Read the entire series: Journey To Knowing
The Adventures We Don’t Recall and Why
I have previously advised on the practice of patience when those dreaded “dry spells” interrupt the joys of crazy adventures in dreamland, leaving us high and dry with no enigmas to unravel. Certainly, effort, of the strenuous sort, seems not to resolve the blank canvas that upsets us. It’s not pushing ahead determinedly that catches the elusive butterfly in flight, but a unfocused yielding to whatever may come which presses the right buttons. And that yielding, that submission, may take some time to manifest the unseen. You know, days turning into weeks and maybe months before a breakthrough.
You contact a dearly departed and then seem to lose them. Their smile at your expression of joy and frustration seems knowing. Their answers to your questions seem like puzzles to be picked apart. And when you return to the pillow and sheets, that’s just what you do. They were there but somehow distant. They were alone when you expected others. Or the others gathered around but you were on the periphery. Were you actually present or merely projecting? Why can’t you shake that feeling of being duped, perhaps even by yourself?
So you plough on, night after night, wanting to see the mystery laid bare, hungry for more than the tidbits of fleeting contact amidst those quickly unraveling magical landscapes. Fellow travelers give encouragement with their successes. Somehow the ship sails on, although what powers its progress remains elusive. Is it curiosity on a cosmic scale? Is it the endless urge to expansion, to discover the details of your greater self, the one all the rumors and teachings reflect?
And that which we don’t recall, is that the cover-up orchestrated by the ego, determined to remain in control by steering the vehicle back onto the track made so familiar by the many attempts to smooth out the bumps? Or are those blank canvases, the ones we would love to see filled with moving pictures, rendered mute by our guides and greater self, certain that the snail’s pace, that turtle crawl, is best for our timid, doubting selves? Does our doubt and fear cloud over those moving pictures that so excited us only days before? Does our reach exceed our grasp? Just who is pulling the levers and making the puppets dance?
Many would cite ‘god’, usually those who rely on devotion rather than discernment; the faithful do not question the source or direction of the breeze. Does not divinity move in mysterious ways? Those of us on the inner journey, shorn of the reassurance of prophets, ideologies and dogmas, want to seek out the mysterious source of all the magic that seems to ensnare us. We’ve heard the advice, read the instructions, heeded the warnings, and might well cite some lesser deity in our abdication of responsibility. Admitting to control over acceleration, braking and steering is somehow too much to handle, too arrogant. Centuries of religious dogmas insisting on subservience and pious humility have left their mark, even on our independent spirits. We are reluctant to snap the reins and have the horses gallop, that could be more than a little scary. Let’s keep to a meander that makes its way across the meadow without kicking up the dust. Let’s be inspired to pick the prettiest flowers and leave the weeds to others.
Perhaps constant contact would excite us beyond any measure of stability, shooting us far past family and society into some planetary orbit, far out of reach? From my own experience, that is a distinct possibility. “I”, the being perceived in these writings, has been in that orbit, basking in its bliss until brought back to earth by its appetites and rituals. It can be disorienting at best, destabilizing at worst. You can feel like some visiting alien, amused at the strange behavior you see but not the distance you are viewing it from. The energies of the spirit worlds can make you giddy, eccentric, strange. From the life here to the life there and back again: is this endless shifting of scenes and masks what the party of immortality is all about? Is this limitless fun of instant travel the cosmic game revealed?
To be alive and then dead and then alive again with a mere shifting of focus is to blow the curtain of boundaries and see in all directions at once. Whether you can handle the excitement is another story. And those mornings empty of moving pictures, canvases as blank as your irritation will allow is as good an indication of your reluctance to assume control and your choice of the turtle crawl as any.
Of course beating yourself up for being less than courageous achieves little, only piling unworthiness on top of unworthiness. Let the dust of disappointment settle, at least until the horizon is clear and you can see where you are headed once gravity is finally neutralized.
October 5, 2021 @ 8:45 am
Great post, Gordon! That is very frustrating to be so close but not close enough. Your writing is so intelligent, almost poetic.