Please forgive me but I am going to talk about myself. But then what else can we talk about? Isn't everything we perceive and experience filtered through the self? We can know nothing except through that self. So really every post of every blog is about the self of the writer. More, every book written, every painting painted, even every word spoken is about the self of the one through whom it comes.
I have found in recent years that I am seeing myself more and more from the outside. I have always felt that the me I know here in this world is not the real me or only an aspect of the real me. It's a personality I am functioning through and by means of which I am experiencing the world but it is not who I really am. Sometimes I have found that frustrating, sometimes encouraging. This doesn't mean I am not William Wildblood but he is just my earthly persona and behind that persona, which will die in the fullness of time, first the physical body and then its psychic elements, there is the soul which is my spiritual self and a much more expansive being.
Before I stand accused of monstrous spiritual egotism I would say that is true for many people. Probably most though possibly not all as some humans are relatively unevolved as in undeveloped. Certain schools of thought have posited that some souls come down to Earth as descending spiritual beings seeking physical experience whilst other rise up through the material world. These latter will have a spiritual core but it waits to be developed by their actions in this world. This is why some groups of people are much more oriented to the physical side of things.
Be that as it may, my experience as I grow older is that the centre of my consciousness, while still firmly in the worldly persona, has started to move out of that and occasionally look at it from outside. I am no longer particularly attached to the desires and opinions of that person. He is me and I am him but there is also a sense that there is something more going on, and I am not as identified with him as I was. There's no need to call in the men in white coats as this is not some kind of psychological breakdown and I am not becoming two people, but the sense of self is detaching somewhat from the local manifestation of it. It has not transferred elsewhere and this is only an early stage in the process but I suspect it is what happens to all of us when we die. Then we disengage from the earthly self and start to become that higher self. Those who fail to do this would remain what we call earthbound. Some will do this faster than others but in the end all of us have to cast off the "coats", that's to say the psychic and mental bodies as they are called in some schools, that we have donned in order to function in the physical world. Incidentally, it is these cast-off bodies which still have some residual life in for a while that are probably what is contacted by spiritualists. Hence, the banality of most of what they have to say.
I recognise I have a long way to go in the process but I think that those of us who have some slight understanding of the spiritual world, and no one has more than a slight understanding, in my case it's more of a belief in than an understanding of, can do some of our dying before we die. I don't expect to die anytime soon but a friend of mine died recently and he was relatively young so death has been in my thoughts of late. The death of the body is just the first stage. We must disengage from the other vessels of the earthly self before we can return completely to the spiritual world. We can begin that operation while still alive by seeking to centre ourselves in God rather than our worldly ego, and this has both a positive and negative component to it. The negative is detaching ourselves from our personal aims and ambitions, worldly wants etc. A chopping away. The positive, which is more important and if done properly will take care of the negative side by itself, is lifting the mind away from self and up to God. This will pull you up towards your own soul which is where the life of God intersects with your own life. You will start to become your true self.
4 comments:
Having suffered severe clinical Depression since adolescence, undergone psychotherapy from a variety of practitioners over the years, and yet still experienced episodes of such deep, dark despair as to consider death a welcome 'friend' (should 'he' come to call) - I've become extremely self analytical...so, I absolutely understand your meaning in regards to viewing varying perspectives of 'me/who I am/my real self', etc.
It can be so frustrating to try and describe these things to people who have no conceptual framework whatsoever with which to comprehend them.
I also understand the negative aspects of disengaging with worldly ego desires, etc....
Because I suffer from painful physical ailments as well as 'psyche' pain, I've discovered that even in the process of disengaging 'egoically', there are times when the negative (i.e. 'demonic' perhaps) influences make "lifting the mind" upward, towards God (even at times when I'm praying desperately for Heaven's aid) nigh to impossible.
It's actually somewhat intriguing to me, objectively viewing myself being in such a state of desiring God so desperately, and yet unable to escape 'self'; my mind bound to the experientially Earthly 'me' by the very pain which initiated the process of worldly detachment.
Well, thank you William, truly! I had been spiraling mentally downward in rumination, but reading today's post shifted me into the observational perspective - definitely a more appreciable 'place' to be!
Carol
p.s. Not to step on JM Smith's toes, but I had a thought on the title for your new book - 'Enduring the End Times' - just a thought for your consideration.
I'm glad you found this of some use, Carol. Depression can be a terrible thing. I'm fortunate not to suffer from it but I know those who have so I sympathise. I think my teachers would counsel trying to steer a middle course, neither reacting too much to happiness or sorrow but keeping an even keel to continue with the nautical theme. Actually, that 's what you are. A boat sailing the troubled seas of this life. Your task is to be the captain of your ship which is the soul and you can do that with God's help. The waves and waters may be rough but your ship is seaworthy and it will get to the other side where all is calm.
This echoes some questions I have been struggling with over the past year.
As I understand it, whereas the undeveloped soul finds it natural to focus on the physical and emotional spheres of life, an intermediate soul has started to develop an active life on its own plane that is not reflected in the mundane physical consciousness: ‘the greater part of you is with us’. This can create a bit of a crisis, because the limitation of mortal life does not naturally appeal compared to the freedom and intrinsic fulfilment of higher plane life. There is a tendency to leave the personality to operate automatically from emotional responses, and to neglect the effort needed to get the most out of Earthly incarnation in a spiritual sense. The personality reflects this in various ways: ennui, depression, resentment at being left out of something tremendous that one cannot even describe to satisfaction, or a single-pointed view of life as an ordeal that is to be endured teeth-gritted with no room for positive aspirations. The greater soul, because it resides in spheres where wilful evil cannot enter in, is perhaps blameless. But it does exhibit a lack of perception of spiritual realities as they are concealed in the physical world, and an immature understanding of how exactly earthly struggles translate into advancement in the spiritual realms.
From the perspective of the personality, a solution is to listen carefully for the things that one’s soul does seem to pay attention to, and take action on them to begin to pique the interest of the greater self and draw on its energies. This leads to some tremendously uncomfortable confrontations with reality ‘on both sides’ of the divide, one might say. The personality, of course, has to dispel its self-importance and accept the complete unimportance of things long believed worth-chasing; a sense of humour and one’s own ridiculousness generally helps. But the greater soul, too, has things to learn, or else it would not be incarnated and would not have neglected the personality throughout the incarnation. The soul’s natural childlike innocence, and perhaps the wealth of opportunities enjoyed in its native life, do not translate into a wealth of good ideas about how to act under mortal limitation.
There is an incident in ‘The Boy and the Brothers’ which I thought was illustrative, where the greater self of the Boy is temporarily brought through the outer personality, and gives the impression of being a far more sensitive and intelligent being but apparently unable to endure the pain of Earthly existence without the support of the Boy’s flawed, limited but down-to-earth everyday persona. Until true spiritual maturity has been reached, the personality might come across as more ‘adult’ than the soul, in the unflattering sense of knowing how to employ the lower emotional and intellectual nature for ongoing survival.
A very interesting comment. Thanks Serhei. Although the soul is certainly greater than its earthbound cousin there are things it can only learn through that projected version in three dimensions of itself so it is a two way process. The personality needs to attune itself to the soul but there is a complementary feedback too.
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