To Live?
To live? To sing the heart’s passion and feeling flowing through you? To find balance despite what life throws at you? To channel a grounded foundation within the core of your being? To follow the higher self’s lighter path, to feel it whispering on my scalp, golden feathers floating down in front of my eyes? It’s winds are light, yet persistent! Like water eroding a stream’s rock shores. Oh, how the river of life flows through me! What a gift it is to feel that despite my base tendencies — it’s hardness, coldness, instant gratification ridden, suffering inducing, rigid dirt through which we are growing within and without ourselves — it is all born out of love! Infinite love! So loving that it creates that which I hate and despise most. I do not have to understand it, for I am forgiven! I am loved despite my shortcomings. In fact, I am loved because of my shortcomings, for without them, how could God love itself fully?
For God to love itself fully it must experience what it is like to feel like a being — a human — that lacks the ability to be infinitely loving. It is okay. We are just human. Travis Scott was right when he said stop trying to be God, that that’s just not your part. That’s just an idea. Just be you and trust the process. Have faith in it, and be convicted when you hear your higher path calling you that it is right for you. That you are in God’s hands, Brahma’s hands, with the Buddha walking beside you — oh, Guatama — Muhammad leading you to conquer from within so you can love without! Jesus and all of these others are with you because how could they not be? If they weren’t with you then that would entail separation.
But as we know, have felt, have experienced: in the Ultimate, everything is connected in infinite Consciousness, a.k.a. Being, a.k.a. Truth. In the words of the Kybalion, “The All is within all, and all are within the All.” The fractal geometric theorems as discovered and thought of by Mandelbrot tell us that reality is infinitely self similar. That is, at every level of reality whether you’re looking at the spiral shape of a conch shell or that of a spiral galaxy, the fundamental geometric structure is essentially similar, yet perpetually manifesting in infinite appearance of form. So, the pattern of the whole is found within the piece, and so perhaps this is what the bible means when it says we are created in god’s image — we as finite beings are but one iteration, one piece of, a reflection of god’s infinite pattern — the infinite pattern of reality. And this is what I mean when I say that all the sages, mystics, and yogis of past time, and ultimately God’s voice is within you. Because the infinite is within the finite, separation is a relative notion and in a sense an illusion, and All is present in this moment: in this moment as you experience it with your mind, with your pure consciousness.
When I speak of God, I do not mean the Christian creator God, not a monotheistic conceptual notion, or any conception of God put forth by any organized, institutional religion. What I am referring to is an experience that cannot be thought of or spoken. If you have an idea of God, that’s not it, as Leo Gura said. This is an experience you can have. Ultimately, it is an experience of yourself on a deeper level than you have ever had before, beyond the confines of your day to day duality driven experience of reality.
If you want this experience you must cultivate the ability to hear this voice, to be aware of it. To be aware of the nature of reality. This isn’t a voice in the typical sense when someone you know speaks to you. It’s more of a feeling, and a sense of some sort. It’s a state of Being, a state of consciousness that seems almost categorically distinct from this one, and yet this one is subsumed within it. You realize it is what you really are at a deeper level than you ever have before. This realization seems to tap into a priori wisdom, and knowledge. That is, it is something you know that you know before any experience to contrast it with, yet it is a posterior because it is only an experience, not a thought in the typical sense that a priori definitions refer to. It is both a priori and a posteriori, though, because the duality between experience and thought collapses. The duality between ‘pre-‘ and ‘post-‘ collapses. This is an experience of total unity, which is facilitated by ever expanding love.
This kind of insight — vipassana — may come to you through a medium you are familiar with, like playing music, walking in nature, writing, contemplating by yourself or with others, or most likely through an ecstatically altered state of consciousness like through meditation or entheogens. The deeper the insight and experience of this Ultimate Reality, the less communicable and the more ineffable it becomes, while simultaneously becoming increasingly obvious and intuitively true. It is difficult to hold onto it with memory in this state as a human since it seems we are almost downloading higher dimensional information into a lower physical plane of existence: 3D. Imagine being a 2D being who suddenly becomes aware of what it’s like to be in 3D space and then trying to communicate it to your 2D friends! And yet, you know it when you see it and when you feel it, and it makes sense completely while it’s happening. It might even make more sense and seem more real than the typical state of consciousness we are in, almost like this existence is but a shadow of something with a more fundamental substance, which nods to Plato’s Cave Analogy. And perhaps it cannot be communicated, but it can only be pointed to.
What is the point in trying to describe the moon to you when I could just point to the moon, as the Buddhist saying goes, and have you see for yourself? And this to me, is one of the hallmarks of a great spiritual teacher, guide, role model, and leader. To be able to guide the student, client, and/or patient sufficiently so that they can guide themselves, and see for themselves. To make them realize that they have the ability to experience and find truth for themselves. Through this collaborative process of learning and growing together we can make a world more peaceful, aware, knowledgeable, scientifically literate, wise, ethical, joyous, and balanced world than ever before.
To take up this path is but a humble shaman’s request, a psychotherapist’s request, a human’s request. To live! To live fully as you feel is right for you! To be true, to be you, and guide others along the way too. Om. Much love, and stay safe and healthy.
