Arterial Self, Problem h

Problem h: Enthusiasm & Joy in relation to Arterial Self-deciding
A man has two balloons. One balloon is inside the other. If he inflates the interior bladder it enlarges the outer also. If he were to inflate the outer balloon first, he could then expand the inner balloon to a smaller dimension, resulting in a space existing between the two walls of the two spheres.

Commentary:
When a man feels happy he expands. With a joy experienced or with a laugh rising up and out of him, an inner truth just realized, an ecstatic recall, or in a jovial interlude to an otherwise soberside day ... he experiences within his many bodies of being, an expansion.

One could even come to view the ballooning universe as a similar joy which pervades the cosmic ethers in this period - the same with the opening a flower as it enlarges the bud and increases its swelling. This happiness pushes the outer boundaries and works the spaces…those spaces which are as the deciding pause through which the happiness may increase and expand out further.

The physics of happiness and joy in relation to arterial deciding is different to that happiness which is obtained without self-effort. By this it is meant that we can distinguish the experience differently from the natural joys abounding which we ourselves have had little or no conscious working upon.

Arterial deciding means that we have involved our ego along with our personal signature, and that our relationship with whatever has produced the happiness now made unique by this our involvement. It also implies that we are consciously far more aware of the properties and qualities and so forth. If my soul appreciates the artistry of nature and the ego is enveloped in a beauty, then there becomes a very small requirement in my active participation, for the experience itself largely rests upon the impression and the receiving, not the deciding and the doing.

The 'pursuit of happiness' as a God-given right is suggesting from the outset that the happiness requires an effort to be striven for - a 'pursuit', rather than it merely happening upon us and teeming around most naturally.

So it is to the arterial experience we look further to, returning to the question as to why it is that our happiest responses may become blocked or unfelt when we release ourselves to those choices which correspond best to its desire and deciding.

If I place a balloon within a balloon, and the inner bladder is expanded so far as to meet with the wall of the outer (which has already been advanced) then it shall be where those edges meet that there is an acknowledgment occurring. If they do not touch, one does not meet with the other, even though it is that one does contain the other and do both share same stem regardless. Thus with the swelling it is the inner skin which advances up to that of the outer, and once reaching the extremity it pushes the outer skin yet further. If there were no inner skin strength there would be nothing to take up the outer layer beyond itself. This example is crude in concept, but suffices in the explanation of this process. It is at the point of their first touching that the experience of awareness would take place. If, on the other hand the inner balloon expanded the outer from the beginning, the two membranes together would move as one without the distinction that was in the experience.

Within the many substances of a man there are these ballooning peripheries. Our astral experiences which unite our bodies here in the physical world, as too our etheric forces which combine and circulate around the physical also, do so with this balloon within balloon (within balloon) conjunctures. Periphery touches periphery. Men shrink and men expand. Above all there are times in the expansion when momentum carries them outward, but there cannot be an experience of this until it has gone to where it can go no further; and contacting, literally contacting, it then it is felt. If you stop to consider something which invokes a sensation of happiness rising within you, you will know of this description then, feeling the expansion and meeting in gentle experience.

Now to add to this just a little bit further: when a man concentrates his activity and attention upon an explicit deciding (a refusal is usually more exacting than an affirmative) he goes through the action of contraction by the very concerting involved. He temporarily narrows down to whatever it is requires his full consciousness; whilst also the consciousness itself involves something of a contractive effort as well. For this it might be said therefore, that the opposite to happiness is consciousness, implying then that consciousness is unhappiness. However, this is not an instance of an either/or. It takes one to know the other, just as simply as it also takes one membranous wall to meet with another and forge through the spaces between before there can be validity and experience given to either.

The nature of the arterial decision so told, is one that is deliberate and true to the constants of that individual. If we are told that our own fleece is to be removed from our backs (skin and all) we are not necessarily going to experience a great happiness because it no longer will happen. This is not a causal factor to an arterial happiness. If someone wishes to take from you what is yours to begin with, it is more of a relief to refuse this happening than a joy.

The question then goes on to ask, if it should be that we may so entirely partake in what we have chosen to do, may we then also rejoice and fully enter into it. With time, this is most perfectly effected, because of the concentrated deliberation which has taken place originally within the arterial nature. For the man who invests himself in deliberateness - prudent or passionate - there is a concentration of mindful reflection before the will is exacted, and he shall contract and expand with a far greater action and periphery than the individual who has not the conscious working or contrast afforded him.

Intention becomes in-tension. The contraction back from the world and all of its influences drives us down the arterial highway to our Father, that we may return with the determinative velocity of further happiness once the decision has been released and then executed.