The Outer Reaches of Inner Space

Twice a month on Saturdays.

Our spiritual unfoldment can be side-tracked by the way we rationalize our experiences. We all have an inherent, subtle restraint on our perspective. Instead of expanding our perception outwardly, how we see life and ourselves, we deflect this outward motion with a self-perpetuating inner loop, which takes us back into the comfort zone of our limitations.
We have experiences of the outer reaches of inner space, most often when we are distracted and the experience comes upon us unexpectedly.

As soon as we become conscious of the moment we are back in the confinement of the perspective from our comfort zone. These experiences may nudge the corners of our comfort zone, but we long for a breakthrough.

The Sufis employ this tendency of consciousness, by turning it upon itself in a manner that momentarily breaches our self-imposed boundaries. We can go beyond the immediate superficial response, which we use and accept in the context of social expediency. We can access deeper layers of meaningfulness, each a passage to another dimension of consciousness, revealing a cascading abundance of revelations, beyond the veil of what appears.

Wajid

Ego As Opportunity

Premise (posted to my Facebook feed recently ago: “Inflated ego, an over-emphasis on one’s self (MY needs/ desires/ fears/ ‘my view is the right/true way’/etc.), is the primary obstacle to human evolution and to optimal futures for our planet.”

It’s not a “problem” if you look at ego inflation as a futile attempt of the Boundless in us to know and express Itself in and through the limitations of embodied life.

From that perspective, the thing is to drill into the facets & countenances of the “inflation” and discern what’s trying to surface and evolve through the constrictions and filters of the ego.

So it’s not a “problem,” it’s an opportunity.

“The Soul’s Journey” — Talks by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan

“The Soul’s Journey” from before birth through the non-phsical vibratory planes to manifestation, and through the “afterlife” are a foundational teaching of the Sufis and especially of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

Pir Zia discourses on these teachings in four podcasts. This is “the Sufi Book of the Dead.” Highly recommended.

THE EYE OF THE HEART

The essence and direction of our journey during our lives, are hidden in the “Intention” that has driven and therefore shaped our destiny. As a human being our experience of this force of nature, this manifestation of God in our very being, is an aspect of our will and resolve. When combined in a harmonious expression they become a divine declaration via the heart (resolve) and the mind (will). Action and non-action, movement and rest are felt as clues illuminating a path that reveals itself in a flurry of impressions both instinctive and intuitive, whirling madly around each other in search of balance, of harmony, which is, for the one who endures the experience, Love Divine.

What do we know of this Love Divine? Through meditations we have identified this condition to be the natural state of our being. Nevertheless, we need to remember that the intensity of our pleasure in love, is in proportion to the intensity of our experience of separation, of our longing to reunite with this natural condition, which again and again we forget. Yet, we also known that a balance between these opposites can only be a brief experience, due to the essential mandate of nature, to create friction as the source of all that is, particularly divine intelligence.

Wajid

Our Challenge…

The temptation, when feeling powerless, is to move to anger and to join others in their anger… Makes us feel ten feet tall & covered with hair, right? But it’s a brittle, false strength that clouds our vision and erodes our capacity to act effectively — and damn, we need EVERYONE fully on-line right now to get us through this period of the latent American fascism now surfacing.
And it’s not just the hatefulness of those in power we need to deal with; it’s also our brothers & sisters who are acting-out their own Shadow stuff in the political sphere.

So get the therapy, and do the spiritual practices, that will expose and dismantle your feelings of helplessness and sand-pounding rage. You’ll know that it’s working when you can read of some new outrage (and there will be plenty of opportunities) feeling centered, calm, and trusting in the larger process — not as a pollyanna but as an authentic light-worker who really carries more light than darkness.

We re being tested severely in the authentic depth of our inner work… but it’s also an opportunity to further de-squam ourselves of the inessential egoic contrivances and empty ourselves of our “stories” and history and be really, really *present* with what’s possible.

And the spiritual powers we need to further-develop are not mushy, accepting pseudo-Love — that’s just a dodge to avoid facing our own Shadow, and believe-you-me, Trump and his minions is all of our Shadow, incarnate.

What’s needed is the kind of spiritual sovereignty that confers inner mastery over our own process. This isn’t the kind of “man-up,” macho-it-through” control that is really an ego that is out-of-control. It’s standing in the clear light of what is most authentic and real about ourselves, irrespective of what’s happening outside our skins. This mastery is just like being on skis or sailing a watercraft; the “givens” are the wind and waves of the world and of our own emotions, but we have a firm and practiced hand on the tiller and can use the wind & currents to go where we will.

This is what real spiritual practice is about, not “manifesting” things or manipulating phenomena or adding to arcane intellectual knowledge of historical metaphysical descriptions.