October 07, 2020

03

We live our way to the truth of who we are
coming to terms with the truth of how things are,
of how the world is,
of how life is,
of the way things work
moment-to-moment,
one situation at a time,
one day at a time,
over the full course of our life.

The Spiritual Journey,
is the Hero's Journey,
is another term 
for Growing Up.
Growing up is coming to terms with how things are
and how we are
and how best to deal with the contradictions/dichotomies 
at work within and without
throughout our life.

We want things to be different than they are.
We want to be different than we are.
And how well we bear the pain of the difference
between how things are and how we want them to be
on all levels of life and being
is the essence of growing up,
of waking up,
of squaring up
with how it is with us
at various points in our life.

Our identity changes over the time of our living.
Living changes us.
Living requires us to change.
The people who refuse to change,
who live static, rigid, lives
are dead people.
They may be 98.6 and ambulatory,
but they have no life about them,
they haven't been alive for years past remembering.

How we respond to our life
through all the stages of our existence
is the marker declaring our degree
of vitality,
interest in,
and enthusiasm for
our life and the experience of being alive.

Our life is naturally designed to bring us forth,
to show us who we are,
by requiring things of us
we do not know we are capable of.

We have to be fluid and flexible enough
to sit before what is being asked of us
and explore/imagine/consider how we might
best respond to it in the here and now of our living.

This is to say that new epiphanies,
recognitions,
realizations,
understandings,
visions
and additional illumination
are required--and available/possible--
at every point along the way
from birth to death.

And so, it is said that the awakening
of every enlightened being
requires a return to the state of unenlightenment.

We never out-grow the need to respond
creatively/imaginatively
to the circumstances and situations
of life here and now
throughout the times and places of life in the world.

The Spiritual Journey has no end.
The "Circumambulation of the Self"
(Carl Jung) is eternal and everlasting.
We are always becoming who we are.
And the longer we are conscious of the process,
the more we are able to laugh and dance
along the way.

–0–

02

We cannot live one dimensionally in in a multi-dimension world.

This is the failure of Evangelical Christianity
and of strict religiosity  world wide.

"Walking the straight and narrow"
is not about prudishly, puritanically, keeping the rules.
It is about walking gingerly, consciously, carefully
along the slippery slope,
the dangerous path,
the razor's edge,
between the Clashing Rocks,
the Scylla and Charybdis,
the dualities, dichotomies, duplexities
of day-to-day,
moment-to-moment,
life in the world of normal, apparent, reality.

There is no static way of being.
Balance and harmony are about controlling the wobbles,
like riding a bicycle.

We have to live free in our soul,
like the spirit that blows where it will--
which is another way of saying,
"Not knowing what it will do next"!

Jesus lived that way,
raising the dead in one minute,
and leaving the dead to bury the dead in the next.
Forgiven the woman guilty of adultery one day,
and cursing  the innocent fig tree on another.

Do not look for, expect, demand, insist upon consistency, 
uniformity,
absence of deviation
from yourself
or one another!

Sometimes, we do it this way,
and sometimes, we do it that way,
as the occasion requires.
We dance with the music of the times.
We do what the situation calls for--
without being burdened
with having to "toe the line"
and "mind our p's and q's"
by doing what we are "spozed to do"
in all times and places
because we dare not "get out of line"
or express our own individual gifts and genus
in the way we go about our life.

Grant yourself the freedom of getting out of character--
because it is required by the circumstances,
or just for the hell of it!
Do things that are "not you"!
Expand your range!
Open yourself to the possibilities!
Live beyond your limits!
Outside your boundaries!
Live to find out--to discover--
what you are capable of!
Experiment with new roles!
Try out for different parts!
Explore!
Experiment!
Bring yourself to life
in the time left for living!

Why hold anything back? 

–0–

01

When the light comes on,
everything/nothing changes.
Life goes on as it always does
and nothing about life is as it was
for the one for whom the light comes on.
Now, that one has to live
with a foot in two worlds,
and walk two paths at the same time--
living in this world
in light of that world--
with this and that world
informing and influencing
the way they live 
in that and this world.

The two worlds interact/interface
in the one for whom the light goes on.
They cannot live in either world
as though the other does not exist.
The two worlds are not mutually exclusive.
They both are conjoint with the other
and create the "Mysterium Coniunctionis"
(Carl Jung's term meaning
the "Mystery of the Conjunction"),
which is the ground of all of our dualities,
and which we live to integrate and express/exhibit
by the way we manage the challenge 
of living in two worlds at the same time,
walking two paths at the same time,
and consciously realizing 
and living in the tension
of the interplay between the worlds
(Which might be better thought of 
as "dimensions" within the world of
normal, apparent, physical reality)
moment-by-moment
within all of the times and places
of our existence.

We are living within an optical illusion.
Now it's this way,
now it's that way.
Which way is is?
Both ways simultaneously!
How do we manage our life 
living both ways at once?

Playfully!
Laughing and dancing all the way!

It is the Tevya dialogue in "Fiddler on the Roof":
"But, this cannot be so if that is so!"
"You are right! That is also so!"
Laughing and living in the tension of all opposites,
of all dichotomies,
being so at the same time!

The two become one in us!
And we become one with all things!

Integrating what cannot be reconciled,
and bearing the agona, the agony, of the tension
playfully, laughingly,
every step along the Way,
by doing it the way it needs to be done,
the way it is being called for,
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.

Sometimes we do it like this,
and sometimes we do it like that,
and sometimes we do not do it at all!

When to do what is our call to make,
lovingly, laughingly, playfully,
doing what is called for in each moment,
the way only we can do it,
moment-by-moment,
"singing and dancing in the rain."