Wednesday, December 22
A nice fellow with questions came to see me today. One of his questions was how to rid himself of his angry thoughts and emotions.
In my experience, the only answer to anger is finding the Love and Compassion that unites us all, eternally, soul to soul.
How to get to that Love and Compassion is the real Question.
Of course the answer is always the same: know that you are the soul, a being of Radiant Light, that you are not your thoughts and emotions. Know the other person is the soul, a Being of Radiant Light, not their thoughts and emotions. Know that the material world is not as it seems, and that the entire situation or difficulty, at root, is Divine Light. Know that our true relationship with others is soul to soul - the rest is behavior, the ego, the psychology. I told him that we are all seeking happiness. That we are all struggling; that we all deserve Compassion merely because we are incarnate, in a physical body, and therefore are suffering. And we are suffering because we have forgotten who we truly Are, that we are the soul. (Why it is this way, that we forget everything when we incarnate: I consider it a serious design flaw in the human physical/mental vehicle.)
I also gave my new friend the exercise of closing his eyes for a few moments several times a day, and imaging himself as the Radiant soul. I encouraged him, in that simple exercise, to both see and feel himself as the Radiant Light of the soul, to stand in that Light. This exercise alone can transform us, bring us to a more conscious relationship with the soul - whether we meditate or not.
This fellow today is a high soul, and a seeker in his own way. He has not been trained on the spiritual Path, and I considered the best things to say to him in the short time we had together. In addition to the previous paragraph, I added that he was a high soul, an advanced soul - and undoubtedly had incarnated at least in part in order to help his fellow sentient beings. And now that he was on earth, and found it difficult - was not the time to complain or mope or give up. I told him an exercise that has helped me in the past: I image myself kneeling before Our Lady or Christ, or some other Divine Being just before I incarnate. They are giving me my personal assignment, my own mission while on earth.
Just now this fellow is without a job, although he is highly qualified and diligently looking. When I mentioned helping our sentient beings and receiving a Mission before we incarnate, I could see that he was becoming uncomfortable and depressed again. So I added: "Helping people, for instance that you make your wife dinner now that you are without a job and have time on your hands." With this simple idea and sentence the fellow brightened and his soul began to shine through him with a clear Light again ...
My main message to him, however, was that in order to find Peace and truly live Life, we all must find the higher octaves of the personal emotions. Of course, if this were easy to do, there would be only saints walking the planet.
All the personal emotions contain potential negativity - even personal love can easily flip to anger, even hatred. This is because the personal emotions are coming from our small hearts and the ego, the personality, the psychology. The higher Emotions - do not. They come through us, given to us by the soul and by the Divine Itself.
However: first our small, personal minds and hearts must be very pure and transparent, or the Higher Love and Compassion cannot come through us. And our own small heart must be opened, know how to love, know how to be selfless.
Often our heart opens during difficult times - if we allow it. Unfortunately, most of us want to close the heart, to protect it, when we are very sad, when we are facing some tragedy or loss. However, the best thing we can do is to allow the heart to break, to break open. If we do this, then the higher Love can come through us - and we will be the first recipient of that Love and Compassion and Peace.
This is one of the secrets of the saints.
Then we must apply our spiritual exercises: knowing that we are the soul, that others are the soul. That this conventional reality of earth is not ultimate Reality. That the essence of and the substratum of all that we know and can see or touch or smell or sense in any way - is Divinity.
We can say that God is everywhere, as we have been taught - but we should also understand and know that God is the essence, the very substratum of all that we know as ourselves and the material universe.
This is the Wisdom of the saints.
The same is true of the other Higher Emotions: to truly know Justice, first we must have developed personal ethics and learned to control our own personal anger. For the Higher Emotions to come through us, we must be very transparent and pure, and standing in the soul.
We must also first understand the difference between personal love and Divine Love - and the difference between personal sympathy and empathy vs. the Higher Compassion and Mercy. For all this we must understand the nature of the ego - i.e. that all out thoughts and emotions are the ego.
A good rule of thumb: if we hear ourselves say the word "I" in a conversation, either with ourselves or with others : then we are still standing in the ego.
Thursday, December 23
Met with one of my meditators the other night, over dinner. Began with Saint Teresa of Avila’s statement that we must meditate if we are to fully progress on the spiritual Path. My meditator said he had been meditating more frequently recently, and as a result feeling more vulnerable: in actuality, he was becoming more transparent because of the increased meditation, and that can feel like vulnerability at first. When we meditate both the mind and the physical being are transformed, the very cells of our body are transformed. He also said he did not know what to do with the feelings and thoughts that were surfacing as a result of the increased meditation: here I suggested to just let them go, not to analyze them or dwell on them. Meditation is not therapy - in meditation we allow the thoughts and emotions that surface to dissolve back into the Light, to disappear and/or be transformed by the Light Itself ... The main thing is to remember that we are the soul, to remember the true Self - whether we are having thoughts or not. So that even as we speak or listen or act in the world, we do not forget our connection to the soul, that we are the soul. That is the Goal, not the thoughts or actions themselves. If we remember that we are the soul - all else will fall into place.
Of course, sometimes this sort of Selflessness can also occur if we only think of the task before us and not of ourselves ... But this method of reaching Selflessness has its limitations, and is not always successful. For one, when the action is completed we are thrown back into the ego, and its infinite self protections and thoughts and emotions reemerge.
Sunday, December 26
During Midnight Mass last night, I was immediately thrown into a very deep meditation - it felt as though I were standing in an inner spotlight, the Light was so very intense. The experience was so deep that I had trouble coming out of it and staggered as I got on line for Communion. M. later said she was hoping people would not think I was drunk. But of course I was drunk, on the Divine ... Completely. It was not an ecstasy because I could come out of it at will, and still could hear Mass. But it certainly was close to one. I suspect that God would not put someone into an ecstasy during Mass, because the Mass is more important than any mystical experience ...
So far as I recall, the story about Saint Teresa going into ecstasy and levitating in the church was not during Mass. Of course, I could be mistaken. For those of you who do not know the story: Saint Teresa had asked her fellow nuns to stop her from levitating in public. In this instance, our beloved saint went into an ecstasy and began to levitate when people were about - and the other nuns tried to hold her down, but could not. So there was saint Teresa hovering in the air with a handful of nuns holding on to her!! What a Blessed sight that must have been ... The Power of God - we just could never imagine it. The power of the seas, of the most terrible storms, of our strongest machines, of the planets and heavenly bodies - are but a pale comparison. As is the Light of our sun. But there is something else about God we could never imagine while incarnate - and that is the Beauty and Wonder of that Light and Power ... No, those a pale words for something fully Unnameable and Indescribable ...
Well, perhaps someone else could describe it, but not I ...