Commentary

I received a comment from an anonymous reader that I feel warrants another post.  Anonymous writes:

“I know that polishing that mirror is the ultimate goal but it becomes so tarnished through out lives that the majority of people don’t even realize that we are on the whole so dulled down. Those who are aware and put enough effort into it can reverse or prevent the dulling but for the rest?

I know this is a question asked throughout the ages and in every form of religion but why can’t there be a practical guide so that as Dara brings up we HAVE that world of which she speaks? One where we are expressing the divine and the world truly is a less flawed reflection of that? Why do we suffer so much to polish this mirror? I am just confused as to the point of all the hardship. I know Dan that you say that the struggle is what builds our character and intuitively and practically I believe that, but why is that so? If things are so perfect in the Imaginal why create a place where “souls” or character needs to be honed? Again I realize this is a universal question, it just seems foolish. Why have a world where this takes place in the first place? Shouldn’t everything just be the divine or an expression of it with out all the cruelty, violence and suffering involved? I’m not in despair at all but I would say that at times I just sit back and wonder what the hell the whole purpose is?
I suppose the easy yet true answer is that it’s bigger than I can understand but isn’t that just the same as saying it’s God’s will and not for us to know. Both are unsatisfactory answers to me but perhaps that is the way it is – I accept it but don’t have to like it I suppose.”

I thoroughly enjoy comments like this because they cut right to the chase.  They raise the questions that are really at the heart of the issue.  So thank you to the individual that wrote it.

To begin with the first paragraph I cannot say for certain what happens to the people that put little thought into their mortality and squander life with heavy doses of television, drugs, and everything else.  At one point I was happy to say that people like this became splintered into a million pieces and spread across the universe postmortem.  However, upon reaching further into the mystique, and having what I can only call revelations and direct experiences of that postmortem world, I am no longer certain that is true.  While I think some memories are often discarded at death, I do not believe that a soul is simply memories or that it can be “annihilated”.  Last year I entered into what I can only call an area in the mundus imaginalis with postmortem people that lived in neighborhoods very similar to any neighborhood in America.  Many of the people there were deformed, but I felt no hostility in them.  It felt as if these people were preparing themselves for better things. Instead of being accosted or stalked, I was given a free pass to simply walk through in peace.   The “form” people take in the postmortem domain seems to be based upon their purity.  Ugly, deformed, and deranged looking people have lost some of their humanity and compassion and that is why they appear so grotesque.  When you no longer have a physical body, the mind becomes the body.  These are very likely the people that have died and done little to work through their hostility, fear, and selfishness.  In a word, these people veiled the image of God within themselves.

The answer I would give based on my own intuitive understanding and experience is that whatever we don’t solve here, we will solve in the imaginal domain when we are dead.  So becoming a clear surface resigned to God isn’t something that only happens in the physical domain.  It seems to be something that is worked out “over there” as well.  Just to be clear, the imaginal domain really isn’t so great, at least not the initial phases of it.  There are ghastly things there and people that aren’t wholesome.  I use the “imaginal” because it is the intermediary state which must be navigated first.  In many ways I would even say that in certain places it is worse in the imaginal because people are free to do whatever they want.  I have witnessed all types of debauchery there.  Admittedly, I have seen worse things there than I have in the physical. This is one of the main reasons I tell people to not trust “spirit guides”, “aliens” and “ascended masters”.  They all come from the imaginal domain.  When you go higher, however, the primordial language can no longer be communicated into human language. So to be clear, the imaginal isn’t the goal at all, it is really only a peek through the veil of eternity to the Pleroma which is beyond even my own logical understanding and abilities of expression.

Every being takes up several orders of existence, not only a physical existence.  Rene Guenon wrote a very good book about this called “The Multiple States of The Being”, which I recommend.  So while we are presently only experiencing the physical domain (mostly) this causes us to live with a narrow view of things.  As cliche as it may sound, you are not your body.  You are not even your human identity alone.  The totality of your being stretches from the highest point of eternity to the physical domain. The problem is that as mere humans, we don’t have full access to every order of our existence.  This is why suffering enters into the equation.

The tip off that there is more to the physical human being (and it is actually a very subtle tip) is that you are able to perceive yourself perceiving the physical world.  Were this not possible, you would be locked into this world having no hope of life beyond your death.  So while life here is suffering, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, not even in the very worst predicaments we sometimes find ourselves in.  The key, which a materialistic and atheistic soul cannot accept, is that until a being is resigned to God, they can experience only suffering.   I do not believe that occultism, synchromysticism, neo-gnosticism, or any other new age system can teach people this type of resignation.  It can only be gained by going within oneself and uncovering the good that is there, a good that while attached to the physical human individual, is not a mere moral platitude.  I am referring to divine and noetic presences.  It is only by this self-exploration that a person can accept their suffering as a necessary part of their own existence. It doesn’t mean they have to like it.

To use an example I will tell you about my mother.  She was dying of ovarian cancer that had spread throughout her body.  She was always painfully shy and often seemed to have a negative outlook on things.  She was very kind to people and extremely compassionate on a level that seems very rare today.  When she was living out her final months, her fear of death had abandoned her completely.  In the final days, just before death had her hanging on to this world by a thread, she exuded pure joy.  All she wished to do was tell people about Christ.  She was NOT telling them about the evangelical’s or fundamentalists God, she was telling them about the person hood of God in Christ who had been kind to her even under the worst of circumstances.  It was her hope that people would remember her…that she was not afraid even in the face of suffering and death. She told me over and over again that she was doing nothing, but it was “God living and being kind through her.”  That is actually very telling.  In fact, it represents the highest mystery of the human being.

In a matter of weeks her suffering turned into pure resignation to the fountain of life that literally gave her a life to live, a life that ultimately was not her own, but belonged solely to God.  Accepting something like that is not something people want to do.  It is an affront to their perceived freedom and autonomy.  This attitude is rampant throughout new age spiritualities and modern ideas.  To say that ones life is not their own, but is granted to them, is simply unacceptable today.  This is due solely to selfishness. This is why I believe whole heartedly that religious tradition is superior in every way to new ageism.  When I saw her on her final day, even though she was emaciated, a final peace had come over her.  The look of death’s physical grip that was upon her face the final two days had vanished.  She had peace and then passed very quietly into eternity.

Finally, there is no answer to your question.  All answers existing in the realm of reason, rationale, and logic (the physical) will be wholly unsatisfying.  This is because there are no answers in this world that can communicate the hope, friendship, and meaning of the world beyond. I will only say that from experience everything in that domain is far more intense and meaningful than it is in the physical. You must find it for yourself even in your suffering.  In fact, until you reach further into yourself, into the domains far above reason, you will not be able to answer the question satisfactorily. Again, this is solely because there is much more to being human than suffering and pain, infinitely more.