-with Ease, Simplicity & Plainness
CLARITY - being the objective of both the higher mind and heart-known reason - is always and ever present. Hard earned by you, it shall come and be known.
To sense the presence of Father God, can in aspect, be firstly most terrifying ... for who in wakefulness goes a'knocking at His door? This is why most make their approach to Him with their innate childlike aspect of soul, receiving their impressions like so; deliberating their ideals in such a way therefore, that that reality need not bear down upon the soul-discourse relayed. The prayer life may be vivid or condescending, but does not meet within the incarnating ego in full circumspect.
There is another approach yet, to knowing our Father, one which begins with an earnest man who has now such a catalog of experience and retrospection, that his manhood requires that he meet with His Father 'I to I' so to speak - that he would rise up and return His gaze - that he would gather himself through his own ego and look therein for the Divine Presence.
To be answered in equal, and in difficult chambers! Here one can realize that this is no small transition ... for within the soulic approach to prayer we brought comfort in the very discourse, whereas within the egoic transaction we are redefining the nature of the ego as it has been.
It is most natural for the soul to rest with our Father and translate for us the heavenly satisfaction gleaned from an eternal (and general) happiness. The soul knows of continuance, it understands the spirit in all - perceiving the glorification of our Father within and about each presence, each particle. Our own souls hold pre-eternal recollections of such early love as was first known by us and in return - and because of the overview there is much to content and little to disparage within their immortal psyche.
Now in respect to the grappling of the ego and its entrance to Father God, this is not merely a question of intellect, but rather such a consequence to development overall, with the assumption of our Christhood, with the purity and direction of intention.
The personality strains beneath the higher current's pull; being both cunning and rehearsed, our 'plastic' selves are imbued with quality and weakness twofold; and we are decidedly uncomfortable when we begin to reassert our higher ego's desires against the bent and the broad of the habitual personality.
You see it is a difficult (though not impossible) task to import the idea of being open to divine possibility (i.e. anything could happen) and furthermore to trust in its occurrence, outcome and sanctity ... awkward to recondition a personality who is wrought from behavioral expectations, into the freedoms our Father God incurs - and doubly difficult to introduce into one's ego the same, but on its higher and distinctual level!
The Soul lives in the company of Father God yet needs the Ego to illumine His presence to her that she may see the Face of He who she loves.
Arterially a man may take stock and recount his time before; arterially he may make his approach with such a mindful intent that now rests consciously on the fact that his spiritual life is utterly dependent upon the grace of Father God's continuance. His recognition of this fact, as it comes to him throughout his daily existence, is as an initiatory portal wherein he is now to circumnavigate and trace new bearings - becoming, within his egohood (his Christ-self) reborn!
Initiation denotes the passage into new life, and as implied there are great merits won in the outcome. The endeavor to quell impossibilities as perceived, with the savory straight simplicity of Father God's propriety; to ease one's way through all conjunctures; to glide into life with the gracefulness of gentle landings - this we may do when we become practiced in discerning our own relation to the life and happenings around us.
The exercise of reviewing the day which has just passed (working backwards until morning) in an arterial context is useful in the strengthening of our personal discernment. The exercise in general holds good purpose when employed with other emphases besides (conclusions and corrections of conduct).
However, prescriptive to this we ask for a singular application - not one of secondary response, but becoming acquainted with the primary responses to the day. For example: when we reflect on past happenings it is a primary position to find one's place amongst them, and decide and then know if we hold aversion, antipathy or wellbeing in relation to those happenings. It would be a secondary process were we to examine whether or not we could have done differently (an abstract exercise - albeit useful morally and imaginatively, nonetheless as abstract in thought). For the purpose of this we are trying to reaffirm the reality of the day in regards to our own person.
So when we go back we may honestly take issue with that and those which made an impact upon us ... how were we affected by a sight, or substance, a word, an exchange, a surprise, an expectation delivered, a face, a hand, a motion, a voice, a fragrance etc.? With every presentation of memory it is to be asked: "Arterially, what is my position to this?"
- Are you disturbed, violated, repulsed, rebuked?
- Do you feel weakened in your tolerance or strengthened in your soul?
- Are you enlivened, awakened, made jubilant, resourceful?
- Do you recoil or rejoice?
What is the natural and innermost reaction - honestly and in heart? Learn to observe in recollection and thereby strengthen your signature in being.
Although these responses are most private, few folk will review even unto themselves in true qualifying scrutiny. It is not a matter of criticism either, but in attitude simply of placing, of acknowledging, and dismissing each and every one with a resolve to refer to Father God, or a gratitude to refer the same.
Now the reasoning of this exercise is to maintain our Arterial Self's discretion rather than to deny it. Arterially (and egoically) it is natural to a man to prefer goodness in all of its examples. Men are excited by holiness; and yet it is usually the ugliness of a mundane world which seeks to further itself, that enters most of the 'complications and impossibilities' which present in greatest dilemma without.
Arterially the path to Father God is simple! For it is our main vein to Him as is to ourselves! That which decides - circulates through the divine mind of the soul into the heart, coursing the blood, flexing the lungs, dancing with the ego, pervading the extremities (and further bodies out from them) ... is the arterial nature which traverses all of a man coherently and conductively. So it is asked how it is that men and women can disregard their arterial discriminations and forego their selfhood, adhering moreover to a personality which is pliant to expectations beyond itself, corruptible and permeable, held aloft like an umbrella with holes throughout the fabric!
When men emulate others or seek to be similar, it is because they have drawn much useful instinctual knowledge from the mass (pneu) and thus continually identified. Individual karma eventually goes on to teach each man differently that he is not, as he may perceive or wish for, completely and totally so part of the collective to the exclusion of self. Only recently in the ego development of Man, has this been brought to him as a reality. (Of course there is also the reality that we are but part of the collective - however and nonetheless, we stride single-file along this one procession.)
By this karma we are awakened to the responsibility there is in evidence when it comes to our actions and deferments thereof. Our souls perceive the reasoning of karma and our egos eventually (after death) are given the opportunity to tie in all of the connections; the 'why-wherefores' and fiz-gibits, to put it bluntly.
As a man goes onto to properly incorporate certain attributes to him - working with intention upon himself in spiritual reform - as he pours into himself both inspiration and source, he learnedly passes into the world that which he has loved, and emanates verily those main axioms by which he would now live by. He gives by his presence, most loudly. All that he may consciously endorse he will impart and give out to an, as yet, less intentional world of thought.
By this he helps then the path of others in their thought and further inspiration. The quick and easy access trod is usually come by because of the folk who did cut the road before them. Just that, this man has brought to many. When the apt thought passed from his being or his lips to where it was most needed in the quick ... where, in relative terms, the others who did not work so hard to win the concept were just so inspired .... because of him, because of intention he worked through with and did earn with much more effort than perceived or known.
There are degrees of self-consciousness, and for those who are motivated by others' opinions or impressions before that of their own experienced, we find that eventually (over lifetimes) discomfort provokes their wills into being; and at least in small but important measure folk learn to say "No!" (and mean it). That is to say, not to say "no" as an automatic response to everything, but to deliver with evaluation the divisions between self and impingement. Our beloved saints were strong enough in their arterial selfhood that they could rebuke pain, and even at times gravity, with a "No!". And then further to this comes the "Yes!" - once again resounding in definity!
Prominent holy men and teachers are often distinctive in behavior and sense of self, and quite apart from even the groups they may associate in. They needs keep a strong identity in order that they may be as close to Father God, not closer to other men who might disrupt that working rapport.
The decision into the aesthetic incline, stipulates that beauty and purity live well in spiritual strength alone. Although there appears a paradox in saying that by the development of true selfhood shall we also develop our senses for our extraordinary Selfhood in Father God, it does teach us also that to prize one, is to worship the other, and then this too flows on into all of Creation remaining. The drive to commune with Father God in such a way that He livingly determines the length and breadth of one's output within this world and beyond, will be answered, shall be fulfilled.
Before the soul and ego of a man, present choices - their presence felt, their invisible faces staring 'I to I' - and when questioned a man can have an inner pledge secured, when the Arterial Self acknowledges its readiness. However the transition involved is no small matter! The foci has not moved, but has so enlarged that the heart itself wants to burst with readiness! The desire to love our Father to the fullest is expressing our gratitude for existence. Revelations will follow. Clarity will come. Trusting will prove itself worthwhile!
Remember also that as pioneering men, unique paths are cut; not the least perhaps in those just in the making- ways within, that we have not seen, further openings then for all men to follow. The psyche of individual men differs according to their spiritual history; and what one man may bring may offer such a mix and mirth unparalleled by others who have, in their own way, also sought distinction.
This subject heralds the newest phase of the cement between our Father God and our refurbished ego activity. Oh that we may feel His Hand at our shoulder at all times! That loving itself becomes most simple - and all else does fall away!