What is the most important information I learned in my years of reading?

Thursday afternoon, during a physical therapy session for some aches and pains, the therapist asked what I did during the day. Being introverted, I responded with a short answer: “Read”. “Read what?” he asked. Slightly longer response: “Oh, about spirituality, religion, consciousness.” Probing further: “How long have you been reading about those subjects?” Answer: “Thirty-plus years.” Further: “What’s the most important information you learned?”

Lying on a table, consciously breathing in and out while doing exercises, wasn’t the best time to contemplate the most important information I had learned in thirty years of reading and taking notes. I rambled something about The Tibetan Book of the Dead and what a Hindu woman had told Morgan Freeman in a video titled The Story of God. In essence she said she viewed truth as the trunk of a tree and all the different religions as branches.

Driving home I wondered how I would have answered the question had I been asked when I wasn’t doing physical therapy and the purpose hadn’t been to distract me from the exercises.

Morning Meditation 1, 10, 2024

This morning as I began my meditation I used the method described in my previous blog entry—that of dissolving the objective world by letting go of the patterned-ego, the self, and the Self as I focus on Subjective Consciousness without an object and imagine High Indifference.

Partway into today’s meditation it was as if someone changed the channel and provided a clarification—a necessary one. And it came via the soul levels of the Kabbalah. I should add here that, for me, High Indifference is akin to Mt Everest which can be reached by way of several paths but, primarily, by way of the Northeast and Southeast routes. So, High Indifference can be reached through Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam or Christianity because their mystical or esoteric paths all arrive at the summit.

Learning (slowly) how to participate in life

A year ago yesterday I moved into the lake house with a goal to experience unitive consciousness. I viewed this as an escape from earthly existence. As I wrote in a previous entry I wasn’t interested in the old cliché, “chop wood, carry water, enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” My version was “chop wood, carry water, out of here.”

Looking for an exit I’ve read and studied many of the paths: Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, Sufism, the Fourth Way, the Course in Miracles, Edgar Cayce…you name it and I’ve probably read something about it. But, nothing worked; I’m still here.

Recently I’ve been reading John Van Auken’s book “Edgar Cayce and the Kabbalah”. In it he explains the divisions of our being:

5  The Living Being (Nefesh)
4 Soul Mind (Ruach)
3 Soul Being (Neshamah)
2 Spirit Mind (Chayah)
1 Spirit Being (Yechidah)

He describes The Living Being, the fifth and lowest part, as being “influenced by the bodily instincts, our animal nature, which contains all the base urges, cravings, and desires of bodily existence. But here also is our human nature, with its three-dimensional mind and personality….” He continues, “This ‘Living Being” is a dynamic that needs to be subdued, trained, and directed.” Also, “This acquired outer self has become so dominant that we assume it to be our whole being—who we feel we are—the rest of our being having fallen into our unconsciousness.”

The fourth level or Soul Mind “is the moral consciousness that may subdue the urges and patterns of the Living Being. Here we have the ability to distinguish between good and evil, to subdue the most powerful instinctual urges for reasons higher than the gratification of these urges. This is the discerning mind and conscience. It is the involved mind that analyzes and correlates desires and measures them against the entity’s deepest ideals.”

The third level or Soul Being “is our soul self, the ghost self of our whole being. It is the bridge between the physical incarnation and the heavenly tiers of our being. It is both in the body and beyond it. This is the portion of our being that is striving to save the Living Being from the wheel of desire and karma, to free it from its servitude to self-seeking entanglements.” Cayce referred to the Soul Being as our “better self.”

The second level or Spirit Mind “is beyond anything earthly. It relates to the first flash of consciousness and the Giver of the gift of consciousness. Here is our spiritual mind, the womb of individual creativity, from which we use our very own free will to conceive. This level of our being can give life, can return life after illness or even death, and can ‘quicken’ us, as is often said of the Spirit.”

At the highest level is Spirit Being which “is the ultimate unity of the individual in God, as an individual spirit within and one with the Great Spirit.”

According to Van Auken Edgar Cayce also related the chakras to the divisions of our being. He associated the “four lower chakras—root, navel, solar plexus, and heart–with the Living Being (Nefesh)…The three higher chakras—throat, third eye, and crown—would be associated with the Soul Mind (Ruach) and the Soul Being (Neshamah).”

The point of it all, or so it seems to me now, is to be the Living Being but live as the Spirit Being. As Frank DeMarco writes in “The Cosmic Internet”, we are the “ringmaster” in this life. This is it. A soul or mind-stream probably incarnates but it’s not this same being. Each moment we choose. I can choose to live at the level of “base urges, cravings, and desires of bodily existence”, or I can choose to live at the level of the “better self”, but I have to do it in this body. The Living Being doesn’t “check out”. I am all levels and I choose at which level this “I” lives.

With the help of a patient and understanding counselor, a loving wife, and a good friend, I’m beginning to see some light. I guess I don’t really care if the earth came from an egg, a big bang or a creator. It’s like the old Buddhist story: if you’ve been shot by an arrow the immediate course of action is to remove the arrow, not find out who made it, shot it and why. I’m here in a body…period. So my goal for this next year at the lake is not to find a way to escape but a way to participate.

God explains the World

The following entry is from my 2006 journal when I was studying the Kabbalah. Presently I’ve returned to studying Buddhism. I think the Kabbalah is the path for a person who needs a Creator and Buddhism is the path for a person who doesn’t need a Creator. I think they are both wonderful paths.

In the following entry I imagined God telling me about the world and humanity.

“So, this morning I began thinking, or hearing, that instead of Tikkun Olam being the healing and repairing of the world, possibly God was leaving the world not broken but unfinished. He could have finished the world and everything would have been predestined. But, instead, he left the world or Malkuth incomplete, in the form of probability and possibility. So, in essence, God created the universe and everything in it, had a great time playing with all the possibilities and said, “This is good. And since I had so much fun manifesting my thoughts and creating the universe, I’m going to let you create your own world. And, not only will I give you the basic stuff with which to work, I’ll even tell you the characteristics and qualities that will make it ‘Good’. I’ll give you the blueprint in the form of the Qabalah and religions. But don’t get attached to them. They’re the map, not the territory. And now,” he says, “I’ll give you two pieces of advice. One is that every quality I’m telling you about has both a positive and a negative aspect. For instance, I give you the quality of love. Its virtue will be obedience but its vice will be bigotry, hypocrisy, gluttony and tyranny. Use all the qualities in moderation, stay balanced and flow with the energy. The second piece of advice is that I will observe everything you do without judgment. But you will judge yourself. Because you and I are one, you will not allow yourself to unite or merge with yourself until you return in a balanced form. You may experience all the virtues and vices and you may experience them again and again. And when you are finished and ready to return, you will review your experiences and re-experience them until they are balanced. Returning yourself to balance will be suffering. And you will wonder why I created evil and suffering. And so I’m telling you now. Your choices are your responsibility, not mine. I will watch you play and create. I will always love you. I am you. We are one. Suffering occurs when you are out of balance and forget this conversation. But I am always here to remind you. All you have to do is ask.”

Simplistic Overview

Kabbalah provides an ethical and evolutionary ladder for those who believe in a creator. It is a process by which you work your way back to the Creator by assimilating His qualities. Buddhism provides an ethical and evolutionary ladder for those who don’t believe in a creator. It involves the understanding of objective and subjective selflessness and personal responsibility for karma. Exoteric Christianity relies on an outside or exterior source for salvation. For me, personally, this approach seems the antithesis to uniting with one’s original nature. If one does not accept this path, one is destined to spend eternity in Hell. Esoteric or Mystical Christianity, on the other hand, affirms the belief in the Oneness of All.