Drugs and the path

       Adepts who use drugs, and are on a personal path that is like to mine, must at some point confront that usage and what it does to block us from advancement on the path.  Often, as adepts, we are simply told that they are “bad” but little explanation comes with that information and it is one of those blanket statements that I have come to mistrust.  However, for me there were things to be discovered about the use of drugs that changed my opinion of their effect.  I had to learn on my own and I am a slow learner.  But I think that each person will have their own unique experience.  I have come to realize that they are, for me, an impediment and a short circuit in my being as I try to make every part of me like God.

        Here is my experience of marijuana.  I give you this as a more in-depth explanation of the type, (if you are like me), of negative aspects of this drug than you are likely to get from most spiritual sources.  For me the negative attributes of the marijuana high strip it of any positive ones because for an adept those attributes others think of as positives prove not to be so.

        The one thing that everyone will experience when getting high is the coming down.  It is generally considered to be the user’s big obstacle.  Even more important, all of the enjoyment, all of the lessons or information or whatever that we get by being high doesn’t translate into a change in our real self.  That is why coming down is a ‘let down’.  We haven't incorporated the experience into our true selves.

        Put it this way: if all that I experience when I’m on drugs doesn’t make a permanent change in me when I’m not high then who is it that is really experiencing the high?  I am not including opinions, emotional changes in alignment, the ability to recall or some such in my definition of changes.  I mean a real change in my higher self.  If I’m not reaping the benefit of all that experience does that mean that I’m not experiencing it at all?  Isn’t it the drug having that experience and doing it through me?  When I was high I was a spectator - like watching TV instead of living life.  And, that being true, how is it that the drug would be helping me on my path when my inner being, my soul, my inner self is not gaining experience on the path while I am high?  To understand how that works I needed to understand about my own higher self and the qualifying and mis-qualifying of God’s energy. (There are 3 earlier blog entries – “Like God – Not Like God” - on energy and the chakras that give you a bit more explanation on your use of energy.)  Because if I am giving away the energy I have received from God to marijuana then I am mis-qualifying energy physically through one of the chakras and that energy will need to eventually come up for transmutation into energy that is more real for my inner Godself.  This is true any time that I give my energy away.  That is how I see it.  It is the difference between watching a movie or living real life.

        I want to get on with life.  For me, marijuana, while fun, was a waste of time.  I decided some years ago that I’m going home.

God's Matrix: The Immaculate Conception

        I am aware that God sees all of me.  He can see everything I have ever done and the intent with which I did each act.  God is fully aware of how much negativity I have gotten into and perpetrated in all of the many lives I have lived.  The first thing that comes to my mind is to wonder just how God can still love me, can still love humanity with all of our ‘not like Godness’.  We have done much and have much to answer for karmically, regardless of how much we may be striving to follow the path in this life.  The answer to this is in how much vision God actually has.  If we put all of our iniquity on one side of the scales of justice and put on the other side God’s vision for what we can potentially become, (the Immaculate Concept that God holds for each of us which is what we will become when we reach that pivotal point in the long journey), then the evil shrinks into insignificance compared to the majesty of the presence of God that we will discover within and are eventually meant to manifest.  And, outside of the limit of time, God sees this in the ever present now.

        This is God’s Matrix for us: this Immaculate Concept, and God holds this Immaculate Concept for each of us.  This is the culmination of the journey.  It is also the reason that I know that we live many lives.  I simply have a far higher regard for God and His mercy than to think that we would be cast for all eternity into Hell for one life of illusion within a negative matrix.  We don’t do that to a child that fails a grade in school.  That child is simply made to repeat the grade until she gets it right at which point she moves on to the next grade.  This process continues in the life of our spiritual path until we graduate with doctoral honors into the fully Self-Realized beings we are meant to become.

        It is our fate, should we decide to fulfill it, to become Sons and Daughters of God in the fullness of time – to realize for ourselves the oneness with God that is His perfect intent.  We may rest assured of God’s love and work to manifest that love and oneness in each of our lives trusting in the love that God has for each of us.  That love is one that far outshines the greatest love that any earthly father has for his children.  And which of us would consign our children to hell for eternity for a single life of infractions when the potential is so great?
        The purpose of this blog is not to convince you of the reality of reincarnation.  The purpose of this blog is, through the consideration of reincarnation, to realize the reality of God's love for each of us, the absolute forgiveness that is there in God's Being and the incredible potential that lies within even the greatest of sinners.

"The trip to the top is worth the inconvenience!" - El Morya Khan

Our Personal Matrix: A Landscape of Illusion

        I hope and pray to God that I can do justice to these next two topics.  They are vital to understand because they can be the origin of so much illusion and distraction on the path.  So, let me here and now ask God to be the origin of these communications so that I am not so much in the way as the subjects are covered.

        I am first going to discuss our own personal matrices.  We need to understand that our judgments are based on our ego’s interpretation of the world around us and how that keeps us from letting go and letting God.  Then I want to talk about God’s matrix concerning each of us – what I call the real ‘Immaculate Concept’.

        I have been told in many ways by many teachers not to judge others for we cannot know their experience.  Jesus, we are told, forgave even those who were nailing him to the cross, saying “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”.  We hear that and we think to ourselves that they didn’t know that it was God that they were nailing to the cross.  But that isn’t all there is to it.  The nature of that forgiveness and the understanding behind it was far deeper and much more profound.

        Those of us who have seen the movie “The Matrix” often use it to express what many believe to be true in one fashion or another.  We think of ourselves as being subjected to a matrix environment that we can neither directly perceive and certainly not prove yet we use the mythos to express that ‘intuitive thing’ we cannot directly grasp.  On one hand I do believe that the physical realm is, in a very real sense, a matrix.  I believe that the etheric realm, (heaven to Christians), is the ‘real’ world and that the physical is an illusion.  It isn’t, after all, the matter in an atom that keeps us from passing through it.  Essentially there isn’t any - matter, that is.  Most of us can’t walk through walls, not because atoms are solid material but because of the force that holds them together both individually and as clusters of molecules.  Those forces are quite real but are not solid in the way that we think of the physical world as being solid when we are moving about in it.  But that isn’t the conceptual matrix that is my subject today.

        We each have a personal matrix as well as the one we as humans in the physical plane share.  It is a personal paradigm that filters everything that we perceive – how we perceive, what we perceive, what conclusions we allow ourselves to come to.  This personal matrix rules our lives, often completely.  My wife and I have seen through experience how much this colors our conclusions about others when we discuss people and events in our lives.  And, when we see how trapped others are by their matrices, how they are trapped in Maya, we realize that we cannot judge them for actions which have causes that they are unable to see or understand clearly.  Then, when we are done with our moments of realization and we go on with our lives we fall back into our own matrices and go right on judging others with impunity.

        Here is the crux of the situation.  We cannot judge others.  This is so true on so many levels.  We can’t judge them because they often aren’t guilty of the level of intentional behavior, or mis-behavior, that we attribute to them.  We assume, by their behavior, that, within their personal environment, they must be able to reach the same conclusions about given situations as we do.  This assumption is incorrect.  If they are guilty it is because they are at a level at which they lack the clarity of spiritual understanding, such that they are incapable of escaping from or reforming their own matrix.  Usually, it is because there is a lack of understanding, of awareness of the true reality of God’s Personality and Presence.  People find themselves trapped within cages of perception and we find ourselves judging them for not acting outside of those cages.  Further, most people are incapable of even knowing that they are in those cages.  Once we are aware of that, can see it even if only vaguely, we cannot help but completely redefine our relationships, both with God and with those around us.  The lack of that awareness leads to the construction and retention of our own personal flawed matrices and each of these matrices takes on a life of its’ own so that each of us struggles within our own warped reality and we attempt to judge others by the confines of the environment in which we live, the cage we, ourselves, inhabit.  But they don’t live there. 

        If we see someone doing something that we judge as being out of alignment or ‘not like God’ we cannot know that we are right in placing blame on them as though their actions were purposefully evil.  We can only say, with Jesus, ‘Father, forgive them for THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.’.  We might as well say, "Father, forgive me for I know not what I do.".

        No others experience our reality and we experience no other’s reality so how can we judge with any clarity at all?  At its’ most basic the lesson here is to begin the work of letting go of your own matrix and accepting God’s matrix into your life.  This is a process more than it is a decision.

The Nitty Gritty of the Path - the Mask

        This is something I have said before in other ways but, since I consider it to be so important, I am going to cover it again.  I consider it to be one of the most important steps or tools on the path.  This is the reconstruction of your paradigm such that you no longer allow your mask to dictate your actions.  I am sure that most of you have heard the saying It isn’t about you.  Well, it is never about you in the person of your mask.

        What is your mask?  It is your ego, your dweller on the threshold, often the habitation of your ‘fallen consciousness’.  It is all of the parts of your outer being that you describe with the word ‘personality’.  We often hear people say things like, “That’s just who I am”, when they are defending their perceived inability, (read ‘unwillingness’), to change.  In one sense they are right about trying to change their mask.  You may change the mask from one exterior trait to another but you won’t have ended up perfecting it and you may come to feel inadequate or burdened by the attempt.  This is because you can’t perfect the mask.  The mask has its’ own agenda and, bottom line, the mask will always have its’ own self-preservation in mind.  That goal will always be at odds with your spiritual path.

        The first thing to address is recognizing when your mask is engaged.  It is the case in most people that their mask is engaged constantly.  This is true because we so closely identify with our mask as who we are.  It follows that we would make no attempt to disengage it when that would, to our way of thinking, be a negation of self.  It is, after all, the personality that we have identified with ever since we were born and it has had many years of undisputed dominance over us in which to become firmly entrenched and to deeply root itself into our consciousness such that it has effectively silenced the competition.  But there are times when it comes out of hiding and reveals itself in stark contrast to its’ surroundings.  These are the times when it feels the need to defend itself and its’ territory.  Whenever you react to a situation by becoming personally involved emotionally you are seeing the mask.  If you have a reaction to something, some event, someone, some bit of ‘misfortune’, some 'injustice' that you have been on the receiving end of, that manifests through an emotion, be it anger, disappointment, jealousy, frustration, etc. you are seeing the mask rear its’ head.  Whenever you want to blame your emotional state on something outside of yourself you are seeing it.  Your emotional state is never caused by what happens outside of you.  Let me repeat that.  Your emotional state is NEVER caused by what happens outside of you.  Except as that event triggers something inside of you that is the real cause.  You might think of it this way.  That event that you think is the cause of your reaction is only the key that unlocks the cage your reaction always inhabits.  A good test is this:  If you can even imagine a person that would react differently to a given situation than you are reacting then the cause is certainly within you or they would need to react in the same manner as you do.

        When someone does something foolish, inconsiderate, vindictive or whatever that is their issue.  However, your reaction to their behavior is your issue.  More specifically it is your mask’s issue.  Your inner being, the God within you is not adversely affected by the behavior of others.  Neither is it affected by the ups and downs of returning karma.  It is only the mask, when its’ agendas are thwarted, when its’ desires are unmet, that reacts to the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’.  Buddha addressed this issue when he spoke of non-attachment.  If you move through your life without attachment to the results of your actions then you cannot be frustrated or disappointed by those results or the lack thereof.  It is, as I have said in a previous blog, like the difference between a football game and a ballet.  In the one the goal matters.  In fact, it is all the game is about – the final outcome.  In the other there is no tangible final goal.  Or rather, the final goal is comprised of the quality of the actions of the dancer from moment to moment and that is where the focus is.  In ballet, the focus is on the relationship between the dancer and the audience.  As the audience you are the recipient of the dancer’s efforts.  In a sense you are the loved one with the dancer as the lover.  In your life dance God is the loved one and you are the dancer.

        A great many of the books you read, many of the teachings of great masters, that relate to the spiritual path will be focused on the need to accomplish this goal, some tools for accomplishing it, describing how to approach it, why you should consider it, what you discover once you manage it, etc.  Why is so much attention paid to this?  It is because it is absolutely essential to the path.  You cannot serve two masters.  You can’t serve God and your mask.  You can’t focus on your climb to the top of the mountain when you are given to the distraction of your tumultuous emotions.

        So, what is the key, the solution, to this situation?  As with so many things the answer is simple but not at all easy.  My father used to talk about something he called “The Misery Gap”.  He said that this was the time between when something happened and when you could find it funny.  What he was actually talking about was the time it took to let it go.  Think about the things that have happened to you in your life.  Some of them very recent.  Some long ago.  Some personally insulting, fear inducing or some such.  Some absolutely devastating.  Others only inconvenient.  None of them retain the emotional impact now that they did when they were so vital to your life at the time.  You have come to incorporate those things into your life and the powerful emotional reactions that they elicited at the time have lost the edge of immediacy.  This is the misery gap working its’ way along to an inevitable conclusion.  It may not reach the end for many years, often not in this lifetime.  Yet all this shall pass.  All of it.  When it does you are left with only what you have made of the inner God being that you are. 

        In order to resolve this internal environmental situation you MUST have a force that will balance the power of the mask to assert its’ dominance over you.  You can do this by making multiple alliances within yourself.  The first ally is the most important.  It is your love of God.  Love of God must come from closeness to God.  This will rely on your constant communion with God and your understanding of how God works in creation.  Without that you can’t have a pure love of God for you will always have questions, doubts about God’s perfection and pure love for you.  You will look around you and often find it impossible to understand how God can be pure love, mercy and wisdom when you still see what man has made of this world.  That is one of the major purposes of this entire blog site and as I realize it I will come to focus more upon that issue.  This is a subject that can be made clear but only if you are willing to sacrifice your personal paradigm, your own construct.

        The second ally is your understanding of yourself.  You cannot come to grips with the mask if you cannot perceive it when it is working.  You need to peel back the layers of camouflage that the mask erects in order to preserve itself.  Remember that many of the internal assumptions that you rely on to make your decisions were accumulated by an infant and toddler.  You have carried a paradigm with you for all of your life predicated upon the internal structures built by you when you were very young in order to defend yourself, your soul, from the negativity that surrounded you.  You can forgive yourself for all of that when you realize you were just trying to survive.  But it is time to delve into that, to see what you have built and to discard the protections that are no longer necessary and only serve to cut you off from God.

        The third ally is your ability to control your attunement, (read: at-one-ment or atonement).  You are like a radio.  There are all sorts of broadcasting stations out there and without any mental discipline you will be unable to choose which station(s) to tune to.  Have you ever been ashamed by a particular thought that occurred to you?  Have you ever had a thought you even just regretted momentarily or thought to yourself that it wasn’t even like you to have that thought?  Most thoughts that come into your head aren’t even yours.  They are broadcast by the greater mass mind of the planet and you are a radio that is open to all sorts of frequencies on the mental dial.  How do you overcome this?  You do it through meditation and by enlisting the help of your first ally: Love of God.

        The process of personal growth is simple but it isn’t easy.  We have walked too far from God for the journey back to be short and easy.  But as El Morya has said: “The goal is worth the inconvenience”.

        Until next time:  Victory!