In the beginnings of my awakening process questions emerged; who am I, why do I exist in physcial form and what is my destiny? The existential questions that often precede one's deeper search for meaning and purpose in life.
My journey, like so many, started with entering the classroom of external knowledge of others; teachers, mentors, checking out belief systems, churchs, ashrams, retreats, conferences and enough read books I should be the wisest alive today. My search was to try and find how to fill the empty void or hole that felt as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon within me. So this process of sitting longingly, listening to every word said or read in order to satisfy this yearning, slowly took me from one world of existence into another world. The sages, saints and great contempory writers and teachers, like our own Ken Wilber, took me into their experience and conveyed this can be your experience too. It is available to everyone if the necessary spiritual work is done. And, of course, doing the work means the emptiness gets filled....But, for me, and maybe this is your experience too, it felt both joyful and depressing. Joyful, in the sense, that something within me was being recognized and embodied greater than just my humanness, yet that joy of recognition was short lived, and in it's place was a state of feeling chaotic; a lot of crazy making images and sensations of energies that felt like emotional pain overload. Stuff was arising within me, creating so much pain and anguish that I began to doubt this ground of being, always and already as core presence that others spoke about, and that maybe something was so off within me that I couldn't experience this presence.
Yet, the nectar of joy was just enough to keep me coming back, even though concurrent pain and suffering was often more than I could bear. This roller coaster ride of paradoxical experience, for me, has spanned most of my life. Meditation and contemplative prayer was my antidote to the suffering, though in the beginning these tools appeared to increase the pain and suffering. What helped me endure was using the natural world as a way to see how necessary pain and suffering is to bring about awakening. Nature begins in the dark of earth as seeds. These seeds must lose their enclosed safety and become vulnerable in order to sprout and grow. The lotus must sprout through the dense mud to come into its light. Babies must leave the safety of the womb, and become vulnerable to endure the birth into the world of form and growth through the stages. And, finally the ego/personality must leave its safety net of a false identity and become vulnerable to endure its growth through the stages to find a greater light and core presence.
People often refer to these passages as dark nights of the soul. I've come to see these dark nights differently. For me, it is the dark night of my ego/personality in it's surrender of false attachements to the many roles, beliefs, and experiences it endures as truth of who it is, and why it is, and what it is here for. And, we know these attachments begin to take hold from childhood right into adulthood and often we die with them.
My soul, a bright star, provides the infinite light for it's emergence through the dark passages of ego surrender; much like the sunlight is providing the needed light for the lotus to emerge out of its darkness. Nature is a great visual, and provides great metaphors in its complexity and splendor, to give us understanding that something greater is within, giving the means for transformation and transcendence. For some reason stages of growth are not easy and often painful. And, often we die in our resistance of not wanting to go through them. We see this in the natural world too. Not all growth and sprouting endures the steps necessary to get to the fruit or flower. And, often we see where weeds and poison inhibit the growth and fruition, much like the ego attachments act like weeds and poison to our growth and awakening. And, here we are living in our natural world that is violently reacting to our weeds and poison we are releasing into its natural environment, creating conditions that are putting man and nature in danger of extinction. Humanity's awakening is nature's salvation. Kinda of spooky isn't it?
This is why great teachers, having experienced these dark passages, give us hope and faith we, too, can safely leave the cocoon of dark pain and suffering and emerge and evolve as greater divine beings. We emerge with a level of knowing and awareness of consciousness to create our world where more love and joy can be permanently realized.
This helps to answer the question, who am I; a beautiful soul of infinite light and love, that is one with the ground of infinite presence/being. But why do I exist within a body form with a complex circuitry of impermanence? For me, this question has been answered differently at various stages of my growth and awareness. My perspective keeps chainging because I keep changing. At each higher stage of consciousness I've evolved into a greater, clearer knowing. Below the heart chakra are levels that identity with ego/personaltiy survival. When the heart chakra level is reached or higher, the ego begins its surrender and the soul begins emerging with its light and greater love and joy. The ego rarely cares why it exists in body form because it so strongly idenitfies with the body as itself and feels when the body dies so does it. Therefore fear around death and the body keeps the ego occupied with getting and attaching to anything it can to give it pleasure. Sex, money and power are its focus.
But at the higher levels of consciousness the soul knows it is not the body and ego/personality. The soul knows that it is permanent and one with the ground of being. Yet the soul loves the body and ego/personality. And when the ego makes its surrender to the safety and love of the soul, and relinquish it's attachments, then the soul uses the body/personality to experience life with immense joy and happiness. It knows how incredible to be able to use the senses for being in relationship with others and the natural world. It seeks other evolved souls to begin the process of cleaning up the world in order that beauty, goodness and truth are the new powers of creation versus sex, money and power that often destroy at the level of a false ego identity.The soul does not attach itself to external beliefs but has great understanding of all beliefs and supports anyone or anything that leads to the greater good of humanity.
Something extraordinary is happening on our planet today. A greater number of humanity appears to be awakening to this soul level of consciousness. An energy (this is the best word to describe this field or dimension emerging) of incredible power is being released onto the planet and a deeper current of corresponding energies within humanity are creating a magnitude of almost earthquake proportions of change.All systems are being affected; political, economic, religious and the environment. We, as a humanity, are being polarized to make choices.....our choices determine our very survival. And we all know this intutively. We exist to live in form as divine entities.
What is our destiny? Well this is still to be determined isn't it? But we have the power and the soul to make the right choices. We are all bright stars born with infinite light. We are one with each other and to experience this in relationship is to know the greatest love ever told. It is the Jesus and Buddha story. It is all the stories of all great souls from the beginning of time who have given us the same message. That message is the message of divine love. Not in an afterlife but in the life we live now.
I want to end this with how this writing came to me. Yesterday something within me said to check out the movies. I've come to pay attention when these strong movements within me give guidance. I began to look at the movies being played and this sensation of "oh my gosh" when I saw the title of this movie, "Bright Star". Now what gets even more interesting is in the book I wrote, my protagonist, was given the name Bright Star by her teacher, who says it means infinite light.
The movie Bright Star was written and directed by Jane Champion, who I respect greatly in her work. It is based on the true life story of John Keats, one of the greatest romantic poets. His greatest poems were inspired by a woman he deeply loved. It was a love story only the soul could experience. He wrote a poem for his beloved titled, Bright Star.
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.
Much love to all,
Mary Linda
