in order to transcend this physical plane of existence. And yet, compassion can only be born of Love, of the ability to see another’s pain, because we recognize that pain as a reflection of our own pain, as One expression of a pain that the world feels, that God feels, that is beautiful, and transcendent, and the key to the Door of Life, through which we all must pass to get through to the other side.

The movie American Beauty was an excellent example of this pain, sense of disenchantment and disillusionment, as are many other movies, plays and stories, all of which are the same story, telling us about ourselves, and about our promise and potential, as well as our doom and destruction. All stories are only One Story, All loves are only One Love, All of us are only One of us, we are all, therefore, One.

An expression that encompasses the juxtaposition of compassion and Love is, “I’m Sorry. I Love You”. I feel you, and resonate with you, on the same vibration of love and joy, ecstasy and despair, anger and envy, happiness and depression. I see your heart as my own heart, feel your anxieties as my own, hold your triumphs as high as my own, unadulterated by a need for envy or jealous because You are Me, and together We are Free to Be All that we are Promised, All that we believe We can Be when we are young and unbound by the life choices we have made.

The rising exhilaration that comes from the realization that all of the above is true is felt as a gentle thrumming in the body, a gentle shiver that moves from the base of the spine up, into the crown. Can you feel it now? As you can when you hear or read some Eternal Truth? That is the confirmation that we all are One, that Truth, beneath the relativity of our senses and experiences is more than truth, culturally and individually defined. While we are drugged by the sensuality of the Ego, confused by the rush of emotions and experiences and bombarded by stimuli from both within and without, beneath that seeming torrent lies the deeper calms of Eternity, where all Experience eventually sinks, softly, permeated by Light and Dark alike, eventually undifferentiated from the Source of All, while still, incredibly, remaining distinctly aware and conscious of its individuality. Immersed in Love, in God, in All.

At the personal level, then, I am confident in the Love I feel. The compassion that opens my heart to you, to the multiverse, to Divinity. Being not yet immune to the vagaries of emotional turbulence, I waver in the storm, bombarded by emotional currents that do not all belong to me, but are emanations of our shared spiritual milieu, traversing the biosphere, atmosphere and etherosphere simultaneously, affecting those who are open to such. And yet, I revel in the Love. Am dwarfed by the immensity of its expression. Tears and laughter combined, transcendent joy and intimate sadness, the blessing, and promise, of Life.

Experiential Living: Life and lemonade

I suppose experience is what I’ve been after all along. Back in the day, during my college years, especially at the HBCUs I’ve been blessed to attend, I’ve seen more than my share of fights, comprised of individuals and groups, although I’ve been doubly blessed to be a peacemaker rather than a warmonger. Whenever the masses would run away from the gunshots or surging crowds, I would run to them. Whenever an argument would break out, I tended to seek resolution rather than further animosity and chaos. The experience was visceral and real, requiring me to be totally present in those moments of conflict. The same emotional highs that create vivid memories and the addictive need to experience them again and again also act as markers in our mind’s eye, drawing us back to them for the reliving, again and again.

In those days when experimentation was the goal, rather than the method of intoxication being the most important aspect, it was the friendships and the journey itself that provided the experiential manna, which is why that time period came and passed in my life as a phase, one which I look back on and do not miss but appreciate, for the experiences and memories both good and bad. Attempting to hold on to experience and to keep memories alive are both banes of the dope fiend seeking to escape experience.

Being caught up in sensual experience is also expressed by the pleasures we accrue as we age, the food and drinks we like, the television shows and movies, the drugs, the sexual positions, all remnants of previous experience. For example, I love McDonalds Big Macs because they’re good. I’ve known they are good since the first time I ate one and they taste the same today as they did back then. Experience. I eat them now seeking that same taste, comfortable, familiar, without mystery. I watch science and speculative fiction television and movie shows because I seek a return of the familiarity of youth, the books and the comics I used to read. These movies, with this new technology brings these things to life in ways that were impossible to do just a decade ago and it is a joy to me to see the characters I could only imagine by animating a 2-dimensional comic up on the big screen, their muscles just as taut, their exploits just as superhuman as I remember. Experience, albeit more cerebral than actual.

At a certain point in life, experience becomes stale. Most people, when this occurs, take refuge in the fact that they’ve always done it before so they continue to do it, even though every fibre in their being is telling them that it is not working anymore. As with dope fiends, the high doesn’t get you as high anymore. With food lovers, the big mac doesn’t please your palate the way it used to, even though it tastes the same, something is missing, the enjoyment, the pure, sensual satisfaction.

Rather than look at these thoughts, examine these feelings of discontentment, we seek to drown ourselves even further in a miasma of sensual experience hoping to find that dish that reawakens our passions, that sexual position that takes us just a bit closer to the perfect orgasm, that drug that makes us just a little bit higher, that takes us away from the underlying realization that none of this experience is enough to truly satisfy something within us, something that is telling us that there is more, that we need more, that we have to have, more.

For those to whom these feelings overwhelm, experience steps in and they/we create, consciously and unconsciously, conditions in their/our life that send them/us spiraling into the dark night of the soul and the supreme realization at that point is that change is an experience. That, perhaps, there is more to life than what we have previously known, that perhaps drugs aren’t the way out at all. Perhaps there is a bliss beyond the sexual orgasm, a physical contentment beyond that provided by the comfort foods that we consume daily. That experience is not bounded by what we’ve experienced before. That there are new experiences out there, new forms of perception, new forms of sustenance, new forms of living, of loving, of experiencing life in its variagated aspects.

The transition from one perceptive narrative to another can be immediate or transitional, can occur in an instant or take a day, a week, month, year or decades. But whenever it occurs, at some point you stop and realize that you are not in the same place that you were, that you are not the same person that you used to be and that something happened at some point to make you different. Meditative journeys into Self confirm this realization and you begin to trace the path back, into your past, noting the milestones and important events that changed the course of your life to its present one, morphing your perception of yourself and the world into the one you currently possess, or are currently in the process of formulating through your own unique experiences.

When you realize that you no longer need the crutches of the past, that you no longer smoke the cigarettes or the weed, that you no longer watch Jerry Springer or engage in the neighborhood or workplace gossip, that you no longer seek outside of yourself – in another person for instance – for completion, the quality of your experiences take on an entirely different tone, and your worldview expands as you become aware of alternative perspectives and the interconnectedness of humanity as a whole.

Life being comprised of successive experiences, being a collective experience in and of itself, I suppose what we’re all after is experience. I’m not special, or at least, any more special than you are. Being consciously aware of our movement through the days and years of our lives becomes a paramount accomplishment when we finally realize that each and every event, each and every choice is meaningful and that the quality of our lives is dependent upon these decisions that lead up to and make up our individuated life paths. In this viewpoint there are no bad decisions, no negative occurences, because every, single thing that happens to us has meaning and leads to further movement, evolution, and even, change.

Change is a good thing. Clarity of mind and the purification of the body/temple go hand with the shedding of the past in the attempt to create a present and future of light and love. The importance of finding one’s life purpose and living in accordance with the truths we discover on our journeys of experience cannot be understated. Change is inevitable, the removal of the physical, mental and spiritual detritus that obscures the perfection of our conception is evolutionary in nature and will occur at every level of Creation as a condition of life itself. Growth, movement, experience. In seeking the light, what further evidence of Divinity’s perfection do we need, other than the proof of our own experiences?

Conscious Living: Seeking the highest potentiality

Sometimes it is difficult to see through the haze of emotions, past experiences, neuroses, personality quirks and cultural and familial indoctrination in order to find your truth. In fact, this is probably one of the most difficult things to do once the decision to take your spirituality seriously is made. No matter what tradition you may practice, there remains the detritus of a lifetime’s worth of programming that must be identified, codified and sorted through in order to find the pure light of your spiritual self that lies beyond. The major religions all recommend certain spiritual tools that allow you to sift through the layers of the personality in order to accomplish this aim, to include affirmations, prayer, contemplation and meditation.

Within the structure of traditional religious practice, all of these tools serve certain ceremonial functions. People pray together in churches and mosques, they quote affirmations and meditate together in Sat-sang. Tales of faith designed to teach deeper spiritual lessons bind believers together within the ceremonial structure of the religion to create a common narrative that transcends individuals and cultures. The codification of belief has come to define aspects of societies to the extent that entire geographic regions of the world can be simultaneously assigned to disparate religious systems that also possess political characteristics as well. Because of this institutionalization effect, the structure of formal, spiritual aspiration takes on both the positive and negative aspects of politics and economics, resulting in the degradation of spiritual qualities and the elevation of consumptive qualities.

When spirituality becomes mass-produced, therefore, the danger of formal religion’s incapacity to elevate the individual soul to a higher plane of self-realization and existence becomes much greater. When church or mosque becomes a weekend jaunt, when prayer or meditation becomes only a social function, when affirmations become pithy quotes, spirituality dies a quick death and dogma sets in. Of course, the original capacity of each religious tradition to bring the seeker to a state of higher consciousness remains available, yet the path of such a person must then wend its way through all of the personal and cultural brambles that conspire to keep the true aspirant from self-realization. Working through your daily trials and tribulations is then experienced as a constant questioning of Self versus Other, of belief versus truth, of personal knowledge versus cultural tradition.

Are they lying to me? Do they know the real truth or is this just their interpretation? Is what I believe right or wrong? When seeking the elevation of the soul beyond the material planes of existence, when seeking to exemplify a higher form of living while still being incarnate upon this earth, when seeking to embody Divinity in thought and practice, these questions threaten the aspirant with immobility and doubt. It is at this point that tradition – the teachings of your religion, the experience of your own, personal spiritual explorations – comes into clarity. Seeking the highest potentiality, according to the system of truth that your own discernment has confirmed, becomes the way through the morass of doubt and ambiguity that ever threatens those without conviction.

The highest potentiality is the path that best exemplifies a divine passage through life’s disparate lessons. The form of the ever-present question becomes, what is the highest potentiality of this experience? Our individual growth depends upon the manner in which we deal with life’s trials and tribulations. How we respond to each test determines whether or not we have to repeat it, at a higher cost for each iteration. Seeking the highest potentiality allows us to consciously chart a course forward based upon our own personal spiritual knowledge and experience, no matter where we may be along the path. As we both succeed and fail during the course of our lifetimes, we gain a greater confidence in our ability to live our truth. How our personal truths then come to resemble and manifest the greater Truth that binds the cosmos together in love then becomes the indicator of our personal spiritual progress and the standard by which we come to live our lives in a conscious manner.

Living life consciously can only occur once we have recapitulated our lives, gone through our memory banks and examined each lesson we have learned for its deeper Truth. Once we have done this we become aware of the story of our lives, our own personal mythos. We become aware of the trends of our lifetime, whether we are the hero or villain – according to our personal belief system – and what the value of such assignations might be to the future course of our lives. We can then make the effort to live an examined life and become resolute in our desire to become better people and we are able to make conscious decisions about who we are and who we want to be. It is at this point that seeking the highest potentiality of each lesson becomes ingrained within our psyche and lived reality, allowing us to then embody our highest principles automatically and on a daily basis.

Coming to the point where we can live a conscious life is not an easy thing. Often, it takes personal trauma to get to the place where we can even examine our lives deeply enough to realize who we truly are because it takes being able to pierce the lies we tell ourselves as well as the lies we have taken on as our truth. That truth can hurt and, often, we have to be at a place where life experience has forced us in order to even want to examine our behavior and thought processes to that degree of detail. This is generally known as the dark night of the soul and results in the death of the Self and the rebirth of a new aspect of Self, better equipped to live your life honestly because of this direct-if-originally-unsought self-appraisal.

Mid-life crises, traumatic events, social ostricization or unforeseen occurrences and accidents can all result in the onset of the dark night of the soul and the resultant death of the self. And while it may seem like a negative thing when you are going through it, once you have come out the other side you realize the importance of what you’ve just experienced and are then prepared to live your life consciously in search of your highest potentiality. The tests never stop, because that is what life is all about. It never becomes easier, just different. Envisioning our experiences as cyclic and spiraling ever-higher as we continue to co-create our shared reality gives us the necessary perspective as well as the impetus to reach for the stars, seeking the truest manifestation of Self as we journey through our lifetimes in preparation for what lies beyond.

Physical Abiding in Oneness: The awakening heart

Compassion is not a simple thing. Empathy. Putting one’s Self into the place of another, feeling where they come from necessitates the quieting of the egoic mind, the stilling of the constant chatter of distraction, that ever-playing chorus of voices and opinions that fills our minds. But sometimes, it is possible to come outside of ourselves long enough to actually feel where another person is coming from and, by so doing, take a short walk in their shoes.

The Bodhisattva vow in Buddhism is the promise to devote one’s Self to the elevation of all Beings no matter their station, and to forgo one’s own transcension of this world until all other Beings have passed on ahead. That is a serious promise. To be a part of the cleanup team as it were, those who wait till everyone else has left Creation before leaving themselves. It is also the epitome of what compassion truly is. Most of us possess the capacity to feel compassion and most of us do, at many points during our lives. But that does not mean that all people do, nor that all people have the capacity to do so. Psycho and sociopaths are ready examples of those who lack the human capacity for empathy and compassion, for whatever reason.

Some consider it a gift, while others consider it a curse. Those who are truly empathic go through life sometimes believing that their ability to feel the pain of others is a curse, rather than a gift. It is only when they come to the realization that this ability often comes with the capacity to heal others with the depth of their feelings do they come to understand the beauty of their gift, and the reality that it took, often, a lifetime of suffering on their parts in order to fully understand and remedy the suffering of others.

At the stage of evolution the world now approaches, it is the way of the heart, of compassion and empathy, that will show the world the light at the end of the tunnel. The depravity of this latter part of the Age of Pisces has been filled with so many examples of heartlessness, brutal violence and a total lack of empathy on the parts of secretive cabals, governments and individuals alike, as above, so below. The cheapness of life and the short measure given to the innate human right to existence is an indication of the turning of the clock, the passage of the measure from balance to the extreme, which is as it should be, in all actuality. Life, Creation, abides by rules of energy dispersal and accretion, of repetitive cycles and patterns within patterns, masking as chaos and instability. This capacity for masking order with disorder is the condition of incarnation and the illusory reality that so many traditions speak of. Being able to see past the figures before you and observe the nature of the dancing shadows on the cave wall reveals the passion play of creation for what it is, a play carried out upon a darkened stage, the observers being the multiverse, each moment measured out for its full, emotive impact, its underlying tension and release, expression of originality, contributing to the ongoing evolution of All That Is.

To abide upon this planet, humans have had to do awful things. One of the most awful among these, is the relegation of love to an act of physicality, security and possession.  Due to the nature of Creation and the world that we have inherited, the relationship between the sexes has passed into the extreme expression of the patriarchy with its attending ills. Love, as the quintessential expression of Divinity has become associated with psychological and physiological imperatives passing in nature, ephemeral and only the surface aspect of a deeper, abiding energetic holism that undergirds all of Creation.  When, in the Christian Bible, it is stated that God is Love, this is meant literally. In other, more ancient traditions, it becomes clear that what this refers to is love as an actual energetic form,  a sublime strata of Being-ness that suffuses all of Creation, much like air fills the atmosphere of our Earth.

Compassion is love. Compassion is the love of Self as Other, or Other as Self. The ideal of Oneness experienced as a visceral knowing that the other person is a part of Self, that their situation is your situation, that their pain is your pain. The plurality of Beings upon this planet exemplify the type of evolutionary diversity that such an intense cradle of spiritual experimentation requires. That being the case,  it often takes quite a bit of practice for many to get to the point in their soul’s evolution where they can truly feel compassionate toward others, especially if those others are quite far away from them in ethnic, social or moral distance. But it can be done and there are many faiths where this requirement is a main tenet. To feel love for the Other, for your enemy, to forgive, to have compassion for the situation of another.

Spiritual maturity is birthed from experience. Experience is part suffering, part joy. The pain of a life can be bittersweet, and this feeling of happiness and sadness mixed is a magical place of love and understanding that possesses the capacity to lift an individual’s consciousness past egoic tendencies and limitations that might otherwise keep them bound within their own minds and experiences, relegated to an unemotional and intellectual experience of reality lacking the fullness of emotional immersion that the empathic experience on a daily basis. If this is the case for you, there are methods by which you can increase your compassion through prayer and cultivating an open heart, through meditation and the contemplation of love and Oneness, through direct experience and actively seeking out ways you can help others. At this point in our shared journey, this is what is required of us each, to look within ourselves in order to find out how best we might serve all of humanity. How we might burst free from our boxes, break free of the paradigms that limit us and open ourselves to our own spiritual and evolutionary paths, and those of others. After all, you are me. And we are One.

Subjective Perceptivity: The greenness or pinkness of love

I wonder if it is possible sometimes for people to feel things the same way; if, perchance, they have the same idea about what a feeling is, if, they experience emotions the same way. It’s like that question, does everybody see the same color red, or is my red your orange and your orange my green. The subjectivity of perception…

What does Love
mean to
You?

Is it warm and
fuzzy like a
deep, vibrant red
or does it open your
soul and go straight
to your head?

Do the fits, starts
and bumps make you
trip, fall and stump
your heart on the
hard rocks of life?

Or do the pitfalls
and pratfalls
enthrall you
then stall you
as life then
befalls you and
love’s call
leaves you…

crawling.

Bemoaning and
groaning, intoning
entreaties to G-d
to release you
(from this pain)
appease you
(in this game)
to treat you …

…as you deserve to be treated. Which is the crux of the issue, I think. My green is your pink and my intentions in Love, especially worldly, romantic Love, probably do not match yours. Why not? Because I have been socialized differently perhaps, because I have different needs and desires, different goals and wishes for my future. Because I’m a man and you’re a woman and we’re two halves of a whole, which means our perspectives come from oppositional centers, meeting at the junction of functionality and destiny. And yet, beneath the material veneer we are souls in synch, our experiences correspond and, at some level, become One Experience immeasurably intricate in nature and yet simple at the same time, expressed as a feeling, a certain knowledge that yes, this is Love, what I’m feeling, this is Love, what I’m experiencing, this is Love, what I’m giving, this is Love, what I am receiving from you.

Beyond the subjectivity of our feelings and experiences is the realization that something is missing in the common expression of the collection of emotional outbursts and social mores that ritualize the dating procedure in a modern day interpretation of primal biological and spiritual imperatives, as pheremones begin the dance of attraction and rejection, drawing biologically compatible individuals together and instigating the mating imperative. Social evolution over millenia formalized the flirting and mating process and we tread, barely cognizant of the flow of time and space, down the path followed by our ancestors, leading toward the tree, the cave, the hut, where the soft whispers of Love and desire find expression in the passing Oneness of sexual union – and, perhaps, procreation – fulfilling our quota of pleasure and desire, if only for the fleeting moments of the orgasm, also called the little death (la petite mort), for good reason.

Waking in your arms
the soft sheen of light
illuminating you
breath low, mouth
slightly open
lost
in dreams desirous of
knowledge…

I wonder you.

Touch you softly,
amazed,
dreaming your dream
in mine,
not knowing, really,
what exactly it is, I’m
trying to find.

Possessiveness, jealousy, desire and greed equates to need in the egocentric game of Love that we live, believing that we are answering the call of destiny while, in the final instance, it is the quota of Love we share that makes us memorable in the lives of others. The kind moments of selfless giving, the power of presence, of being there, supportive and open, when a friend or loved one is in need. The tumultous romances, the passionate orgies of lust and desire, pale in comparison to the quiet, simple presence of Love as expressed by true unconditionality. Usually reserved for children and old people, and strangers in extraordinary moments of release, this kind of love is the base upon which our romantic and courtly, chivalrous love is based, that which we call love but which is actually attraction cubed, since love transcends the call of the senses and takes us outside of ourselves when experienced truly, and requires us to give all of ourselves in homage to the sublime sense of awe of being in the presence of Divinity, which can, truly, be seen in the visage of another who is, truly, not other in any sense of the term.

The blessing of recognition, when another soul has been found which vibrates on the same wavelength as your own. The experiences of attraction and revulsion, as knowledge grows and we build layers upon layers of subjective conclusions based upon past experiences with others, presenting our intentions overtly and covertly, always watching, judging, counting the marks for and against, hardening and softening our hearts as we catch occasional glimpses of that love we first felt through the sharp and jagged spikes of our conditions, needs and expectations.

Can this be love
that I’m
feeling?

Is this truly love
that calls me to you,
that feels so
true?

Do you love me
the way that I love
you?

If so,
then why do I feel so
blue?

My blue is your green and we coexist in between moments of innate recognition of Divinity and Humanity, our higher urges drawn back down into the morass by our Egoic insistence upon applying past experiences to the Now. But what else can we do? How can we not judge X’s behavior by our experiences with Y, some years ago? The situation…seems…similar. So…they must be the same…right? And so we treat them the same, punishing X out of our pain caused  by Y out of fear of being denied our quota of love and rather than be hurt, we’d all rather hurt instead, isn’t that so?

Isn’t it?

Re-conditioning ourselves away from limited conceptions of Love frees us to be, frees us to experience the very essence of Creation through the awakening of the Divine within us all, that which binds us and makes us whole, which makes us, One.