Can we realize God? How is it we are to realize God, to have the experience of our own Source? I would venture to guess there would be about as many different answers as there are people you might ask. This is as it should be. We are all individual, unique expressions of the Whole. Picking up from the last post, I operate on the premise that despite conditioning, there seems to be an urge in the human Spirit for something not quite defined yet ever present, a pull towards wholeness of Being and unity of Spirit. More and more pronounced it seems to me is the willingness and the bravery to break from societal conditioning, dictates as to right and wrong, especially the tendency to have those dictates come from some outside source. The term path to depict our own personal journey has come to imply to me an outward reaching, a following, an origination by someone other than our own Self. Anyone that knows me knows clearly that I am not one fond of being lead anywhere, as if I am somehow deficient and in need of deliverance. That does not mean I shun anything as I have drawn to me delightful human beings willing to share their practice with me and I have along the way adopted and benefited from a myriad of activities that have assisted over the years of my seeking. This is where words tend to not fit for me any longer. Path as used here is defined as a course of action or conduct and practice is defined as to do something repeatedly in order to acquire or polish a skill. So put together, we tend to follow a course of action in order to acquire something. Relevant to this topic path and practice tend to define that which we do to build/grow our relationship to God or whatever term you prefer to use as a means to define Source. I have chronicled loosely in past posts how we have adopted the tendency to seek and follow familiar paths, the tendency of human beings to believe and follow what is popular and seems to hold security in getting to the destination we desire. You may balk at that but if one looks ever deeper into human motivation, personal motivation, much of our decisions and actions are based in a need to quell feelings of fear and insecurity. At the root of massive group think is tremendous fear, fear we have been taught to hold that I dont believe is a part of our actual nature. We have been conditioned to fear and it runs tremendously deep in the human psyche. Of particular relevance to this post is the word conditioning, defined in the dictionary as a process of behavior modification by which a subject comes to associate a desired behavior with a previous stimulus. This process begins the very day we are born and in most people continues unabated throughout the life span. We spend most of our lives having our behavior modified by forces all around us, rooted in an infantile need to survive and being completely dependent upon forces outside of ourselves to do so. From the earliest of conditioning we then learn to modify our own behavior in a manner that ensures we will be liked, accepted, loved, and approved of. At what cost? Its scary to wake up in ones life and begin to see the extent of the success of conditioning and just how far from ones true Self it has taken us as a species. Is it any wonder there is in virtually everyone of us a sense of incompleteness, fragmentation, and dissociation with our own Self and Source? Conditioning takes one away from ones true nature and I believe leaves one with a nagging sense of loss and being lost. So what do we do; why more of what is popular, familiar and socially acceptable by consensus of course. Its a self-perpetuating cycle fueled my none other than FEAR that rather than takes it away and makes us more secure tends to have the opposite affect. There comes a point, perhaps many points in a life stream in which I believe all paths and all practices fail to deliver us to the destination we desire. Its my belief and my experience that any path or practice can only take you so far and indeed is necessary and important along the way depending on what you are aiming for. Have you ever sat down and asked yourself What do I want? For the majority of mankind that might be answered by such things as a better life, a better job, more money i.e. security, a better mate or perfect health to name a few. Those are answers based in the belief that I am this body and a deep rootedness in material existence. Further investigation might lead to vague answers like peace, stillness, openness, and happiness. That is going a bit deeper. Theres something below that, at the core of our Being. Whether we are aware of it or not, I believe at the core of each of us is a desire for Truth. Its been popular in the New Age to misconstrue our deepest desire as evidenced by the common phrase my truth. What is common is to assume that knowing our truth will lead us closer to actual Truth. By definition, if it changes, it is not Truth and I think we can all agree that our truth often changes with the passage of time and circumstance. I find I have ceased trying to know, understand and speak my truth having recognized that in the deepest part of me, my desire is for Truth. Truth is changeless, ever present and I believe embedded in our very DNA. Truth seems resistant to direct inquiry, its mysterious in that way. What I have found is that it is far more affective to recognize what is not Truth and to chip away at that than to attempt to find something that is already there waiting to simply be uncovered. Hidden in the parables of many religious texts and the esoteric teaching in other holy texts is this very notion that Truth cannot be found as it has never been absent, it must simply be uncovered and once uncovered becomes quite evident. This has been my actual experience as well. There is a stripping away rather than an adding to or somehow improving on what is. Inherent in this process is a state of surrender, one we must reach again and again at deeper and deeper levels. We must give up our truth which implies my truth and your truth are somehow different, to discover Truth which is universal and unifying, not individual and separative. My truth is merely a ploy ego uses to rebel or somehow put a protective boundary up between me and you. Its rooted in fear. Dont get me wrong, its an important part of the maturation process of the individual and if ones sole interested is in ones individuality, its quite sufficient in and of itself. At a deeper place resides in each one of us a desire to know ultimate Truth or God. There is a deeper set of questions we must ask ourSelves in order to get there. In each man, woman and child it is my belief that it is fundamental to our nature to seek unity with each other and the Source of our Being. Its fear that prevents us from doing so in both cases. To be continued.....
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:16:21 +0000
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