I have covered these two topics before--both separately and together--but they still come up: Is there such a thing as a "Twin Soul" or "Twin Flame"? and What is a "soul mate"?
As previously discussed and illustrated through my blogpost entitled "Anna," a soul mate is any soul from your Soul Family, soul group, or from within the community of souls with whom you have worked closely before. You and a soul mate may have contracted to play significant roles in each other's lives--whether that contract was to participate in a single particular event of primary significance to one or the other's growth goals or whether it is to play off each other in a mirroring/sounding board dynamic in a long term relationship such as husband and wife, siblings, mother-child, father-child, mentor-student, or others. Journeyman Paul has soul mate relationships with the people that have played girl friend, three hour encounter on a train in Europe, daughter, great grandmother, college friend, brother, father, spirit guide, and current wife in Drew Fisher's life time--and those are just the ones that have been revealed to my conscious mind in this Drew Fisher vehicle. It is likely that there are many, many more people who have contributed to the growth and development of Drew Fisher in this incarnation who are members of Journeyman Paul's soul community, but that that information has not been significant enough to have been revealed to me (so far).
So, in short, a soul mate can be one of any number of souls you might encounter while traveling in your current human vehicle. You might be in contact with or be using several of them at this very time in your life. You may also have none currently present and/or active in your life. It is important to here recognize that a soul mate might also have contractually agreed to work with you in a particular incarnation in an adversarial or violent capacity. The lessons inherent in being the recipient of an act of violence or adversity can be very powerful--and sometimes we ask close Soul Community members to step in and perform those very difficult tasks because we know that they will do so with that goal of working for the Highest Good and most Sacrificial Love for us. To perform acts of destruction, harm, crime, or even mischief require very strong souls--souls based in a strong sense of Self and Love, souls firmly entrenched in the awareness that this is all a Game, that we are only putting on masks, playing roles to afford one another experiences based within the rules and contexts of the contextual field in which we are making our selves present. Were an "immature" or "damaged" soul to take on a human bodymind that has a destructive or violent role in store for it, it may come out more damaged, more entrenched in its perception of disharmony or injury--which only means that it might take more time and therapies for its healing and wholeness to be regained.
For example, many Monads willingly took on key or supportive roles in the Nazi regime in Germany. The hurt and suffering that they helped to inflict or submit others to during those lifetimes in the 1930s and after was offered up with an intention of creating a perspective of gratitude and appreciation for life, family, culture, freedom, and so many other things in our world which can become taken for granted. As the comforts and ease, liberties and freedoms of modern industrial human society were growing, the Spiritual Kingdom saw that there needed to be balancing "reminders" of the special gifts we were being given. Pain and suffering are, of course, the great balancers, the great "reminders," the great perspective resets for humankind.
It is correctly rumored that many of the Monads who participated on the Nazi side of events in the 20th century are now ensouled in Jewish or Palestinian bodyminds--as a means to making amends, to balancing out the scales, as a karmic exchange for their roles in the Nazi regime. But, a problem has arisen as some of the Monads who participated in the Nazi atrocities and the Nazi mindset and way of life came to enjoy the perpetration of destruction, control, fear, hurt and pain upon others. These are the Monads or souls who were not quite fully prepared for the impact their actions could have on their Higher Mind, on their spiritual psychology. Thus, we now have a problem with current bodyminds living lives with variations on the reinforced destroyer/perpetrator mentalities that they never quite cleared their beings of from their Nazi lives; there is violence being perpetrated on other human beings by the supposed "victims" of previous crimes against humanity! The psychoses of inflicting pain and destruction upon others is not being reversed but carried forward!
Though some former Nazis are, no doubt, making amends for their complicity in aggression and perversion, balancing the scales of karma, it may, in fact, take several lifetimes and between-lifetimes for some of the other Monads who seem stuck in aggressive, destructive behaviors to heal and re-balance their eccentric patterns.
The question of twin souls--or "twin flames" as some are want to call them--is definitely based in a contextual field that rings true to me and my recall of experiences as Journeyman Paul. I'm not sure if it was in the first phase of individuation, that is, that first shift from Unity Consciousness into the realm of the Grand Illusions of Cosmic Creation, but I resonate with the recollection of "being born" in an ethereal form of an "egg" in a kind of diaphanous form similar in concept to the common symbol of the Yin and Yang: curled up with my "head" or "mental point of reference" facing or entwined with the "tail" or "feet" or "grounding feature" of my "other half"--who happens to be ensouling the bodymind of Toril, my current wife in this Drew Fisher incarnation. Within that "cephalic point of conscious reference" resides the seed of all that is Toril, all that is essentially my other half--and within her is the seed of all that is me (Journeyman Paul). So, while "separate" from our previous form of ubiquitous Unity Consciousness, or God, and "separate" from my other half, the yin to my yang, I am ever reminded by that seed within--as I am by the Blue Pearl within my Heart--that all perceptions of separation are but illusory and were made up by Us for Our play in the infinite realms and variations of the Cosmic Playground. At some level, despite the degree of separation in dimensionality or time and place that Toril and I choose to focus our attentions and intentions, we are never truly separated, never truly apart--and the same goes for our relationship with God. Do you see how everything is metaphor, how everything is built layer upon layer upon the Illusion of the First Individuation?
So, in the belief system constructed to this point with the help of my experiences as Drew Fisher, Toril and I are "twin souls." We were "born" into the Illusion of Separation, into Cosmic Creation, together, metaphoric examples of God's Taoist commitment to duality. We came from the same egg, she the yin to my yang, I the masculine half of her feminine representation (which, interestingly, plays out in the fact that neither of us has been able to access a single lifetime in which we were not representatives of those original gender orientations). This is not to say that there aren't many, many other ways in which form was--or is--"born" into contextual fields within the infinite possibilities of Cosmic Creation. I'm certain that there are. This is just the entry or "birth" that Toril and I remember--and one factor that has led to our inclination to (want to) reconnect within Game-playing fields, within multi-dimensional contextual fields.
Twin souls may decide to work together in numerous incarnations--in the guise of many roles, including but not exclusive to that of lovers. The roles you decide to take on may include those of family members or even as adversaries. I would like to here caution you against obsessing over the quest for your Twin. This, in my opinion, is simply a waste of time. If and when you are ready, that information may present itself to you, but the soul work you accomplish is not dependent upon your pairing up or holding your hands much less even finding your Twin. Suffice it to say that you are always "holding hands" with your twin, whether you are aware of it or not.
I am told that the Monad can or will experience the joyful "reunion" with its twin while in human form when one has reached the last initiation on the scale of human unveilings of Spiritual energy. At this point it is considered that one has "done all the work" necessary to open one's human consciousness to full awareness of the presence of the Rays (though, I can assure you, the likelihood of one's master of their potentialities is very slim). After this stage or "rung" on the ladder has been achieved, there is a bit of a plateau for rest and reflection, but then there opens up an entire new ladder of spiritual goals and learning with another vast spectrum of experiential choices from which to choose our next contextual field and appropriate forms for learning and growth. The work of spiritual growth does not end with mastery of spiritual principles through the perceptual filters of the human experience. There are many, many other forms, other dimensions, other expanded fields of conscious awareness to work within, to master, before we achieve re-union with our One True Self. Imagine the consciousness/perspective of a star! or a galaxy! or a universe! And these are just four-dimensional entities of which we are already aware. We can only begin to imagine the choices of experiential perspectives beyond the four dimensions that we humans are familiar with. And through it all, rest assured, you will be "holding hands" with your cosmic twin, working with a loving "family" and "community" of Monadic oversouls. What a wonderful, beautiful Plan we have devised!
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Monday, December 21, 2015
Initiations
One of the few topics I have been avoiding from the start of these blogposts is that of initiations, that is, the spiritual "ladder" that one works along as part of the human experience. I have been avoiding this topic because the Ego has its way of treating things competitively, of wanting to extoll its own virtues and achievements. The Ego wants to "look good." It wants others to think it is special so that it can think well of itself.
The topic of initiation always seems to provoke Ego. Ego wants to tout how far it is along the spiritual path (in order to deceive others into believing Ego is in submission to Spirit). The key here is to try to remember that there is absolutely nothing that the Ego can do to improve the spiritual progress that one achieves. As a matter of fact, it can more accurately be stated that the Ego has an agenda which is usually quite different from and often misleading to The Soul Plan that was installed by the Monad and its team of spiritual beings.
I apologize if I am confusing you here. You see, I will remind you, the Ego is, after all, merely a fabrication that we spiritual beings have created to further challenge our selves in our adventuring into the deeper and deepest realms of Cosmic Creation, veils of Ignorance, into the murky tar pits of the human experience. And, ingenious it is, this concoction that we call "the Ego" is a side of ourselves, a point of view, that interprets the world within and around us in a way that is very different from the spiritual perspective.
The Ego is very much a product of the physical- and emotion-based perspective of Earth World. It is fully immersed in and governed by the tremendous amount of information bombarding us from our senses and our psychological identification with our human bodies. But, again, it is a devise, a tool, that we spiritual beings installed into the fabric of human beingness in order to test our selves, in order to confuse, distract and retard our ability to focus on the True tasks at hand, which would be to learn, embrace, and use spiritual principles, to practice spiritual law while in these Earth incarnations. The emotion-based sentient human experience has been devised as one of the deepest forays into the Grand Illusions of Cosmic Creation, certainly one of the most overwelhming and confusing "rides" away from "home" (which is nondualistic Unity Consciousness).
The basics of spiritual law include individual realization, use and expression of Love, Beauty, Truth, Choice, Universal Divinity, Forgiveness, Detachment, Harmony, Unity Consciousness, etc. The achievement of this ability to realize, use, and express spiritual principles while in human form comes in stages. These stages can be called "initiations." Many spiritual traditions have elucidated set or flexible numbers of stages or initiations. The scale of initiations can be defined differently but they usually correspond to the individual's ability to cast aside or see through the various layers or veils of ignorance, the Illusions. Were one to emerge into human form with full awareness and command of all of the Illusions, in full command of spiritual law, that person would probably be recognized as an "enlightened being;" the lightness one might feel (and exhibit) from being unencumbered by the tremendous weight of Ego, from being free of the Illusions and the veils of Ignorance, is truly liberating and would certainly be found to be inspiring to those who might be fortunate to find (and recognize) themselves in the presence of such an individual.
When I began my formal studies of spiritual information I encountered goals of achievement in Buddhist traditions--the Five Precepts of The Golden Rule, the Buddhist system of basic morality. Before that, of course, there were concepts like The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule--the mastery of which claimed to ensure one a saintly or righteous life. I also encountered lists of goals from other writers who had spiritual focus, such as Deepak Chopra's Laws of Spirituality or Spiritual Laws of Success. And when I found myself a student of Esoteric Healing--which draws much from the writings of Alice Bailey and other authors of Eastern and Theosophic traditions--I was exposed to the concept of Initiations. I had come across this term before. First in a book by British author Cyril Scott entitled The Initiate: Impressions of a Great Soul, second in the pop novel of Richard Bach's entitled Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, and finally in an autobigraphical book by Swiss spiritual teacher Elisabeth Haich entitled Initiation. All three of these source books have been referenced or presented in previous Life Is Beautiful blogposts.
The number of initiations requisite to mastery of spiritual law while in human form has been source to some interpretation and variation. I had heard of five, seven, nine and 12 stages of spiritual awakening--for that is, in effect, what each stage represents: a new level of awareness or awakeness; increased or expanded awareness of the deceits of The Grand Illusions, The Ego, the lightening of the load of Fear and Ignorance. As consciousness is expanded, raised, it is able to use its awareness to build upon and seek further information, to come to grips with that new information, and then, hopefully, put it to use.
People will ask questions like, "How long will I have to work on this stage, this initiation level, before I can move on to the next one?" And the answer, of course, is: As long as it takes! There is no right or wrong time, no right or wrong initiation level to achieve (or not). There is no failure. Everybody will figure it out. At some point. For some it may take several lifetimes as the lures and attachments to concepts and beliefs in the four-dimensional sensory world may prove more attractive for that individual for a while. Addictions and addictive behaviors are another obstacle thrown into the human equation to make the journey more challenging, more But then, the achievement of success on the climb to spiritual awareness becomes that much more appreciated, that much more rewarding.
Each stage or initiation can take years or lifetimes. Once focused on a spiritual path, achieving success at recognizing spiritual concepts and laws, the speed in which one travels the path may increase or accelerate. But then there is the separate topic of mastery. Just because a soul has been able to begin to recognize it's True self and the True nature of All Things does not mean that they will have achieved mastery of the use of this knowledge. Mastery may take many other incarnations--and not necessarily human or in the four-dimensional contextual field. Once one has achieved full awareness of spiritual law and the role that the Earth School experience plays in our development (toward Self-realization--which is, ultimately, of course, a return to Unity Consciousness with Our Divine Source) we feel free to use our choices to try other means and methods of working with spiritual law. There is actually a whole other "ladder" of spiritual awareness and achievement over and above that which we work with while in the human form. So, rather than set forth a specific number of initiations that we can and should seek to recognize and achieve and then outline and describe the nature and qualities of each initiation, let me instead describe some of the general tasks or themes we will encounter on the path.
Remember, the entire journey is about gradually increasing our awareness of Self and spiritual potential. The journey usual begins with social groups--using others, using established traditions and beliefs for. Like choosing clothing, we may find ourselves mentally trying on several different religious mantles--all the while driven by that feeling of what feels right, what feels wrong, what feels like the uncovering of a part of you, a part of your beliefs, that is an internal truth--something that was always there within you but has now been allowed out of the dark, has been given light and life, has been restored to its proper place. The entire path is like this: gradual, incremental revelations of ideas, concepts, truths that were always within you, that have resided within you since before you were born, but need the "work" of seeking, the kick in the but from that ever broadcasting voice from within, the incessant beacon of the Divinity within us, the spiritual Monad.
"Divine discontent" is an appropriate term used to describe that unsettling feeling in the gut, coming from the unconscious (from the Soul--the beacon of the Monad), that says something isn't quite right, that there is something more, something "deeper" to learn or discover. This is a feeling commonly used by many spiritual travelers to describe their impetus for seeking, for taking risks, for trying new things.
Though our travels are always our own, the path is never exactly like any one else's, we are able to benefit from the myriad paths that others before us have taken to achieve increasing Self-awareness, an increasing sense of the presence of the energy of our Divine Origins. That is how religions and philosophies, social groups, education, art and literature, dreams and metaphor serve us: as means to revealing little bits of our selves to our selves--so that we can decide if we like and want to stay attached to this part of me or whether we are feeling that we are past that version of our selves, of our "truth," whether we have become "bigger" than that particular formerly-useful piece of information, that that piece of information is no longer useful for our current self-definition.
It is important to remember that every piece of information you receive is useful: every piece of information that comes into your awareness can help you on your journey to continually define and re-define your self concept, your Self. A piece of information will either be found useful as a welcomed part of you or as an unwelcomed part and therefore something you'd like to change, or it will be determined as something that has no bearing, relevance, or place in our current self-concept--which then leads us to discard it but, at the same time, has helped us to re-define and reassert our current self-definition. This is why we can say that everything in your world--every single piece of information, physically, sensually, psychologically--all of it is offered to you--has been attracted to you by you--specifically for your use. What you choose to do with it is up to you. If you choose to ignore it, that's fine. You will continue to create a contextual field with variations on that same piece of information until it does lead to stimulation--until you are finally ready to receive, pay attention to, and perhaps process it. There is no hurry. There is no right or wrong. You may not even be perceiving information on a conscious level or you may not be ready to process it at the level of significance (remember: every thing is metaphor) you need it. That may take years and many many encounters with the same piece of information. (Which is one reason that Carl Jung would revisit dreams and symbols and synchronous events over and over throughout his lifetime: there could always be more layers and tie-ins with other pieces of information which can in turn reveal different forms of meaning and significance to our ever-expanding concept of Self and world.)
Another question on people's minds is "Can I fall backwards or regress on my spiritual path?" The answer is a little complicated because it depends on your perspective: From a spiritual perspective there is no right or wrong; we're all going to get there. And the act of taking on a human bodymind involves committing to a kind of "blank slate" wherein we start at the bottom of the ladder with each incarnation BUT it is usually a much faster climb if spiritual work has been done/accomplished in previous incarnations.
The other answer to this question "Can I fall backwards or regress on my spiritual path?" is yes, of course! As in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we all use all of the information, all of the perspectives from the initiatory ladder. For example, once I've reached the ninth rung of the ladder of initiations I will still find myself from time to time looking at a situation from the perspective of the first or the fifth Initiation. It's all available to me; it's all a part of me. I just don't have access to the perspectives of the initiations ahead of me. Yet.
Most of the work on the ladder of initiations has to do with getting used to the reception and effects of the presence of the energy of a particular ray from among the rainbow of Cosmic Rays. This is the true secret, the true reason for the existence of the hierarchy of initiations: there are 12 primary and secondary Cosmic Rays. To take on the effects of the presence of the full energies of all of the 12 Rays at once would be quite overwhelming for the feeble human nervous system. Thus, we devised a system by which we could slowly, gradually prepare ourselves for the flood of the presence and then use of the energies of each of the Cosmic Rays, only one at a time. And, there is an ordered sequence to which we expose ourselves. But the Rays will only begin to be fully received within our human vessel if and when we are ready--if and when our Ego allows for the hearing and opening to the Cosmic Beacon, the Voice of Our Soul Plan, once we have actively begun our conscious journey on our own spiritual path.
Also, there are several initiations that usually prove more difficult for humans in this day and age to work through in this day and age. The first exposure to the energy of Ray 1 can be very unsettling for many and may take a long time to process in order to learn how to work with it. And the exposure to Ray 8 is also unsettling for this is when Spirit is reminding the human that you have the power, that you alone are responsible for your self and your choices and actions, that you no longer need teachers, just as you have never needed teachers because everything, every single piece of information that comes into your awareness and, eventually, into your consciousness was all co-created and attracted to you by you. Once a human recognizes and embraces this fact, one is finally free and able to handle the more refined and specific spiritual energies of the higher initiations. Before this point, the human is still fully and unconsciously connected to a perspective of duality, to the habit of wanting to treat things as "inside" you and "outside" of you, of "here" and "there," "this" and "that," "yours" and "mine," etc. "External" teachers are very important to the human before the eighth initiation. After that the road is much more solitary and yet joyfully holistic and inclusionary.
Again, the ladders of initiation are merely informations from a variety of systems that allow us to look at our progress--as well as our obstacles--on our spiritual paths. As is the case with any information, use it as you see fit--as it serves you--and disregard that which makes no sense, or that which feels contrary to your beliefs and values. As I have said before many times: We are all going to get there and There is no right or wrong way, no better or worse path, to the achievement of our goals. Every choice offers us a lesson, the potential for learning, and if we don't get the message the first or ninetieth time it is given to us, it's okay. The messages will keep coming and one day--when we are ready--not when somebody else wants us to be ready--we will get it. And then we will move on to the next message, the next adventure, the next perspective, the next choice.
The topic of initiation always seems to provoke Ego. Ego wants to tout how far it is along the spiritual path (in order to deceive others into believing Ego is in submission to Spirit). The key here is to try to remember that there is absolutely nothing that the Ego can do to improve the spiritual progress that one achieves. As a matter of fact, it can more accurately be stated that the Ego has an agenda which is usually quite different from and often misleading to The Soul Plan that was installed by the Monad and its team of spiritual beings.
I apologize if I am confusing you here. You see, I will remind you, the Ego is, after all, merely a fabrication that we spiritual beings have created to further challenge our selves in our adventuring into the deeper and deepest realms of Cosmic Creation, veils of Ignorance, into the murky tar pits of the human experience. And, ingenious it is, this concoction that we call "the Ego" is a side of ourselves, a point of view, that interprets the world within and around us in a way that is very different from the spiritual perspective.
The Ego is very much a product of the physical- and emotion-based perspective of Earth World. It is fully immersed in and governed by the tremendous amount of information bombarding us from our senses and our psychological identification with our human bodies. But, again, it is a devise, a tool, that we spiritual beings installed into the fabric of human beingness in order to test our selves, in order to confuse, distract and retard our ability to focus on the True tasks at hand, which would be to learn, embrace, and use spiritual principles, to practice spiritual law while in these Earth incarnations. The emotion-based sentient human experience has been devised as one of the deepest forays into the Grand Illusions of Cosmic Creation, certainly one of the most overwelhming and confusing "rides" away from "home" (which is nondualistic Unity Consciousness).
The basics of spiritual law include individual realization, use and expression of Love, Beauty, Truth, Choice, Universal Divinity, Forgiveness, Detachment, Harmony, Unity Consciousness, etc. The achievement of this ability to realize, use, and express spiritual principles while in human form comes in stages. These stages can be called "initiations." Many spiritual traditions have elucidated set or flexible numbers of stages or initiations. The scale of initiations can be defined differently but they usually correspond to the individual's ability to cast aside or see through the various layers or veils of ignorance, the Illusions. Were one to emerge into human form with full awareness and command of all of the Illusions, in full command of spiritual law, that person would probably be recognized as an "enlightened being;" the lightness one might feel (and exhibit) from being unencumbered by the tremendous weight of Ego, from being free of the Illusions and the veils of Ignorance, is truly liberating and would certainly be found to be inspiring to those who might be fortunate to find (and recognize) themselves in the presence of such an individual.
When I began my formal studies of spiritual information I encountered goals of achievement in Buddhist traditions--the Five Precepts of The Golden Rule, the Buddhist system of basic morality. Before that, of course, there were concepts like The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule--the mastery of which claimed to ensure one a saintly or righteous life. I also encountered lists of goals from other writers who had spiritual focus, such as Deepak Chopra's Laws of Spirituality or Spiritual Laws of Success. And when I found myself a student of Esoteric Healing--which draws much from the writings of Alice Bailey and other authors of Eastern and Theosophic traditions--I was exposed to the concept of Initiations. I had come across this term before. First in a book by British author Cyril Scott entitled The Initiate: Impressions of a Great Soul, second in the pop novel of Richard Bach's entitled Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, and finally in an autobigraphical book by Swiss spiritual teacher Elisabeth Haich entitled Initiation. All three of these source books have been referenced or presented in previous Life Is Beautiful blogposts.
The number of initiations requisite to mastery of spiritual law while in human form has been source to some interpretation and variation. I had heard of five, seven, nine and 12 stages of spiritual awakening--for that is, in effect, what each stage represents: a new level of awareness or awakeness; increased or expanded awareness of the deceits of The Grand Illusions, The Ego, the lightening of the load of Fear and Ignorance. As consciousness is expanded, raised, it is able to use its awareness to build upon and seek further information, to come to grips with that new information, and then, hopefully, put it to use.
People will ask questions like, "How long will I have to work on this stage, this initiation level, before I can move on to the next one?" And the answer, of course, is: As long as it takes! There is no right or wrong time, no right or wrong initiation level to achieve (or not). There is no failure. Everybody will figure it out. At some point. For some it may take several lifetimes as the lures and attachments to concepts and beliefs in the four-dimensional sensory world may prove more attractive for that individual for a while. Addictions and addictive behaviors are another obstacle thrown into the human equation to make the journey more challenging, more But then, the achievement of success on the climb to spiritual awareness becomes that much more appreciated, that much more rewarding.
Each stage or initiation can take years or lifetimes. Once focused on a spiritual path, achieving success at recognizing spiritual concepts and laws, the speed in which one travels the path may increase or accelerate. But then there is the separate topic of mastery. Just because a soul has been able to begin to recognize it's True self and the True nature of All Things does not mean that they will have achieved mastery of the use of this knowledge. Mastery may take many other incarnations--and not necessarily human or in the four-dimensional contextual field. Once one has achieved full awareness of spiritual law and the role that the Earth School experience plays in our development (toward Self-realization--which is, ultimately, of course, a return to Unity Consciousness with Our Divine Source) we feel free to use our choices to try other means and methods of working with spiritual law. There is actually a whole other "ladder" of spiritual awareness and achievement over and above that which we work with while in the human form. So, rather than set forth a specific number of initiations that we can and should seek to recognize and achieve and then outline and describe the nature and qualities of each initiation, let me instead describe some of the general tasks or themes we will encounter on the path.
Remember, the entire journey is about gradually increasing our awareness of Self and spiritual potential. The journey usual begins with social groups--using others, using established traditions and beliefs for. Like choosing clothing, we may find ourselves mentally trying on several different religious mantles--all the while driven by that feeling of what feels right, what feels wrong, what feels like the uncovering of a part of you, a part of your beliefs, that is an internal truth--something that was always there within you but has now been allowed out of the dark, has been given light and life, has been restored to its proper place. The entire path is like this: gradual, incremental revelations of ideas, concepts, truths that were always within you, that have resided within you since before you were born, but need the "work" of seeking, the kick in the but from that ever broadcasting voice from within, the incessant beacon of the Divinity within us, the spiritual Monad.
"Divine discontent" is an appropriate term used to describe that unsettling feeling in the gut, coming from the unconscious (from the Soul--the beacon of the Monad), that says something isn't quite right, that there is something more, something "deeper" to learn or discover. This is a feeling commonly used by many spiritual travelers to describe their impetus for seeking, for taking risks, for trying new things.
Though our travels are always our own, the path is never exactly like any one else's, we are able to benefit from the myriad paths that others before us have taken to achieve increasing Self-awareness, an increasing sense of the presence of the energy of our Divine Origins. That is how religions and philosophies, social groups, education, art and literature, dreams and metaphor serve us: as means to revealing little bits of our selves to our selves--so that we can decide if we like and want to stay attached to this part of me or whether we are feeling that we are past that version of our selves, of our "truth," whether we have become "bigger" than that particular formerly-useful piece of information, that that piece of information is no longer useful for our current self-definition.
It is important to remember that every piece of information you receive is useful: every piece of information that comes into your awareness can help you on your journey to continually define and re-define your self concept, your Self. A piece of information will either be found useful as a welcomed part of you or as an unwelcomed part and therefore something you'd like to change, or it will be determined as something that has no bearing, relevance, or place in our current self-concept--which then leads us to discard it but, at the same time, has helped us to re-define and reassert our current self-definition. This is why we can say that everything in your world--every single piece of information, physically, sensually, psychologically--all of it is offered to you--has been attracted to you by you--specifically for your use. What you choose to do with it is up to you. If you choose to ignore it, that's fine. You will continue to create a contextual field with variations on that same piece of information until it does lead to stimulation--until you are finally ready to receive, pay attention to, and perhaps process it. There is no hurry. There is no right or wrong. You may not even be perceiving information on a conscious level or you may not be ready to process it at the level of significance (remember: every thing is metaphor) you need it. That may take years and many many encounters with the same piece of information. (Which is one reason that Carl Jung would revisit dreams and symbols and synchronous events over and over throughout his lifetime: there could always be more layers and tie-ins with other pieces of information which can in turn reveal different forms of meaning and significance to our ever-expanding concept of Self and world.)
Another question on people's minds is "Can I fall backwards or regress on my spiritual path?" The answer is a little complicated because it depends on your perspective: From a spiritual perspective there is no right or wrong; we're all going to get there. And the act of taking on a human bodymind involves committing to a kind of "blank slate" wherein we start at the bottom of the ladder with each incarnation BUT it is usually a much faster climb if spiritual work has been done/accomplished in previous incarnations.
The other answer to this question "Can I fall backwards or regress on my spiritual path?" is yes, of course! As in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we all use all of the information, all of the perspectives from the initiatory ladder. For example, once I've reached the ninth rung of the ladder of initiations I will still find myself from time to time looking at a situation from the perspective of the first or the fifth Initiation. It's all available to me; it's all a part of me. I just don't have access to the perspectives of the initiations ahead of me. Yet.
Most of the work on the ladder of initiations has to do with getting used to the reception and effects of the presence of the energy of a particular ray from among the rainbow of Cosmic Rays. This is the true secret, the true reason for the existence of the hierarchy of initiations: there are 12 primary and secondary Cosmic Rays. To take on the effects of the presence of the full energies of all of the 12 Rays at once would be quite overwhelming for the feeble human nervous system. Thus, we devised a system by which we could slowly, gradually prepare ourselves for the flood of the presence and then use of the energies of each of the Cosmic Rays, only one at a time. And, there is an ordered sequence to which we expose ourselves. But the Rays will only begin to be fully received within our human vessel if and when we are ready--if and when our Ego allows for the hearing and opening to the Cosmic Beacon, the Voice of Our Soul Plan, once we have actively begun our conscious journey on our own spiritual path.
Also, there are several initiations that usually prove more difficult for humans in this day and age to work through in this day and age. The first exposure to the energy of Ray 1 can be very unsettling for many and may take a long time to process in order to learn how to work with it. And the exposure to Ray 8 is also unsettling for this is when Spirit is reminding the human that you have the power, that you alone are responsible for your self and your choices and actions, that you no longer need teachers, just as you have never needed teachers because everything, every single piece of information that comes into your awareness and, eventually, into your consciousness was all co-created and attracted to you by you. Once a human recognizes and embraces this fact, one is finally free and able to handle the more refined and specific spiritual energies of the higher initiations. Before this point, the human is still fully and unconsciously connected to a perspective of duality, to the habit of wanting to treat things as "inside" you and "outside" of you, of "here" and "there," "this" and "that," "yours" and "mine," etc. "External" teachers are very important to the human before the eighth initiation. After that the road is much more solitary and yet joyfully holistic and inclusionary.
Again, the ladders of initiation are merely informations from a variety of systems that allow us to look at our progress--as well as our obstacles--on our spiritual paths. As is the case with any information, use it as you see fit--as it serves you--and disregard that which makes no sense, or that which feels contrary to your beliefs and values. As I have said before many times: We are all going to get there and There is no right or wrong way, no better or worse path, to the achievement of our goals. Every choice offers us a lesson, the potential for learning, and if we don't get the message the first or ninetieth time it is given to us, it's okay. The messages will keep coming and one day--when we are ready--not when somebody else wants us to be ready--we will get it. And then we will move on to the next message, the next adventure, the next perspective, the next choice.
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