Believing in Yourself

To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all doubt, unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason and words.
~ Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

Although the title of this post has become a cliché, shopworn and ubiquitous, it still has a lot of meaning. So much so, that I for one, having heard it a thousand times before I was 21, never understood the real meaning until after Kundalini altered my mental processes and changed my being. I was too busy flirting with the suffering artist paradigm and Billy Strayhorn's seductive LUSH LIFE syndrome, too busy feeling my pain and drowning it in alcohol, drugs, and women. All I knew was I wasn't where it was at.

Spontaneity Removes Inhibitions

Like the two previous posts on this subject (Neven Paar's Spiritual Evolution and Margaret Dempsey's Casting Pearls Before Swine), I learned to believe in myself when I discovered there was something out there, something beyond the material world, something beyond feeling sorry for myself.

Up to then I'd had my preceptors' sentiments on the great orthodoxies of life (religion, education, goals, ambition, status, marriage, success, politics, accomplishment) beaten into my brain without really accepting what they said because so much of it didn't jibe. If there was really something out there, it must reside beyond the limits of my indoctrination. And if it did, I wanted be in on finding it. Trouble is, I didn't know where or how to start. In the meantime, I wallowed in nothing to believe in, so why bother.

Spontaneity Attracts Followers

Later, drawn into Yoga and meditation, possibly because they were outside traditional Western orthodoxies, I practiced in fits and starts, again without any idea that what I was practicing — if I took it seriously — might lead me to that something beyond the world I'd rejected. That was forty years ago.

Now that I know the "metaphysical dimension" is real, like the two previous posts cited above, my first impulse was "to spread the word." And I did. Once.

Thankfully, I paid attention to my listener's reactions; I watched her face. It wasn't that she blew me off; it wasn't that she didn't try. She had no idea what I was saying, no way to relate. I didn't feel resentful; it wasn't her fault; it was mine. As if I had all of a sudden started a lecture on metallurgy at a baby shower. I had two choices: never mention my experiences to others again or pick my opportunities judiciously, usually in situations where I could transmit a practice or concept through example.

I became very selective. I cannot, you cannot, they cannot transmit the reality of metaphysical experience into words that a listener understands — until the listener becomes receptive.

The World Through Rose Colored Glasses

My education was all about preparing myself to do my part. Move the nobler precepts of Western civilization forward. I took a different approach. Now approaching elder status, I see acquaintances who took that other path frozen with looks of surprise on their faces, surprised that the end is near. That after retirement, things wind down rather swiftly and there's nowhere to go, so book that Caribbean cruise, reserve that barge trip down the Rhine, plan the bicycle excursion through Thailand, pencil in the monuments of ancient Egypt. And once that's done, collapse into the waiting arms of death — without a thought of what lies beyond.

I found that path too limiting. So I went another way — a way that's shown me:

• There is no death (death is only a change of state),
• We keep evolving,
• There is meaning in the Circulation of the Light,
• We pass our Kundalini magnified consciousness through genetic mutation to future generations.

My path was a choice; my choice a path. One ordained by Karma; one that had to happen. And now, looking around, there are more and more people acting spontaneously, less bowed by the weight of orthodoxy. More interested in self-realization, whether it be dancing in the park at a street fair, meditation, Yoga, study of the occult, energy healing, astral travel.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.0V9w5P2W.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
~Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.0V9w5P2W.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.0V9w5P2W.dpuf

Trouble is, Dylan Thomas, great poet that he was, didn't understand that the Light doesn't die. So, heed my words: There's lots of time. Go dance in the Park!