When I was at university studying Sociology, it became apparent that each new topic was a way to tell the story of the world from a different angle. Terrorism and it’s causes, feminism, love and friendship, human resources, philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, scientific revolutions, myth, statistics, and all the other units I took all told me about the world from a unique perspective.
All of them were exceedingly convincing and I came to realise that in their own way they were all true. In their own way, they held to a point in time and space that informs us of a particular set of data. None of them, it seems, considered reality holistically. How could they?
Even studying culture and healing which highlights the nature of mindful matter, perceptual bias and other wonders, still faded at edges to exclude discussions seen as outside the field. Having heard all of these stories and more, I feel there is nothing outside. Nor is there anything inside. The illusion of separation, of dividing reality into matter and energy, is unnecessary.
I’m reading a set of lectures originally published in 1922 by Alice A. Bailey titled ‘The Consciousness of Atoms,’ a book which popped out at the library along with Yoga Sutras, Mindfulness in the Modern World by Osho, The Ego Trick by Julian Bagel, and Mind & Cosmos by Thomas Nagel (as well as a Hunter S. Thompson anthology and a few Zen writings). The lectures have so far iterated the three essential stories on the planet – (i) realism or materialism, (ii) supernaturalism, and (iii) idealism.
It fascinates me to read such a succinct and scholarly repast from the early twentieth century.
It sparks my imagination to great heights when one so direct and yet exceedingly learned can speak without apology on a subject which must have been scandalous for its time. And the cards I draw for myself around the work I do echo this sentiment. For you see, I return to the question of what it is I want again and again. Mostly because the only answer is to have what I need to do what I’m told (intuitively), which seems to make the call to have desire grow louder.
For some time, perhaps six months or so, I have been asked to think about what I want. It seems I have dutifully followed my instructions and had my experiences in the moment since birth and the guiding chorus of wisdom now wants me to know desire. Not that I have not experienced pleasure or been absent to choice, but that the world is made simple by following my instructions and having no preference – only surrendering to the moment and focusing on what I need, to be present to what is, from a place of unconditional love and pure embodied expression.
Now, it seems, that is all going to change.
It is the difference between a leaf blowing in the breeze and a living doll. Between a wave and a participant consciousness where fancy and play are enjoyed in the fullness of human expression rather than kept secret from aspiring, unsatisfied artists. To be oneself is not simply a matter of being on purpose. The universe wishes us to also have joy. So far my life has found that joy in finding ways to love unconditionally. What now?
Where does one find the joy of something more than knowing how to be in the world as Spirit consciousness?
As I embrace this question and the energetic of surrender, I release the need for an answer. I know that life is not about answers, it is an opening up to and expansion from not knowing that allows miracles to happen. It is love to be in the question without need or desire for conclusion or closure. We are greatly served by the energetic of questions that allow us to see ourselves as constantly moving, constantly reforming and redesigned by each moment. Of this I can be sure until it no longer serves me. For just as every myth on the planet is true until it is not, our truth is certain as long as life continues to fruit.
Whatever my desire, whatever new way of being on the planet this question of choice and preference alights, all I can know for sure is that paying attention is the answer.