Everything Is Metaphor: The World "Outside" You

To Monadic Consciousness, all Earthly human experiences are but agents for individual growth and expanded awareness of the Truths and Mysteries of Creation; in effect, every thing is a metaphor. "You"--or, in your case, "I" is a metaphor: a vehicle for the planned accumulation and accrual of experience. You are much more than the perceptions that your human consciousness filters like a myopic telescope. That which you believe is "outside" you ("you" here being understood as the perspective of your human bodymind) is a matrix or field of information in which your illusory bodymind floats, flows, and negotiates meaning and significance. In truth, nothing exists outside you and nothing exists without you: you are a point of perspective within The All that exists by the grace of The All for the sheer experience of experiencing perspective, and the infinite variations of individuated perspective. Everything in your field of perspective is an illusion created precisely to allow the experience of experiencing perspective of all and everything Creation can possibly be; we are limited in our "view" only by how occluded (ignorant) we are in our perception of our Selves. The Earth-based human experience was created as a base for the exploration of psycho-emotional experience and to experiment with the depths of depravity one can experience while maxing out the Illusion of Separation. (The Illusion of Separation is the Illusion, you will recall, that allows us to experience the illusion of separation from our permanent state of unity with The All. If occluded from the truth of our permanent and unchanging state of unity with The All one could, of course, experience some anxiety, sense of loss, perhaps sadness, and "Divine discontent"--for the impelling desire to reclaim that which we have allowed ourselves to feel as lost.) The goal of this depraved condition of Ignorance was designed to test our personal resolve in the effort to reacquire those Original States of Universal Consciousness, that is, the All perspective of non-perspectivity, or what the Taoists call "Wu Wei," a state of perfect accordance with the natural state of Unity Consciousness.

Everything that you perceive as "outside" you has been created for your use in this quest for expanded consciousness (diminished ignorance, increasing re-awareness of our own Divinity, of the illusory nature of all Creation). The part that we forget (especially in especially deep states within the Illusion of Separation in which we find ourselves deeply mired in victimhood and depravity) is that we, Ourselves, had a very significant role in setting up the conditions in which we find our human vehicle: that we had a very active role in creating the Plan that we had for this Earth-based human adventure--with clearly defined and shared goals and objectives planned out for the "lifetime" we committed to. And more: we are in every single moment playing an active role (whether conscious or unconscious) in the manifestation of our "external" "surroundings" and the events and possibilities they offer us--all according to those learning goals and objectives that we set in motion when we signed up for this adventure ride. There is nothing real in your surroundings--unless you choose to give it the power of "being real." There is nothing in the world "outside" you that can harm the real You--nothing that can alter the fact that you are only playing at the games available to you as an individuated point of perspective in the Cosmic Illusion of "Creation," that you are--and always will be--a part of the Great Unity Consciousness, The All. The game your Monad chose to participate in (Earth-based human in a so-called "21st Century") is just a game, and like any game, you will have success if you play by the game's rules but You will have greater success if you are able to remember that these are just rules to a game, that, like any game, you can choose to play as long as you like, that you can also choose to stop playing this particular game, or you can choose to fight against the rules of the game and see what experiences that brings you. It is most important to try to remember that there is no right or wrong: that there is absolutely nothing  that you can say or do that will jeopardize the fact that you are, at day's end, always an essential part of The All--no, in fact, you ARE The All! Your choices to participate in the games of experience, using the Grand Illusions of Cosmic Creation, are inherently distracting and deluding you from remembering your Ultimate Divine Unity. Use the "outside" world as it was intended: for your strength, will, and expanding awareness of your own Divinity--i.e. for increased (deepening) Self-awareness and, ultimately, as fodder toward Self-Realization. Or not! You can certainly use the information bombarding you (at all times) from the "outside" to reinforce and secure your Ignorance--even to deepen your immersion into the Illusions of Deprivation, but, ultimately, it is the plan of every individuated point of perspective to hear and follow that inner beacon of "Divine discontent": the beacon that is trying to remind you, at every second of every day, that you are Complete, you are Perfect, you are not alone, you are always and forever a part of the Great Field of Unified Consciousness; the beacon that is trying to assure you that everything is going to be all right because it's all game, that all of Creation exists purely for Our entertainment--for the exploration of everything and anything that is possible.

The Living Universe

"The universe is a living entity that is unutterably vast and an intensely alive process of awesome precision and power. We are beings the universe inhabits as much as we are beings who inhabit the universe. Life exists within life. Our life is inseparable from the aliveness of the living universe. Our aliveness and consciousness extend beyond our biological bodies and into the further reaches and depths of the living universe. Our physical bodies comprise only the smallest fraction of the full scope of our being. Our bodies are biodegradable vehicles for acquiring soul-growing experiences. With renewed feelings of wonder, we can open to a larger sense of self that connects into the subtle aliveness of the living universe..."

The Purpose of Pain

If you are a sufferer of chronic pain consider that your condition may have some very real spiritual implications--that there is a very direct message being delivered by your pain. It is my understanding that physical, or psychological pain is contracted as the result of "inhibited soul life," which means that the information being broadcast from the original Soul Plan has been misconstrued, misinterpreted or outright ignored. Remember:  the Ego/Personality that family and society and our own innate biological survival instincts help us to construct during our childhood becomes quite confident and set in its ways. There are often attention-grabbing obstacles or set backs and/or tragic or euphoric events in our lives that shake up the Ego into reconsidering its posturing, its belief constructs. But sometimes even these are not enough to break the constricted thinking patterns that we have grown accustomed and reliant upon. Pain--and especially daily, quality-of-life-threatening pain--has a way of demanding, commanding, even requiring, a shift in behavior and thought. Sometimes this is what is necessary for the Ego to be broken in order to finally let the beacon-like message of the Soul Plan break through the murkiness. Remember: the Voice of the soul is always singing its song, trying to get its message across; it is the Ego, distracted by the Grand Illusions of four-dimensional emotion-based sentient experience, with its layers of survival mechanisms and pleasure and comfort patterns, that fears letting go of its patterns--patterns that it has spent years building and reinforcing and with which it has become quite comfortable and even automated. Thus, pain, in my view of things, is a powerful method that we attract into our lives in order to give us a wake up call--to inform us that something we are doing is out of line with the purpose and goals we declared when we made plans to take on this current human incarnation.
     Chronic pain, then, is similar to an air raid siren in your head that won't go off. Chronic pain changes you. It breaks down the patterns of ease, joy, and free-wheeling fun and play that we may have fallen under the spell of--patterns that, I believe, are contrary to those you had placed into the goals and objectives for growth in your Soul Plan. Chronic pain, in effect, forces us to stop the patterns we had developed and to recreate ourselves in new ways. Suffice it to say, if we find means out of our chronic pain syndromes and patterns, we have discovered insights into our True Nature that can lead us to alternative paths for living and thinking. Even drug regimens, surgeries, or more destructive forms of escape from pain (like addictions and unmanaged anger) offer us glimmers of insight into the illusory nature of our four-dimensional "reality." Ideally, of course, we would find spiritual means to change our ways, to detach from the patterns and illusions that led to our chronic pain syndromes. But We have chosen created many obstacles in the fabric of human experience that impede and distract us from finding these very easily. Remember:  The 21st Century human condition has been expressly manifest to be the most difficult, challenging, "distant" or "deepest" dive into the Illusion of Separation that we can come up with. Our journey back to spiritual consciousness--through the medium of the four-dimensional emotion-based human experience--is supposed to be difficult.

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In a survey that came out in May 2011, sufferers of chronic pain and related syndromes informed the world about how their lives have been profoundly affected by the chronic pain in their lives. This is what they had to say:

  Almost 9 in 10 respondents (approximately 87%) feel they are no longer the person they were before they started living with chronic pain;

 Nearly all respondents (92%) report their condition has had a significant impact on major life decisions, such as:
     o Including whether to initiate or remain in a relationship
     o Change jobs
     o Have children

 Of the more than 650 respondents who have children currently under the age of 18: o 95% report their pain condition affects at least one of their parenting duties, such as:
     o Taking care of daily household and childcare needs
     o Enjoying their children's milestones
     o Managing their children's activities and scheduling

 Approximately 7 in 10 survey respondents (68%) agree that pain limits their ability to care for their family;

 Nearly all respondents (approximately 98%) report they have implemented some type of adaptation to their daily routine in order to conduct activities and tasks; three-quarters of respondents have made three or more daily adjustments;

When I read this information I found myself thinking that every single bullet point had what was to me an obvious message. Let me go through them with you.

The fact that 87% of the respondents feel that they are no longer the person they were  before they started living with chronic pain makes perfect sense. Pain--and especially lasting, inescapable chronic pain--changes the way in which the brain and mind have to respond and react to everything the sensory network reveals; all sensory inputs are being distorted by filters of distraction, discomfort, and misery; all information inputs are being tainted by these "negative" hues. Nothing is being perceived in the same light as it once was.
     Again, the purpose of attracting pain into one's life is to shock the Ego into reconsidering its belief systems, its filters of interpretation, it's concept of Self. To bring chronic pain into one's life must construe far more serious messages--messages of radical annihilation of one's past/previous behavior and/or thought patterns.

92% of the survey respondents claim that their chronic pain condition has had a significant impact on major life decisions, such as whether or not to remain in or initiate new relationships; change career choices, relationship dynamics about and with children.
     I truly believe that some of the patterns that we fall into are patterns that we have become so familiar with that we allow them to perpetuate--at all costs!--in order to preserve that which is known. We fear the unknown! These pain syndromes allow us a radical change in thought and behavior so as to give us excuses to change our relationships to many other things/patterns in our lives--including family, jobs, even daily routines.

95% report that their pain affects the way in which they can parent their children (or partners or other significant life participants). I believe that the current dominant relationship dynamics practiced in "first world" societies has established patterns of eccentric dysfunction--codependent behaviors enabling and even encouraging, nurturing dependent, addictive behaviors.
     I've heard America called "the borderline nation" by psychologists for the fact that the cultural attitudes, values, mores, and behaviors exhibit all of the same symptoms on a collective scale that individuals who are diagnosed with "Borderline Personality Disorder" (BPD) exhibit--which include:

---- Extreme reactions—including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions—to abandonment, whether real or perceived
---- A pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often veering from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
---- Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self, which can result in sudden changes in feelings, opinions, values, or plans and goals for the future (such as school or career choices)
---- Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
---- Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting
---- Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
---- Chronic feelings of emptiness and/or boredom
---- Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
---- Having stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality.

These symptoms are not the "normal" behavioral reactions of a healthy, centered human to "normal" and typical life circumstances and informational inputs. If we were to go back to consider Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we would see that something in society has gone awry; something has skewed our interpretation, perception, and reaction to reality (a reality that we had a hand in creating!) Ego/Personalities guided to create constructs based on fear, outside power, helplessness rather than our own personal strength, and, of course, Love and trust, create a psychological topography ripe for dysfunctional distortions and misinterpretations of the realities offered us here in the four-dimensional Earth School. Denied full access of any information regarding spiritual possibilities (because of the stigmas and shame and guilt we have been taught to feel or associate with such belief choices) we are left floundering in a fear-filled, "godless" world--taught to clutter our senses with as many external distractions as possible and then numb or deny any internal pangs of Unity connectivity with myriad choices of addictions.

When we get into pain syndromes that have no known or no understandable cause, it is not uncommon for people to think the pain is all "in their head" (for that is what they are often told). I would like to posit a metaphorical extension to this interpretation. I think we should consider that it is a message coming from the Higher Mind, the Soul, outside or within "the head." Remember:  all of this--even the pain!--is part of the illusory world, part of the infinitely interpretable informational options available to us through this particular contextual field that we have co-created. The message could be as simple as "Make a different choice" or "Take a different path" or as complex as "get out of there" or "stop doing the thinking, behaving that you are doing" or "Time to try on a a new belief system" or even more radically, "Time to get out of here/Time to leave this situation, pattern, relationship, or body," that is, "Time to try a different form/different contextual field."

What if you new exactly how long you have left?

What if you knew exactly how much time you had left on planet Earth--in you current human host bodymind? With this knowledge, what would you be doing differently?
     Let's say you have nine years--that you know for certain that you will be leaving your human bodymind in nine years. How will this affect the choices you make . . .  today, as well as the plans you make for your now-limited future? Would you keep up all of the patterns you have in your life currently? Would you communicate the same way you do now with a) your loved ones and b) strangers? Would you put more time, energy and focus into any other pursuits? Like travel? Reading? Religion/spirituality? Partying? Funeral/wake/memorial service planning? Would you continue spending your money on all of the same things you do now? Would you invest more time and energy into contributing to the future welfare of your loved ones or to community service projects? Would you be more interested in spending more time alone, with yourself, or in groups, socially, with others?
     The problem with the nine years issue is that it's too long for one to just spend, too long to try to go without ever paying bills and taxes (unless I want jail time to be part of the way I spend the nine years), too long to stop taking care of oneself and one's possessions (if I want them to continue working for me while I'm still here). I could resign myself to a hermetic life, sealed up in a room with books, music, Internet, paper and pens, meditation and farm-fresh food. I am ill-equipped for survival in a nomadic lifestyle, yet that is always a possibility (as it is for us all). I am not sure that I am ready to lead the life of a mendicant beggar, but that is another possibility that would attract many extraordinary experiences my way, I am sure. Leisure and travel require some kind of money or means to earming one's daily bread and nightly bed. I could figure this out. But would I enjoy it? Would I end up regretting those choices?

     How is Life meant to be lived? 

"Jean-Peyre"

Journeyman Paul has used Homo sapiens sapiens for many incarnations during the last 12,000 years. More than a few of these lives have been spent within religious orders or religiously-defined societies or vocations. Today I will present one of Paul's incarnations within pre-Reformation Europe. In this lifetime, Paul chose a French male for his host. At the time, France and all of Western Europe were very thoroughly immersed within the moral and societal structures dictated by the Roman Catholic Church. Rémy (later called Jean-Peyre) came from a typical rural communal village in Occitan or Langue d'Oc--an agricultural community called Belvézet which was located in the rugged hills above Les Seynes river, a tributary of the Gard[on], in what is the present day département of Gard, which was a western part of the Rhone River watershed in Southern France, northwest of the cities of Nîmes and Avignon.

     Born at the end of the 12th Century A.D., Rémy was his mouther's firstborn. After a series of miscarriages from his young mother, there followed the births of a series of sisters who managed to survive birth and infancy. Rémy was not, however, the first born of his father, Guillaume. He had a son from a previous marriage named Guichon. Guichon was five years older than Rémy. Guillaume was a taciturn man who was often absent from the family home for long stretches of time due to his tending to the seasonal moves of his animals (primarily sheep). The father's affection for Rémy was diminished by the boy's frailty. Rémy's older step-brother, Guichon, was also often absent as he was considered indispensable to his father. As with Rémy, Guillaume's affection and attention for his family members was tied directly into their utilitarian use to him. 

     Sickly as a child, Rémy did not grow up very strong, confident or motivated. Being disregarded by his father, Rémy became a cherished companion and helper to his mother, especially in the care of his young sisters, whom he adored (though thought of more as domesticated animals). Thus, his physique, character and traits quite naturally inclined more toward the effeminate (which caused even greater disdain and disinterest from his father).   

     At this time, it was fairly common practice for families to "unburden" themselves of male children that were viewed as probably having little to contribute to the agricultural chain of life (especially a sickly child such as Rémy). This could take the form of live-in jobs in the employ of larger local farms or apprenticeships to local trades and crafts men, but it was more common for the "sickly" boys to be given over to local religious or clerical opportunities (sometimes for a fee or service).

     In the region in which Rémy was raised there existed many local monasteries. Around the age of 11 or 12, Rémy's family found placement for him in a local monastery near Uzès. There it was planned that he would commit to the training with the goal of, hopefully, one day entering the Benedictine order. For whatever reason, Rémy was not able to satisfy the requirements necessary to rise up the steps within the Order with the other novitiates. At the age of 16, he was placed into the service of the local diocese in Aureill[h]ac-Arpaillargues where he became a junior priest-in-training where he was renamed "Jean-Peyre." 

     Jean-Peyre was not in service long before the region got swept up in the fervor of another Crusade. This crusade was different than the three previous Crusades. This time, instead of raising armies of soldiers to travel to the Holy Land and fight the Moslem "enemies of the One True Faith," the idea was to send "armies" of children, poor, and other unfortunates ("les Pauvres") to try to convert the Muslim people through their innocence and meekness. Jean-Peyre's superiors in the Church got quite caught up in the spirit of this new Crusade. They enlisted themselves to not only recruit "soldiers of Christ" to be brought to Marseilles for shipping to the Holy Land, but to accompany the precious cargo at least to Byzantium (today's Istanbul). Jean-Peyre was such a follower--he had developed so little of his own ideas and opinions on any thing--that he had no feelings one way or the other on the events that unfolded with him in the middle. Of course, he had absolutely no inkling as to the nefarious deeds that were about to unfold--to which he would become an unwitting participant and, in fact, accomplice. Instead, he was quite content--and genuinely happy and satisfied--with his assigned role of helping the individual children arriving at his church and, later, while en route to Marseilles; it was his job to find bedding, food, and some solace and care for the weak and weary "warriors" under his charge. Never questioning what these children and their caregivers had been told--or what the parents of the children--some not much younger than his 18 years--had been promised or given in return for their voluntary "donation," Jean-Peyre did what he was told, obediently went where he was ordered, and found himself totally ignorant of the bigger picture and possible political and economic games being played behind the scenes.

     The scene at the docks in Marseilles harbor was quite eye-opening for Jean-Peyre as he, himself, had never seen the Sea much less been on a cargo ship before. He was as nervous and preoccupied with the uncertainties and insecurities he felt for going out on the wavy expanse of water in a tub with sails as he was with challenges of herding the Crusaders that were under his supervision. Though he knew they were in for a long journey (to the Holy Land!), he had been told that they would be making several stops for provisions and other transactions along the way. The first leg was to be to Tripoli.
     The trip was miserable from the start. The rolling motion of the rough seas caused Jean-Peyre three days of mind-numbing sea-sickness which greatly diminished his ability to perform the duties he was there to carry out. During the night of the third day at sea, the ship was tossed and battered about by a severe storm before it finally capsized and broke apart near the rocky shores of one of Italy's islands. For Jean-Peyre it was a fairly swift death as he did not know how to swim. The visions of the receding surface of the Sea as his drowning body sank into the depths were his last impressions of that lifetime.
     In the Spirit World, Journeyman Paul was able to ascertain that no one survived the sinking of the ship that Jean-Peyre was on and that most of the children and impoverished "soldiers of Christ" on the other ships that did survive the sea voyages ended up being sold into slavery in either Tripoli or Byzantium. Not one "Crusader" ever made it to the Holy Land. This news prompted a prolonged spell of guilt and low-esteem in Paul as he found himself feeling overwhelmingly complicit in not only the ultimate deaths of the Crusaders--whose care and assauge he was charged with--but for his ignorance to the role he played in the bigger picture of intentional trafficking of innocent humans. This served him, however, and his personal growth in that it gave him the motivation to try to choose successive incarnations that were less ignorant, less meek, more engaged and aware of local and regional politics and that continued to form thoughtful opinions over a lifetime. This was also a lesson for Paul which left a somewhat sour taste for the Roman Catholic Church--which undoubtedly contributed to his choosing a few Muslim lives, a few Asiatic, and this current non-religious lifetime in me, Drew Fisher.