The Call of Life — and Death
Daily Review…
Yesterday saw a flurry of activity in me regarding many dimensions of Pathwork – adding a section about how to grow through the Pathwork Lectures to my website (under the audio tab), responding to folks who asked questions about the audio recordings and about various Pathwork teachings (e.g., “What is the Pathwork view of Evil?”), sharing marketing ideas, following up with various leaders across North America about Erena’s new Pathwork Graduate Program that begins in November, etc.
This morning I felt discouragement in not hearing more in response to my flurry of activity yesterday, especially as it relates to the Graduate Program for which I feel such energy. This discouragement was my greatest disharmony. With this disharmony I turned in my meditation to Pathwork Lecture 145 Responding to the Call of Life, paragraphs 7-10.
Life issues a call; it makes a demand on every living individual.
Most people do not sense this call. Only as you become aware of your own illusions can you simultaneously become more aware of the truth within yourself, and therefore in life.
Consequently, you will understand in each moment what the call of life wants to convey to you.
How do you respond to it?
1) Do you respond with your total being?
2) Or do you respond half-heartedly?
3) Or do you resist responding at all and make yourself deaf to it?
That is the big question, my friends.
So there listed are my three choices in each moment of my life. How do I respond in this very moment? And the next moment? And the next? That is the big question. This is not responding to some grand overarching goal, vision or mission, but rather a moment-by-moment responding to what is right before me.
What I say here, simple as it sounds, can become very important in helping you honestly question yourself: Do you truly wish to understand the call of life? What does it require of you? And are you wholeheartedly responsive?
Do I have a deep longing to follow my Life Plan, my Seed Plan, my Source, my God within? On some level that longing is there and gives rise to much in which I am involved. But when I pause, I have to ask myself, “Truly, am I saying ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ or ‘Maybe’ to this call from within? I realize I am not wholly committed, not sacrificing my very being for my Calling. And there is a price following this plan exacts from me. What is that price? What has to be given up to follow my true Seed Plan? And am I wholehearted in my “Yes!” to giving that up? Again, this is a moment by moment choice. I find this pretty challenging!
The call of life is a dynamic movement that can be also felt as a stream. This stream of life manifests differently to each individual. It is at once universal and intensely personal.
It is universal in the sense that it aims exclusively at awakening the real self, absolute reality. It goes about this in a totally unsentimental way.
It disregards
1) personal attachments,
2) social considerations, and
3) any other peripheral values, including personal pain or pleasure.
This life stream is unique to each individual – no two of us are alike in what wants to manifest in and through us. This variety among us humans differs from that of the acorn that always wants to become an oak. Oh the acorn will develop into a unique oak based upon its environment, but it will be an oak nonetheless. Or I wonder, are the many seemingly random variations in the oak in that particular acorn’s seed plan? At any rate the variety for the oak is relatively limited. The variety in human consciousness however seems infinite, spanning great ranges of consciousness and capacities for love, creativity, and wisdom.
Yet the Life Force manifests and does so without regard to the personality’s wishes or predispositions. The Life Force within me does not care about my personal pain or pleasure in my life. The Life Force moves me ever forward. It is my own resistance to this Life Force that brings pain and suffering.
If awakening the real self requires what temporarily seems like destruction, this destruction will turn out to be rather the groundwork of the real inner life, the preparation needed to awaken the inner center.
If the awakening brings what also happens to be most joyful to you, the very experience of joy proves that you are more attuned to your real self than you realize.
We may be the caterpillar going through the chrysalis stage on our way to becoming a butterfly. In such a case everything we think we are in our “caterpillar” state dies and is transformed in a “resurrected” “butterfly” state. The caterpillar in us can try to hang on to its being a caterpillar, but to no avail. The Life Force moves in whatever way it must to accomplish the transformation, including “killing” the caterpillar in the transformation process. Resisting the needed death phases causes needless pain and suffering. It is my choice. Am I willing to give up everything I think I am (caterpillar) in order to be who I truly am (the butterfly)? My prayer is to have the courage to stay the course of my Life Force – moment by precious moment.
And when I do not resist but am aligned with my Life Force, Joy arises. I notice that this “Joy arising” happens so often as I engage these Pathwork Lectures and apply them to my life, and share them in conversation or in these blog entries. This Joy I experience is the evidence that I am on the right path. And this Joy reveals to me the benign (well-wishing) nature of the Cosmos, the ultimate Love that God is. I am reminded of a statement attributed to Einstein (click to open).
So how does this reading relate to my disharmonies? I can visualize myself as a fountain of water with many ideas flowing up and out of me. And I can see these ideas flowing into my own soul substance, into others, and into the many souls of my Pathwork community. I am invited not to give in to my discouragement when it seems these ideas do not resonate and enliven others the way they do me – or do not even enliven me as much as they could! In fact I see my discouragement in others as a projection of my discouragement in myself! An inner voice says, “Just let the ideas and water flow, Gary. Let Spirit do the rest – to your own soul substance and to the souls of others. Find your Joy in being the fountain! Hold the Vision for what you see for yourself, for your couplehood with Pat, and for your Pathwork community over this next year. Be faithful to the Source within, moment by moment.” I pray that this be so!
Coffee Time with Pat
Pat joined me this Sunday morning and shared what was going on in her day. Yesterday was packed for her as well, with a lot of cogent exchanges on the email forum that her group of 30 AIP practitioners maintain. I was amazed that the issues Pat was wrestling with on the forum were similar to what I was experiencing right here in my own meditation time this morning. I shared the words of the Guide written above. Pat agreed as to their relevance.
Pat: And this is all related to the purification work we shall be doing with Sage and Anthony in our emerging couplehood. Gary: Right – Sage said our work on our couplehood would be spiritual root-canal work for each of us and for us as a couple! What has to be purified? What has to die in each of us such so that the New can come forth, so that the Source in each of us can flow within and out of us as we come to experience Union? All of this reminded me of the Guide’s message about the role of death in the growing organism – be that an individual, a couple, or a group. (Click to open quote “Role of Death in Growth” from Pathwork Lecture 165: Evolutionary Phases in the Relationship Between the Realms of Feelings, Reason, and Will.)
I am full of Joy as I complete this entry.
Shared in love, Gary