Omega – “Does not take away the lessons of the limitations we are working through.” Very true, it’s what it’s all about. What a game it is to actually see them though.
“In fact part of me agrees with uprooting those flowers, what a waste of time, all that focus doing good for others, creating 'beauty' but neglecting my angry angry thief.” Again yes – because life is a duality between the light and the dark, between growth and decay and all other things. The path we take toward our Self.
Realisation is like a razor’s edge. Walking it we need balance between the opposites facing us.
People often tend to think that if one thing is right then the oposite must be wrong. The opposite rpesent us with a huge dilemna for at every moment in such things as hearing a sound, it is only apparent because it is surrounded by silence – the silence between the sounds – but also all people and objects are only individually identifiable because they exist in empty space. But more important than that in understanding the void we exist in is that each day we cycle through the alternating experience of existing and not existing – of having focussed personal awareness and then meeting the loss of it in sleep. The midway point between these polarities is dreams.
In dropping into this experience of sleep where there is a void or loss of personal awareness, we lose any sense of self and body and so the transition from waking self awareness to the void is easy. But the dealing with these extraordinary opposites of the void and personal awareness is about meeting it with your waking self. For many people this can be a difficult or frightening thing. We tend to think of the void as a huge nothingness, a vacuum in which the human personality will disappear.
I tend to believe that the trials of waking awareness are there because haven’t yet learned to meet them. To quote from Edward Carpenter:
“Do not be dismayed because thou art yet a child of chance, and at the mercy greatly both of Nature and fate;
Because if thou wert not subject to chance, then wouldst thou be Master of thyself; but since thou art not yet Master of thine own passions and powers, in that degree must thou needs be at the mercy of some other power. And if thou choosest to call that power ”Chance,’ well and good.
And there is no passion or power, or pleasure or pain, or created thing whatsoever, which is not ultimately for man and for his use-or which he need be afraid of, or ashamed at.
The ascetics and the self-indulgent divide things into good and evil-as it were to throw away the evil;
But things cannot be divided into good and evil; but all are good so soon as they are brought into subjection.” Aye, there’s the rub.
For we cannot let go of something if in fact it has hold of us. If you have a tiger running around your house you would avoid it at all costs unless you had a way of immediately being in control of it. So it is with your own fears and pains. Unless you can stop their attack, you avoid them, run from them, and in fact let them unconsciously control your decisions and actions. Of course, you need help and a greater power than your own conscious resources to totally grow beyond such fears and pains. But often you cannot even open yourself to that greater influence while they have a strong hold on you. Without knowing it you resist the action of the divine in your life. See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/integration-meeting-oneself/#Ox and
https://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/ Tony