UNVEILING THE SPIRITUAL PATH
Chapter 5
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“On the road to becoming a ‘pilgrim to the holy land,’ there are constant detours. In the early stages of awakening, distractions abound. The seeker wanders hither and yon, tasting from a panoply of religious and spiritual experiences. Satisfaction is sought but rarely found for any length of time, as the qualities that will ultimately grant satisfaction to the soul are not yet within reach.
Regular physical practices such as yoga or t’ai chi are sometimes considered to be spiritual paths. While they are useful disciplines for body and mind, when they become ends unto themselves, they do not constitute what we refer to as the spiritual path—a pathway to self-transformation. As avenues of healing and self-discipline, such practices can be extremely advantageous for the emergence of the higher self as mastering them grants a sense of self-empowerment that can buttress the psychic ground for the journey. But they are not one and the same.
The period that follows awakening to a higher reality is a time of serious testing to determine whether the aspirant is ready to proceed on the journey, for the demands will intensify from here on. The tenuous seeker may resist abandoning the comforts of material life, or find the disciplines too demanding, or may be lured into an attractive position in the world. For myriad reasons, they may lack the will to press forward.
Whatever the reason, temporizing only delays the inevitable. Once the soul is stirred awake, it will not be satisfied until it is nourished by the Source of Life. Once the personality encounters the inner spark of divinity, it cannot return to a state of unknowingness. Awakening is like a small campfire that can either burn itself out for lack of fuel or can be fed by adding small branches and twigs until it becomes a raging fire that lights the path ahead. If the small fire is allowed to die out in one lifetime, it will be reignited in the next.
Once the spark of divine mind has been recognized by the incarnate soul, it will never entirely fade from view. Established patterns of life may interrupt the good intentions of the early aspirant, temporarily blotting out fleeting deep impressions of something greater. Outer conditions of material life may recreate themselves for a time, but a profound discomfort with social values and norms will ultimately drive the one who has awakened back to the path of ascent. This has ever been the nature of the journey, but present world conditions have amplified this discomfort to the point where a growing wave of souls feels propelled to discover the Higher Way.
The goal of the second stage of the journey is to remove the dross of the personality that has blocked the light of the soul and kept it hidden from awareness. Before the lifetime in which the soul awakens, the individual accumulates karmic debts that must be repaid on the path of return to the Source of Life, God, the Creator. In addition, every one of the billions of souls who have reincarnated through cycles of Earth’s evolution has been part of the blood-stained collective history of humanity.
The work of clearing the karmic ledger requires considerable spiritual courage. Yet by the end of the stage of self-purification, the light of the soul will shine unobstructedly, and the love and joy intrinsic to the true self will become the foundation upon which one’s life is lived and one’s spiritual purpose is fulfilled. To arrive there, the seeker undergoes a period of self-examination through which there occurs a growing sense of responsibility for the circumstances of one’s life.
It could be said that this is the most challenging phase of the spiritual journey for it requires profound self-scrutiny, which can generate great personal discomfort. The light of the soul, growing brighter since withdrawing from the illusions of the material world, now turns inward to expose the obstacles to its emergence. In time this light will permeate the personality and produce a life solidly anchored in Spirit. But for now, it shines on blockages to the soul’s fuller presence in the seeker’s life.
The real work of this phase of the path begins when the personality becomes conscious of the pull of the soul. From the point when the inner light begins to dawn, there is a mounting awareness of the patterns of thought and behavior that have shaped the life of the individual. During this time, as restlessness grows with established aspects of life, there may be frequent changes in employment or relationships that will reveal personality patterns that remain consistent in spite of changing circumstances. With the development of self-observation, needed changes in habits and qualities are recognized.
All who tread this way inevitably enter what is known as the ‘burning ground,’ passing through the fires of purification. What is being burned away is every tendency toward selfishness—every self-seeking motive that has afflicted the life of the individual until now. The word ‘afflicted’ applies both to an internal state of dis-ease and to the external impact of this dis-ease upon others. Every thought and action driven by purely selfish motives, in disregard of injury to others, takes a toll on the individual while harming other lives. This is the root cause of karma.
A life crisis becomes a burning ground experience when the soul is conscious enough to recognize lessons that can be gleaned from the crisis. Whereas the unconscious personality feels victimized by life and interprets a personal tragedy as a random happening, the result of bad luck, the awakening soul begins to realize that nothing happens by chance. Simultaneously, the realization dawns that crises bring opportunities to remove the dross of the persona that blocks the light of the soul. Self-pity is replaced by a quest to learn the life lessons being offered by a particular crisis, drawing forth the kind of insight that leads to self-transformation.
Those who enter the burning ground and willingly allow the cleansing action of its flames will in time become purified of any impulse to do harm. Consciously crossing the burning ground, while extracting the lessons that the soul imparts to the persona, sets the traveler on the road to achieving the ultimate state of purification that culminates in mastery of the human condition. It also opens the door to contact with Those who have achieved that state of mastery and have entered the realm of Spirit.
During this transition to a subtler dimension of life, countless individuals are experiencing contact with beings on the inner planes. However, much of what they receive will invariably be distorted until they pass through the fires that purify. The danger of this stage is commonly called ‘the glamour of psychism.’ Messages or images received are believed to come from beings on a higher plane of consciousness and thus deemed infallible indicators of truth or guidance. In fact, such messages will commonly be distorted projections from the astral plane—the plane of emotions.
As long as the motive for such communication is sullied by personal desire or ambition, the messages will be unreliable. They will certainly not originate with members of the next higher kingdom of our Earth—the realm of perfected human souls known as the Spiritual Hierarchy. Messages from this realm will be transmitted only to human souls whose personalities have been cleansed by the flames of purification to the point where selflessness and harmlessness are unfailing.
This phase of the journey is critical to humanity’s future and constitutes the next frontier for souls at the forefront of conscious evolution. It paves the way for communication and cooperation between the human and spiritual realms of Earth—the relationship that will give birth to a new world. Events now occurring across the globe could be viewed as aiding this process. Blazing fires, for example, might be seen as flames of purification serving to rid humanity of identification with the realm of matter—the realm where selfishness is fed by the illusion of separation. The exposure of human selfishness and greed as the main causes of planetary destruction is releasing many souls from that illusion and driving them to search for a Greater Reality.”
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REFLECTIONS 