The Dawning

Times change but not the quest for spiritual truth. The spiritual process begins for everyone at the time of birth. To be born as an earthling is to contribute towards a deepening enlightenment of the human race.

All roads, even those steeped in the deadening weight of unconscious materialism, eventually lead to the source; there’s nowhere else to go once the road has been travelled for long enough. But the process is glacially slow. Wherever an opening appears in the psyche for transcendent knowledge to externalise, it’s quickly overpowered by the forces of existence that degrade the purity of the original inspiration. The evolutionary point of consciousness of humanity can be gauged by watching the latest news bulletin and the condition of the world at any time. At this epoch of human culture there are no mass solutions. The truth, where it can be heard, is for the individual alone.

The living of circumstances and the challenges to keep things afloat, particularly in times of hardship, actually erodes the path until nothing remains apart from the experience. The key word is ‘experience’. The pure experience is not the problem; this is necessary, of course, in the practical world. But along with the positive aspect of experience is the negative shadow effect, the psychic entity of self, the past, that has gathered since the time of birth. The past is everybody’s burden yet, paradoxically, the only way that human beings can exist.

With the lack of any real knowledge of truth and love from our teachers, parents and religions, the focus of most people’s lives is directed exclusively into the world. To compensate for the natural replenishment from the inner source, people become psychologically attached to the need for experience. This manifests as a chronic urge to keep busy and mentally active through crippling workloads and computerised technology. Moments for stillness and recreation come less frequently, if at all.

The shift or potential change in the life is when the experience of living has reached a point when it fails to deliver the same pleasure of the past. From infancy into childhood, and then adulthood, the memory cells are infused with the pleasure and pain experience of living in a world of opposing forces. These cells vibrate in accordance with the stimulus of sensory experience. The pendulum of emotionality peaks at a level of intense excitement and swings to the depths of depression.

When the focus is turned inwards, an individual is reaching (perhaps unknowingly) towards the light of their own self-knowledge. At a point determined by the diminishing resistance to the incoming stream of spirit, an opening within the psyche emits a beam of light that passes through the subconscious, illuminating the nucleus centre of the brain. This release or surrender of psychic tension triggers a cellular reaction as clusters of cells are re-energised or updated through the presence of light or consciousness. The initial feeling is interpreted by the mind as something extraordinary and out of the normal range of experience. There can be a sense of having been reborn or the knowledge of being touched by the Divine.

It’s by the way of things that an individual is directed towards a source of truth comparable with their lights or incipient self-knowledge. For someone indoctrinated by the Christian religion the experience can be equated with the realisation of Christ, or alternatively of Buddha for a Buddhist. In other instances, a renewed sense of purpose can instigate a change of life consonant with a fresh perspective. Quite how dramatically this will affect the life will be determined by the impact of the truth and how this will unfold against the external forces of the world.

In my own experience I gravitated, through the miracle of the unknowable Source, to the orbit of the Australian spiritual master Barry Long. I know now that this was through grace and a climacteric in the spiritual process that demonstrates how the inner light or being directs the way. The realisation of a higher consciousness is accelerated tremendously when in the proximity of a realised being of deep spiritual profundity. In a way similar to how a signal is amplified or strengthened through a fibre optic broadband connection, a master of great power is able to reflect through his realised consciousness the purity of his being to those receptive to his presence and teaching.

We are all mirrors, reflecting to each other the truth we’ve realised in our daily lives. But the radiance of the spiritual light that determines the depth of self-knowledge is mostly obscured, insulated by layers of emotional calluses that have formed to numb the trauma of existence. The pain and rawness of facing the emotional self direct is so awful that, for the majority of people, the only alternative is to escape through the myriad distractions in the world. For the individual who is willing, however, the next phase of the spiritual process is to begin to master the self as a conscious way of life. This is done through harnessing the power within, and is the subject of another post.