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Thread: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

  1. #1
    Palehorse Redivivus Guest

    Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

    Quote Originally Posted by wstein
    I want to encourage both (all) of you. I definitely took my own path, in my own time, and unfortunately on my own. I desperately wanted a companion or two along the way.
    I (and others here) try to offer assistance to others on the same quest, hoping that their journey be less of a struggle than my own. Don't get me wrong, its still a struggle, your struggle, but friends can make it easier.
    After struggling alone, I don't always remember to ask for assistance on those occasions where it might be available.
    I can definitely relate to this. This has been a huge dilemma on my own path, and I think I'm finally getting close to making peace with it. For years anything like help, assistance, guidance or commpanionship were foreign concepts ("having people around" is not the same thing as I'm sure anyone in this situation would agree)... and then one day I hit on some sort of magic combination, and it gradually started showing up. Now I'm trying to reverse-engineer exactly what happened so I can offer others something they can hopefully use to reduce the pain and struggle this issue can present, even retroactively.

    Just yesterday I was a bit irritated by a popular "self help" type I have friended on Facebook, who posted the statement "If you're having trouble with a certain problem, perhaps your challenge is to stop thinking like a loner and learn to recruit help."

    Granted I'm no longer "thinking like a loner" much these days but when I was actually IN that situation, you may as well have said "stop doing the only thing you have any frame of reference for, within OR without, and recruit something that isn't there and never has been." So, the part of me that is STILL there, resented hearing what came off as a smug proclamation from someone who has either never truly been that cut off from help and companionship, or has repressed the part of himself who is.

    Then the same guy said "To go from independence to interdependence, set some goals that are too big to achieve solo." At one time that sounded like a great idea; call the universe's bluff, and make a leap of faith. So I tried it -- promptly splatted on the concrete where the safety net was supposed to be -- and spiraled even further into loner-hood while having to focus even more on myself to heal those injuries.

    The other "easy answer" I explored was this concept of changing your beliefs to change your experience. So I held different beliefs, got super-optimistic, told myself that help and companionship was there, I just couldn't see it, etc etc... and not much changed. I didn't know it at the time, but the problem ran much deeper.

    To cut to the point, things have gotten increasingly better on this front over the past two years as I've explored the theme of love, what it is, how to access it and what to do with it, figured out how my energy body and chakras are actually supposed to work, and removed everything not consistent with that.

    But as I've discovered even more recently (as in, yesterday), even those distortions were symptoms of an even deeper, fundamental core issue -- the conditioned need for approval. Thing is, this got even more tricky... because I recognized early on that needing approval wasn't in my best interest, and thus thought I was "over" it.

    The wrench was that a need for approval is actually a masked desire for love -- which is freely and unconditionally available since we're basically swimming in a field of it that underlies and permeates all. Ideally, you detach from the addiction to approval and "plug in" to the field of love, through your heart chakra. If at that time your heart chakra is as FUBAR as mine was, then good luck with that.

    So while I thought I was detaching from seeking approval as a core motivation, and took love for granted... what actually happened was that I rejected all forms of approval, i.e. shoved the desire for it into my subconscious where it continued playing out in a variety of ways I was unaware of. It usually played out in a dysfunctional love-hate sort of way, where I'd create situations unconsciously hoping for approval to show up, and approval never got the memo; meanwhile I was unknowingly cut off from the ability to process love as well.

    Ironically I'm pretty sure it was my ego that kept me going long enough to get to this point -- and that's part of why I'm defensive of the idea that the ego is not the problem; the wacky ideas it tends to absorb, are. At one point after the latest and most harsh approval-related let-down I'd experienced until that point, I said "this is it; something needs to change, drastically, now, or I'm DONE, because this whole human thing is NOT working." I let out a sort of internal primal scream that sent my energy blasting out in all directions. This was of course a completely selfish, egoic, manipulative, controlling, "brute force" way to frame and approach the situation. But... it worked. Gehenna got in contact for the first time within three days, and that was the beginning of a complete change in direction that ended up resolving this whole issue for both of us.

    In any case my current perceptions on this are:

    Approval is not "bad" anymore than the ego is, but we create conflict by trying to substitute one thing for another; in this case, approval for love.

    Love and approval are both tools, but the natural order of things is for approval to be one of the physical manifestations of love given and received. To seek approval for its own sake is just another attempt to control the behavior of others. Rejecting approval, or love, only masks the need under layers of self-deception; it doesn't alleviate it.

    *wanders off to ponder s'more*

  2. #2
    Ouroboros Guest

    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

    Awesome post, Palehorse.

  3. #3
    Timotheus Guest

    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)


  4. #4
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    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

    One of the things I've seen recently is that all of the metaphors and koans and parables and so on are things that you don't really understand until you understand them. Which makes you wonder, "Well, what's the bloody point, then?" The point is that these things are sort of signposts. You don't understand them, until you "get there" and suddenly you go, "Oh! I see! This means that..." and you can proceed with that little bit of understanding.

    It's a bit like the way my mother in law gives directions. "Go down to the end of the street and turn left and go down a ways until you come to that house with the blue fence, and then get in the right lane and when you see a group of pine trees, you need to turn. Got that? Okay, then go until you go past the place with the mini-golf and just beyond that is a fish and chips shop, which is where you want to turn. Then it's about, oh, three streets in, I suppose, there's a house with a rose garden on the corner where you need to turn."

    Now, does that make ANY sense to anyone who hasn't been there? Almost certainly not. Although, if you were driving and you had her description available in a way that you could access instantly, it probably would get you where you need to go. At the VERY least, as you were driving you'd say, "Oh, there's the blue fence!" and "Is that the mini-golf place?" or whatever.

    Spiritual awakening seems to be pretty much the same thing. Someone who has been there can tell you what roadsigns to look for and what they see, but until you're in the driver's seat and finding your way, it won't make much sense. BUT... when you DO get to the fish and chips shop, you'll know you're on the right track, eh?
    May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.

  5. #5
    Palehorse Redivivus Guest

    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

    Good stuff, OW. That's totally how I am with taking directions too, heh... I'm terrible remembering a complex set of directions, but if I actually get there and see something that was talked about, I might have half a shot. That may be how all "guidance" works -- a lot of it is lost in translation, but eventually and cumulatively enough is retained to get us there.

    One value that it seems the koans, metaphors etc. have even before we "get there" is that they seem to influence the subconscious mind and thus guide the journey. That's why they use so many images and metaphors; symbolism is the language of the subconscious, so it's given something to latch onto and work with, even if the individual has no idea that they're being guided, much less where to. Seekers and masters are a tricky bunch. Their suggestions also have the rest of the cacophony to compete with, so it seems like a lot of trial and error goes on, and can for quite a while. Eventually something "feels right" in comarison to all the things we've experience that didn't feel right; then we're locked on, and it becomes a process of calibration.

    The problems arise when we substitute one image for another, or the subconscious is otherwise given a false image of "What Is" to latch onto, so we spin our wheels and dump our energy into those images without accomplishing anything. Mine in this instance were that love = approval, and that either is something you can seek, with the added layer of "rawr, I'm fiercely independent so I reject both." This seems to me what is meant when seekers talk about being "at rest" -- most or all seeking (even for things like "awakening" or "enlightenment" or "experiences" or even "salvation" -- are masked versions of a desire for love, to hear from someone or something that we're "good enough." This is roughly the equivalent of a fish going on a mad search for the ocean, but calling it a bunch of other things and having no idea what the characteristics of his objective actually are.

    This was IMO why, although I understood the concept of oneness -- I didn't find it particularly restful. Love is where the rest is found -- and note the double meaning there. In contrast, you can see that everything is interconnected with, influences and depends on everything else, without feeling any particular sense of connection. Love "flows through the pipes" and creates that feeling of connection.

    Interestingly I grokked the concept of self-acceptance a lot earlier, and I thought that was the way to access love. It wasn't. I got the hang of accepting every part of myself unconditionally as it was (so it would feel free to drop everything inconsistent with itself, and thus function as it's meant to)... but then I was in the position of thinking on some level "okay, *I* approve of me... so why doesn't the rest of the world seem to reflect or even correspond with that at all?" And that put me in a position where I probably looked pretty full of myself much of the time, because I started going "I accept myself! See how self accepting I am! Agree with me dammit! Is this thing on? Hellooooo?! *taptap*"

    The final piece of that puzzle was of course to fix my broken heart chakra, so the piece that I am could find its natural place within the rest of the puzzle, and plug into the love being exchanged by the puzzle itself. Not all of the fear, axiety, pain, struggle and searching has ceased yet, but as my system acclimates to a whole new way of being, I can at least say that "this is where it's at, yo."

    I probably seem like I'm just babbling on, repeating and rehashing things, but this is my way of boiling the process I'm going through down to its essence for a more full understanding. That seems to be happening, so yay.

  6. #6
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    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

    I probably seem like I'm just babbling on, repeating and rehashing things, but this is my way of boiling the process I'm going through down to its essence for a more full understanding. That seems to be happening, so yay.
    It's why they call it alchemy, yo.
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  7. #7
    Palehorse Redivivus Guest

    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

    Quote Originally Posted by CFTraveler
    It's why they call it alchemy, yo.
    Hah, interesting you should mention... when I was doing the work to determine what my personal archetypes are (and thus what tools I have to work with) "The Alchemist" was one of mine. So, that is indeed another aspect of how I roll.

  8. #8

    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

    Quote Originally Posted by OlderWiser
    One of the things I've seen recently is that all of the metaphors and koans and parables and so on are things that you don't really understand until you understand them. Which makes you wonder, "Well, what's the bloody point, then?" The point is that these things are sort of signposts. You don't understand them, until you "get there" and suddenly you go, "Oh! I see! This means that..." and you can proceed with that little bit of understanding.

    It's a bit like the way my mother in law gives directions. "Go down to the end of the street and turn left and go down a ways until you come to that house with the blue fence, and then get in the right lane and when you see a group of pine trees, you need to turn. Got that? Okay, then go until you go past the place with the mini-golf and just beyond that is a fish and chips shop, which is where you want to turn. Then it's about, oh, three streets in, I suppose, there's a house with a rose garden on the corner where you need to turn."

    Now, does that make ANY sense to anyone who hasn't been there? Almost certainly not. Although, if you were driving and you had her description available in a way that you could access instantly, it probably would get you where you need to go. At the VERY least, as you were driving you'd say, "Oh, there's the blue fence!" and "Is that the mini-golf place?" or whatever.

    Spiritual awakening seems to be pretty much the same thing. Someone who has been there can tell you what roadsigns to look for and what they see, but until you're in the driver's seat and finding your way, it won't make much sense. BUT... when you DO get to the fish and chips shop, you'll know you're on the right track, eh?
    Huh?
    In your example the directions do make sense, its just that one might not be familiar with the landmarks until you start to follow the directions. At that point hopefully you can match you experience with the landmarks given. I don't feel this example is a parable.

    Most parables I remember are really vague and poetic and totally not understandable until you after you arrive. The parable does not provide any understanding, it just allows confirmation. The understanding was gained by the process of proceeding on the journey. A parable can act as a reminder to something half forgotten.

    The parable version of this is more like: There are obstacles on your path, if you go not the right way you will be lost. Travel until the color of the sky blinds you. Focus on nature, that will keep you safe. Your journey will be nearly complete nature gives way to man's influence. Pass the offerings of nature and stop to smell the roses.

    OK, I being a bit harsh but not that much. Parables are stories. Some people understand stories and some do not. Sometimes that's because they are language impaired. The real issue is that stories rely on relating. When breaking new ground or going to new kinds of places, you have no experience with which to relate with until after you get there. If that's all you got, it might be better than nothing. As such I much prefer a clear set of directions to a story.

    Disclaimer, I have an hang up based on past experience. People in my life that rely on stories tell them when either they don't know the answer or have the answer but don't actually understand it. They have fed me a story in an attempt to give me the answer without actually telling me what I want to know. I have found this frustrating. I would much rather they just say they don't know and not waste my time.
    Sin nada (Nothing is impossible)

  9. #9
    Timotheus Guest

    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)


  10. #10
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    Re: Companionship on the Path (was Beyond Enlightenment)

    Quote Originally Posted by wstein
    I don't feel this example is a parable.
    It's not. It's an analogy, to demonstrate my thoughts on koans, parables, etc. I didn't intend it to be a parable. I've never in my life told an original parable, koan, or anything along those lines, as far as I'm aware.

    Quote Originally Posted by wstein
    Most parables I remember are really vague and poetic and totally not understandable until you after you arrive. The parable does not provide any understanding, it just allows confirmation. The understanding was gained by the process of proceeding on the journey. A parable can act as a reminder to something half forgotten.
    Yes. Quite. Which was kind of what I was trying to get across with my analogy, which I just didn't specify was an analogy.
    May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.

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