Thoughts on a Plane
I'm thinking about sacrifice for some reason. A note in Dion Fortunes "Dr. Taverner" stories about an affair between a poor Indian woman and a British administrator, where the affair was unhappy as a sacrifice to pay for the important role the child would play in the world.
How is that so? What is possibly altered "downwind" or should I say "down-plane" in a fortuitous way? I think about how sacrifice alters the consciousness of the beings who experience the loss.
I had an unhappy time as a kid with my peers. They were mean and bullying. Girls were unfriendly. I so much wanted their friendship...and love! But it was firmly denied. It seems unfair. At any rate, it did change me. Now I am not bitter, because I feel many gifts. However, those gifts came because I walked a lonely road. I wouldn't have them...I wouldn't have meditated and found joy if I'd been given that kind of happy companionship that makes lives like Barbara's parents (no direspect to these wonderful people! I only mean that they felt and expressed ease more than loneliness, joy more than suffering. They passed all this on as loving parents, which definitely improved the world).
Sacrifice then created gifts in the present. The present gifts came because the sacrifice altered the container of the being that felt the pain. The water held by that container was now different...or maybe the shape of the container is different. A sacrifice is a twist...a bend...a kink.
A bonsai tree undergoes such pain, and in the end is a miniature story of great beauty. The bends in the tree are the appearance of maturity. And not only appearance, but the reality of maturity.
A related thought about sacrifice is the Rosicrucian idea that alcohol was introduced to the western race as a way to cut them off from the world of spirit. And usefully so. Without the spirit connection, commitment is deepened to physical existence. The western man had better build his heaven here, because he couldn't share the feeling that it waited for him behind three breaths as the Amerindian, the Indian or the Chinese man knew.
We can see that Jesus never denied reincarnation, but for whatever reason, His church didn't teach it. That was useful. It created people cut off in an archipelago. And look! They did what was expected of them: they made the world cleaner, safer, amazing. They labored over their increasingly complicated machines, they wrote complex computer programs. They even flew to the moon.
All along the way, it was clear that the Indian or Chinese mind was just as capable if not more capable of subtle mathematical thought. All well and good, but these people didn't relentlessly seek application of those subtle ideas the way western people did.
I'm sure we've reached the end of this road...this archipelago of dulled spirit. We're in the period of diminishing returns of this mode of being. On the bleeding edge, they continue to kill their God. Their machines are so fine now that electrical activity is controlled to the point that neighboring electrons on missions begin to interfere with each other -- they are that finely manipulated.
I'm flying over England, land of the pub and pint. As they conquered the world, they drank. The "spirit" in alcoholic spirit was a sop to ease the pain of the loss of connection with God.
The controlling powers knew that people denied this connection would both rail at the loss, and build monuments to the unseen, now shut-up realm. That there would be a darkening of spirit...that the greatest evils would emerge from this barred gate. And that the powers of apprehension in the physical vehicle of man would be heightened as well. The effluvia squeeze out both sides of the tube.
This was a sacrifice. The sacrifice made by the west. For all their wealth, was it worth the loss of God?
Who can answer that question? It is a pointless question. It was willed that it be so on levels so far above us as to be like the weather: it is useless to complain.
So, the window is closing. Now, God is our only chance. We must find Him in great numbers, and that will change what we do day to day.
We are worked on like the bonsai tree. We are...in some way...beautiful. But terrible, too. As befits gods in the womb.
At home
Later, at home, I meditated and felt that thoughts are things. We are scanning over an idea with our thought...we are rendering a multi-dimensional structure into "thought space" where we can reason about it. The structure we are traversing has a reality on some plane.
This activity will eventually move from software to hardware. What is for us now the outermost limit of intelligent reasoning and subtle analysis will one day be an organ. It will be the ground easily passed over by future beings. None of this should make us feel bad or sad to live in the time before that day. To each is given his work, and there is dignity in simply doing it. Also, we can all come to understanding. There is no barrier between us and our Father save what we imagine (and then must laboriously tear down). To take my thoughts above about hardware/software too literally is to become a futurist, and there are few sadder creatures!
It is simply that I can better feel now the mechanical, stereotyped nature of my traverse across an idea. This means that there is a part of my being that sits in familiar terrain, doing it's job so often that it has fashioned mechanism, and well ahead of my dawning apprehension of its labors.
A few days later...
Terrible 12 hour long caffeine withdrawal headache. Now, coffeed-up, I can breathe again. This happened to me in the summer when I first quit coffee. I had to taper it down. Now, after 2+ weeks in the USA drinking coffee, the headache was even worse, and quite relentless. It came on at night, when I couldn't go buy any coffee. Finally, stores opened at 8 am and I could get some, but by then a war between tiredness and the headache had shifted such that sleep won out. I got some coffee around 10, and now, 11:30, I'm finally recovering.
It was an interesting night though. Many quasi-astral-projection experiences. Many insights, which, like dreams, have now faded because I didn't write them down in time. What remains is the idea that there are no cliffs in experience. That the border between one state of consciousness and another is always gradual. This is good news! It means that if you are interested in any particular thing, you can reach it from where you are without some special magic or a gimmick. However, the way may be long and require vast patience.
Going further in the world of spirit is akin to carving a statue out of a block. It's only by cutting something away that a new frontier of understanding is reached. It's easy to say things like "mind is everything," or "truth is within," but those statements are only meaningful when they come from a place of experience. Yes...you may "mouth" these platitudes, because you suspect there is value in those ideas. And that is not unhelpful. However, the cutting away of unnecessary material only comes after a taste. At that point, it's not that you have become someone with a strong will who sacrifices pleasures A or B. Instead, you've simply dropped those parts of your psyche that are attuned to desire those pleasures. They just aren't there anymore.
Lending credence to the phrase "mind is everything," that dropping did ultimately take place because your rational mind saw the logic in the letting go of something that was beside the point. I've long been suspicious of a way of holding spirituality that prioritizes feeling over thinking. I believe they are fooling themselves: they are merely entering a cul-de-sac of mind in which the thinker enters an imaginative space in which thinking is deprecated. This is a kind of jungle-gym. Their rational self is very much there, it is only playing a game. The problem with this approach is that games always end, and with the ending comes dualism -- you flip between "spirit time" and "practical time," and it's clear that the "practical time" consciousness is the adult.
Mind is not the enemy. It is the vehicle, and must be treated well. Do no violence to its apprehensions. Rather, let them carry you when they are sound. When you have a hunch that they do not serve, try to maneuver into a place where mind can be shown the delta between the end state of its own idea, and the alternate. By its very nature, it must choose the better path at that point. This is the way of relationship. You are helping each other.
Another thing that keeps coming up -- my use of the term "you." First off, when I write "you" here, I am referring to myself. That is, I'm in no way trying to tell some reader out there what they had better think or do, I'm reporting the gyrations of my own mental experience. Second, the "you" in the subject position is one of several. Hopefully the context of the sentence points to which one it is. If I say "your enemies are not really your enemies, but your teachers," this is a report from some lower or middle floor "you," who needs that insight in order to overcome the natural desire on that level to defend against or attack enemies. That "you" is saying this in order to realize a higher truth on his level. Where did it get the idea to say that? From a higher "you," from whose position the statement is banal.
So there is a verticality to the mental activity that ultimately prunes off branches that don't lead to the goal. A conversation carried out between different levels in a skyscraper. If the next salvo in that conversation comes from a sufficiently high floor, it will appear to be direction-less -- that is, everywhere, and that will code as "outside" to the listener. Mystical writings usually have some "other" who imparts wisdom. I'm not convinced that this voice is truly outside the skyscraper. I think they are usually simply higher levels of awareness.
And again, since there are no cliffs in experience, why can it not happen that one level speaks to another? By the nature of consciousness, which is like a lamp or flashlight shining into the direction of interest, channels are carved into being by the sustained presence of that light. At some higher level (invisible to "you"), awareness of the new channel provokes interest. With something like love, the higher awareness will speak into the channel that which seems required at the moment. And of course, they will listen attentively for a response.
If you think I'm being fanciful, I throw the question to you: wouldn't you behave precisely like this, when you are secure and have all that you need? Anyone who appears in your visor will be treated with more kindness that they expect. Your kindness is exquisite and subtle. You don't realize this because mostly you are busy and a little bit afraid all the time. But I say this: your will to the good is shockingly vast.
Here is a thought experiment to see it!
Think to a time...
Think to a time when you were given a gift far beyond what you deserved. This is the Christian experience of being "saved." You, all undeserving, are nonetheless lifted up, valued and loved. At such moments, you are in awe of the goodness that has touched you. You feel overwhelmed and bereft of the ability to repay the gift. The truth is, however, that you are forging an iron will to repay it in the level of your gut. This will manifest as the ability to cut away what does not serve...to deny the lower selves. But that comes later. In that moment of humble poverty, of security, happiness and gratitude...you have discovered how kind you are. Because your ability to feel the magnitude of the gift implies your understanding of the magnitude of it. Your understanding of the exquisite kindness bestowed.
And understanding is an equivalence relation. Once you understand, you cannot help but act from that understanding in future. So...your ability to perceive vast kindness means that you are now transformed into a being that acts with that kindness.
Thusly, do lower apartments in the skyscraper get a new coat of paint, from buckets delivered by higher floors. More and more, "you" (at whatever level we mean) operate from an environment that is ever more closely modeled on the environments higher up. There is always a translation of concepts, of course. Floor One will never be Floor Ten. But it will express union with Floor Ten.
Traditional concepts of beauty in architecture and music encompass this notion -- of consonance between the levels. To get lost in them means that you are imbibing the idea of consonance as a general good, and will begin to express it yourself. The term "uplifing" is well-chosen.
Thusly, you are training the mind. Ultimately this is a highly rational activity. The end result of which is refinement of spirit. Isn't it strange to consider that the finest usage of your rational sense is employed in building that most ephemeral thing, that thing so often denied by modern culture -- the human soul?
Minor aside
My sister and I were in a yurt for a weekend, watching movies and enjoying the hot tub out in the snow from time to time. Somehow, the human liver came up as a topic (I don't remember how!). We know that the alcoholic ruins his liver. He continually chooses poison over health. The liver is charged with filtering poison out of the body. It finally fails him, because its purpose has been overridden too many times -- it can only handle so much poison.
Funny, that this organ is called "liver" in english. "Leber" in german, which means "the one who lives." Above I spoke of concepts being expressed differently on different levels, though they are always consonant with their meaning on higher levels. Well, perhaps, distilled to its essence on a rudimentary, physical level "to live" means "to choose."
That is, what need is there to live a life unless meaningful choices are made in that span? So the fundamental activity is chosing.
This organ, the liver, is expressing that concept from "the floor" of the body. It is the body's way to hold faith with the notion that living is a serious and honorable undertaking. On a higher level, we know it is our job to chose the better and avoid the worse. On a lower level, that same attitude is expressed, only coded into "hardware" with the responsibility of chosing.
Thusly, we can say alcoholism is a disease of the spirit, effecting its violence down-plane into the body. If you object to this characterization on the grounds that a chemical need has been fostered in the physical apparatus, my response is to agree, but say that this is not the primary cause. It is simply the importation of the spiritual corruption already present into the physical level, for the vast system within each of us expresses homeostasis (or "consonance") not only for the good things, but also for the bad things. To knowingly chose what destroys is, frankly, evil. We would never admit this when we make those choices, of course. But at higher levels we know it (we can tell by the silence emerging from upper floors), and on lower levels it is known too (the sickening of the liver, for example).
Here we see the Satanic expressing the will to stand apart from God emerging from middle levels of the skyscraper of being, and casting blight in both directions. On higher levels, the pain of lost relationship with the lower levels is felt, though they will not turn their eyes away from God, thank goodness. On lower levels, real suffering of all kinds is unleashed. It is rough for us humans... we are threaded through with this impulse, and often we need to see it play out in ourselves in order to recognize it and "cast it out."