Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
The Spiritual Journey from Person to Presence
We are all on a spiritual journey. For everybody, this journey starts with birth and ends with death. Our life is a link between our date of birth and date of death. A link that contains all the secrets, dramas, tragedies and comedies of our lives, and we are all abandoned in this performance that we tend to forget who we are in reality.The book of our life stretches between the two end points, and this blog is the chronicle of our wanderings. The track of our wanderings is defined and determined by our thoughts, ideas, desires and our willingness and readiness to meet the expectations.
The story of these wanderings, this personal history may be infinitely varied at an individual level. Breaking through the different heights and abysmal depths along the route in the world of shapes and forms may provide the individual Wanderer with endless joy and immeasurable sorrow. By identifying with our personal history written in the world of shapes and forms we experience ourselves as individuals different from everybody else.
Some people, a small fragment of mankind are, however, able to identify with their own respective personal histories to a lesser and lesser degree. Under certain circumstances they recognize that this Journey along the road is aimless, they are led around and around in various landscapes of the world of shapes and forms. From life to life we chase the same ideas and desires.
We have recognized that we are suffering, we are suffocated in the swamp of the multitude of beliefs and ideas, and this recognition spurs us to embark on a Journey to discover ourselves.
Understanding all this is the beginning of the real JOURNEY along the road. This journey will eventually lead us out of the world of forms and shapes, back into the realm of Consciousness, free from any identification with forms and shapes.The Last Chapter of our Personal History
The last chapter of one’s personal history begins when the Wanderer becomes a spiritual seeker. As a first step of spiritual seeking the person starts to look for enlightenement, Self-recognition in the world of shapes and forms (that is, outside himself or herself) in the hope of thus reaching the state of permanent happiness.
The seeker intends to find a dogma, a great Master, an elevating spiritual experience that expands his/her Consciousness. If it is not found here on Earth, the person will be looking for it in the other world, in the heaven of a religion.
The Ego uses the mind as a means of spiritual search. It is through the mind that the Ego intends to understand what is beyond mind and forms. The mind in this way prepares the mental image of enlightenment, seeking, happiness etc.
The mental images are born through the comprehensive process of the mind. For comprehension, the Wanderer also requires information, so the spiritual Seeker shall gather bits of information like a busy ant. From books on religion and spirituality, lectures heard and conversations attended, the Wanderers are attempting to screen information, ideas, opinions and experience necessary for them. The same takes place with spiritual experience. The individual assumes that if they gather a sufficient amount of experience, as a result they will reach a certain point, they will increase their spirituality. The knowledge and experience accumulated shall all form a part of the Wanderer’s spiritual Ego.
These mental images motivate the Wanderer to make efforts at implementing the mental images at the level of daily life, to make these images the cornerstones of their life. Achieving spiritual objectives, however, affords only momentary satisfaction for the seeker, so after achieving one specific goal, relentlessness returns, urging the individual to start working for new objectives. The mind produces new mental images, and seeking starts all over again.
In this way the last chapter of our personal history becomes longer and longer. At some people this chapter will be the most important part of personal history, until death closes the book.
The First Step of the Journey
Closing the last chapter of our personal history and taking the first step on the Journey will come with the recognition of the futility of spiritual seeking.
The Wanderer stops and abandons spiritual seeking. The individual recognizes that all the objectives they have so far been looking for outside themselves, are only found within themselves.
The Wanderer will stop when they recognize the activities of the mind and refuse to follow it any longer. The Wanderer realizes that with the help of the mind they will not be able to surpass the mind. The Wanderer will experience that stopping is the inactive moment of the mind, the silence between thoughts. In that silence, the Wanderer will experience the Consciousness without forms, and recognize that he or she is in fact the Presence without thoughts.
Starting from this internal silence, the person shall start observing the functions of their mind, and shall abandon the accumulation of spiritual teachings and the search for lofty spiritual experience. From the edge (the mind) the person will turn towards the center of his or her being (the Presence appears). That is when the Wanderer learns to use their mind appropriately. The individual will recognize that spiritual teachings are only worth as much as these are relevant to the individual’s own life.
That recognition will not be a fruit of the mind’s analytical work; it is only inspired by the recognitions starting from the inner silence. These recognitions are best comparable to seeing (in several spiritual teachings these people are referred to as „Seers”) and they work like relevances. The Wanderer then leaves behind the spiritual seeker, with all the accumulated knowledge and lofty spiritual experience, and takes the first step on the Journey.
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(C) Frank M. Wanderer, 2013-2016
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Thanks to: http://powerofconsciousness.blogspot.com
