Limits of an Infinite Self

The Matrix has you...

Indeed it does. It has us under its spell... this God-forsaking realm of animal urge under Demiurge. The human experiment reaches its morbid climax once again as another cycle of time approaches its inexorable end. A time of reckoning, a crossroads of fate. A more golden age, or a deeper, wider, longer hell than we could ever imagine. Lifetimes of iniquity and failure behind, and one more chance to make it right, to break the mould and exit this bloody stage of mundane mortality and the oppression of hateful laws. Might makes right. Dog eat dog. Ignorance prevails. The cancer is terminal. We lurch from day to lifeless day, unaware that the hungry maw of Death awaits to consume our wasted zombie flesh. We are already dead; it is only our continual state of distraction-denial and restless, outward activity that convinces us otherwise.

Believe and it is so. Conscious, waking-mind belief affects the appearance of reality; the deeper the level of belief, the more fundamentally it shapes our experience.

Today I have chosen the material nature as my frame of reference. I've given my lesser qualities a turn at steering the vessel. It is a choice. Yesterday was different; tomorrow will be different again. But today I embrace my fallen self. Mechanical. Bound. Yet I know... I know that that is not who I am. The essence of me is eternal and free. This will never change, no matter how I might deny it.

The ascending path is hard. It is narrow and steep. Through adamantine strength of will I could attack it head on and stay the course. But that is not my way. There are few with such strength. So I lapse into detour, the side-road that looks so much easier and leads nowhere but back to the true way. Lost time and rueful wisdom. Just for today. Tomorrow is a new day.

When shall we seek God? When the harvest is in and our bellies are full? When we've persevered with our own strength and won the glory and praise of this world? Not likely. It's when we've exhausted all other ways, when we're pushed to the brink, when all the faith we had in anything else is brought to ruin; that's when we turn to the true source of Knowing, Loving, Doing and Being. Our Divinity.

Theories, teachers, traditions, techniques. These can help us. But they will also hinder us.

You seek an experience of God? Fool. God is the one experiencing all things. You yourself are part of that wholeness. It is only your conviction that you are a separate being that keeps you from knowing this.

Your seeming separateness may seem a curse, but I say it is the greatest gift of all. Seek the One if you feel so inclined. Seek with every fibre of your being and you will find it. Seek by half measures and you will wobble, tugged by turns toward truth and death. In any case, you can only be what you are until you choose to make yourself something else. Make the change or have it made for you.

This day I have drunk of the wine of this beautiful prison earth. It is sweet poison for the blood, intoxicating the mind with a heavy softness that fades into guilt. How much more potent is the wine of heaven, which purifies, clarifies, and exalts the spirit!

This blog is not a conscious service to humanity. Any good that comes of it, comes in spite of the misguided efforts and petty motives of the writer. It is in the modus operandi of God to use all things, all vessels, for the universal good. In the case of a corrupt vessel, the good that is wrought comes in spite of the vessel's own intentions.

The writer would characterize this blog as a running display of his own ignorance and shortcomings. Look not for revelation hence, lest you be deceived.

So says the lost soul, confounded by too much trying, all in vain.

Less writing, more living. Or rather, less vanity, more service.

I overindulge, yes. But that is my choice at the moment. To expose my ugly side with honesty. Not even in the words, of course, so much as behind and between the words. Unconsciously. But with the potential for consciousness, upon reflection... and soon I leave this pit behind for another view again. Thank god for that.

To honour and love God and one's fellow creatures - mineral, plant, animal, or human - is the totality of the law. If we do not know ourselves, how can we know others? How can we know God?

To see ourselves in others, not as projections of ego, but as individual expressions of the same essence of God. All that endures is God, all else is but the ever-changing dream in the imagination of God.

To know is to perceive directly. We do not perceive; we are too caught up in chasing our thoughts, from past to future to past again. Fantasy, delusion, worry, regret, interpretation through the filter of the unknowing, conditioned mind. Or we are embroiled in sensation, craving pleasure and avoiding pain. Identifying as the content of our mental, emotional and physical experience, instead of as what we truly are. Thus we enslave and imprison ourselves and are tossed about by outer circumstances and our unconscious drives. Truth as it can be perceived exists only in the present.

To make the unconscious, conscious. This is the beginning of the alchemical work. The proper study of man is man himself. What lies hidden within him. Observing, without bias or judgment, one's actions, feelings, thoughts, and motives. Passionless understanding. Accepting, and accepting responsibility.

This writer is a fool, as are all common men. The only thing keeping him from being a perfect ignoramus and an imbecile is his flickering recognition of the fact that he does not know, does not perceive, only thinks, feels, senses outwardly, and foolishly parrots the thoughts of others without real understanding. Even were this not the case, you would be a fool to assume otherwise. Anything he says must be tried and proven first. And if you know directly, you have no need of his words at all.

What we might call "knowledge" is not given. It is earned. Through suffering and striving. Through patience and labour. And even then it is only one's own subjective experience. True knowledge surpasses all this, all the efforts of man. It is timeless. It is priceless. It is to perceive what is. How shall we who are blind and deaf, perceive?

We are blind and deaf because of the thick miasma and dirt of illusion and sin that covers us. So many are comfortable with this condition, they seek to preserve it and deepen it. You who desire the sincere and loving, all-illuminating truth, must not be so complacent as these. You have your work cut out for you.

Purification. Cutting through the illusion, casting off the sin. This requires brutal honesty and total commitment. Yet it is not merely the work of the separate little you, capricious and weak. It is the work of God within you. The divine will, the divine intellect, the divine love.

With God all things are possible.

God is within you, and you are within God. Rejoice and give thanks, for it is God who created you, God who sustains you, and God who will transform you in ways you never imagined. Life and death, night and day. One eternal Being.

This is from a couple of days ago. My Internet was down all weekend, but it's fixed now. I spent yesterday reading The Collapsing Tower and gaining new insights from there, so thoughts have changed... and it's all good.

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A couple of years ago, I attended a level 1 Reiki course taught by Kirsi Voutilainen. That weekend was a watershed experience for me in more ways than one. It was perhaps my first time connecting in person with such deeply spiritually-oriented people who understood that there was so much more to life than what meets the eye; who had gone through incredible inner transformation and were committed to continuing that work; who clearly saw both the disease and the beauty of our world, as well as their causes and implications; who knew why they were here: to transmute the energies of the old world into those of the new, a harmonious and balanced Earth that called to their hearts from the future and drew them toward itself as co-creators of it. Healers. Old souls. Lightworkers. Spiritual warriors. Kirsi was one in whom I saw these qualities. Another was Markku, a star child and survivor spirit of the previous generation to mine. He and I have maintained contact and I consider him a real friend, though we've only met once.

No human relationship is without its issues, of course. With Markku I tend to feel like I'm being seen and appreciated for all that's best in me. But there's a lingering anxiety that if he could see me in totality, he would be sorely disappointed with all my failures to measure up to that "best." Now I know this is not the case, it's a totally irrational fear, but it's there and it brings a level of caution to my interactions with him lest I somehow offend or disappoint. This is a pattern that has shown up in other relationships too, but it particularly comes to the surface with this one. It's the dark side of my diplomatic streak and the ego's desire to be liked and win the approval of others. The antidote, I guess, is just to be more aware of it as a falsehood and have the guts to be more real. Which means operating from a deeper, truer place, free of even such a deep-seated fear. Courage to BE what I am, as I am, even if it means revealing my own lack of the qualities ego would wish to display as if it owned them. Ego cannot own the qualities of Spirit. All it can do is to stop getting in their way.

What it comes down to, again, as with everything else, is the Work. Cultivating the connection with divine truth. The God-Self. Recognizing the fears and desires and weaknesses of the flesh, accepting, forgiving - and choosing to follow the way of Spirit whenever the choice is clear.

I think it's safe to say we become more like that with which we identify ourselves. What we define, we limit. That's the literal meaning of the word, isn't it? To define oneself as solely a separate being - a mechanical consciousness built on inherently unconscious matter, a collection of programs arising from a Darwinian process of adaptation for survival - is tragically limited. But such a view is not hopeless for the open and searching mind. There are many ways to grow beyond those limits, to find real meaning and joy. Whichever path is most naturally suited to their needs and proclivities will open up to the individual thus seeking.

On the ultimate, fully transcendent level, we are all identical with the One. As individual souls, we embody some particular configuration of the archetypes into which the One differentiated itself for the purpose of the functionings of the universe, an incarnation of itself. Like cells in a body, we contain all the information needed to create a whole new body. But in order for the body to function optimally as it is, each cell has to perform its own particular function, some infinitesimal portion of the workings of the whole.

Around us, we see a great sickness. Human cells divided against other cells, filled with the toxic waste of their own dysfunction. The body is not threatened. It knows exactly what it is doing. It is healing itself. The methods at its disposal are legion. The toxins will be purged and transmuted, one way or another. Cells that are beyond help will die and be recycled. Balance will be restored. This is not some random process. It is part of a natural cycle. The crisis we observe is entirely under control. It appears threatening only to the extent that we lack the connection to the whole and its divine perspective.

Some of us are here to demonstrate what happens when disease takes over. Others are here to help the rest return to wellness. In healing ourselves, we facilitate the healing of others. These two processes are closely linked. From the point of view of the whole, anyone in the process of healing themselves is helping to heal the whole. And the source of healing is always within.

For myself, when asked what I want to be, probably the answer I most resonate with is "an angel." I want to channel the energy of heaven for others. The power, the love, the wisdom. That's a high calling, I suppose. One that I'm far from fulfilling yet, in more than a flawed and partial way. Still hamstrung by ego. But that's just as it's meant to be. One doesn't bring heaven to earth without first having roots in the earth, taking part in its pain and struggle, going through one's own little piece of hell and rising out, learning what it takes to transform the darkness, integrating it and transmuting it through the light.

I face my own laziness, cowardice, stubborn resistance. My lack of trust in the only thing worthy of all trust. The power of appearances would have me shrink in fear of what's to come, collectively, as well as the karmic results of my own past choices. But I know that the point is to break out of the past, to learn from it and do things differently. Come what may. It will work out exactly as it needs to, for my own learning and for the overall good of the whole.

At the Reiki course, I spent a moment reading an "angel board." An oracle. I asked about my purpose. The answer it gave was "Support." As far as I can tell, that's probably about right. In relation to others, in whatever capacity I'm able. In relation to myself, though, the "why am I here?" Hmm. I really think it's because I chose this. I volunteered. I wanted to take on the biggest challenge in the world. To be born on Earth, to forget who I am. To play the game called Being Human, and another one called Remembering. I must have been one heck of an optimist when I signed up. Multiple incarnations, all the karma that goes with them. Jeez, what a mess. But what else you gonna do, right? The world's a playground. You might as well get dirty, get into trouble, get lost for a while in the things you imagine. As long as the appeal is there. When you're done, you go home again anyway.

George Ure talks about "decoupling" from the system to survive and thrive when it breaks down. That would be nice. I like to fantasize about living in a self-sustaining way, somewhere closer to nature, apart from all the insanity of urban society. But I don't see it happening, not now. It's the economics, just infeasible with the means I've got, which is no means at all, as far as money is concerned. Besides, what about my schooling? OK, sure, in a perfect world, I could go be an apprentice and not have to go to a corporate-world-adapted institution for massage therapist training. But I digress. The point is that disengaging from society at large isn't an end in itself and I don't want to take it to the extreme. In fact, I'm too disengaged as it is, from the standpoint of being a useful human, helping others, contributing. Just another thing to angst over... or to simply understand and do something about. And I have been, a little. So that's good.

What I would really like is to spend more time with people. There's a lot of thresholds to that, though... So... I'll take my human contact as it comes, and initiate it when I feel moved to do so by the force that animates me...

Life is funny.

The conscious game changer for 11.11 was something I really felt was important. I looked past the slick media presentation, the fluffy new-age idealism, the pop bastardization of quantum physics and saw something worthwhile regardless. What I recognized as well, in part, but failed to resolve entirely, was the flaw in my own approach to participating. Namely, the fact that my desire to take part and have others join in was not purely of the Spirit, but carried a strong element of egoic fear under the surface. Fear of the unmitigated depths of hardship, loss, darkness, and uncertainty that appear to be in store as part of a collective awakening process. Desire to avoid the attendant pain and struggle as much as possible. Insofar as my motivation thus sprang from ego, the conscious game changer became an exercise in wishful thinking, tainted magic ritual, self-defeating. I didn't see this right away, but I was troubled and wondering what was wrong. Life being what it is, I was then guided to materials and experiences that helped me understand and remedy the problem.

Laura Knight-Jadczyk's article Truth, Lies, Reality served to remind me of a perspective I'd somehow lost touch with: that there is an objective reality (known in the mind of God) independent of what anyone personally believes, and that our human conscious ability to positively influence that reality through focused intent hinges in some way upon our ability to perceive and accept that reality as it is. This is, of course, a perspective that sheds light on the truth, and not the absolute Truth itself... (in my personal opinion... ^_^ )

Then I was looking for info on the Galactic Underworld of the Mayan calendar and came across this article on Joy and Fear. Another quite useful perspective.

Then I got a nice boost from the latest Smoking Mirrors and one comment in particular. Another comment linked me to Clif High's extraordinary essay Failing, falling, flying, fearlessness - for which he deserves at least three pieces of the most delicious pie!

In between there somewhere, I spent an evening in the company of some really wonderful friends, which, after a week of near-total solitude, transformed my ill ease of mind into full-flowered joy and peace that carried over and deepened through the night as I meditated and rested better than I had in quite some time.

Now this morning, I felt prompted to open a random page in Barefoot Doctor's Handbook for the Urban Warrior: A Spiritual Survival Guide. The insights I received from there on Focus, Worry, and Doubt were exactly what I needed. The Taoist philosophy and humour of Barefoot Doctor never fails to lighten the way...

There's more, but the short of it is that I was blessed with the wisdom of multiple perspectives from others and integrated them together with my own inner and outer experience into a harmonious and practically effortless way (Tao) through and out of the confusion and malaise I'd been in. All in a day's work. (For universe, mostly. Credit given where due, with many thanks.)

Happy Tipping Point!

My intellect wants to take this post in six different directions. None of them works. The more thoughts my brain puts together, the less fruitful it seems for the needs of this moment. It might have something to do with this. With the fact that defining the world and the self is a function of ego which restricts the flow of endless potential that is the source of truest joy. To express that which is most true for oneself in the moment, is what puts one in the flow of life. At this moment I feel a warmth, a breeze blowing through my heart. It's a fragile thing in the midst of all the opposing tensions in my mind and body, but it is the center of truth. Knowing. Being. Accepting. Appreciating. Loving.

In my dream last night, I was walking along a trail through a sunny field of green grass. I was on my way somewhere else, but my mind was right where I was, in the moment, joyfully observing. As I walked, I passed a couple of girls riding a moped through the grass, and I felt how they shared a deep, unbreakable friendship. I saw a pair of lovers lying in the field, totally immersed in each other with such tenderness. I saw a mother with her newborn child, such a profound sense of joy and love, nurturing and trusting between them. There were others, too: a father and young child, a woman with her dog, students full of enthusiasm for learning and having fun. All the while I was floating with each step.

Then I arrived where I was going. It was a college campus, full of busy people rushing here and there with their schedules and deadlines and appointments and assignments, no time to notice and just be in the present, to connect with others in a real way. The atmosphere of control pushed down on my shoulders and I walked heavily, hunched over.

This is the contrast, I imagine, between feeling what is, as it is, and the efforts of the mind to lock onto what is and have it be something in particular according to one's need for control. One leads to effortless joy, the other removes joy.

It's OK to feel gloomy, cut off, depressed. Those feelings are real and valid in their own way and there is no point trying to deny them or artificially force oneself to cheer up and be happy. Accept the darkness. See into it, understand where it comes from. Allow the experience, but know that you are not the content of your experience. You are a being whose essence is beyond all definition. You need not trouble yourself with thoughts of "Who am I?" To ask is to deny what you already know: "I am." Everything else is just part of the game.

We are immersed in the game. We have forgotten who we are. And that is exactly as it was meant to be. Now and in the coming time, we have this opportunity, if we truly so desire, to awaken and expand to other levels of the game, or even, given a critical mass of harmoniously aligned intent, to affect the conditions of the one we're in.

What unites us? What is our common ground? Does that not far outweigh whatever might divide us?

What can one million people together achieve? A lot. Like, say, shifting the entire course of our planet's future? If they believe in the possibility and put their minds to it, then yes.

That's the idea behind the New Reality Transmission.

I read about it on George Ure's daily Urban Survival report today and thought, man, this is exactly what we need. Imagine going through this apocalypse with the minimum amount of human suffering and the maximum amount of things like enlightenment, world peace, free energy, ecosphere restoration, and no more goddamned lies ever perpetrated upon humanity for the benefit of the selfish few at the expense of the rest, ever (until the next time we screw it all up and have to go through this again, haha, knock on wood)... manifesting in the shortest time possible. Doesn't that kind of sound... well... worth it? Worth a few minutes of your time each day for a few days? Really. I mean, really.

That's all I guess I have to say on that. If you don't know what the "November Tipping Point" refers to, I would point you over to Half Past Human and particularly their latest update. Also, for a curious seeming correlation between the Web Bot, Time Wave Zero, and the Mayan Calendar, check out these short articles on Altimatrix.

You can just smell the self-righteous zeal coming off this post, can't you? Yeah, I know. I'm working on that. But I don't mind, actually. It reminds me of just how human I am.

Oh, and on a relatively unrelated note: yesterday was my birthday and it was awesome. :)