It’s such a subtle thing that seems always within our reach, but never within our grasp: this need to let go of our ego identities and embrace our universal identities. Yet it makes all the difference. At some point we need to graduate from “practicing” spirituality to actually being spiritual. We need to make the shift from making connections to being connected. We need to live it as it has always lived in us. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: Well, this seems to be somewhat of a pattern in my dreaming, too, and that’s why it’s easier to recognize. And that’s probably why, as well, that a person takes and suffers, or goes through, the smashing and whatnot that one goes through in the first phase of development, which is considered like kind of the negative step or something, where you absolve yourself of all kinds of identification that get in the way from you being able to be real – because your ego then dominates in terms of how it is that you lean on the various identifications.
It’s kind of like one has seen, and been told, and recognizes so much of that and just can see how they have their characteristics in relationship to not being able to step aside from certain ways or mannerisms about themselves. It’s almost as if that waved in their face causing them to feel that and to take that into account responsibly. It almost leads to a connection to the energetic so that that naturally starts to unfold or happen.
And then as that occurs and happens, that becomes like a process in the path, or a step that then goes into the next, which goes into the next, and so on. It’s amazing how this process evolves then. You’re influenced by everything, and everything has an aliveness, and everything is God. And it is all meaningful, and that’s why it is said – because we seem to evolve like this – that so much is said: there’s time, place, and people, but there’s also right attitude. There’s a fourth thing that’s brought in.
And if you have the right intention, you can be doing something in a wrongful way and it will lead to a rightful result. But if you have the wrong intention, you can be doing something in a rightful way and it won’t go anywhere. In other words, it’s more than just time, place, and people. It has to include that, too. That’s where you get into the fact of the things that spur you, like the inflections and whatnot that create the scenario and the greater teaching and stuff like that, that is an effect of what comes to your attention in the outer, and how it is that you’re able to rapport with that in order to see yourself able to suddenly recognize something in a whole new way.
So, in my meditation dream, I find myself holding back or staying back to try to get something that needs to be done first. And so in holding myself back I send my brother – it’s like we have tickets to a concert – I send my brother with his ticket ahead to go into the concert and get settled in a seat.
But I don’t actually have my ticket on me. In other words, I’m assuming apparently that I’m riding underneath the fact that together it’s like maybe something was different, but when we break us up and he goes ahead and follows a more natural flow, that that works for him and his ticket takes him right in. But with me a little bit presumptuous or something, I can come into the place through a side door, after completing some task that I had to hold back on because I couldn’t come in with him.
But something isn’t quite right: I can’t be that presumptuous, so I get detained. And it’s not like I’m denied from this place. I just have to go back to where I had been staying to retrieve my ticket and then I can come and go in. For the moment that I was inside I would have been able to find my brother and get him to vouch for me or something. And it would have been okay, but because I was pushing my limits and had to take a step back to do something, I really need to bring all of that energy forward again in a better way so I have to contend first with things that are currently meant to be done.
I’m not allowed to pass through a restricted barrier at this time. I have to do this other first and then something can open up. The barrier is that I am not allowed to skip something that has to do with the need to be readily attentive in another way because there is still the need for me to be yet a bit in this particular way, and to have to be that way first.
Now, what this is like is you have to live something. You can’t just go into an absolving and absolving and absolving. You have to take note of something in the density of life first, then you of course have to bring yourself out of its effect upon you that keeps you stupefied. Then you have to come back to that because that is meaningful as if that is a thought of God or something that needs to emerge as an energetic in life.
That sticks to you in some degree, so you go through this point where you have the negative that is the part that wipes everything out and annihilates and creates an emptiness, and then you have the part in which something sticks that you’re constantly trying to throw off because that quality of nothingness is something you absolutely have to have, too. And the combination of the two is what is made possible when the two can come together.
I’m able to say that this dream is requiring me to be more surrendered and more removed from outer appearances that I still see myself as maintaining an identity towards. This identity is keeping me from letting go to an inner space where I am able to take the self-image energy to a deeper surrendered overallness. It means it doesn’t go away; it’s there, but it has to be contended with differently.
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