Gradual Evolution

Sixth Principle of Personal Transformation > Having All of Life Be In God

Becoming fully receptive to life’s sacredness is often a gradual process, one in which the experience of God’s Presence within life becomes more and more apparent as it manifests through the flow of ordinary events. As fears and attachments loosen, we let go of conditioned attitudes and roles we have felt compelled to play, and become freer to respond to all of life with our true selves. This freedom to be ourselves is defined by our participation in each moment and by the quality of heart and mind we bring to it. Within each moment’s experience, we become free to learn and grow, to change with each encounter, to operate freely and fluidly as the continually evolving sacred beings that we are.

 

I always thought that enlightenment would come in a flash, a sudden lightning strike of transformation and I would be forever free.  When I first encountered yoga and buddhism years ago, I literally believed that this was the case.  Over the years this belief has taken many forms, but it’s been hard to let go of.

I never anticipate all of the work that spiritual aspiration would involve.  I figured that if my surrender was complete enough, I would just leap out of a smaller self identity and into an experience of cosmic wholeness from which it would be impossible to return.  When it didn’t happen, I blamed myself, assuming that my surrender must not have been authentic, or that I must just be too afraid of leaving behind my karmic baggage.  I still get caught up in this thought process, and if I’m not careful it can lead to self-judgment, guilt, and a feeling for failure.

But here I am immersed in the gradual process, the progressive healing of ancient karmic wounds.  “In the Integral Yoga, there is no difference between the sadhana and the outward life; it is in each and every moment of the daily life that the truth must be found and practiced,” says the Mother of Auroville.

So I try to open myself to the circumstances of my life, to the “flow of ordinary events”.  And I try to release self-judgment, trusting that what is unfolding within me and around me is unique and important and perfect.  I’ve come to believe strongly that no good ever comes from pressuring someone else to change their mind or believe something or want something.  But somehow it’s harder to grasp that this applies to myself too.  Pressure to surrender will never succeed in bringing me into alignment with my highest truth.  It’s only through releasing control and struggle that my path can unfold.

Julie Redstone once said to me that the Light does not respond to force with counterforce.  The strength of the Light is in its purity.  I remember being dumbstruck by the simplicity of it, and by the realization that I had always thought and acted as if fighting against my lower nature and the hostile forces was the only way to freedom.  It turns out that embattlement just perpetuates the battle, giving life to an illusion.

Prayer

Dear God,

May my heart, from the absolute depth to its most outer manifestation, from the physical organ to the spiritual center of my being, be completely and totally aligned with Your Holy Breath at all times.  May the Light that flows from Your Heart engulf me and transform me – shaping me into a pure vessel of Love.

May I join with You in the transformation of all density, all ignorance, all falsehood, and all that seeks to prevent the progressive advent of Light on Earth.  May I be brought into collaboration with others who seek to serve the great evolution with their whole selves.  May hope for a new and fantastic future inspire and nourish us.

I long to join with You completely in the Divine Adventure.

Easter

The days leading up to Easter represent, in the Christian tradition, the passage of grief and despair that we as souls must tread as we seek complete alignment with our deepest and truest selves.  They end with the revelation that Jesus has conquered death and returned to free all mankind from the bondage of illusion and suffering.

For many of the souls who were embodied with Jesus at the time of the crucifixion, the dark night of the soul did not end on the first Easter Sunday.  For these souls the Son did not rise, and they have wandered in a seemingly perpetual night for centuries.  These souls, in their love and devotion for Jesus, had opened themselves to a Love that was so new to the Earth that it greatly accelerated their own evolution so that they were out of step with the rest of humanity.  They had no intellectual or philosophical way of understanding the transformation that they underwent.  But they experienced it as a profound alignment with God, an immense capacity to give and receive Love, and a fathomless Joy that pervaded their entire beings.

When many of these souls experienced the events leading up to and culminating in the crucifixion, the trauma was extreme.  They had opened themselves to a Love greater than any they had imagined possible, and then they watched as the Love was mocked and desecrated in the most vile way by forces of evil and darkness, and then seemingly snuffed out before their eyes.  The devastation that they experienced was profound.

These souls who experienced the crucifixion but not the resurrection have wandered within the Earth’s atmosphere for the past two thousand years.  Some have incarnated frequently, and lived lives ranging from extreme hedonism to extreme asceticism.  Some have sought to deny the Love that they felt was responsible for their pain, to desecrate it.  Some have sought to atone for what they experienced as their own culpability in the disaster that they witnessed.  Some have sought simply to escape from the pain that is felt as having no end.

But, unbeknownst to them, as they wandered, feeling lost, grasping for control of their lives, plunging into or running from the immense pain and grief that they carried, these souls have been led progressively through the tunnel of time and space toward their own redemption.  They have been given life circumstances that have shaped and prepared them for this present day and the work that they will be called to in support of the Earth’s integral transformation.

Now is the time for these souls to rise and discover their true stature.  It is time for them to find the seed that was implanted within them long ago and redeem it – give it room to grow, light, and nourishment.  The seeds of Living Light that they have stewarded through the vast depths of darkness and ignorance are the foundation upon the New Earth will be built.  The time is now for them to rise and prepare.