How hard is transformation? How elusive is “enlightenment”? Are these things even possible? What is this process, by which the soul evolves? Or do we even have a soul…
…and if we do, do we. as human beings in the physical world, have anything to do with it? Can we “contact” it? Can we get it to “do” anything? Or is the “soul” just a figment of our imagination?
i want answers, and I want them now. Okay, class…send me your wisdom.
Yes, I’m going to break a promise here. I said in my last post that in my next post I would offer my reaction to all of your reactions to the assisted suicide piece. But I’m not going to do that here. I’m inspired in another way today. My mind just wants to go here…so here is where I am going. Maybe some other day I’ll respond to your responses about assisted suicide. But this morning I got up thinking all about the Soul, about the soul’s Journey, and about this thing that some people call “enlightenment.”
And I was thinking, too. about this business of being “on the path.” Everyone talks about being “on the path.” The spiritual path, they mean. The path to enlightenment. The path to transformation. The path to Nirvana. Yes, that path.
Well, I can telling you one thing about this Path from my own experience. Taking the spiritual path is arduous and challenging. I do not want to speak lightly about this, nor do I want, with the simple power of words, to cause you to feel that there is “nothing to it.” In my experience, it can be the most difficult thing you will ever do in your life. Because it requires clear Intention. Absolute Commitment. Deep Determination, and a refusal to accept anything less than Total Involvement in Every Moment.
It is about Mindfulness, which means being Fully Present from minute to minute, allowing you to move into Acute Awareness of every thought, word, and deed that proceeds from you, of every emotion that builds within you, and to Stand in Your Truth about Who You Are, and come from Pure Choice in the demonstration of that.
You do this by stopping and just breathing as you catch yourself in a string of thoughts, or a flow of words, or a trail of actions. You do this by examining each thought as you are thinking it, and asking yourself, Is this what I choose to think? You do this by listening to each word as you are speaking it, and asking yourself, Is this what I choose to say? You do this by watching each action as you are taking it, and asking yourself, Is this what I choose to do? Then you ask yourself, why? Why do I choose to think, say, and do these things? What am I creating here? What am I experiencing? Then you measure that against your idea of divinity.
Arduous as this may sound, it is also the most joyous experience you will ever have. It is the reason you are here, walking upon the earth. It is the Soul’s Highest Happiness, and its very Reason for Being. And once you have stepped off on The Path, once you have committed to taking this Journey, the walking becomes dancing, and the wonder of expressing love in every moment replaces any momentary or transitory “upper” that any other aspect of your physical life could possibly hope to bring you. Yet it enhances those physical pleasures beyond belief, turning ordinary life into an extraordinary experience.
At least, that’s my idea about it. But wait a minute. What if there isn’t even this thing called “the soul”? IS there? What do you think? And if there is, what is our relationship to It? Can we do things, deliberately, in the physical body that affect It?
How? And why would we?
i want answers, and I want them now.