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The world still has secrets.
Not everything is figured out. There are a plethora more ideas, angles, nuances, & notions that the world wants you (with your unique perspective) to bring to the table. In this way, there’s a sacred duty for the individual to carry out and add their piece of wisdom to the collective conversation.
It would be a great tragedy if we came to this world and everything was already figured out, luckily the mystery refreshes infinitely.
True learning is a balancing act.
New information flows in and you have to do something with it - either let it go or let it alter your course. If it doesn’t change something about you, like your behavior, attitude, or aims, then it wasn’t something kept.
It must have been not worth keeping or you weren’t aware enough to hold on to it.
I get upset when I'm not getting at least one life lesson out of a day. Not because the lesson wasn't there, but because I wasn't as aware as I could be. The lessons show up everyday, my awareness is the wavering variable. It is frustrating to consider how much divine and evolutionary oomph went into creating the magic and insight available in a day only to be blind to it. Something that feels 100% in my control. Whether or not I succeed, I aim to bring maximal awareness for these things each day to do my part.
It’s like the classic story, as I’m sure I’ve told before, about the guy drowning in the river. At first, the guy’s drowning & calling out for God’s help when all of a sudden a guy in a canoe comes up to help. The drowning man tells the guy in the canoe, “God will help me”. So the canoe man paddles on. Drowning guy continues to wail for God’s help. A bigger boat comes up to help and same thing…the drowning man says, “God will help me.” And then a final (even bigger) boat comes up and the theme repeats. Eventually the man drowns, dies, and goes to heaven. When he arrives, he immediately asks God: “God, I was drowning there in the river, why didn’t you save me?” God then, I imagine with a grin, says “Well, I sent 3 boats.”
We have to pay attention to the moment in front of us. That’s where the action happens, where the lessons will appear. As you know from your own experience too, they can be so easily missed.
The most important information doesn’t just bypass the 3D, it’s embedded in it. Open your eyes….All three of them.
It’s hard to balance with your eyes closed.
Like in a game of poker, we’re all pot committed.
Whether by experience, education, or epiphany, we’ve all slid our chips into an idea that brings out our religious nature as humans. There’s no avoiding it, it’s just how humans are.
Our psyches depend on a religious framework to stack the odds that we don’t go crazy. But if the religious underpinnings of your life aren’t based on something divine, then any other path of religiosity will come up short. Unconsciously, some people may let their ‘God seat’ be occupied by something like politics, sports, work, or science. But the containers just can’t hold up to and compare to God. There’s just too much of the good, the bad, & the mystery to be accounted for. Carl Jung, in The Undiscovered Self, writes:
“Religion, as the careful observation and taking account of certain invisible and uncontrollable factors, is an instinctive attitude peculiar to man, and its manifestations can be followed all through human history. Its evident purpose is to maintain the psychic balance, for the natural man has an equally natural ‘knowledge’ of the fact that his conscious functions may at any time be thwarted by uncontrollable happenings coming from inside as well as from outside. For this reason he has always taken care that any difficult decision likely to have consequences for himself and others shall be rendered safe by suitable measures of a religious nature…A feeling of security which is absolutely essential for carrying out a decision, because a decision is inevitably somewhat one-sided and is therefore rightly felt to be a risk.”
Belief in something bigger than yourself is required to exist. The main question is if your current belief stands the test…is it working for you or against you? Is it making life better (stability, peace, love, magic) or worse (bummed out, worried, judgy, bored)? It’s hard to know any of these things if you’re not already aware of what your religious attitude points you towards. And because we are people of the West, you can bet that regardless of which belief you hold, it’s based on its own Heaven/Hell spectrum. You’re either doing good things and aligning with it or going off track and sinning by your belief’s specific definitions.
For me, it’s God as nature & beyond. To know fully is to lie because our brains can’t hold it. But I have had experiences where I felt God and his stretch in all directions past infinity - forever ingrained in my memory and psyche with unshakeable certainty. Heaven, in this case, is harmonizing with nature, telling the truth, and living in the truth of who I am. Hell and sinning, for me, is when I’m moving out of alignment with nature and lying either literally or with the life I’m living & my soul’s calling. These beliefs are evolving and never permanent. The mystery of this world is just too active to have a closed mind with all of its intoxicating wonder.
So, take the time to consider who or what is residing in your God seat. If it’s not a God or the God, then ask yourself more about that. There’s likely some interesting self-exploration to uncover there. And if there’s a chance to adopt new beliefs that are more pragmatic for your life, why not?
Regardless, I bet you’re religious.
The world needs more depth operators.
Those individuals swimming deep in the mystery and bringing back the treasures of insight to share. Plenty of people will restate the obvious at the surface level, but I want the gold and gems and hidden pieces found down deep that alter our lives for the better.
We tend to think of personal evolution as something that requires us to do more, be better, and go above & beyond, but we overlook the immense amount of natural flow taking place. If we use a deeper perspective with this new understanding of natural evolution, we can relax into it a bit and let go of our straining. The ingredients for insights will come all on their own, but you have to connect the dots and put it together. The beauty is that one insight learned and shared from one individual is likely transferrable and applicable to another individual.
After all, we’re much more similar than not. The human experience has its overlapping patterns and themes.It’s important though that we’re all looking for those new twists and glimpses of deep understanding that our own evolution has us cross paths with. Sending those pieces of wisdom back into the collective conversation with your peers and community only helps. Either it’s an entirely new take or it’s something that reassures us we’re not the only ones with that experience.
We love when we meet deep people. You can instantly tell & usually see it in their eyes. You want to keep talking to them because they give off the vibe that they know something you don’t. They know some piece to the puzzle that you’re missing. They’ve seen some things, done some things, and learned some things to gain a different angle of wisdom.
These are the types of things that excite me. Who wouldn’t want to absorb that? On the contrary, some others live a shallow life. Granted, some do this because they know no other way. The others are merely afraid to dive deep into Life. It’s a scary thing to do because there’s just so much unknown once you get into it. The surface is safe & conquered.
Courage comes with its rewards though and you become changed the more you dip into that river of mystery.
All hail the treasure hunters.
