Paradigm Shift 2: Mask vs Buddhahood

I have always felt a need to meditate but didn’t for many years because I couldn’t get myself to adhere to the practice with any consistency.  I felt that it was necessary but didn’t really know why.  I knew what others have said about calming the mind and all the rest but it was all belief and no knowing.

Then one day my wife and I discussed something or other and whatever it was brought up to me again the whole question of the mask and the realization, (again), that we can’t make the mask a part of our perfected being.  Even if our mask, our outer personality, comes to a correct conclusion about something that will forward us on our path it won’t be really pure if we are still functioning from that place.

Imagine for a moment that you are heading from Chicago to Denver and you are a plane.  Now imagine that you have your wheels removed and replaced with train wheels and you are set on railroad tracks.  You are on the right tracks to get from Chicago to Denver but you are taking the wrong transportation.  You are going to get the clickety clack of the tracks.  It is far noisier than it needs to be and there is no station at the end of your journey that is constructed in a fashion that will allow your plane in.  The problem is that you belong in the air.  You are going to have to take off from the tracks eventually or you can’t get there because you need to land at the air field. Those tracks, that environment, is your personality, your mask.  When you are making your journey, you can’t take counsel of your mask.  Your mask will always have its’ own survival as a major part of its’ agenda.  You must leave it behind.

How can you do that?

One issue I have faced on my path has been that when I try to see clearly it is usually still me, the mask, that is trying to see. Of course, it does that from within the mask and that means I am, by necessity, seeing through the clutter of that mask.  We need to let go of the demands of the desire body.  How often have I heard that in one way or another from one teacher or another in one organization or another.  But how do I do it? How do I stop desiring, being attached to things, results, relationships, etc.?

It will help to understand what is happening in order to see our way out of that mental channel.

We tend to be goal oriented in our lives.  We do things with the end in mind as though it is through our efforts that things come to us in a cause/effect relationship.  We treat life like a football game. Every action is taken in order to create some future result and we are always striving for that result to bring us some manifest objective which will bring us some reward.  It might be a real, monetary reward or a simple positive feeling.  Regardless, that is how we view the way things work when we are always focusing on the past and the future and we are always in a state of desire and non-fulfillment. We are thinking about what our present activity will bring and regretting our past actions that have not brought us to where we want to be.

One thing we can do about this is to strive to take each action as though we were dancing a ballet rather than playing football.  It takes concentration, of course.  In ballet, it is not the  ‘goal’ that matters.  What matters is the quality of the dance at that given moment.  When the moment is gone there is no focus on what was.  Before the moment comes there is no focus on the coming moment.  Ballet is focused on doing the dance in the now with as much grace, as much perfection as possible.  When you are doing anything, strive to focus on the action of the moment.  Of course, it is most likely an action that is meant to bring about some result but it will bring about that result whether you are concentrating on the result or the action of the moment.

The way to solve this is meditation. Meditation can help us to step back from the mask and talk to our own real selves. That is where the best counsel comes from.

No one's experience can be perfectly transferred to another

        This blog entry is meant to give you one reason to be careful about the doctrine that you receive.  I think it will help to clarify why I still accept doctrine but also why I take from multiple groups and teachers and am careful about what I accept and don't accept.

        Eckhart, Prophet, Suzuki, Blighton, Rama Krishna..., all that any of them can give you is THEIR experience.  Even if they are 100% right on (I’m careful and dubious about just who is 100% right,) they still have to bring any experience in to themselves through the distorted perception of both their own personality and the limits of the physical plane.  That will certainly wash out some of the colors of the experience, giving it new shapes that it didn't have when it was happening in the etheric, (heaven), and losing some of the clarity and definition of the original experience because it loses definition.  When someone has an experience on the etheric it is in an environment that is far more 'real' in a very true sense, than here on the physical.  In addition, it is not limited to the five senses which is why, when it is related, it is often in the imagery of archtypes.  Even when it isn't we still get only the person's own unconscious interpretation of the experience.  The experience itself is for that adept's soul, often on an unconscious level but we get only what the conscious recollection can give us and that recollection may, in a sense, be without as many pixels as the original experience.

        Then they have to relate it.  Each person is different and so and that means taking the distorted experience of a spiritual event and bringing it back out again through the same personality and paradigm which experienced it in the first place to be expressed through words which only adds to the distortion.  If you have ever read directions that were first written in Japanese and then translated into English by someone whose first language was Japanese rather than English you will get the idea.).

        Elizabeth Clare Prophet said that when she dictated she could only receive and thus communicate what the ascended masters were giving her if she had some understanding of it herself. That is a refreshing level of honesty from someone who was in a position of profound spiritual authority.  That automatically means that unless her understanding was spot on perfect (almost never the case for anyone here in the physical) the translation was not spot on perfect - i.e. it was, to one degree or another, incorrect.  Therefore, even the "Dictations" of the ascended masters contain some distortions of the original clarity.  (That isn’t to say that you can’t take them as the words of the Ascended Masters.  Just consider that you have a translator from one language to another.)

        So we have a minor distortion within the experiencer at the time of the experience, a distortion of the experience when put into words by the experiencer.  Another distortion by the listener when they hear only what they can accept.  These are the basic distortions.  There are other factors that can be included but are not important enough to mention.

        So be careful and parse what you are given by anyone.  This is always good advice.

Preoccupation with the past

               Tonight my wife was feeling irritated about how someone else had responded to a situation she was involved in.  I pointed out that nothing outside of ourselves can really disturb our inner harmony.  In fact, if you look at that statement it will be obvious that it is true.  If it is outside of ourselves, outside of our emotional body, then it cannot have an emotional impact.  It is when something invades our emotional body triggering something that is already there that the emotional body gets out of alignment.  I asked her what it was inside of her that was the cause of her lack of harmony and after some reflection she began to point out how the behavior of this other person reflected her behavior during the same day.  She followed with some examples.

               I didn’t think that she was getting to the core of the issue since what she was giving me as the catalyst for her irritation was only isolated events in her life that seemed separated from the situation we were discussing and further they could be explained away by someone just having a particularly ditzy day.  I suggested that the cause of her irritation may be deeper.  Upon reflection she saw that what was really irritating her was that this other person’s response to events in her life illustrated to my wife that her own children hadn’t learned the lessons as they grew up that she felt that she had learned on her own but not passed on.  The fact that she’d had to learn those lessons on her own but her children hadn’t learned them from her was a source of irritation.  The question still remained: “Why did that irritate her?”.

               Finally, she realized that she felt that she had failed all those years ago as a parent to teach those lessons and was unhappy to see that her children had fallen into traps that she might have prevented.  She was feeling responsible.  It was at this point that I said what I felt was really the issue.  I felt that she was dwelling on the drama, the events of her past life.

               What is it with us humans that we place so much emphasis on the quality of our children?  I suspect that what we want is to vindicate the imperfection of our own past failures, those events that we can no longer change in our own lives, by having our children do so much better.  We may feel that somehow their success means that we finally got it right ourselves.  What we forget is that our children come into this life with their own set of issues, their own karma, their own momentums to overcome.  They may, in fact, have chosen us to be their parents in order to deal with the very environment that is presented to them by that choice.  That isn’t to say we aren’t responsible for what we offer.  They aren’t subject to fatalism in their responses and we are still responsible for our own actions.  But if our children were going to be perfect they would most likely already have made their ascensions.

               Never-the-less, our preoccupation with our past, once we have examined it enough to learn the lessons that we need to learn, is generally ego supported.  That doesn’t mean that the experience will always be enjoyable for the ego.  In this case personal enjoyment wasn’t the incentive for the ego at all.  The ego wanted something to play with, to knead like Playdough, because the act of that kneading gave her ego a sense of self-substance, no matter how uncomfortable, and that is the reward that the ego received, the gratification.  The ego gained a sense of tangible existence from the experience.

               There will be no getting past an ego that we insist on feeding and, if we dwell on the past once that process has served its’ purpose, we’re feeding that ego.

               But I also suspect that our desire to live vicariously through our children is often fueled by our sense of failure in our own lives.  That isn’t to say that a personal sense of failure will automatically lead to a desire to live through them nor would the desire to do so always mean that we had been a failure.  But that there may be a relationship is to me pretty obvious.

        So, once again, the lesson here is to let go of the past.  You learn what you can from it in order to grow but you let your emotional attachment to your past go.

Paradigm Shift 1

        One of the big lies that the fallen ones have foisted off on lightbearers is the concept of guilt.  There are a lot of reasons why they have done this but, in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons is to convince us that in order to make our ascensions we need to purify and perfect the outer man.  There is a symbiotic relationship between these two concepts.  If we approach our path with the assumption that the outer man must meet the requirement of absolute perfection before we can be worthy of admittance to adeptship then it follows that we are constantly faced with our unworthiness which is all our fault.  Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  We see all of our imperfections as levels of failure and we feel unworthy of the goal and responsible for our own unworthiness.

        That doesn't mean that I reject remorse and contrition for our errors.  We can't make much progress on the path if we don't recognize those places within ourselves where we fall short and, in response, strive to overcome our foilables.  In one very real sense we are responsible for our situation and the recognition of that fact can be freeing rather than burdensome.  When we realize that we made the choices that led to our extended sojourn here in the physical and cut us off from constant communion with God we can see as well that, in that same vein, we are able to make that return journey.  This is evident in the simple fact that we are still here.  If there was no possible way to return then there would be no reason for continued existence.

        With  all of that it is reasonable to ask the question, "If the goal is not dependent on our perfecting the outer man then how do we proceed and what are we to do about this outer man, this mask?" since it seems counter to all goodness to expect that imperfection not only can attain salvation but also that imperfection could stand to be in a perfect environment once achieved.  To put it another way: How much do you think your ego could stand of the presence of God?  To realize the answer of how to proceed we must change our whole concept of who we are.  When we ask that question - Who am I? - we usually come up with an answer that includes our thoughts, opinions, emotions, etc., all of the things that make up what we think of as our 'personality' - how we perceive ourselves 'to be' in our essential character.  But this is not the case.

        Who we are is behind all that.  Who we really are is a soul that finds expression on the physical both inhibited and facilitated by the outer personality.  So it is easy to mistake our outer self for the 'real' person.  This is especially true given that the outer personality would like nothing more than to be mistaken for the real being - and usually is.

Astrology - the Cosmic Clock

        Astrology.  What a subject.  There are few subjects that are as misunderstood even by the practitioners and certainly by those who reject it as ridiculous.  It isn’t hard to understand how someone can think it is nonsense given the approach taken by so many who claim to have a secure grip on it.  How, for instance, can your astrology be given to you in a newspaper column that makes such generalizations about “Signs” as those columns do?  I have read some of them and they make little or no sense whatsoever.  Besides which to use the chart of the heavens for purposes as mundane as those to which they are often applied is to trivialize them completely.  It is, however, the inclination of many to misuse any gift that is given to us, to turn any tool on the path into a goal all of its’ own and this is done all too often with Astrology.

        Let’s talk about what astrology is and what it isn’t keeping in mind that this is only my opinion.  Here is the most basic question.  Do I believe that the planets - those bodies out in space that circle our sun – do I believe that they affect my life, that by their movements they have the effects that are so often attributed to them via the art and science of astrology?

        No.  I don’t.  Not any more than the hands of a clock make the earth rotate and change the time of day.  The planets do not have the effect that is credited to them.  Rather, they are the hands of a clock.  They simply tell you what the condition of the universe is at a given time like a clock will tell you what the time of day it is rather than being the cause of change.

        Well, in fact, they don’t work quite the same as a clock.  A clock will tell you what time it is now but has no ability to tell you what the results of that time will be.  A clock can’t tell you that, given the way things look right now for anything that has its’ beginning at this moment, this or that is what can be expected in the future.  There is no level of clarity to what the clock can say beyond the simple statement about the “now”.

        The planets, however, in spite of their not being the source of anything, do give us far more information than the clock ever will and, given that I don’t believe that God created anything that He wasn’t very adept at using fully.  I have no problem with the idea that the positions of the planets can be used, once we know how to read that cosmic clock, to tell us a lot about the nature of the universe at the time and to tell us a great deal about our karmic situations as well.  And a birth chart does just that.

        When you are born, at the moment you are born, the planets positions can be used to indicate what the karmic environment will be for that lifetime - because of the condition of the universe at the time of your birth.  You might think of it as a kind of  'time stamp'.  These are the issues we need to deal with this lifetime in order to progress on our individual paths.  Where people get the incorrect impression is when they assume that the astrological chart compels us.  It doesn’t.  It impels us.  That is to say it pushes us in a direction but we are free to accept or reject the environments it urges us into, the tendencies we are given are just that - tendencies.  Another way of saying it is that karma will return to us but nothing dictates immutably our response to that karma when it arrives.

        Saint Germain tells us that through the judicious use of the Violet Flame we can overcome any and all karma that we have incurred so that it will not only cease to affect us but will be balanced, that negative karma will be burned up in the Violet Flame itself.

        Kryia yoga is another tool for burning away negative karma.  Paramhansa Yogananda was known to keep track of his astrological chart to determine what the chart said would be his “worst” days for doing anything and then he would make a point of getting more done than otherwise.  He did that to point out that we are not the slaves of our charts but rather that the chart is a tool to use to know when we need to put extra energy into this or that area of our lives, to watch out for certain proclivities.

        Bottom line is that astrology is a great tool to use but a lousy master to be enslaved to.  However, despite it being a useful tool on the path it is not an essential one.  You can get there without it.

A Passenger for the Trip

        I want to discuss a difficult topic to completely comprehend.  I am not sure that I can make this clear but it is important for any reader of this blog to understand because it speaks to a good reason for not doing a blog like this.

        With any subject that I cover in this blog, even if I go in depth, (which I seldom do since it is up to the reader to continue to meditate upon and discover truths about each of the things that I talk about), my aim is not to fill you in on the real truths of the path.  Those are for you to discover.  I am not equipped to take you where I haven’t gone myself yet.  For that you must seek the God within.

        In a sense this is simply a primer for the path, a place to dismiss the simpler concerns that come up as you grow in understanding.  It isn’t even a sign post on the road.  It is more like a pit stop to take care of things that need to be periodically dealt with and dismissed so that you can get back to travelling.  That is why there is an email address for you.  So you can ask questions.  The questions don't need to be major.  They can be simply stuff you have been told that you got no real explanation for.  That is the kind of thing I have found to be overlooked by many different paths and that is what I am willing to address, (if and when I am able).

        There is always a far deeper level of revelation, of understanding, of unity with God available to you in your personal relationship with that being that I, myself, am still discovering.  You might think of what I say in these blogs as an ‘introduction’, a 100-level class, if you will, that is only meant to dismiss concerns, to clarify only the most basic information, and does not bring you the true reality of awareness of God in a personal relationship that is vital to your growth and purity.

        Even when I do discuss a topic, do not think at any time that my information complete.  There is always a level of spiritual understanding and revelation about any subject that is yet to be revealed.  Think of it this way.  The ascent up the steps of any topic is on a spiral staircase.  As you climb you keep coming back to the same place but at a higher level.  This is true of the issues we face, the things we are taught, the experiences life throws at us and it is certainly true of any thing I talk about.  I am at a lower level of understanding on the stairs of knowledge.  Some of you who read these blogs and learn from them have a greater momentum in particular areas than I do myself.  But the very thought of one being ‘higher’ or ‘closer to God’ than another is itself a fallacy.

        So, read these blogs, take what you can use, and move upward.  Eventually you will discover that you don’t walk the path to God with your mind.  Eventually you will find that, in order to achieve the highest goal, you leave everything behind – your ideas, your ‘learning’, your opinions, your ego itself.  In a very real sense that is what this blog is about.  I want to address particular subjects that are important only if they become stumbling blocks on your path and dismiss them so that you can get on with the real work.  When you do this, you become free of all personal knowledge that comes from an egoic structure.  So, it is a paradox that we experience.  We gain all this information in order to get to the place where we are able to let all of this go.

        "I didn’t come here of my own accord.  Whoever brought me here will have to come and get me."  I can’t be the driver but I can strive to be a most co-operative passenger for the trip.

Types of Useful Information on the Path

This is a subject that I have discussed a bit in the forward but I mention it again here not because I am hard set against it but because the distinction is important for the adept to be aware of.  Too often we just accept these kinds of information without thought or consideration.  So if you roll your eyes when I bring it up - well, that is ok.  But it may make you treat the subject consciously rather than without consideration.

        To my mind there are three different types of valuable information I have gotten from spiritual organizations as I have traveled on my path. The first is the set of beliefs of any given organization, those things I am to accept as given because I am told that they are true. It is the kind that you think of when someone mentions doctrine. That kind that comes with a religion, creed, sect, cult or whatever. You might call this their picture of the way things are in the universe, i.e. who is in charge, who does what, who I am to pray to, etc. These beliefs often form the basis of this or that group’s theology. They are beliefs. No matter how firmly you believe these things, no matter if they are true, they are not typically things that you know. They are things that you believe, things that you are told. There is a difference between doctrine and knowledge. The difference isn’t that important when it comes to your chosen affiliation but it is vital when it comes to your personal path. You might say that doctrine is the map that is drawn for you of the scenery up the mountain, the characters you are likely to meet or are available for you to call on as you go, all those things which are outside of you, that make up the spiritual environment of your particular religion, sect or creed.

        It is possible that you do know rather than believe some of what is handed down in a church’s doctrine. But if you do it is because you have experienced it for yourself. You have had a spiritual experience yourself that confirms what you have been told. That is different. Then it is no longer doctrine. It is knowledge that comes to you from experience, from the events of your own journey. These are invaluable for they give you great power and momentum on your path.

        The second is the instruction manual for how to progress on the spiritual path. This second assumes that the doctrine calls for that kind of effort on the part of the member. Faiths that teach that you only need to make a level of commitment to achieve the goal often don’t recognize a process for spiritual growth. For those sets of beliefs, the spiritual process is a leap rather than a journey.  In that case much of what I am talking about, rather than being part of the journey, will be part of the process of adjusting to the environment at the top of the mountain.

        The third are the laws that you must keep.  That kind of information straddles the line between the other two. 

        In the west we tend to get the first type of information, a set of beliefs, especially at the lower levels of spiritual commitment. One example is the Apostle’s Creed that is spoken at every Sunday mass. It lists out the most basic tenets of Catholic belief. In the East the word they use is Dharma. The three pillars of Buddhism are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. At their simplest they are the guru, the teachings and the followers. The teachings in both Hinduism and Buddhism are more of a mix of both beliefs as to how things are and instructions as to how to get where you want to go. Even so, in both the East and the West the instructions for walking the path are left either for the initiate to find or left to be given by a teacher if the initiate has the gumption to seek one out.

        In any event, when I use the word doctrine in this book I mean the first type of information, that information disseminated by a church to tell you what you need to believe in order to be a member of that church. You may have noticed that I am careful not to use the word dogma. For the purposes of this book I have a different definition for the word ‘dogma’.  For an explanation of the difference between my use of the word ‘dogma’ and ‘doctrine’ please see the forward. While I am not a fan of doctrine neither do I dismiss its’ importance. The acceptance of a doctrine at the beginning of your ascent up the path can give you an important grounding, a framework in which to orient yourself and to begin to experience the environment of the spiritual path. The big issue is what you do with it.

Sacrifice, Surrender and Love

As my wife pointed out to me recently a vital element of one’s path is complete surrender. Complete surrender comes with complete trust in God and complete love of God as well. But there is a kind of a Catch 22 to a complete surrender.

Complete surrender when viewed beforehand appears to involve sacrificing everything. We think of it as giving everything up. In a sense losing everything. But it is in fact the lowering of our barriers in complete surrender that allows us rather to receive everything. It is the Father’s good will to give us the kingdom of heaven.

I had a teacher once who told me that the idea that most adepts have about sacrifice is all wrong. What we give up is crap. We give up having walls. We give up the dross or the negative effluvia that stands in the way of a greater contact with God. We give up sorrow, loneliness, fear, anger, separation from God, all of the things that make our lives miserable.  The word sacrifice comes from the word sacred. To sacrifice something is to make it sacred even as the word implies. Whether this means an object, time, emotion, whatever. The catch is this. If we strive to surrender knowing that it means that we will receive everything, and our intent in surrender is to receive everything, then we most likely aren’t surrendering.  We're bargaining.  We are still holding out for gain.  My wife calls this a “merchant’ consciousness, trying to bargain our way to attainment.  It is when we believe that our surrender will take from us something we desire and yet we do it regardless of that or surrender without thought of gain because we love God enough, it is then that we are able to surrender completely.

Behind the statement that “all that is necessary for your path is to surrender” is the underlying understanding that “all that is necessary for your path is to Love God” with all your heart, all your mind, all of your soul and all of your strength. When you first fall in love and you would do anything for the object of your love, that can bring a total, (if temporary),  surrender.  Because surrender is a natural outgrowth of that total love. Within the experience of that love surrender is natural. Without it there is no true desire to surrender.