This afternoon whilst walking through the orchard I was contemplating that many people are utterly unaware and ignorant as to the extent of their own ignorance. They are oblivious to it.
It goes along with my pet theory that the world is suffering from a pandemic of self-diagnosed omniscience.
Quite a while back someone told me that he did not think I was a nagal being. I said to him “it depends upon the way you look at it…” He insisted that he was right. I did not argue…
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The Mayavirupa is literally the illusory form; it is the body of temporary manifestation which the Adept creates on occasion through the power of the will and in which He functions in order to make certain contacts on the physical plane and to engage in certain work for the [human] race. CF 761
Mayavi Rupa. Sanskrit, “Illusive Form.” It is the body of manifestation created by the adept by an act of will for use in the three worlds. It has no material connection with the physical body. It is spiritual and ethereal and passes everywhere without let or hindrance. It is built by the power of the lower mind, of the highest type of astral matter. IHS 221
…The stage wherein–after the fourth initiation–there is direct unbroken relation between the Monad, via the Triad, and the form which the Master is using to do His work among men. This form may be either His temporary personality, arrived at along the normal lines of incarnation, or the specially created form to which Theosophists give the technical but cumbersome word “mayavirupa.” It is the “true mask, hiding the radiant light and the dynamic energy of a revealed Son of God.” RI 50-51
He [the initiate] can work through a physical body (with its subtler sheaths) or not, as he sees fit. He realizes that he, as an individual, no longer needs a physical body or an astral consciousness, and that the mind is only a service instrument. The body in which he now functions is a body of light which has its own type of substance. The Master, however, can build a body through which He can approach His incoming disciples and those who have not taken the higher initiations; He will normally build this body in semblance of the human form, doing so instantaneously and by an act of the will, when required. The majority of the Masters who are definitely working with humanity either preserve the old body in which They took the fifth initiation or else They build the “mayavirupa” or body of maya, of physical substance. This body will appear in the original form in which They took initiation. This I personally did in reference to the first case; i.e., preserving the body in which I took initiation. This the Master K.H. did in creating a body which was made in the form in which He took the fifth initiation. RI 705
The Master Jesus on the Cross could not respond to any saving process (even had He desired to do so) because the soul body–as is always the case at the fourth initiation–was destroyed; there was nothing to respond to the evocative power of an outside person, interested or loving. As an adept and as one in whom monadic consciousness was firmly established, the powers then available to Jesus could not be used in the saving of His physical body. At the same time, it must be remembered that He would have no desire to save it, because He now possessed the power (demonstrated later in the Gospel story) to create a body at will in order to meet His needs. EH 654
Some of the Masters will create what is called in the language of the East the “mayavirupa”–a vehicle of expression which is built of atomic physical and astral substance and of concrete mental substance. This They can create at will, use at will and cause to vanish at will; Their problem is not, therefore, so acute in the matter of appearing and of reappearing as is that of the initiate who cannot thus create to suit his purpose and his service. EX 697
Applicants for initiation and initiates up to the third initiation use both the sutratma and the antahkarana, employing them as a unit. The power of the Triad begins to pour through, thus energizing all human activities upon the physical plane, and vitalizing in ever increasing degree the man’s thought forms. The key to the formation of the Mayavirupa is found in the right comprehension of the process. CF 959-960 [See also: ENA 31]
The three aspects of the will, as focused in the Spiritual Triad, are now in full expression; the initiate is animated by Purpose, but faces still greater evolutionary developments; of these I do not need to speak, as they concern divine aspects as yet unknown and unregistered by man. The reason for this complete ignorance is that the vehicles of any man below the third initiation contain too much “impure matter” to record the impact of these divine qualities. Only the “created body” (the mayavirupa) of an initiate of the fourth initiation can begin to register these divine impacts; it is therefore a waste of our time to consider even the possibility of their existence. RI 317
The soul then prepares itself for the coming fourth initiation. This is basically a monadic experience and results–as you know–in the disappearance or destruction of the soul vehicle or causal body, and the establishment, therefore, of a direct relation between the monad on its own plane and the newly created personality, via the antahkarana. EH 518
The causal body is itself eventually done away with when the pupil takes the fourth initiation and can freely create his own body of manifestation. LOM 275
In the mode whereby the liberated disciple can now create a body for physical plane contact and for service in the three worlds–this time not under the Law of Necessity but under the Law of Service, as understood by the initiate. EH 505
The fourth initiation marks the complete realization of this relation by the initiate. It enables him to say: “I and my Father are one.” It is for this reason that the crucifixion, or the Great Renunciation, takes place. Forget not that it is the soul that is crucified. It is Christ Who “dies.” It is not the man; it is not Jesus. The causal body disappears. The man is monadically conscious. The soul-body no longer serves any useful purpose; it is no more needed. Nothing is left but the sutratma, qualified by consciousness–a consciousness which still preserves identity whilst merged in the whole. Another qualification is creativity; thus consciousness can be focussed at will on the physical plane in an outer body or form. This body is will-created by the Master. RI 455
When the antahkarana is built, and the mental unit is superseded by the manasic permanent atom, and the causal body disappears, then the adept knows that the lower mind, the mental body, is also an illusion and is, for him, non-existent. There are then–as far as his individual consciousness is concerned–only three focal points or anchorages (both of these expressions are inadequate to express the full meaning):
1. Humanity, in which he can focus himself at will through the medium of what is called technically the “mayavirupa”–a bodily form which he creates for the fulfillment of monadic purpose. RI 481
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At the fourth initiation, the initiate is brought into the Presence of that aspect of Himself which is called “His Father in Heaven.” He is brought face to face with his own Monad, that pure spiritual essence on the highest plane but one, which is to his Ego or higher self what that Ego is to the personality or lower self….For the remainder of his appearances in the three worlds he is governed only by will and purpose, self-initiated, and creates his body of manifestation, and thus controls (within karmic limits) his own times and seasons. The karma here referred to is planetary karma, and not personal. IHS 117
This marks the fourth Initiation; after that Initiation, the Adept makes for Himself a body of manifestation, a free creation–there is nothing in Him to call into objectivity a body for use in the three worlds and evolved under the Law of Causes. LOM 11
The intuition (or buddhi) being the unifying principle and thus welding all, at the fourth initiation the lower vehicles go, and the adept stands in his intuitional body, and creates from thence his body of manifestation. LOM 339
Since buddhi is the unifying principle (or the welder of all), at the fifth initiation the adept lets the lower vehicles go, and stands in his buddhic sheath. He creates thence his body of manifestation. IHS 16-17
It must be remembered that a Master has no personality at all. His divine nature is all that He has. The form through which He works (if he is working through and living in a physical vehicle) is a created image, the product of a focussed will and the creative imagination; it is not the product of desire, as in the case of a human being. This is an important distinction and one which warrants careful thinking. The lesser lives (which are governed by the Moon) have been dispersed. They no longer respond to the ancient call of the reincarnating soul, which again and again has gathered to itself the lives which it has touched and colored by its quality in the past. The soul and the causal body no longer exist by the time the fourth initiation is undergone. What is left is the Monad and the thread, the antahkarana which it has spun out of its own life and consciousness down the ages and which it can focus at will upon the physical plane, where it can create a body of pure substance and radiant light for all that the Master may require. This will be a perfect body, utterly adapted to the need, the plan and the purpose of the Master. None of the lesser lives (as we understand the term) form part of it, for they can only be summoned by desire. In the Master there is no desire left, and this is the thought held before the disciple as he begins to master the significance of the fourth Rule. RI 101
If the deva, or solar Angel, is no longer attracted by matter, then there is no identification, and objective life is no longer the law of his existence. He identifies himself then with quality, or energy, and becomes an expression of the divine attributes. Objectivity may then ensue as a voluntary offering to the good of the group or planetary existence, but identification with the separated form is no longer the case. The human vehicle then created is as much a thought form in this case as any other particularized idea, and the greatest act of conscious magic is to be seen. All other magical creations are subsidiary to this. Through manipulation of negative and positive energy, thus bringing them to the point of equilibrium before informing them, the perfected body of the Adept is formed. CF 1013-1014
In the case of all avatars it is the will aspect which is brought into play, and which produces appearance–either the will of the perfected adept, such as the Buddha Himself, or (as in the case of the true Avatar, Who is, and Who has not achieved) the will of the planetary Logos or of the solar Logos, taking form for a specific purpose. It involves a higher display of the creative faculty than that displayed by the Adept in the creation of His body of manifestation, the Mayavirupa. CF 760-761
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Fate as a concept has been around for a long time, way more than two thousand years. In ancient European theology there were even the The fates who spun out the destinies of mankind. People use the notion of fate in physics, in common parlance and in romantic novels. There is this made up concept of soul mate. Souls cannot mate they do not have the necessary equipment. “It was fated that their paths should cross.” Fate is not too far away from karma, dependent origination and cause and effect can be related to fate. If you do that cause you will get that effect, that fate.
We have just seen cause and effect in action. The UK government did a reverse Robin Hood budget, the effects are still rippling out.
I don’t think of fate as a done deal. I think that a fate is a set of lessons which you set up for yourselves by choosing the vehicle you incarnate into. How you handle and learn from those lessons is dependent upon your willingness to cooperate with what you chose for yourself when you felt again that need for meat. One can squander a given life or one can welcome with open hands what life offers.
So, we set up for ourselves a palette of possibility with which we paint our current life. It might be Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso or Warhol. It could be tags on the wall in an underpass. Or a life lived entirely in silicio in the god-dammed metaverse. We might open for ourselves an “only fans” page.
Trying to find out why we incarnated and to cooperate with the purpose of that incarnation is not easy. To do so we must begin to have Soular contact. If we start to sense the emanations of our Soul, we can cooperate and learn that which we need and want to learn.
If we have been an arrogant dickhead in a previous life, we might need to learn intelligent humility in the next. If we have been a doormat, we may need to learn to assert.
Dreaming, can help us to understand our fate. But we need to interpret dreams with an open mind and not with confirmation bias.
This morning I had an extensive dream pertaining to people who imagine that they are right. They think that they are expounding the true spirit of the Toltec teachings. They are so convinced that they know best. I beg to differ.
From my view they have gotten entirely the wrong end of the stick apropos of me. They have screwed up one possibility on the palette of possibility in this life.
Over the years I have offered many of these a feather of “hello” when my dreamer has suggested. In nearly all cases no reply. I am taboo.
I will restate. This is my current best attempt.
I think that a fate is a set of lessons which you set up for yourselves by choosing the vehicle you incarnate into and its circumstances. How you handle and learn from those lessons is dependent upon your willingness to cooperate with what you chose for yourself when you felt again that pressing need for meat. One can squander a given life or one can welcome with open hands what life offers.
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This is a visualisation to assist in Dreaming Practice:
It is one of those hot, balmy, end of summer nights. You are dressed in white linen. The sun is low on the horizon and in the process of beginning to set. The sky is starting to pink just a little. There are a few wispy clouds. You are in a vast field of ripened wheat, the heads of the wheat are curled over and near ready for harvest. You are carefree, no-one is watching. You allow your left hand to fall to your side to touch the wheat, strolling through the field allowing your fingers to touch what one day, will become bread. The feeling of lightness and joy is upon you. All the stress has gone from you, you feel young again as you stroll through the wheat field. You come upon a tall dry stone wall and start to explore. You run your fingers over the stone, it is much taller than you. You notice that the sun is now setting and you must go home. Because you have loved the field so much you resolve to come here again at dawn.
It is now just after dawn, and you are back in the field. The air is as crisp as apples and there is a faint dew on the wheat again you allow your left hand to caress the wheat as you meander through the field. Your eyes are bright and alive. As you approach the wall you wonder what lies beyond it. You follow the wall round to your left touching the sometimes mossy stones with your fingertips. Soon you come upon an archway in the wall. It is taller than you and there is an old wooden door there. There is a metal ring painted in black enamel which you know will open the door. Slowly you reach down and raise the lever. The door opens before you. In front of you, you can see an exquisitely manicured rose garden. The scent wafts over you enticingly. You step forward into the Southern Precinct of the Toltec Temple. There are bed after bed of the most exquisite roses, the scent is overwhelming. In the near distance you can hear the soft gurgle of a fountain. Here in a sunken part of the garden the fountain is surrounded by stone benches, roughly hewn. You sit and open up your ears to the fountain.
When the utter serenity of the place has begun to deeply imbue you, you decide to explore further. A little in the distance you can see a man working in the rose bed. Today he is tending the yellow roses, turning over the earth and whispering to the roses. As you approach he winks at you. He is the venerable gardener, master of the Southern Precinct. He has a gift for you. He hands to you a single yellow rose of considerable beauty. He has cut it just now. The cut on the stem is diagonal and perfect. The leaves are dark, dark green and lustrous. The rose itself is of such vibrancy, never have you seen yellow such as this. The flower head is only partially open and the swirl of the petals overlaps in a radial display. The scent is heady.
Taking this single rose you walk along the gravel path to a building which lies ahead. You know this to be an annexe of the great Toltec Temple. As you approach you can see an arched doorway carved in stone. The doors are open and beckon you in. As you pass within you are almost overcome by the sensation of utter silence. You walk upon the black and white marble floor sensing the aeons of its construct. Ahead of you in the Eastern corner is a white marble slab. It is lit by the light of dawn issuing sunbeams onto the altar. You approach the altar and genuflect, cradling the rose in your hands. You lean forward to place it within the sunbeams on the marble slab. As you do so a single drop of dew rolls out of the rose onto the marble slab. A single tear trickles out of your left eye at the same time. You feel it wind down your cheek. It drops onto the altar and merges with the dew. You know that soon you will be home.
Rising now you nod your head and retrace your steps out of the annexe, along the gravel path. The venerable gardener has disappeared. You walk past the fountain and out of the archway. Slowly you close the door. You are now again in the field of wheat, you trail both hands through it, feeling such a sensation of utter poignancy as you have never had before; somehow though you KNOW this feeling only too well.
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The four natural enemies are fear, sobriety, power, and old age.
I think it fair to say that most people have fears, some of these are crippling. In our times we have a new fear, the fear of missing out.
In the context of evolution fear of the unknown and fear of changing from the way you were socially programmed by family and peers are big, as is fear of getting rid of your internal dialogue. If you have no inner critic, what are you going to do without all those circling thoughts? Fear of silence and being alone in one’s own company is also common.
Sobriety as an enemy means that you think you know more than you do and are sufficiently detached to have no pangs of conscience if you are mean to someone. If you are sufficiently detached and uncaring you can then exert power over other beings. This kind of power is addictive to some.
You could say we have, insecure scaredy cat, clever Trevor or Jeremy and Donald the bequiffed prince of orange, the very stable genius, as archetypes of people who have succumbed to these enemies.
The fourth natural enemy is old age, it means that you are exhausted and worn out by struggle, so you just want to pack it all in, get your slippers and a mug of cocoa, nanna and gramps.
One encounters stories of a lot of people who have succumbed to power in alternative circles. It often involves copious shagging by the “guru” of people who have handed their power and wealth over to said guru, so that he can have orgies and Rolls Royces. How many people in Westminster sexually interfere with their junior staff? Power is an aphrodisiac to those who are power hungry. It is a vicious circle.
If you work in higher education, you will have encountered the young smart Alec type, who thinks that they get all the material you have been torturing them with. Thinking they know a lot, they are fond of showing off, whilst still an undergraduate. They are usually a tad more circumspect when it comes to Ph.D. viva having been disabused of their illusion.
The Toltec teachings are the only ones, that I know of, which tackle power as a subject. It is, to my eyes, implicit in Vajrayana tantra. To my opinion a discussion on temptation and on evil in a sane way, is absent in much “spiritual” material. Treating evil as a taboo subject, enables it. In the darkness strange things fester. If you can’t talk about evil in an adult rational way, you are handing your power over to evil by means of fear. Taboos are primitive and superstitious.
I’ll speculate that it is transcending the natural enemy power which is the gateway to the third initiation and thereby inevitable ultimate liberation or if you succumb becoming ever more deeply embroiled with the dark adepts and thereby not achieving liberation, not in this kalpa. Overcome the natural enemy power and in the fullness of time there is no hasta la vista baby, no au revoir.
To overcome power is tiring. If you do this, you feel knackered. Then you have to start all over and with a newfound sense of trying hard not to be a complete arrogant dickhead, rather a harmless and humble being trying their best, and with little or no drama.
I am aware of quite a few people who have lost their battle with power….
Chapter 3 Hodie
Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant.
-Mentat Text Two (dicto)
Frank Herbert “Chapter House Dune “, Gollancz,
The Orion Publishing Group, London.
Page 107 ISBN 0 575 07518 X
I had planned to talk today of the darkness within and my exploration of the feelings behind it, somehow it needs a storm to do this for I can then tune into the wildness of nature and revisit those very, very strange days. The beginning of this descent had its roots in the realisation of my own ignorance so eloquently paraphrased above. But Eric says we will sketch over it for now, because today feels like it is a good time to talk about today, though the resonances to 1995 are clear and the merry-go-round of hospital and doctors appointments is the same. This time though I am not seeking death rather, life.
Eric remembers when he first went into the office and said to Dr Depardieu that he was unwell. He remembers the questions about sleep, sex, food and alcohol. He remembers telling him about his plan to get a large amount of heroin and some syringes from work. He remembers telling him that he knew where he could get this and how he felt that this would be the best way. By touching the ephemera of the memory a tinge of sadness creeps into him. How forlorn and lost he felt then and how the temptation to end it all had been playing like a movie re-run in his mind, flickering black and white on the screen; waiting for the final credits to roll, how there was no Technicolor only black and white. He remembers sitting on that tube train and the veins in his arm screaming at him to go and do it. He knows that he has never really said this to anyone before so he is a little nervous. Dr Depardieu gave him some nice green and white pills and these helped him for a while, they bought him some time. The shame of it was a little hard to bear, he had to tell his university that he was ill and the nature of his illness, bringing in those doctors notes every couple of weeks. He felt then the margins of existence, the twilight of the deranged and the futility of the castrated man. Everything he had tried had failed and he began to cling; it was not pretty.
Enough of this then, we will return to the darkness soon, for there is much in there that is lighter than you can imagine and it needs out too. Today, he went to the hospital on his bike; to check for parking spaces and a place to lock it up. For tomorrow he visits the neurologist, later an MRI scan of his neck and brain and then the orthopaedic surgeons will look at the images of the cervical discs pressing on his spinal column. Eric is pleased with his bike, he has ridden it three times now and some of the confidence in him comes back, twenty years is a long time. He guesses it must be true; the idiom about it being just like riding a bike. He is not allowed to drive any more because he lost consciousness a week or so ago. In a strange way cycling takes him back to the carefree days of his late teen years, when he used the bike to escape the noise, to ride for miles and miles around the North Kent countryside. He knows that the medics don’t yet know what is wrong and that they are investigating; they have mentioned stroke and epilepsy. They haven’t mentioned tumour yet and he wonders if he should tell the neurologist about his dream that said he had cervical spine cancer or wait until the images are back. It is difficult to block out these thoughts as there isn’t enough data yet. He wonders if he should mention all the things that he sees and how he understands the nature of consciousness to be. He remembers that these specialists are trained in the church of reason so it might be better not to mention prescience and lucid dreaming.
Today though is fine. The heavy rains of the last few days have passed and the sun shines on the garden. All is well for now and Eric remembers the entreaty to consider every path carefully and to ask yourself only one question; is this for you a path with heart? For if there is no heart then the path will drag you down and suck away your vitality. And he remembers how many times he has asked that question and how many times he has walked away.
It brings him back to one of the things he wanted to talk about, energy. He doesn’t like that word because it has connotations, co-note-tations elsewhere and the use of it hinders. Eric prefers the word vitality. He says that as the power within grows and develops by acquiring knowledge it imbues both upon itself and the form it inhabits, a vitality and vivaciousness. It lends capacity to the form to operate in ways that it never expected and with an awareness that is sharper than before. This vitality gives a sense of time to things that differs. When beings have this, they can choose the speed at which they perceive things, they can literally speed up or slow down the perception and hence time. This speed then is under their control, it gives intensity and focus. People hunt for this vitality, perhaps the elixir of youthfulness, though it is not that. When the power within has it the eyes of the form glow with an iridescence that can be seen by some, or simply as a sparkle of joie de vivre by others. This sense of vitality is a currency for human interactions.
We can build it up in ourselves and others or we can deplete ourselves and others. People try to steal this thing from each other mistakenly thinking they can and that if they have power over another; they have real power. Whereas this vitality is true power, it is limitless and without bound, it grows as we flow in synchronicity with the universe and our fate. In a very real sense it is more extant than the illusions borne of the form and the mind. It comes from life itself and the vis viva expressing outwards from the void.
Eric says that this thing which he calls forceful manipulation is the very bane of humanity and the basis through which the construct of the world is maintained. He says that because most people live in the realms of the hungry ghosts they cannot yet see the impact of this on both themselves and the world. Ultimately this forceful manipulation is based on some form of insecurity or perception of inadequacy whether expressed through self pity or self importance. It is seen in some quarters as standing up for your rights or skill-full negotiation, yet in many of its guises it is actually quite a lot nastier than that. It is linked to dominion and dominance, man in control of his surroundings and his fate. Its detrimental effects can be seem almost everywhere and perhaps it stems from a deep, deep sense of there never being enough, if you like a hole in being-ness that pervades because mankind has in many cases lost touch with his sense of purpose.
Eric seems to remember that a number of years ago now he wrote poetry feverishly doing some three hundred poems in a couple of years. He burned them all along with all his copious note books. He deleted all his emails and all his notes on esoterica in one ceremony of cleansing the past. There was plenty of that force in him back then, he had learned well at the arcane school. He says that he no longer feels the near religious ecstasy that had driven him then. That it was all gone and it had all been folly and that he must dream now.
He has just come back from his afternoon sleep. Since he began doing dreaming practice over eight years ago now, he has practised dreaming, he describes it as a meditative technique used to open up the doorway to the power within, if you like a channel of communication with his inner being. He learned to let this guide him as it appeared there was purpose to this, it seemed to know what it was doing even if it did make for a somewhat non-linear approach to life.
He tells me before he did this formally; he did martial arts as a sort of walking meditation and is reminded how, when he used to run, timing the slip-slap-slip of his running to his breath was a way of bringing the form more consciously under his control. The martial arts opened something else in him and his body began to behave in a way that was much more economical. Later he developed listening to music as a way of doing meditation, he doesn’t know how he knew how to do it, yet he says if you listen very carefully to music and concentrate only on that; it stills the mind. Further if you open your heart to the music it guides you. When he was recovering from the darkness he let the emotions present in music take him to places he had never thought he could go; making it experiential in ways that were quite special.
He first discovered that he really knew how to dream but only in retrospect after he had stumbled across North American Indian shamanism in a school in Hertfordshire of all places. The cynic in him found some considerable hilarity that a bunch of white people would gather, drum and go on shamanic journeys in search of guidance for their lives. He reckoned they were all making it up. He loved the drumming and to drum, the hypnotic rhythm of the drum beat running with the ebb and flow of his inner tuition taking him deeper and away from the noise and clatter of the mind. Being a bit of a rebel though, he didn’t quite do what he was supposed to do. Rather, he sank into the colour which exists in states of pure calm. He let the colour emerge from the black and the formless, taking shape first as a Rorschach ink blot of colour then slowly filling the whole dreamscape. Out of the colour, images would appear and he would follow them and let them unfold, making notes of what he saw there. He learned he could heal, clear spaces and that ritual was a very power full way of focusing intent.
Later he learned to dream by using yellow roses to focus intention before the dreamscape came. Soon all he needed was a few seconds to enter the colour and hold it firm. What came then was dream after dream after dream. This was new and exciting to him he wanted to share these dreams because that is what it seemed he was meant to do. The people around him chastised him for this. He learned to state the intent of dreaming appropriate for his dreaming class. Then somehow many years later he no longer felt that this intent was right and chose another one.
Last year he went again to a dojo, to try his hand at some judo and perhaps regain some fitness. There was something quite strange about the dojo, it was a sports dojo and had none of the reverence and atmosphere of mutual support he had found at the true dojos of his past. On his second visit they practised ippon seonage his favourite throw and perhaps the most effective of all at giving someone a good whack. Something happened to him and he drove home in a haze of dreaming colour knowing that he had changed. He found that he had herniated discs in his cervical spine; there the discs pressed down on the nerves to the left hand side of his body and directly on the spinal column itself. He could see it in the MRI scans himself. His muscles wasted and it took many months to rebuild them and regain function there.
After that his dreaming took another turn. Instead of controlling the entrance into the colour, he shifted very rapidly into another level of trance. His waking dreams had changed. Now again these last few days something has shifted, he experiences a shimmer of consciousness before entering trance. His pulse rate and metabolism slow and within a matter of a few seconds he is dreaming. Now though, the level of lucidity and awareness that he is dreaming is much less detached, the experience is somehow much deeper. His sleep dreams seem much the same as ever.
Which brings us back to paths and there are many of these and it is these that we dream in for ourselves. As ever it brings us back to the heart and the people we share our lives with. It brings us back sharply to the journey and not the destination, there to flow and to do what our inner tuition guides, there not to try to force things unwelcome on the world.
A little under two years ago I wrote that letter in which I resigned from my post as a senior lecturer at a top university. There I was responsible for the pastoral care of the students and there I had given it my all. In this university and the students there I saw many of the worst excesses of man’s impact upon others, there in a moment of clarity I realised that I was in effect cleaning up other people’s messes and putting a sticking plaster on something which was really quite badly damaged. These fine young minds were studying at the church of reason learning the arcane language and practice of concrete science. They invested all their effort towards good grades and the elusive happiness wrapped up and beckoning in the sort of career that a graduate from there might expect. In so doing perhaps attempting to fulfill the hopes and aspirations of “tennis coach” parents trying to live their lives through their children. How strange that self worth for so many was so directly linked to their apparent capacity to achieve recognition through the exam results at this arcane school. I wonder for many of them if this is a path with heart.
For many, previously at the top of the pecking order in their respective schools, it was an epiphany; now the competition was fierce and the curriculum intense, from the old school of we had it tough, so should they. It was there that many lives are to be sacrificed on the altar of academic success and “we must publish first”, so that we can be top of the premier league. There, where the techniques of politics and manipulation coupled with the weight of a famous institution ensured a good slice of research funding to maintain this status quo. Some people were quite nice but I had begun to realise over many a lunch time conversation that I no longer cared which person was getting whatever chair at which university, or who had done the best work on electro-chromism and got that big adventurous chemistry grant. Despite all the wonderful young people many of my colleagues had become to me cardboard cut outs of people playing a stereotypical game called academia, a game of the mind and most definitely not of the heart. It is however hard to imagine just how difficult it is to let something like this go. All of my adult life I had strived to get the position and now to realise it was hollow was quite a blow. The impact on me the day I sent the letter was immense. I knew in that act I was changing my whole world and irrevocably so.
I resigned, with no job to go to, put my flat on the market and looked on the internet for somewhere to live. I had asked myself when was I most happy and it was simple, those days in the Peak District before I met my first wife, before it all got so very complicated and so messy, before once again I let myself be swayed by someone else and caught up in their drama. As luck would have it this beautiful listed cottage was on the market and, as if it was intended, I am now here, in the bucolic shire writing these words. I can step out of my door and into the countryside once more.
Eric still makes me read Physics World from time to time just to keep in touch and he reminds me that the Warrior’s path is not like any other path; that everything along the way has a purpose and a meaning if only we take the care and the time to look for it. He reminds me not to squander anything I have learned; to be like that blotting paper absorbing the ink of life, for each drop of it inscribes the character and adds to the power within.
Here I am then with doubts about my health and ready to embark upon a new marriage with a woman whom I care for more than I could ever have imagined possible. I have no job. I have some money in the bank and I have this Chautauqua that presses and strains to write. I am conscious that I haven’t really let it rip yet and am warming up. I am perhaps adrift in the sea of life, I most certainly am not lost. I know that everything has a purpose. I am waiting for the power within to show the next step, unhurried, secure and ready to respond in whatever way is needed. Tomorrow is another day.
Chapter 4 A Path with Heart
No diagnosis then from Friday’s visit to the hospital, there are a lot of things that have been ruled out and I am feeling a little reassured. This gives me some quiet time to start to elaborate on what I mean by a path with heart. In a sense any path, although we might see it as achieving a goal or ambition, ultimately leads no where, for we all must die and that part of incarnate awareness which is the totality of us, in the words of the Bard, shuffles off the mortal coil. Our form disintegrates or is burned and the atoms of our vehicle are re-cycled and used by the universe for another purpose, our bits might one day end up being a plastic Tesco’s bag; who knows. In any case once the power within has left, it is not that important. The form then becomes the formless. The formless is then reorganised into something else. It is the vis viva that takes the clay of a human being and through the magic of life re-organises it into something else. If the atoms are incorporated in an organic sense then some other consciousness uses them, eventually.
What then is a path with heart? Eric says that this differs for each of us, yet deep down we all know when we are treading a path with heart and when we are not. That is the simplicity of it all. The trouble is that most people lack the honesty and live lives of denial, because they are fearful of change. It takes a great deal of courage and some considerable measure of practice to learn to listen to the heart. The heart is not all fluffy and warm, roses and sentiment. When operating fully it is powerful beyond imagination and can be quite a demanding master. For in one sense the heart, that is an expression of true feeling, is that part of the total being which is most in sync with what the power within has set us up for. In this context the heart is not the muscle which pumps our blood. It is pure feeling.
Eric says that most people get hooked on romance and idealism and use the mind to try to force this romance on the being, to an extent where after compromising the emanations of the heart for so long, it controls. The mind is the master of what he calls the first ring of power whereas the heart transcends this; it operates on the level where true inner tuition takes place. That tuition of the inner being, whether a work in progress or truly listened to, leads one on the path with heart.
Many paths first appear to be a path with heart, the mind hoping above all hope that a given direction in life will be a path with heart. The being then invests a great deal of effort in following these paths, to the point where it will vigorously defend the “fact” that this is a path with heart. Deep down though, everyone knows when they are bullshitting themselves and even those around them. When such a point is finally admitted the reluctance to change can cause all sorts of problems. The heart never lies. It is a shame that human beings do. In a sense many of us get caught up in a trap of our own making.
Consider each path very carefully and ask yourself only this. Is this for me a path with heart? This is really the only question and it is the 64 million dollar one. Everything else is just so much intellectual masturbation. For opening your heart and listening to it renders all else mundane. Eric says that this then is the bottom line. For as we traverse this, the sea of life, whenever we are faced with what appears to be a dilemma, asking this and answering honestly will enable one to gain sufficient clarity to work out what are the next steps that need to be taken.
Like all paths, it leads exactly no where, what it does though is to provide a journey of quite stupendous novelty, variety and excitement. Esoterically the path with heart is linked to the cabalistic glyph of Tiphareth and is associated with choosing between the old and the new. Every day is nascent at dawn, lived to the maximum, dies at the sunset, rests overnight and life starts the next day, fresh. Knowing full well that each day brings change and the being walking the path with heart will not be the same being on the following day. It takes guts to walk such a path.
Eric says that it might be wise to put in another quotation here.
This one is from M.F. Powers
Footprints
One night I dreamed a dream. I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord.
When the last scene of my life shot before me I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at times along the path there was only one set of footprints. I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of my life. This always bothered me and I questioned the Lord about my dilemma.
“Lord, you told me that once I decided to follow You, You would walk with me all the way but I noticed that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed You most, You would leave me.”
He whispered,
“ My precious child, I love you and would never, never leave you during your times of trial and suffering. When you see only one set of footprints it was then that I carried you. “
This then re-presents a journey through life and in choosing a path with heart, there will be times when the challenges such a choice calls forth can make one feel completely lost and abandoned. If one sticks with it, the power within guides and in a sense carries us, even when the rational mind has packed up, run away and felt very sorry for itself. The power within, leads us to do things which we might not always have the emotional wherewithal to do and makes sure that we make it through to the other side. In doing this it causes us to grow and change. At times we all feel sorry for ourselves and play the martyr.
If we choose to look at our lives for what they really are, hopefully before the last days of our sojourn here, we can always find a purpose for what has happened and if we are lucky the meaning inherent in that purpose. For it is really us, our own power within, which sets up the circumstance for us to learn, blaming others is just stupid and disempowering for everyone concerned.
If we do not take responsibility for ourselves who is going to? Is change then a path with heart?
“Be the change you wish to see in the World.”
Mohandas Gandhi
As far as I can tell most people want some form of change in their lives, yet direct the intention and responsibility for that change towards external sources, hoping that if he (or she) changes, then it would make my life better.
It is a wistful hope that is often forgotten as quickly as it arises, and then so, back to the day to day business of living. Very few people are willing to take responsibility for changing themselves, hoping that someone else will do “it” for them. The changes which they think they seek are perhaps just a tinkering around the edges of life, maybe a better holiday would do the trick…? So here is a question for you are you going to walk this most difficult of paths and see if you can find the extent and wonder of your being-ness by listening to the power within?
True change is not for the fainthearted. It is a matter of bringing the inside out, letting the spirit surface and breathe. The outer form can only present an image of the state of the inner being and true change begins inside. Once a process of change has been initiated it can come at one like a relentless tide, where the sea of change washes before it all that one once held as true.
True change is seldom welcomed with open arms, rather it often comes about because of a moment of clarity when one knows without any doubt that a way of thinking and of being is no longer tenable; that living as one has been, has in some strange way ceased to be an affair of the heart. Such moments can be initiatory of change or alternatively spark a journey of denial in an over expressed need to be right. That over expression of just how great the form side of life is must constantly be verbalised and re-enforced by others to mask the flight which the inner person much deeper down, knows that they are doing. This has consequences.
True change starts slowly as a way of being and behaving is gradually and sometimes painfully eroded. Then the shape and the constituents of a life, are stripped away, allowing a space for a new person to emerge from the chrysalis. What that being is, may bear little or no resemblance to the caterpillar it once thought it was, avariciously feeding on the substance of life and taking from all around.
True change can be said to be transmutative, transformative and perhaps transfigurational. The expense of change is a former life, the gift, a new one, heralding untold wonders of what it is to be alive; bringing with it a new found sense of purpose and meaning. Somehow, setting one apart from the crowd, who may look at you blankly because such a change is beyond the scope of their experience and as such, so very much a part of the unknown and perhaps, because of an unwillingness to change, the unknowable.
In this respect if one really does change, no one may ever notice. Because of the 99% rule which says that 99% of people think only of themselves 99% of the time, many will miss what has been an act of magic, worked at over a great many years.
Eric says that there is only one way to go and that is to walk as gently on the earth as possible, trying to not impose petty wants and desires upon others and taking from the world only what it is that is truly needed. And that life is a journey of learning and of approaching, leaving as few footprints as possible on the rice-paper world whilst having the best impact one can.
This then is a path with a heart, we do not own the world; we can celebrate our incarnation by making our lives an expression of the emanations of our hearts as we dance the pattern of our existence, hand in hand with the power within.
Traou an Dour 
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