I woke early this morning from a strange dream wrapped up somehow in weird evangelical Christianity. I was walking along with Christian and another guy and we come across three men who were doing something New Agey (or perhaps being human statues). Anyway, the other guy who was with Christian and I held up his hand to one of the New Agey blokes (the one on the left) and said something like, you’ve got an object on you. I took it to mean something ‘spiritual’, like a demon or an illness, some blemish in his aura. I couldn’t see anything and thought given these guys looked fairly powerful in their New Aginess nothing would happen. But without touching him, just holding his hand there, the New Ager started staggering backwards and eventually fell to the floor, typical Christian stylee. Then more praying began, more people arrived, more holding up of hands and falling over and healings and conversions and such. It was all a bit mad. My old school friend Steve Phillips arrived and, being sceptical and atheistic and funny, I expected nothing from him. The hand went up. He made a joke. But then he got it also, did the falling backwards thing, lay on the ground. Soon there was a pretty massive crowd, some police ambling about and having a look, even Prince Charles coming over. I had to admit there was something going on, something I didn’t really understand. And I knew it was related to the long email I wrote to Christian yesterday in response to his sending me ten pictures of Jesus’s crucifixion with various, “this is what God looks like” messages on it. I mean, in the dream someone did try it on with me and, open as I was to something happening, nothing happened. But I think the crux was that sentence I just wrote there: “something was going on, something I didn’t really understand.” Maybe best to leave the Christians to their thing. Maybe it is just a beginners’ tool, a gateway drug. But, still, the gateway has its place, it’s one way to get people ‘hooked’. Leave ‘em be. Let ‘em play their beginners’ games and you move on to other things.
Unless, of course, they really do have/know something you don’t have/know. I’m always open to the possibility. Think, in moments like this, Christ, what if Jesus really is the only/right way? It smacks in the face of everything I think and believe to be true – everything I’ve learned from Amma and Yogananda and Conversations With God and Weiss and my own experience – but I suppose it’s good to leave a little room for the possibility. Even though nothing in my evidence possibly presents it as true. But a little doubt keeps you honest. Nothing wrong with that.
Anyways, I’ll guess I’ll paste that email that I wrote to Christian here –
Oh Christian...what am I supposed to do with that? S'a bit grim i'n't it? ;-)
How about some quotes?
"To die for a cause is easy. To live for a cause is a whole other matter."
(Buddha spent thirty-five years helping people; Amma gives 20+ hours every day to helping others, and has done since the early 80's. I'm not saying they're any higher than Jesus. But people sacrifice their lives every day for their "higher cause". Suicide bombers, for example. Jesus's life is the message, not his death. I really think it's time for Christianity to come out of its "death obsession" and martyr phase.)
"There's none so pious as the converted."
(It's funny I was thinking about you on the way home today, and about Mosaic and similar things. About the youthfulness of those involved. You've got the unlearned young teaching the unlearned young teaching more unlearned young and making those unlearned young into leaders. To be a bit more crass, the blind leading the blind. I'm not saying you're not beautiful lovely people - but it's a bit much to go parading around saying you know stuff about God when you're barely out of nappies.)
"Extremes create extremes."
(I was thinking of that when I was thinking about the Christian 'moshing' videos. It's probably why I mock them while just smile at genuine moshers. Genuine moshers say they're doing their mad crazy thing because it's fun; Christian moshers say they're doing their mad crazy thing because they're God's chosen people and everyone else is wrong and what they're doing is holy and good and God's will. Extremes create extremes. I think you'd do well to think about that. You try and push people in a certain direction they're either going to buckle or push back. Why is it Christians bear the brunt of atheist's attacks? Why not Hindus and Buddhists? Answer: probably because Hindus and Buddhists don't shove their religion down other people's throats.)
"Certainty can be a great mask for insecurity."
(One thing I've found: the more devout and public a person is in their faith, probably the more uncertainty and insecurity they have deep down. When you realise the truth you also realise you don't need anyone else to believe what you believe because your belief doesn't rely on theirs.)
"Ours is not the only way, ours is but another way."
(One day, hopefully, all religious extremists will just chill the eff out and realise this. Religion was chiefly borne of man's ego. Ego = separation = the opposite of God, which is Unity. If you think anyone is something other than God's child you're not seeing the whole picture. I understand why ego, why insecurity, why the need to be the chosen ones and to be right and for others to be wrong. But there's a better way than that. A smarter and wiser and bigger and more all-encompassing way.)
Have you heard the parable of the blind men and the elephant? Or the sick man and his doctor? They're good ones; I'll tell them you.
1. A man leads a blind man to an elephant and asks him to describe it to him. The blind man holds the elephant's ear and says, ah, yes, an elephant is big and flat and floppy. Another man describes its leg, like a tree trunk. Another it's tusk, smooth and tapered and curved. No no no, says the first blind man, that's not what an elephant is like, an elephant is big and fat and floppy. No no no, says the third man (and also the fourth, and the fifth) and they all start to fight thinking their own description is right.
2. A man goes to his doctor because of a certain ailment and his doctor prescribes him a medicine. The man goes home but instead of taking the medicine he makes an altar to the prescription and begins to worship it. No improvement. He returns to the doctor and the doctor explains, no no, look you have to actually use the prescription. Ah doc, says the man, you are so wise, I understand perfectly now. And off he goes and on the way holds the prescription and chants, one pill in the morning, two pills in the evening, one pill in the morning...and still no improvement. He returns to the doctor and the doctor explains again. Oh, you're so wise, says the man and off he goes. Returns home. And starts to castigate his neighbours and townsfolk telling them how useless their own doctors are and how wonderful his doctor is, how they're all fools for going to the wrong doctor. And still he doesn't take the medicine...
My child, you're ever such a young sprout. Find a bit of humility and open your eyes to the possibility that there just may be a great many things in this world beyond your current understanding. Check out the words of Ramakrishna, Amma, Julian of Norwich, The Cloud of Unknowing, St Francis of Assisi, Mother Meera, Paramahansa Yogananda, among many thousands of others. It's only your ignorance that allows you to say, "my doctor is the only true doctor that ever was and ever will be." Is it really so bad that there are other good doctors in the world and that there's still a trillion and one things to learn and understand, and plenty to unlearn too. The movement is from ignorance towards knowledge. From separation towards unity. From fear towards love. Which way do you want to go? This is my fear: that I see all these beautiful young shining minds and that instead of opening up further and further and growing into wonder they burrow ever deeper into narrow, indoctrinated beliefs, stuffing their ears to the nagging voice of reality, and becoming more and more 'certain' that they already have the truth they profess to seek. I really want to believe you're better than that.
Also: "belief is for things you don't KNOW, only hope to be true. The louder the belief, the less likely, alas, that you know."
You know it's only love that motivates me to say these things. Actually reading the Bible that partly prompted it. Some passage about the responsibility of saving others from their ignorance. Not sure I buy into that - so many of them! so few of us! - but, there you go, I done it.
Anyways, goodness only knows what prompted all that! ;-)
Big love,
Rory
– and then move on to what I really wanted to talk about, which was having another look at Shawn’s reading from a few months back, somehow drawn there this morning. Maybe one line at a time. So…
You perceive a gulf between the connection that once was to a perceived lack you now find within yourself.
That’s true. Or I guess it was. Haven’t really been thinking about it lately. Been too busy with work and also with thinking about other things like Greece
This lack, this perceived emptiness has created a yearning in you, a desire for connection, for purpose.
Ay, there’s the rub: a yearning for purpose, to feel useful, to have something more than [what I perceive as] shallow interactions with others and the world.
What must be understood is that it is only your perception which allows a distance from your connection, from the divine, from us. We have never left. The connection you feel has diminished has never retreated, in fact you are constantly being bathed in our light, in our energy it is only the aperture of your mind which has contracted leaving you feeling as though life has darkened.
Hm. Well maybe that I’m not thinking about my perceived lack of connection anymore is a sign that I’ve come to accept this statement as true and relax into it. Or maybe I just got busy with other things.
This constriction of flow has created a need to reach out, to find comfort in any way that you consider possible in your current state of perception.
You mean women? Lol. Or in busyness, work, looking for career, travel?
Probably in women, huh? Well I can’t argue with that. Although later on you do say something that makes me think my constant thoughts on women and relationship are actually okay and in accordance with the deeper desires of my soul. I do need another, on some level. But the reaching out is still there. Yes, I’m not at peace with the world, the way things are, feel a strong need to do something more with my life rather than just ‘being’, and so I’m reaching out. The thoughts on knuckling down – once again – to some writing. To doing something “with/for the world”. But what is that desire? For the world still turns and there are seven billion people in it and I, as one man – and one deeply flawed and unenlightened man – could never really do that much anyway.
Am I Ramana Maharshi’s outward-looking mind thinking I need to first wake everyone else up in my own dream? To be some sort of saviour? To…
Well, probably they’re the kind of fruitless speculations I don’t really need to get into here. The original point was “seeking comfort” – and, I suppose, more precisely seeking “mental comfort.” The mind wanting peace. The mind wanting to feel that it’s where it needs to be, not missing out, not wasting time. An image there of a basement flat in Leeds . And the thought of my life as recently lived, refereeing and working and slowly ticking ever onwards achieving very little tangible except the growth of a bank balance and a ticking off of days while the body ages and wrinkles and moves ever onwards into middle age and old age and death. Depressing thought. Terrifying thought. That I won’t crack the secret in my youth and will one day find myself grown up and no longer able to live mad and poor searching for my treasure.
In any case, I’m off to Greece
Loneliness is a self-made void that can never be filled by anything in the outer world. It is a vacuum which draws forth and is never satisfied.
Yup, I believe that.
Ask yourself why it is that you feel disconnected. Target that which separates you from the ever present flow which constantly strives to flow through you.
I think I asked myself. I’m not sure I really got an answer. Why do I feel disconnected? What is it that separates me from the “ever present flow”?
…
Fear. Fear of…various things, really. (I’m typing now without thinking, without foreknowledge of what is to come.) Fear that I’ll do something crazy (such as flying off to a country on a one-way ticket and abandoning my comfortable life just because I one morning had a vision of the name of a city in Greece Greece
Hm. I guess it’s fear. Is the “ever present flow” the thing that presents wonderful ideas to my mind, ideas that I don’t act on ‘because of fear’? Ideas like those I had when I took the acid? Ideas about starting up a little church? Ideas I get excited about and roll around in and then push back out of my mind ‘cos they’re too difficult and different and crazy?
That’s fear, isn’t it? A lot of people go with ideas like that, and probably far crazier and more ill-intentioned people than me.
Ideas for writing, too. All these things that constantly burn within me that I don’t really do, unless in the short-term, momentary flickers on a good day like when I got all determined to ‘pray for others’ that afternoon behind 5 Hessle and just watching movies and being comfortable instead.
Maybe that’s what stops me. Maybe the flow is there and I just don’t “go with it.” I may have hit on something pretty big there. Maybe those ideas of a little group in Leeds , in my little flat, weren’t so crazy after all. But it’s like that time I tried to have a party as a teenager and nobody came. I’d just feel so devastated if nobody came to the party. I mean, that was a different party – a lame party where the only aim was to get drunk – but I know it’s stayed with me. I hate the thought of trying to get something going. But maybe it’s the not doing of it that is causing me my tension. I cry out to God for instructions of what I should do – probably deep down in inside more wanting an answer like, “fly to Canada” or “marry this amazingly hot girl” or “train to be a psychotherapist” – but perhaps God’s already suggested it. Perhaps those ideas of a little group are where it’s at. Or going to the canyon in Mexico
I really need to think about this. And to endeavour to “go with the flow” whatever that may be. And for the first time I see it may not be about leaving everything behind and just living one day at a time, on the road, with a backpack over my shoulder. It may be about something a little more ‘settled’ than that.
Your mind has been busy building reality in such a way that you may function in a world which is daunting to you. You perceive reality as something other than what it is.
This is a terrifying indictment and statement, if true. For what have I been doing with my time then if all it has been is trying to conform to a reality that isn’t reality at all? Yes, I’ve been trying to make it work in the so-called “real world.” Getting grounded. Associating with ‘normal people’. Becoming able to shoot the shit and chat about everyday things and function around blokes without wanting to tear my own head off. Able to rent a place and stay in it for more than to months. Able to tolerate supermarkets and a city built around shopping. Able to live with women. Able to contemplate career and check out the housing market. And even though it’s not truly satisfying, at least it’s ‘sane’ and functional. I was out there, man. I felt like life wanted to bring me to this place. And now you’re telling me it’s all been misguided? Or is that really what you’re telling me?
Your mind has been busy building reality in such a way that you may function in a world which is daunting to you.
Yes, the world is daunting to me. The world of work and of getting by in the day to day. Times I was amazed and staggered that people managed to find and do jobs, barely able to comprehend how I could make that leap. But I did it. And it wasn’t too hard. I found things which didn’t appear to hurt my soul – nor swell up my eyes – and it’s nigh on two years that I’ve been in Leeds . I’ve barely left. It’s not the most satisfying life – but then, that’s perhaps because I’ve neglected the things that could have satisfied me, such as writing – always satisfies me when I actually do it, no matter where I am – and those ideas of starting a little group, a church, a ‘whatever you want to call it’. Other people do that sort of thing. But then, is it not just me “looking outwards” again? Seeking to fill a hole with others? Again, “building reality so that I can function in this daunting world”? Or is it more than that? The “going with the flow”? The fulfilment of some divine purpose, the purpose that I cry out for?
I guess we’ll see. And…
You perceive reality as something other than what it is.
Okay. Good. So what is reality? If I perceive it as something other than what it is – if what I think of as reality isn’t really reality – then, pray tell me, what’s the frickin’ point in anything that I’m doing? If everything’s serving some false God? If every decision I make, thing I do, idea I have is all barking up the wrong tree anyway?
It’s all very well telling me I don’t know what reality is – but a far more useful thing would be to show me. Go on: show me, I dare you. Take me to some cave in Greece Greece
What is reality? What is reality? I want to know.
Show me. Don’t let me give any more of my precious time to living for a false idea of truth. Man, it’s gonna be so frustrating if I get to the end of this life and then look back and see that I was living it all so totally wrong all along…
You long for the magic, the synchronicity and your idea that the world is a place devoid of this is mistaken.
You’re right, I know. And by “the world” I guess you mean “Leeds ” or “the city.” Because if you mean “planet Earth” then I suppose I don’t really have much option for escape from that. But if you mean “the urban world versus the quiet and peaceful natural world”…well, I guess what I’m saying is, yes, I know one can find God in the city – theoretically, anyway (thinking Yogananda and Calcutta) – but then it hasn’t really been my experience and the noise and craziness of it doesn’t really work for me in the same way that nature does. More people in the city, and therefore more chances for people-based interactions – my recent encounter with the evangelicals testimony to “synchronicity in ‘the world’” – but those things are few and far between. The power of the environment. The mindset of the people therein. It does often feel like I’m surrounded purely by shoppers. I mean, I’ve lived here two years and not very much has happened when you think about it. And yet, for some reason, I haven’t been allowed to leave.
So what do you mean by “the world”? Planet Earth? Or the worldly urban life of work and living in an apartment and associating with footballers and drunkards and people who only think about their paycheck and what’s on TV? ‘Cos, okay, I know it’s not devoid – but it don’t seem to have as much “magic and synchronicity” as I would like. And maybe that’s my fault. Maybe because I haven’t worked “to put it there.” Maybe because I’ve stifled my candle and not acted on the ideas that I’ve had. Maybe ‘cos I’ve kept my mouth shut and just looked to others to provide the things that interest me. And then become dissatisfied. And then turned against.
Maybe it really is up to me. But who am I to think such things? Knowing the delusion, the “exaggerated feelings of self-worth”, and the fact that I don’t even know what reality is anyway?
Or is it true that: “it’s not necessary to know all the answers to lead others in the search for them. One needn’t be a teacher to set oneself as the head of a group – its founder, its organiser – because even as the head you can still learn along with everyone else. That’s honesty, humility – and far more value to your ‘students’ than trying to be Mr Wise One who has it all together and has solved the whole shebang”?
Interesting that as I write this I lean towards that idea of starting a group, here in Leeds , in my old basement flat. The other day I wrote and I came to the conclusion that I should be buggering off to Mexico
God, I suppose, will show me the way. It’s one step at a time and all I have to do right now is go to Greece
And the divergent directions? Just to name them and put them out there. Nicky and Ireland Yorkshire . Psychotherapy. My dad’s shop. Canada British Columbia Mexico Leeds and refereeing and squash. Travelling and being a devil-sticking vagabond. And always California
Calm your mind, open yourself, you will find that this material world is made of the same substance as that which flowed through you for a time when you finally opened yourself up to it. Go forth into the world as a child, with wonder and see it pregnant with possibilities as you once did.
Well…okay. I tried that a little by riding my bike and saying, “ma-ma” at everything and it kind of worked in making me feel like a child. But, you know, living in Leeds and paying your rent and thinking about jobs isn’t really “being as a child.” Nor contending with the minds of religious people. Nor having to deal with women. It’s not easy to be a man-child in this town when you work as a football referee and everything’s so concrete and everything. I mean, I pull it off pretty well – there’s no one gonna accuse me of being a grown-up (and I know you don’t mean, literally, be a child; I don’t mean to labour the point) – but it seems a lot easier to do it in the alternative lifestyle where you just gad about with a backpack and toss sticks in the air and –
So why don’t I just do that then?
Ha! That’s a bloody good question. ;-)
Calm my mind. Is this calming my mind? Is writing good for me or not? Or is it all just mind games, the ego, and the opposite of that which I seek? I’ve been remembering lately – in the wake of trying to quit writing my blog – that my best period of growth came in Mexico
This material world is made of the same substance as that which flowed through you for a time. Go forth into it as a child, with wonder, and see it pregnant with possibilities.
Ok. I will. I shall walk wide-eyed and open to whatever comes. I shall be present and think not of the past or the future. I shall get off that plane in Corfu devoid of plans and ideas and just go walking into the Greek sun. Get on a bus if I feel called that way. Spend my money without a thought for hoarding it. Chat with everyone and follow those I feel drawn to, and let those who feel drawn to me follow me. I shall blink like a child and not know where I am. And if it takes me three months to get to Korinth, that’s what it will take. I’m starting to feel glad I’m going only one-way. I don’t care what happens to me or to my wallet. The worst thing? That I spend a hundred, a hundred and fifty quid getting back instead of the sixty I spent getting there. Oh, boo hoo hoo. So I get there and I find out it’s not for me and I should have planned to come back to Leeds after two weeks after all. Oh well. To think I’m letting my mind get bent just at the thought of a bit of money! Foolish child. Spend it! That’s what it’s there for. Man, I’ve got so much. And plenty more where that came from too. Can’t believe I’ve become so tight. And getting worse with it all the time.
Go forth as a child.
I will. I need to relinquish adult things. I just want to be free.
And then you move swiftly on to talking about relationships with women and, wow, I’m right back to contemplating life as an ‘adult’…
You have progressed on your own and have reached a stand still. There is a stubbornness within you. A refusal to surrender as a means of self-protection. A time has come in which to carry on with your journey with a new opportunity to diminish the selfishness within your nature. This selfishness is not unusual or to be labeled as a negative trait, this notion will only strengthen it. You instinctively are aware that the way in which you may be able to accomplish this is with another. To share a life, to share a love with someone. To grow together, leapfrogging each other on your path of experience.
Ay ay ay…and there I am, rocketed right back to thinking about Laura, to thinking how she was ‘presented to me’, and to thinking how I’ve been avoiding being with her for nearly twelve years now. Is that my “refusal to surrender”? That at age 25 she and I were brought together and that I’ve gone nowhere since? Certainly, that’s about the time my growth stopped – felt most explicitly when I was in Victoria in 2001 chasing after Sara – and I know that was linked to women (to, more precisely, my mother issues, as Shawn’s angel pointed out). Twelve years and still she’s around and still I’m thinking about whether or not to be with her. So many reasons to go for it, and several reasons not to. How can I be with a woman I don’t find attractive? But then what of the lesson of Meg Ryan learned while watching When Harry Met Sally the other day? That, wow, she was so hot and sexy and attractive and, man, 25 years down the line she’s just gone wrong (as far as physical appearance goes). So what of basing one’s relationship on something so fleeting as that? At least “never making a pretty woman your wife” won’t be disappointing when age kicks in, as it invariably must, and as it will with me. Such silly shallowness! But then…
It’s not just that, it’s other things too. Her worrying. Her haranguing me about locking windows and doors even when we’re just sitting in the garden. I dunno, maybe they’re nothing things too. The other day, when off in Scarborough – and away from everything, and therefore with some time to really contemplate my life – I think of her and I think, wow, I actually feel bad for not being with her – feel bad for her – for the years 26 to 38 when maybe she could have been bouncing children by now, been a satisfied and happy wife and mother. Maybe I’ve deprived her, and maybe that’s really bad of me. Selfish and stubborn. And maybe it’s not done me any good either. My spiritual growth stopped around that time and though I’ve achieved certain things – university, my relationship with Sara, written a book, a bit of travel and a bit of learning – where have I really gone in my life? Mostly it feels like circles. Like treading water. Like being at standstill. Where God and spiritual experience and bliss? Meanwhile, happily married and daddy Shawn meets an Indian guru and merges with the oneness and gets the thing I crave. So maybe I’ve been silly and missed out. Maybe just twelve wasted years. Twelve years of going nowhere. Just stunted growth.
But then what of Nicky? The woman I met when I came back from Mexico and Israel Ireland
Laura, Nicky, Laura, Nicky…
I walk into an office with these thoughts in my mind and say to the security guard, wanting his surname for the form and half-remembering it from before, “is it Nicky?”
“Yes,” he says, and I can’t help but smile and shake my head at it, shades of Elijah and Rosemary and all weird California
But then Laura’s story far more empowering, the message from Momma and her fulfilment of it earlier this year. The face-disappearing connections we have. The ease and comfort I feel with her. Rested and relaxed. And that “the place where I belong”? But if so, why such thoughts of Canada and Mexico
I need somebody. I want to give my self, my life to a woman. I want it to be the right woman but even you say there is no right or wrong and I just don’t understand how that can be. I mean, I’ve chosen women before and, given that I’m no longer with them, I suppose they must have been ‘wrong’. I mean, Perlilly was awesome and, though there was nothing ‘wrong’ with her, she was certainly ‘wrong’ for me. So how can I know if Laura or Nicky or somebody else is going to be ‘right’?
This is the answer I seek in Greece Wakefield
To grow together, leapfrogging each other on your path of experience.
This is the problem. Laura and I don’t leapfrog. Nicky and I did that, trading karma and growth. Laura watches X-Factor and cooks the tea. She’d make an excellent housewife and mother. Nicky, on the other hand, brought out that emotional side in me. But then maybe that was just my choice.
Oh fuck: what are Laura and I? You must please tell me. Just brother and sister, having made incestuous mistakes? Or something more than that: husband and wife? Lovers and the mother of my children? This is the other answer I seek in Greece Canada
You remember that I Ching sitting in Grimethorpe with Laura pondering the upcoming Canadian trip? “You can’t escape your destiny,” it had said – and I took that as a sign to go…
Well, I’ve written these things a million times: no point going over them again here. No answers to come today. No reason to dwell. Some mad, crazy cave in Greece
Your mind, your self-created idea of yourself is your biggest obstacle. You attract what you are, this you know and when you encounter someone who is energetically matched to you, you see yourself and reject the person who you are with. This rejection is indicative of an unwillingness to reach inside and face the fears and misgivings you have born of a troubled past and a misguided sense of self-worth.
True. Can’t argue with that. Think I’m better than everyone else and still think, deep down, I’m some sort of Messiah, too holy to get involved in the mess of human romantic relationships, just preserving myself for the day when God plucks me from obscurity and booms out, “you are my beloved son and I’m putting you to work in a Jesus Christ stylee.” Such madness! But that is genuinely what I think.
As for the “rejecting someone who is energetically matched to me, someone who reflects myself” – well, there again, that seems to be pointing more to Nicky than Laura. Nicky was very much like me and, yes, I rejected the parts of myself that I didn’t like. Laura’s not really like me at all and I don’t reject her because of the things inside myself – or at least I don’t think I do – I reject her because I…because I don’t relish the idea of the life she offers me. Too humdrum. Too basic. Something like that – though that may be completely wrong, both in my idea of the life and in my interpretation of the rejection. I dunno. I do know that I want an answer though: Laura, Nicky, or someone else. That’s all that I care about. Not what the answer is, but that I get an answer and it’s an answer I can believe in enough to stick to it.
Dear one, you are a beacon of light hiding under an idea of yourself as a limited being. You have been given rare insight and experience and yet these fade into the background in favor of a more realistic outlook on life and your place in it.
So? What should I do with that? That just makes me confused, thinking maybe I should be out there Jesus-style and shining my light – and then a voice there screams: “forget about flipping Jesus!” Okay, maybe there’s a middle point somewhere in there: ie, not doing nothing, but not trying to live some weird ideas of modern-day Messiah. Oh, I don’t know: you tell me I’m a beacon of light, that I sacrifice that in favour of a more realistic – I read: materialistic – view of life and that just makes me want to be spirit-boy, forget all about marriage to a normal, worldly woman. Or can the two things marry up, a la Lahiri Mahasaya? If the latter actually the precursor to the former, a la, perhaps, Shawn and maybe even L.M. and Sri Yukteswar themselves? My path, pre-determined and destined, and for twelve years now ignored by me, marriage the gateway to realisation?
To say that you will attract what you are does not imply that you must become a better man, a more whole individual and then go forth to attract, you are at a place of stand still and require others to help you grow as you are in this moment. It is necessary to forgive yourself for your past and to forgive those things within you that you perceive as unworthy traits. This can be practiced and accomplished by doing the same in others with the understanding that the flaws and imperfections you see in others are only a reflection of that which you despise within yourself.
That’s Nicky and all the things we lived earlier this year all the way. I do forgive. I do understand her because I understand myself in her. But does that mean she’s the one I should commit to? The thing is, there’s nothing really about Laura that I “despise” – not that I’m aware of – so how could she be the one I’m pushing away?
You are a self-created being full of only light and love and the beauty of diversity, it is labels of good and bad which weigh like an anchor leaving you in stagnant waters. See in others this same beauty of diversity, learn to cherish it within them as well as yourself. Vanquish from your mind the ideal of the perfect partner because it is a false construct and not in line with your vibrational needs at this time. Do not fear making a wrong choice, ride the wave of life where it takes you, see the wonder and beauty in others, have a sense of humor about the labels which your mind persistently places on certain traits or ideals, only then can you allow yourself to surrender to another person and thus weaken the selfish tendencies and false ideals you have created. Through our eyes you are pure beauty and potential, a light which begs to stream forth into the world. Your mind-created ideals appear as murky shadows which lay over this light obscuring it. Stop worrying and thinking so much in regards to relationships and your own purpose, go forth and feel your way through each moment rather than ponder the moments to come. This must be done by you, for yourself. This is your own chosen journey and there is no benefit in being told what steps to take, you must feel your way through, you must walk away from the beach of the notion of this world of so-called reality and wade into the water of feeling and experience until you are ready to plunge into its depths. We are with you every moment, we are guiding you with the quietest of whispers, but the choices must be your own.
Where’s the key in all of that? “No perfect partner, not in line with my vibrational needs at this time.” “Cherish the diversity in others, as well as myself” – a challenge, that, controller that I am, and fearful of the whims of others, their potential infidelities, their possible dabblings in alcohol and drugs (perfect mirrors of me).
Real key is probably that “stop worrying about things and just feel your way through the world one moment at a time” – which of course appeals to my reluctance to commit and plan ahead, to forever keep myself ‘free’.
And the ending: “you must walk away from the beach of the notion of so-called reality and wade into the water of feeling and experience.” Wow. What a sentence. What an enticement. That wonderful though life is now it’s not even dipping one’s toe into true reality. That even wading is only a precursor to plunging into some unknown depths, some unimaginable experience. What is the way to that? Marriage? Staying in this city? Leaving it? Or, as is outlined here, and as I conclude every time I search for an answer, “taking one step, one moment at a time, using my feelings as my guide.”
I go to Greece
I guess something’s gotta change soon. I’ve been thinking that for a fair old while. But it’s all now coming to a head, what with the squeeze from the outside world. Refereeing and my dad’s shop and psychotherapy press down on me and I’m either going to buckle – to surrender to that – or I’m going to get out of the way, jump to the side, and emerge into some new way of life. Can’t go on the way I’m going though. More to offer than just riding a bike and coming back to an empty house and filling my time with internet and movies. At least, I hope so.
Writing. A relationship. Growth and God. Whatever I think, whenever I get pressed, it always comes down to that.
Amen.
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