More Samyama, friends!
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More Samyama
I described the first three words already: love, radiance, unity.
I think of these as helpful guide words for the descent from spirit into matter. Why would you descend? You might have seen suffering, and want to help. This is love. You might be pulled by unfulfilled desires. This could be love of life...the ache to feel wind on your face as the sun goes down on a fiercely beautiful world.
Radiance is the reminder that true beauty comes from within. Unity is a reminder to look for correspondence between levels. To avoid being fooled. To check and double-check your motivations.
And now, with the next three words, we are established in matter.
Health
Health. Healing. It makes sense that the word health follows unity. This idea of health is that of the plant, which expresses radiance when given light and water. The health flows from somewhere within, and expresses itself as beautiful green stalks, perfectly jointed stems, delicate yet complex fibers.
There is no "mechanic" or "doctor" outside making sure all these things develop correctly. No. It unfolds from the Silence that precedes existence. Health, true health is here.
When unity is expressed through the layers of being, whatever physicality which builds up around that coursing energy will be healthy.
Sufficient health allows us not only to stand and walk, but to carry burdens. To manipulate our world. And so:
Strength
If limbs are healthy, if joints are robust, then loads can be applied. Strength allows the life form to foster new realities by changing the environment at the physical level. One thing funny about true strength, in my opinion is that the greatest strength is often the strength to be "brittle." The strength to "break," when non-breaking would compromise the idea that the being is adamant about expressing.
You may be called upon to die without hesitation in order to express your idea of what humanity is. I think of those poor people who, in some terrible war, are ordered to shoot their mother or father lest they be shot themselves.
Here is where strength is needed. If the strength is not sufficient to refuse, then the being is not sufficiently "grounded" to Source. I pray that I am not made subject to this test! But I know what I want to do, if I would honor the life that was given me.
Strength flows only from the Unseen. This is a serious reason for taking up a religion, though our culture has forgotten all about it. Too comfortable for too long. We imagine that we don't need to call on the Unseen anymore. These certainties will fall away. Better to keep some hold on the darkness that will one day enfold humanity again, to put some light in the eyes of your children, that they may have the seed of the right idea. For your days will be happy/slappy, the time of plenty will go on beyond your final sleep. How can you share the knowledge of Night, and deliver the blows of that knowledge with a sword that pierces the heart usefully?
For without Night, there are no stars.
Abundance
Wow, that got dark, yeah? Hee hee. Maybe it's appropriate. You see, Strength is the middle word in the sequence of nine. Strength has a negative side. An individual who is too strong may end up with an underdeveloped character. He'll get the idea that he should always succeed, and become enraged when the world doesn't conform. He would trundle down a descending road, losing contact with this sequence of nine...with the ability or interest to sit in the silence and contemplate these things. He would regard that as a waste of time.
Clearly, I'm talking about us. About the paths we ourselves followed.
There may well be human beings who never took the descending path, but they do not include me in their number. No, I was intoxicated by the feeling of strength. I must have died a hundred times with gritted teeth, finally felled after an ocean of tears failed to move me.
If you are reading this, then you are done with that. Or close to done. But I say: one is finished with that life before one is ready to accept responsibility for it. I feel ahead of me great thunderheads. My debt is by some grace pushed ahead of me -- perhaps because the Powers felt that karmic debt consciously accepted produces something more useful than the blind suffering of the traveller reeling in a storm from which he knows not.
I accept it. I willingly enter it. I have a happy moment of grace now, this day, these years. It is a gift to understand!
Dag-nabbit, I continued my side-trip into the negative side of strength and didn't speak about what I should: Abundance is the piling up of virtue. Good, strong, healthy action, carried out again and again, with some modicum of joy creates lush fields of wheat. Grapes bursting from the vine. A time of plenty, of new projects. The promise of a self-sustaining culture, spread across a golden land.
Abundance is security. It opens up new avenues for thought. Where I am now is the result of abundance prior.
Are you reaching for the Highest branch of the tree, in your time of abundance? For if you are reading this, you are warm and safe. You are among the most wealthy on this planet. If not now, when?
We often say that hundreds of our forefathers slaved that we stand where we are now. I would only add to that: you yourself worked hard for it, too. Though you remember it not.
Wisdom
When you are secure. When you are happy. You begin to think on higher things. You now have time to stomp on the grapes of your experience, and so to produce wine. You can go wrong even here. You might fail to process the grapes. Then you will be old without wisdom. We all know these people.
You might harden a crust of self-satisfaction around your abundance.
Wisdom is not guaranteed! But without abundance, you can only achieve craftiness. Abundance is a gift given. And wise thought is the giving of your intellect to the problems at hand. Because there is giving, there is a kind of love. When you turn to your loved ones and their problems, you may really have something to offer.
Can you laugh at yourself? Do you see your foolish patterns?
Do you love yourself? Will you honor your convictions?
Try to do so. And fail.
And try again. And laugh at your fits.
You will be alone. You will be lonely.
And you must comfort yourself.
And you will!
You will rescue yourself, good sir or madam.
And now you are wise.
You are no longer what you were. There is transformation here.
It is appropriate, that Wisdom marks the return, upward journey. It begins the final three.
Remember Unity? The wise man or woman is indeed a shaman, a Gandalf, a Merlin or a Saint. When Goodness is expressed in consult, glance and touch between us on this ground, rest assured that it has a source. We are beginning to withdraw from matter.
Pratyahara
This is something I still dream of...sometimes I think I've come close!
The idea is that the senses that we use out here are but crude analogs of true sight, true hearing and true speech. When they speak of the Word of God in the Christian Bible, they are referring to the song of inner speech. Since we've turned our attention so fiercely to matter, we find this unbelievable. But true sight and sound have a depth and clarity that brings tears to the eyes.
I can only speak with firsthand experience of the sight of the Inner Eye, or the Spiritual Eye as it's called. Folks in India often mark this spot with a bindi, a little red decoration between the eyebrows. In meditation, specifically in pranayama (breath/life-force control), the vision of the third eye can appear -- it will also have a stability not usually associated with the many subjective experiences you might be familiar with in meditation.
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When you see it, it is unmistakable. It is a sign, a true sign that your long work in the mines is beginning to strike gold. Inner vision has the quality of fractal depth. That is, whatever part of the scene you focus on begins to move and elaborate under your attention. It becomes "more what it is," and is achingly beautiful.
The Spiritual Eye is experienced as a tunnel of light that appears to lead out from yourself. This is an illusion. It is actually a reflection. What appears "out there" is actually deeper inside. The tunnel goes down and in rather than up and out. Down slightly and in to the absolute tip of the spine -- the pineal gland.
Pratyahara is the experience of falling into the tunnel. Or, being pushed, by a helpful hand. It is the complete interiorization of the senses. All outer senses are left behind, and you enter a place beyond time: the core of your being.
I stare daily, or almost daily at the spiritual eye. I can only hope that I'll be guided further one day. But already the gift is enormous. I don't expect more.
Now...I'm looking at it, and I hear the kids yelling outside. The low rumble of the dishwasher comes from the other direction. If the doorbell rings, then dag-nabbit, I have to get up and end my meditation. Someone in pratyahara wouldn't notice any of this, and their Amazon package would be left with a neighbor!
Now...where is all this going? Are the wise ones, the Gandalfs and the Saints meant to leave us mortals behind, disappearing into pratyahara, drooling slightly while attendents wipe the sweat from their brow?
That would be pretty lame!
That can't be it.
A wise woman once told me: "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment -- chop wood and carry water."
So we are not meant to escape our lives. But this is undoubtedly some kind of trip! This is Moses going up the mountain and returning with his commandments. What he returned with was far more than a handful of rules scribbled on a tablet. No, he came back with conviction, because he Saw. He really Saw What Is. And on the energy of that a man or a woman could carry themselves through outrageous hardships, and never stop loving.
We modern folks sometimes imagine a UFO landing in our backyard, and that they take us on board (hopefully not doing any of that embarrassing "probing" we keep hearing about!), they whisk us away to Alpha Centuri, teach us the secret of interstellar travel, and bring us home.
Yes, everyone would think we were a kook for the rest of our lives. But my God! What a gift! We wouldn't mind. Because now we really know something.
The spiritual journey is like this. I reckon very very very few of us can get so far. I certainly won't! But I can see the line of it, just like I can trace a line up a beautiful Dolomiti peak...a line that is "right for me," that is "just doable" at a grade of V or VI. These lines are there, though they shimmer in the air. Mostly, we ignore them for entire decades of our lives, or increasingly often, our entire lives.
Akasha
The last word. "Lightness of air." Think Obi Won Kenobi, when he said "If you strike me down, I shall be more powerful than before."
He vanished into the emptiness. And now he is everywhere. But when you try to seize him, he is nowhere again.
We cry out for certainties, and in the end, we only hear the wind blowing between the trees.
This is the truth. We go Beyond. We go behind a veil, and are not known again.
We re-enter into communion with the Father. It is enough.
What I called "me" was only a vehicle to express God. For He needed a vehicle to operate in this world. But He could not help but transform the vehicle as it ran through centuries, acquiring and discarding bodies. He brought the vehicle to knowledge of Self. And once the vehicle understood, it leapt with love into His arms. It wished for nothing else than union with its Maker.
And again, we reach Love.
And there will be more cycles.
And these are enough words.