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.
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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?
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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."
Right on, Jim. Keeping our feet on the ground while simultaneously living “above it” aka in the world of Spirit, is the thing to master. As we all are imbued with a spark of the divine, or Holy Spirit, or whatever you want to call it, we cannot remain in Spirit, because we are flesh. The two must join in union & inform one another. Cheers to the daily attempt at harmonizing the two worlds which are ours!! Much love, e$
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