Christian Yoga

Part Six

by Tony Crisp

	Enter your search terms
	Web This Site Submit search form

Trials and Difficulties

Another feature of the wilderness is that you feel you have touched the heart of things, and although you have had an experience of being part of everything, there is now nothing. Perhaps the events that have led to this point have been extraordinary in their intensity and variety. You may feel you have made the great Voyage, travelled a wonderful Odyssey, and yet at the end of it what is there to show? Where is the Golden Fleece?

This is a difficult time. There aren’t many wise words to say about it, it just has to be lived through. But it does seem to be a time of adjustment. Up until the wilderness the transcendent, the divine, always appeared as something external, something you might achieve or reach one day. Then, on meeting it, it disappears. At least, it disappears as something external, as something separate. The adjustment then is one of recognising that what appears to have been lost is a part of ordinary everyday life, and the moment-by-moment contacts and relationships you meet. What you had as an apparent external reality now needs to be roused and seen as yourself, your own potential.

Another thing that may happen is the falling away of many ambitions, activities and directions, that previously seemed very important. Perhaps they were important enough for you to believe that without them life would be meaningless. But here they are dropping away, and you may feel very confused. The confusion arises because the activities were connected with a belief you had that the activities or directions made your life worthwhile, that through them there was something you had achieved or could be proud of. As they drop from your life you may be left empty-handed, and with the feeling that you are achieving nothing, going nowhere, losing power.

There is another aspect to this also. It is that for many of us, self appointed activities are often seen as being 'the spiritual life'. I mean by this that we might make the decision that by 'doing good' in the world, by a certain type of work or activity, we are developing our spiritual life, or serving the Highest. At this timeof the wilderness, such activities often fall away, or our sense of their importance melts from us. And this often leaves us feeling very confused or directionless.

You are in the Middle of Things

Yet, as your expanded awareness has shown you, you are in the middle of things. There is nowhere that you are disconnected. Your life has meaning simply through existing. Yet why aren’t you being used? Why are you wandering alone in a wilderness?

Those questions have to be answered by you. For how are you going to reconcile timelessness with the passage of time? In your time bound world, every day, especially every year, must be filled in a way that satisfies your own perception of achievement or power. But yet, as someone close to me once told me, “Your life is just a gap in eternity.”

The following is the dream of someone passing through the wilderness:

A few nights ago I dreamt I was with a group of people walking in very dry, desert type countryside. It was like I imagine Egypt to be - or as Israel was while I was there. We were walking somewhere quite purposefully, but I was not aware of where the goal was. I was caring for a younger man who was not mentally alert, or at least appeared to need looking after. Our path took us into a rock tunnel cut into a huge rocky hill. The tunnel was large and with a well-worn path, and with enough height to easily stand. It was dry and comfortable. Deep within the tunnel we entered a huge cavern that spread for over a hundred yards to our left. The others in the group were ahead of us and out of sight, but the young man and I stood and looked at the cavern that was not at all dark or dismal. What was so remarkable was that on the floor of the cave, entirely covering it were thousands of shoes. I knew a race or tribe of people who had been on a great exodus had left them. They had left their homeland and travelled through this tunnel. The shoes had been left as a sign of the great journey, the great change they had undergone - as if they had left all behind. I felt it had happened long ago.

In exploring this dream, the dreamer said:

I realise this dream is about my readiness to move on. I am ready to make this change. I am ready to let go of the past - I need help to unburden myself of all I have been - like these other people have with their shoes. The past is so powerful though. While we are still living in the old country there is still the sense that we can make reparation. There is still time to change, to make amends. By staying one is making reparation for who one has been, or what one has done . But when I decide to leave - then I am faced by the finality of what I have done, and realise that it may never be undone.

I have mourned at that grave so long though. I have wept so many tears over it, to remain would be sickness. There are few tears to shed now. They have fallen in the past. There are regrets, but they are regrets that are not binding me or keeping me in the tomb. So in this way the cave is like the tomb one dies in or is resurrected from.

So now I have the feeling that although I am ready to move on I am in a state of preparation - getting my bag packed, putting my kit-bag/rucksack on. I have left my shoes in the cave, paid homage at the shrine of the dead, of the past. I have what may be an old pattern emerging though. In looking forward to change I keep expecting something amazing to happen.

The change is that I have made up my mind not to go back into the old rigid roles of trying to live in a particular way - trying to be something in particular - to struggle for recognition and make a name for myself.

The Whole is Greater than the Part

In a certain way things never end. The tree can never depart from its roots. It still needs the life of the earth. As strong as it may become there are still tender and vulnerable twigs and buds somewhere on it. Nothing is taken away, but much is added. So it is with your own growth. You still remain a vulnerable human being, and yet so much is added that mitigates your tenderness.

Christian Yoga Part Seven