To Become Humanized

Almost all of our myths, or at least our interpretation of them, is that you should destroy the instinct and march off heroically to rescue what is lost. In multiple stories in the West, in movies as well as fairy tales and ancient myths, we are informed that the hero must heroically fight a dragon or a witch or an evil usurper to death and with his foot on its neck then and only then will he redeem himself and rescue the fair maiden.

The Ramayana, a wonderful story from the East, says that it is only by your instincts, by your monkey nature, that you will restore the unity of the world, the wholeness that you once knew but lost.

I think the biggest joke every played upon me, a divine joke, is that I first traveled to India many years ago to be spiritualized. I had read of India and the East for decades, looked longingly at photographs long before I had the courage to buy a ticket and travel there. I presumed I would find the appropriate teachings, or a tradition, or a yogi of some kind, and sit and meditate until I found my enlightenment. Increasingly Westerners project such salvation upon a journey to a foreign land. But that is not what happened to me. Instead, I went to India and became humanized – which is what I should have sought in the first place. I did not find lofty yogic heights, I did not find esoteric wisdom. I found my monkey nature, by doing ordinary things, by listening to my instincts, by learning to accept what happens.

Sacrifice: To Make Sacred

I have been gripped all day by the thought of SACRIFICE. I grew sick of the word early in my life and it was enough to drive me out of the common jargon of most churches. But when I learned that the word meant TO MAKE SACRED, I got another perspective on it. I slowly saw that it was an adequate description of the meaning of a human life. To make the evolution of an experience to the level of the sacred -- well, who needs more definition or explanation? It makes the only sense I have ever found of this enigmatic thing we call LIFE.

I recall the deaths of people close to me earlier in my life; I had no adequate sense of meaning for myself in the experience and I went away vacant and sorely wounded. Now I have a profoundly deep meaning of such experiences, and, though they still hurt, they do not torture me as meaningless any more.

On the contrary, I know I must experience the loss of everything that seems meaningful now. I am not strong enough to believe this deeply, but there is a deep understanding of it even if I play wailing infant on the surface. I can see I have not learned the basic lesson of life if I can't accept the next SACRIFICE that faces me.

What a strange statement to make!!!!! Man lives to be the vehicle of the great transformation of life from ego-centric to THEOCENTRIC. Yes, but when will I be strong enough actually to live the next such event?

Duality: The Essence of Everyday Consciousness

Spiritual teachings are sometimes interpreted as advising us to let go of material things and lighten our load by reducing attachments, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding. To advance consciousness we need to be weaned, not from the body or material things, but from our allegiance to duality. The very idea that the material world is separate from some other higher existence is itself an error of duality. Reality is not dual, though our current level of awareness perceives it that way.