… come out a jellyfish. Credit: Freepik.com
It’s been eleven years since my heart opened on Feb. 13, 2015 (1) and I’m not asking for a refund.
Anyone who wants a testimonial on the benefits of plying the spiritual path might want to go read my Ascension Ethnography, (2) which only goes up to around 2023. (Yes, I’m keeping it up in Volume 2.)
Life on the spiritual path can be a rollercoaster! But it’s so liberating.
One day Constant Comment drops away. (3) No monkey on my shoulder any more, nattering at me.
Another day my entire character armor drops away. (4) I feel normal again! NORMAL!!!! For 70 odd years I’ve behaved abnormally. Hesitant, uncertain, second-guessing myself.
Yet another day self-doubt drops away. (5) I can walk forward without being weighed down by doubt and hesitancy.
This is like a vacuum, car wash, and polish.
I come out looking better than I did and I aged in the meantime.
I’m joking about it, but I get to do that at age 80, right? The white beard and all?
No?
Oh, OK.
Life on the spiritual path gets better and better. I’m not asking for a refund.
I’m not asking for my life circumstances to get better. As long as my computer works and I can look out over the ocean and chat with you, I’m happy. Coffee in the morning (5-6 a.m.). Three peanut butter cookies to dip in it to set me up for the day. Lunch, dinner, I’m fine. (Bed by 11.) Everything is happening … in here, with you, on this digitized piece of paper.
I share; you listen. You share; I listen. We compare notes. That’s how it works.
I’m sustained by this wonderful love toward everyone, toward which we’re all headed. (6) My three months at Cold Mountain Institute in 1975-6 solidified what I was looking for – Self-Knowledge, resulting in more and more universal love. (7)
I got to see what a difference it made to get the muscular tension out of the body. I came up with my first theorem at Cold Mountain: When muscular tension rises in the body, awareness goes down and vice versa.
I went in a mongoose and came out a jellyfish (with a bite), “don’t encounter the bus driver” ringing in my ears.
It showed me how powerful self-awareness is. I could see what it had done for me in three short months.
Then the est Training a year later was the piéce de résistance. So much solid wisdom about how the human being functioned. I draw on Werner’s insights to this day: What you resist persists. Make a difference. You need to see each other less. The latter became for me the notion of increasing the distance to see if that works. It often does and saves a relationship.
I say that as a writer who needs vast stretches of contemplative time. Not suitable material for a relationship. I no longer pretend otherwise. Oh, I forgot. I’m 80. I shouldn’t be talking about relationships at 80! Right?
Garbage. 80 feels like 50, except I could use having my short-term memory back. 7 am. Time to see what the world is doing….
Footnotes
(1) See:
- “Submerged in Love,” March 14, 2015, in An Ascension Ethnography, Vol. 1, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/An-Ascension-Ethnography-5.pdf, and after.
- “Activating the Wellspring – Part 1/2,” March 14, 2015, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2015/03/14/activating-the-wellspring-part-1-2-2/
(2) See An Ascension Ethnography, Vol. 1, ibid.
(3) On the disappearance of the monkey on my back, see On the Departure of Constant Comment at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Departure-of-Constant-Comment.pdf
(4) See Factory Reset; or, Dropping Our Character Armor at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Factory-Reset-or-Dropping-Our-Character-Armor-9.pdf
(5) See “It Isn’t That Something has Arisen. Something Just Left,”
(6) See The Ring of Fire, Wave of Love at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Ring-of-Fire-Wave-of-Love-Compilation-9.pdf
(7) OK, OK, true love is always, already universal. Therefore the term “universal love” is what’s called a pleonasm: a partial repetition of terms. Show me higher-dimensional love that is not universal.