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..:: Communion ::..
By
Alan Schneider
This essay treats the
subject of communion, our special spiritual communication with
the higher states of consciousness associated with the Divine
level of manifestation. In essence, communion is how we interact with
the Soul, our personal Conscience, and God.
The complex of physical
perceptions that has been classified in these essays as the body, the
central nervous system, the physical senses, personal emotions, and
the ego unquestionably acts as the collective suppressor of
Divine awareness, along with the expression of all higher conscious
states. On the other hand, meditation, chanting (at least in Hindu and
Buddhist contexts), and various Yoga practices have the effect of
directing attention away from the Physical Plane and toward
the higher Spiritual Planes of expression. One action of the “Kundalini
Detector” (the subject of a recent series of SYNERGY essays,
Evidence I, II, and III) which was substantially
consistent was that its responses to the Chakra sites associated with
the physical body, and the Soul vibration present in the vicinity
of that body, was either substantially reduced or lost altogether in the
presence of ego-motivated perception of any kind. The strident
effect of ego-influenced thought patterns is far more potent within the
physical consciousness than the much subtler, quieter vibration of the
Soul.
It is a safe bet in the case
of the vast majority of human observers that they will be either
consciously or unconsciously engaged in ego-based motivational
processing for most or all of their waking hours. The exceptions to
this condition are those few among us who have learned to identify the
presence of the ego, recognize the threat it represents to spiritual
Truth, and learned to use one of the techniques previously noted to
switch it off, while leaving the observational consciousness
on. Simply attempting to use conscious thought to attain the
perceptual level of the Soul or the Divine Mind will be unsuccessful –
both experiences are completely beyond thought and intent as we know
them. And the emotional wishes that may be present within us as
ego-drivers – the wish to succeed, the wish to achieve, the wish to
control, the wish to be superior – will only compound this failure by
goading us further into subsequent attempts. The mind, ego, and
emotions must be laid aside for spiritual exercise to bare
fruit.
Why is this necessary?
Because the Divine Consciousness operates in a context that is
completely different – 180 degrees removed – from our
perception of reality as experienced on the Physical Plane. For
starters, God does not even have an “environment” per se – as the “I AM
PRESENCE”, God just is, and does not require anything to
sustain an infinite, eternal manifestation everywhere. God is all
manifestation, including the manifestations of place and time. Although
I cannot prove this in any objective sense, I ask the reader to take my
word for my statement that I have been in this Presence and experienced
total freedom from any sort of constraint. God is total
freedom of consciousness in universal conscious expression.
There is absolutely no
negativity or division in the Divine Presence – God is Perfect Love and
Omnipresent Light. Because God Is Love, Creation radiates forth from
the I AM PRESENCE as an eternal, limitless expression of that
Love. But, this is not like human love, which is inevitably
self-oriented and perspective bound. God Loves both the prey and the
predator, the good and the fallen, the oppressor and the oppressed.
This is the case because God only “sees” the Soul in all things,
especially things that are apparently “temporary” in the temporal
illusion. This Soul is part of the Divine Truth, and is, like God,
imperishable. If this physical life is fundamentally illusory, and only
God is the Truth, then it can be said that God ultimately Loves God
alone, that the whole of existence observable on any level in any
context amounts to God pouring God into God, as Love pouring Love into
Love. The coming and going of Karma on the Physical Plane is
significant to God only to the extent that Enlightenment produces
Dharma and enables the experience of the Truth. And the physical
forms and processes of this life are all Karma with the sole
aforementioned exception noted in the previous sentences – even the
physicality of our experience is another example of God pouring God into
God as Infinite Divine Love, another Aspect of the universal Divine
Presence.
The Soul is God’s Loving
gift, as the possibility of Enlightenment in the context of the
limitation imposed by sensory experience here on the Physical Plane,
primarily occurring in, and represented by, the body of flesh. This
even makes perfect “logical” ego sense – the one consistent lesson of
events on the Physical Plane is that limitation exists –
the body is limited, the natural “laws” that determine events here are
limiting, and the ego itself is supremely limiting and limited. Since
God is the sum total of all Manifestation and Truth, this would
necessarily have to include the truth of limitation as part of
the Divine Being, and this, for once, is a part of the Supreme
Absolute Truth that we can perceive with the senses, notwithstanding
the fact that we may still literally have trouble distinguishing “the
forest from the trees”! What is universally present is often most
difficult to perceive...
The nature of the human “Fall
of Consciousness” consists of our understandable tendency to “fall” back
into the illusory experience of sense perception, and away from
intuitive, Divinely inspired, states of extra-sensory
perception. Intuition is the Voice of the Soul speaking
in our consciousness. A significant portion of this phenomenon is
frequently called “The Still, Small Voice of the Conscience” in
spiritual literature. The conscience is our inherent perception of the
moral valence of life on the Physical Plane, and is all too often
opposed to the much more strident voices of our personal desires,
attached as they are to the transitory gratifications of the ego, and
the physical immediacy of the senses. Like all the other facets of
intuition, the conscience must be identified, accepted, and validated by
human experience on the Physical Plane, and this can be a painful,
difficult, and frustrating process. The ego is addicted to logic
as its primary decision-making modality, and logic is frequently opposed
to intuition on the stage of life. How compelling it is to simply do
what is outwardly “sensible” and “convenient” in this existence, rather
than perform the often far more difficult actions required by
moral responsibility and selfless compassion, intuition’s
partner in the Heart and Soul!
Along with the Manifestation
of Perfect Love is God’s Aspect as the Divine Light, and, like
everything else on the highest of spiritual planes, this is also far
removed from our human sensory perspective on illumination. The literal
fact is that light itself is a Living Spirit that is both
integrated as a field of Consciousness, and segregated as the
waves and particles of physics. Just as everything is reducible
ultimately to light – that is, radiant energy – either in the
wave or photonic particle manifestation (even electrons, neutrons,
protons, and other nuclear particles are so reducible), so everything is
expressible as an element of the Divine Consciousness manifest in the
form of universal radiant expression. In this way, the “ideas” of God,
carrying the Divine Presence, are sent throughout the universe to take
manifest form eventually under auspicious circumstances. In the human
expression, this form is the Light of the Soul associated with the
physical body of Karma. As the Soul learns and experiences through the
association with the body (as the vessel of limitation), Karma becomes
Dharma, and the Soul becomes more and more present and perceptible in
our consciousness as the Guiding Light of compassion, shining ever more
brightly in the physical edifice. This process is why we are here.
The total expression of the
physical manifestation of limitation is extremely complex, and
accounts for all the births and deaths of all the physical and sentient
conditions of all time, expressed as the Physical Plane. God’s
outpouring of Love is absolutely perfect, leaving nothing incomplete
anywhere. Even the apparent darkness and fragmentation of physical
existence is still perfect as a Karmic vehicle under God. It is
our greatest challenge as sentient creatures to know this as the
Truth, building on the initial foundation of the senses and sensory
experience, as Jacob’s Ladder extends from the Physical Plane back to
the Heavens and the Divine Presence. Communion is the process of
climbing this ladder of perception in both directions, repeatedly
Ascending to the Divine, and descending back to mundane physicality with
a new set of spiritual perceptions to offer our fellow human beings –
perceptions of Love, Light, and Hope.
- With Love, Alan -
(Copyright 2009, by Alan Schneider)
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