Post a Comment On: Inner Pearls

Following a path of religion through the centuries reveals a majestic and turbulent nature of human thought and aspiration as it has endeavoured to explain and bring a sense of order to the somewhat chaotic happenings of the natural world.

Such soul searching would appear to have bounced about between various philosophies such as: Creating a reality in which we must sacrifice of ourselves in order to win favour of a deity and continue to be bestowed with the blessings of the earth Creating a reality in which we are imbued with a purpose and necessity to prove our virtue and worthiness to deserve eternal life and of waiting upon a creator’s grace to ease our afflictions and suffering Creating a reality in which we must employ reason and take responsibility for creating a better world rather than of relying solely upon (if at all) a creator’s grace to redeem us Creating a reality in which we must demonise any sense of division or conflict of thought in favour of political correctness in order to experience unity, justice and coherence The tools by which humanity has allowed itself to be capable of receiving illumination or divining truth have included: ritual & sacrifice, doctrine & dogma, penance & suffering, piety & virtue, prayer & faith, intellect & reason.
Having seemingly run out of steam or patience for a better world to emerge, particularly in the face of so much conflict and of converging crises, it appears as if there is an emerging trend for humanity to embark upon a path of deconstructing each of its previous tenets or pillars of faith. Instead of encouragement of critical analysis and of application of reason, there is now an encouragement to suspend thinking per se, to await illumination in silence or to trust in a material hierarchy of elite to guide humanity’s future.  Instead of upholding that truth is resident in a reality or world other than the here and now, opportunity and wealth is to be materially oriented and bestowed according to the market recognition of one’s merits.  Instead of believing that affliction or suffering is noble and worthy of charitable thinking, responsibility is to be taken for safeguarding and empowering the self so as not to be a burden for others to carry. Underlying all of these concepts of the nature and location of a creator, reality or utopia and means of being able to experience such a state is TIME. Every explanation and justification of why joy or grace is not present revolves around the necessity of distance from remembrance or perception of an idyllic state and this is only made possible through a perception of distortion of time. Concurrent with this is the notion of whether freedom and idyllic experience is brought about wholly according to a creator’s will and timing or of an individual’s will and conscious effort made throughout the course of a lifetime or of both. 
What is interesting about the Book of Genesis is that it has generated debate as to whether it is the sin of Adam that is responsible for the origin of death – would death have come about irrespective of any sin? Hereditary disease is transmitted through genetics but does this relate to Original Sin or have such potentials come about through response to the environment and any subsequent lifestyle choices made throughout the centuries or is this merely splitting hairs?
The Gospel of Thomas opens with these words and to which Jesus is attributed to have said: “Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death" and also “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed.”
I have often wondered about the meaning of these words and cannot help but conclude that the invitation to seek is an encouragement of the practice of contemplation and reason as a primary means of allowing for revelation. This doesn’t negate the validity of any suffering, but puts it into context. What is usually disturbing for thought is when we are able to realise that we have brought about an experience upon ourselves or another, through having made an error in our logic. Until such time as we are able to recognise our error, we are not usually perturbed. Does this error in our logic correlate with what has been denoted as Original Sin? 
What is pertinent is the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This marks the beginning of an experience of free will, which is simply the choice to live coherently and in integrity with the whole or of choosing to experience the consequence of our actions. Illness and suffering are the consequences of our choices, even if they are seen to have been brought about through the lifestyle choices of the whole and of which we are a part. Without the potential of experiencing freedom from such consequence, momentarily being provided through an experience of death and/or of being able to reboot our thinking, we would not be able to move back into integrity of thought and coherence. 
The words of Jesus, “… the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you” provides clarity for me that the mechanism of being able to experience grace, joy or ultimate wellbeing is in our being able to bring our perception and experience of an outer world into coherence with what we are able to know through honesty, intellect and reason as being understanding and wisdom.
Blame is what keeps us in poverty and from knowing ourselves and this relates more to an integrity and clarity of our mind and our state of consciousness than it does to a sense of justice about events as we perceive them to have happened.
It is when our senses are solely attuned to events as we perceive them to be happening in an outer world and our deciphering meaning from them based on an interpretation that we happen to have picked up from others (which can be the basis of an error in our logic) and are so certain that a thing is known, that we lose touch with an experience of inner coherence. We could refer to this as an experience of losing our truth, but what it does mean is that an extent to which we continue to do this as we experience life is what drives us to erroneously measure time and also to fear death.  No amount of faith in such an instance will be capable of rescuing us from our terrors.
If the measurement of time lies within our own circuitry, then it puts an onus upon our willingness to dive fearlessly into the unknown, for it is only when we are able to do so and to not run from what we find, that we will be able to recognise an illusion that has been cast and as Plato described, of the shadows on the walls of the cave. 
What I find particularly intriguing are these words of Jesus, “This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?”
I find this particular passage intriguing because it speaks to me of how as humans, we build sandcastles of what utopia would look like or of what we must do or become in order to gain admittance to the castle – we either endeavour to defy a measurement of time completely or else we are forever clutching at straws in some vain hope that we might one day become successful. 
Whatever image we are able to create of that which appears to be better than of what is already present is destined to collapse in the light of our coming to know it.  As humans, we create and follow along with what we think is being required of us and just like Frankenstein’s monster, it takes on a life of its own and it will pursue us to the end. We are caught in a loop of our own making – the ouroboros eating its own tail.
Once we are willing to stand in our light and to acknowledge the power of creation, it opens up potential of new avenues still to explore. This is the meaning of immortality in that it is both partners with and beyond the realm of death. It is also what in truth has been glimpsed as representing the hope and the promise of redemption - as we discover how it is that we have been playing with the light.