“The ego
can’t understand that the spirit and soul are there to help. The ego of man
will simply not understand what to do first to gain access to this world of the
inner self. Indeed, the fear of this ‘other world’ will be so great that the
ego will feel much ‘safer’ when it denies that another world could possibly
exist. This is not right or wrong, but it is a lack of understanding that an
opposite force can and will work for you and with you.” (Bridges of Consciousness, 210)
I read a few sentences the other day
that have stayed with me – maybe like a piece of sand or grit that burrows to
much later become a pearl. The sentences were about how we don’t usually
understand that opposing forces can work together to help us. This pearl of
thought is relevant to me as I watch the news, and as I review the “endless
electoral cycle” that has become an embedded part of our American life in
particular. As I watch the news stories every day, and read Spiritual
Philosophy with an ever-growing appreciation and intention, I understand better
how necessary it is that we understand our mission in life, AS life, and that
life is meant to be understood to be truly enjoyed and celebrated (shared). We
cannot truly do this (live) as our “best angels” until we know our best self,
which is designed to live love, truth, and equality and all that unfolds from
the Ethical Values. Knowing our best
self requires a motivation to know and developing a love for life and learning.
Every day now I listen to stories of
how we, as a culture and world, are struggling to understand truth and lying.
From the most respected and accomplished personalities to the most singular and
“invisible” personality, we are showing ourselves the challenge we have to know
the love, truth, and equality of our internal self as we are designed to be and
to live as a whole energy being.
A body of work is a body of
knowledge that sustains itself as a whole throughout its eternal life, in
whatever form (as energy). I am a body of knowledge as physical matter, as I
have been created from the passions of my parents, and as I have continued to
support (or abuse) myself as a physical human being growing, day by day, year
by year – cellular matter adding density and mass, into the time and space of
Time and experience. What do I know of the body of knowledge that I am? How do
I use or apply the knowledge that I am? Knowledge is only a possession when it
is used only by the intellect. This can be very useful in many ways, as I’ve
enjoyed and acknowledge throughout our human history, yet this is not the true
gift of knowledge as a body of work, a whole (a gift that keeps on giving).
This is what is coming to me as I
listen to our collective challenges and struggles to understand truth and
lying, and therefore love and equality – the basis of the Golden Rule, love
your neighbor as yourself. We have lots
of words for how we think and live this struggle to be who we want to be –
“cover up,” denial, secret, secretive, private, privacy, hidden, revealed,
levels, shades, sharing – the list goes on and on. Just as the elements of
wind, water, sun, and sand (Earth) shift and change throughout time, and
together, we uncover within ourselves the levels of consciousness that we have
lived as we have created our evolutionary cycles of life. We cling to beliefs that we have made
“sacred,” or “set in stone.” We become possessive of who is entrusted with
“right” and/or “wrong.” A deepening exploration and exposure to the study of
myself as energy is teaching me to understand what Mandelbrot exposed in his
own ways about fractal geometry; what Jackson Pollock expressed in his own ways
about the cohesiveness in the distinctive patterns of nature; what Pythagoras
heard and defined as the music of the spheres.
I am coming to appreciate what “a
body of work” means. What does it mean
to “age gracefully”? How do we know and define objects or practices or thoughts
and emotions as “timeless”? What do they tell us, show us; how do they
enlighten us? Fragments are essentially part of a whole, and can be in
themselves beautiful, of course. A perfectly curved lip (Think Elvis!); a
perfectly delicate flower petal just beginning to burst into full bloom; the
head of a dandelion; a single pearl. Yet without the identification or
association of their being, they mean much less. The parts add up to the sum –
yet the sum is not simply a sum of parts. We are energy beings – organic in our
consciousness journey as we create our lives, inviting ourselves to wake up and
smell the coffee (and the natural perfumes of all of life, the joys that
transport and set us down, gently, etc.). To begin a journey of reading a
writer’s body of work is to acknowledge the design and pattern of life, and to
begin to incorporate, to absorb, to integrate knowledge that cannot simply be
taken in by the intellect. The same is true of any art form, and life is
designed as the art of change and growth. Evolution. To begin to learn is to
begin to apply the knowledge that “I am that I am.” Thought form expressing
itself as love.
