Last revised: June 12, 2009
I was reading a back issue of SaLuSa the other day and he provided me with a statement that startled me and caused the melding of two bodies of literature in my mind:
“What the next few years will do is to offer you the opportunity to lift up your sights, and set them upon the most lighted expression you can achieve. After all, the object of working your way to Ascension is to move into a state of enlightenment, and continue to evolve.” (1)
Until I heard SaLuSa say that, I had puzzled over the matter and kept the literature of ascension and the literature of enlightenment separate in my mind.
But now I felt released from that. I felt as if a dam had broken. It was now time to meld the teachings of the spiritual sages with those of the masters, celestials and galactics that we have been so earnestly listening to.
As a result of these events, I struggled today to carry on my daily affairs because words kept pouring through my mind. I realized that it was time, for me at least, to begin to focus on the spiritual fundamentals as my way of preparing for what looms ahead in our lives – the reality of announcements (2) and all that follow.
From my studies of enlightenment, and I am not myself an enlightened man but only a seeker, the basic spiritual movement, the fundamental spiritual act, could generically be phrased as “turning from the world to God.”
To my way of thinking, all of life is a huge spiral in which the soul leaves God and begins a journey outwards, towards realizing itself as God, only to merge again with God when that realization is complete.
Jesus described it when he said, lo, I came from the Father out into the world and now I leave the world and return to the Father. (No time for citations anymore.) That is a precise description of what I just referred to.
And the halfway point, and this is only my way of seeing things, occurs when the individual soul turns its attention from the world and focuses it on God.
Now those words “the world” and “God” can mean many different things to different people and all would be partly sound and correct. I could say “turn from worldly desire to desire for God alone.” I could say “turn from my appetites to my longing for God.” I could say “turn from pleasure to yearning.” I could substitute for the word “God,” the One, the Self, the Tao, the Formless, it really doesn’t matter what word I use.
However one wants to talk about it, there comes a time in one life or another where one feels the irresistible call to put aside what St. Paul called “childish things” – one more movie, one more bottle of wine, one more trip to Marrakesh – and cry out for God.
Sri Ramakrishna had many parables about the child playing with its toys. So long as it did so, the mother continued cooking rice over the fire. But the minute the child tired of its toys and cried out for its mother, she would take the rice pot down from the fire and hurry to her child.
The child has turned from the world to God and God has hurried to the child.
Or Jesus, when asked what the first commandment was, said “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul.” A person who does this has turned from the world to God.
For me, this basic spiritual movement is the first noteworthy, conscious step an individual takes on the spiritual path and the one who does it has covered perhaps more than half the “distance” between Origin and Destination in the overall journey of life.
For me as well, delving into what it means to turn from the world to God (please substitute any other word you’d like if this word does not work for you) is an ongoing practice.
It’s been quite a while since a movie no longer satisfied me. I have my wardrobe down to … well, I may as well wear a uniform. The only uses I have for money are so basic that I could leave home without it some days and not notice.
When I look, I see that the consequence of turning from the world to God is that, after a while, it remains no longer a conscious action. I do not need to turn from the world at this time. I am drawn from the world, drawn inward, irresistibly.
I am almost incapable at this moment of doing much more than simply communicating about this. As a useful member of society, I am at this time a complete waste, a nincompoop. I don’t even care to make excuses for myself.
I have no idea how I shall be tomorrow, but if there were a predictable direction to this, I quite seriously think I will be what spiritual writers call “abstracted” – not good for anything other than to simply contemplate God.
And not even to contemplate. Just to be bliss.
With the last ounce of focus I have, before surrendering even that, I say again what I wanted so desperately to say, as if it were a message in a bottle, a deep dark secret passed between best friends …. shhhhh (is anybody looking?) … the basic spiritual movement is to turn from the world to God.
Footnote
(1) SaLuSa of Sirius, April 6, 2009, through Mike Quinsey, at https://www.treeofthegoldenlight.com/First_Contact/Channeled_Messages_by_Mike_Quinsey.htm
(2)”Announcements” refers to the expected announcements disclosing the reality of extraterrestrial life and UFOs and the announcement of the abundance program called NESARA.