5.
“You are God and you create your own reality.” When this aphorism is
being subjected to the demands and dictates of the lower self who has a
spiritual, rather than materialistic, ambition, distortion and delusion
are even more extreme but harder to detect. For instance, the
personality will often take on “spiritual symptoms” by assuming itself
as spiritually-conscious, when, in fact, the person has merely read some
New Age literature and had some vague, psychic experiences combined with
some amazing coincidences.
Often the separate self will take on all the appearances of a
spiritually-enlightened being by adopting a vegetarian diet and other
symptoms of spirituality: the constant discussion of personal psychic
experiences, the daily consultation of oracles, such as the Tarot, I
Ching, Runes, psychic channellers, and so forth, the constant use of
psychic and psychological language and the constant readiness with an
explanation for every one of life’s eventualities.
In this case, the separate self has deluded itself into thinking that it
has found something important to do with its life and immediately
proceeds to turn the Spiritual into a career option by trying to recruit
everyone they meet as followers of their new found “wisdom”. Or again,
they may turn into a recruiter for some Guru, organization or
“self-improvement” workshop. Others succumb to Psychism or some ancient
and romantic system and become museum ritualists. There are as many
forms of delusional psychism as there are human types, and all of these
are called “temptations on the path” so that because, even in genuine
quickening, all of these illusions and more present themselves at some
point in the process of transformation.
It is well-known in the esoteric schools that the personality, with its
vanity, delusions and egotism, will go to any lengths to avoid the
knowledge of its own mortality. It is precisely this mortal principle in
the human being that ends up transformed beyond all recognition in a
genuine “Quickening”. In a genuine “Quickening”, the whole of the
individual’s life is at issue, not merely the details or specific
psychological situations, but rather, stage by stage, the entire context
and sense of what constitutes meaning and reality. Once the aphorism
sinks into the self as an inner experience rather than as an idea, the
whole concept of the Self begins to undergo a re-evaluation.
Any relationship which is not the result of karmic ties or spiritual
attunement will diminish in importance. Often the quickened individual
is rejected and soon abandoned by their family and many of their friends
and acquaintances. At the same time, the quickened individual has become
magnetized in a new way and quite suddenly finds their life filling up
with all manner of people who are already involved in a spiritual quest.
These new acquaintances are invariably a quixotic mixture of sometimes
unlikely people at various stages of spiritual emancipation or delusion,
as the case may be. And this new social situation is a mirror of the
Awakening Self.
This phenomenon has been called the “Aquarian Conspiracy”. To some, one
is a student, to others, a peer, and to others still, a teacher, in some
way. The atmosphere of suddenly living in a constant awareness of the
otherness of spiritual exploration can prove intoxicating. There is
magic in the air, excitement, a feeling that anything is possible. One’s
previous life, with its people and situations, can seem dull,
meaningless and pointless by comparison.
It can seem so clear and obvious that if the important people in one’s
life are indifferent or hostile to the new found spiritual life, then it
must mean that they are, in reality, no longer important and must be
left behind as belonging to one’s pre-spiritual past. Some of one’s new
found spiritual friends will counsel this and relate their story of how
they had to leave important people behind because they had “out-grown
them”. There are also so-called spiritual teachers and groups who insist
upon a complete disconnection from all previous relationships as a
prerequisite to gaining some exclusive spiritual knowledge and full
membership within the group itself.
As the “Book of the Golden Precepts” has it: “If thou art told that to
become Arhan (an initiate) thou hast to cease to love all beings, tell
them they lie. If thou art told that to gain liberation thou hast to
hate thy mother and disregard thy child, to disavow thy father and call
him ‘householder’, tell them their tongue is false.”
If the New Spirituality is able to find one amid the circumstances of
one’s life, why should it not continue to unfold there? It did not
require the permission of any one indifferent or hostile to it, and was
it not the case that, before the infant-awakening of the Self, one may
have been sceptical, indifferent or even hostile to it oneself? The
Universal Over-Soul is the originating source of all individual
Spirit-Selves. So it is obvious that those who counsel the abandonment
of family, lover and friend on the grounds that they as yet remain
asleep in the Spirit speak from ignorance and vanity and reveal that
they do not understand the divine Laws of the Universe.
It happens in the course of life and relationship that stages and
relationships come and go, that people must sometimes part in order to
fulfill their respective destinies, but for the individual who is
awakening to the Spiritual Realism, there should be no self-indulgent
loyalty breaks. Separation can only come about after long and sober
reflection. Obviously, every individual’s life and relationships are
different, so until some of the dust settles, it is wiser to be guided
by basic conscience and compassion than half-understood ideas about what
a spiritual life or relationship is supposed to look like, and it is
always extremely important to understand why the Spiritual has shown up
in the current life situation.
It is often found that the individual’s life is in a state of great flux
and change anyway, and the Spiritual, when it does appear or is realized
in a new way, makes everything crystal clear, and a big, bright, new
life springs into existence as if by magic. There is often a feeling of
having been selected by the Spirit to go out and make amazing
differences in the World. Sometimes this is true, just like that. The
feeling of being special, destined for great things, can be almost
overwhelming. One feels lifted above ordinary humanity into a higher,
more real existence. There is the experience of high-keyed awareness.
Everything seems so clear, and the majority of people appear to be
walking around in some kind of dull stupor from which they may never
wake up.
A self-indulgent feeling of vanity and self-importance can take one over
at this stage, combined with an unwarranted attitude of superiority
towards all others who are not spiritually active. It is this
ego-inflation that false spiritual teachers, friends and groups play
upon in order to lead the quickened astray, even as they warn against
being over-influenced by ego-concerns. In some form, it must always be
this way, because one is learning to discern the true from the false,
the real from the unreal.
This is an important lesson and challenge which has to do with learning
to be guided by the Spirit-Self within. These deceptions or
“temptations”, serious as they may be, are nothing compared to what will
come later. For each stage of the long transformation, a new nexus of
self-deceptions, illusions and deceptions by other beings, who play upon
the weakness unique to every individual, must be met. They are called
“temptations” because, of course, our weaknesses are very tempting,
sometimes irresistibly so.
Even when the quickened discover that they have been tricked, lied to
and exploited, at whatever level, they never adopt the posture of a
victim. To take on the dark, psychological mantle of the victim is to
fall down on the path which leads over the Bridge and to be stopped in
the quest for reality and freedom. And this attitude is one of the
meanings of “taking responsibility”.
The ability to discern is often blinded by ambition and psychic greed.
In a culture which glorifies ambition, it is hard for most people to
understand that ambition has absolutely no place or role to play on the
spiritual path. Spiritual ambition, like all ambition, is a condition of
separation and conflict, leading to the illusion of victory, followed by
the realization that one has abandoned compassion in order to serve
small-minded and vain demands, followed in turn by the emptiness and
despair which comes as the result of having betrayed the Higher Self and
others. As the “little” book, “Light on the Path”, puts it: “Work as one
who is ambitious but without ambition”. which means that we are to do
the best we can with what we are, but never allow our efforts to breed
competitive egotism.
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