This process of slowly unfolding is hard to adjust to and hard to keep track of.
Sometimes it feels like expanding into something.
Sometimes it feels like the penny dropping.
Sometimes it feels like a wave of bliss arising.
But always the direction is forward.
Forward to Nova Earth, abundance, Disclosure, Ascension. Forward to the adventure of a lifetime.
Never mind all the office routines that I need to observe – and let that term be all inclusive – the spaces that I go through and the different ways of orienting to them that are required can be quite challenging these days.
In an article I wrote years ago, I compared it to being like Vincent d’Onofrio’s character, the alien in a “borrowed” human body, who couldn’t quite get the face aligned and so was constantly tugging on it.
One minute I’m soaring. The next minute I’m aching. I’m either expanding into a space or smarting from a vasana that’s come up for cleansing. I’m disoriented and constantly in danger of tripping. I don’t know what I’ll be asked tomorrow.
I imagine it’s the same for everybody. The outer chaos seems to be mirroring the inner chaos.
In this journey, given what’s being asked of us, I get constant inspiration from a passage from Plotinus, which I recall to mind very often. May I cite it here, at length? I love to share it.
What is this vision like? How is it attained? How will one see this immense beauty that dwells, as it were, in inner sanctuaries and comes not forward to be seen by the profane?
Let him who can arise, withdraw into himself, forego all that is known by the eyes, turn aside forever from the bodily beauty that was once his joy. He must not hanker after the graceful shapes that appear in bodies, but know them for copies, for traceries, for shadows, and hasten away towards that which they bespeak. …
Withdraw into yourself and look. (1) … Do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautified: he cuts away here, he smooths it there, he makes this line lighter, this other one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble. Do you this, too.
Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one radiance of beauty. Never cease “working at the statue” until there shines out upon you from it the divine sheen of virtue…. (2)
Have you become like this? Do you see yourself, abiding within yourself, in pure solitude? Does nothing now remain to shatter that interior unity, nor anything cling to your authentic self? (3)
Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space, not confined to any circumscribed form, not diffused as something without term, but ever immeasurable as something greater than all measure and something more than all quantity?
Do you see yourself in this state? Then you have become vision itself. Be of good heart. Remaining here you have ascended aloft. You need a guide no longer. Strain and see. (4)
Have we become so cleansed of our vasanas (core issues) and conditioned behavior, so free from image management and manipulative games that “virtue” (the divine qualities) shines out from us?
He gives us three tests: (1) Are you aware of yourself abiding in the knowingness of a quiet mind and divine unity (pure solitude)? (2) Are there no competing agendas and unfulfilled desires left to interrupt the inner unity? and (3) Is there no remaining overburden of vasanas and conditioned behavior, sleeping volcanoes triggered into explosive life, upsetting our balance and obscuring the Natural Self?
Some will find the first a road in; others the second; still others the third; and some, all three.
For the state to be complete, it requires that we actually “see” the Natural Self or know it or realize it.
How many times have I had bliss going on with me but it didn’t come alive and envelop me until I recognized its existence? The minute I recognized it, like a long lost friend, it hugged me as if to consume me. Swallowed in one gulp. (5)
Here too, as with bliss, I believe that we must recognize the Natural Self and be willing to assume the responsibility that comes from accepting what we “see” for it to come alive and consume us, so to speak.
Recognizing is actually an action; it isn’t being passive and waiting for something to hit us between the eyes. I had my “sensors” already out, my “radar” on, my awareness present when I saw the gentle face that caught my attention and led to my experience of the Self. I was already open to “recognizing” it.
All victim stances would have to go to keep that space of the Natural Self alive. That’s why we have to strain and see.
We have to watch for any remaining vasanas and allow nothing to cause the space to close down, before its natural time. Several times I’ve lost hard-won transformational spaces because I told a lie or pinched a candy.
All self-worth issues, codependency, dysfunctionality, irresponsibility, and childishness would have to go, I think. And I’m only speculating. I’m not an enlightened man.
Do you see yourself in this state? Plotinus’ description is a pretty good metaphorical summary of where we’re headed, I think.
Strain and see. One day we’ll look and will see.
Footnotes
(1) If you’ll permit me, look in the heart.
(2) I’ve never heard a more poetic description of the cleanings process that we’re all in and will be in for a ways more down the cosmic road.
(3) Natural Self. No overburden of vasanas and conditioned behavior.
(4) Plotinus in Elmer O’Brien, ed., The Essential Plotinus. Representative Treatises from the Enneads. Toronto: New American Library, 1964 Essential Plotinus, 40-3.
(5) This swallowing of my lower-dimensional state is what I think Ramakrishna means when he talks about the actions of the inner guru. Bliss is my inner guru.
The saint of Dakshineswar also used to suggest to his disciples that they make themselves bait for some Big Fish. I consider bliss a Big Fish.