Crossing the Threshold into 60

What I have learned during my spiritual odyssey in this lifetime

‘You know why your culture is sick? It is sick because it worships the rebel and not the lover and servant. It is sick because it worships the man of reason and not the naked and dancing slave of God. It is sick because it has lost the image of sacred perfection that every mystical culture has known always. It is sick because it has chosen the path of futile domination over the Path of eternal love.’ Anonymous Sufi

There is an ancient promise to humanity that appears throughout spiritual literature — although perhaps you have to be ready to notice it: if you give your life back to me (the I Am or God) all your material needs will be provided.

It is the condition of Adam and Eve’s return to Paradise and it is the journey we are all on. First, the long desert road, all sweat and hard work, what in mythology is called the descent.

Then comes the turnabout — what the Sufi mystics call tauba — followed by the journey home which finally morphs into a simple realization of the Self and the revelation you never even left Paradise; that it was all a rather unpleasant dream.

Current events put this struggle, what some call The Hero’s Journey, in an interesting place. Only the sat guru will tell you the universe is inside you, that you birthed the whole thing.

Man-made religions on the other hand, along with egoic consciousness itself will tell you that you are the plaything of fate, born into a cruel world, perhaps again and again and again.

Working these things out has become the pre-occupation of my elder status; time is pressing after all and I have had enough glimpses of these truths to know ‘I’ will be in their pursuit until I am burnt or buried.

It’s the only game in town and there are simply too many exhortations along the same lines to ignore them.

‘I take the responsibility of sustenance for the one who follows the religion of their own true nature. For such a one all that is required is supplied automatically.’ Krishna

Christ put it another way of course but essentially said the same thing. Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven and all these things will be added unto you. It’s not a bad promise.

A certain programme, where I began my spiritual ascent 33 years ago this winter (which makes me as old as Christ but not quite as holy) tells those who have had a reasonable look at Hell, it is not a viable option:

‘We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.’

Those old guys had the smarts to let us all fill in our own blank.

Which was pretty important as I travelled the highways and byways of faith, religion and spirituality through Taoism, Buddhism, mystical Christianity, Hinduism, Sufism and finally Advaita Vedanta, where I eventually landed only to spend all of my time trying to get rid of that pesky ‘I’.

For those old-timers were right. Staring death down the barrel of disaster at 25, I had to admit I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and ought to quickly find a better way.

Luckily, consciousness did that for me. The same force that runs the universe, that breathes us, births us, dies us and even chooses when we go to the bathroom, is in charge and I had to accept its governance.

I have to be honest and admit to many years of disobedience, that surrender has come not in a flash unlike some lucky seekers, but as what is known as the educational variety.

It’s been a slow burn but I came to accept a few things — it’s God or mammon, I don’t try to straddle both; the ‘I’ thought and the world appear in consciousness together; when the world is quiescent the Self appears and when the Self appears the world disappears.

I have found that although I get it wrong hundreds of times a day, I don’t need to control anything. I was never and am not in charge.

It was also revealed that the mind or ‘I’ thought arises from the heart and is a pale reflection of the true Self but one we all follow into the world until we wake up to the understanding that objects in world and mind are not real.

We spend lifetimes following this false light and need guidance to get past the veils of the mind, through the tenth gate into higher consciousness, which is totally an inside job.

The discovery that one is not the doer is something of a shock but consciousness really does do everything, including seemingly evil things which act as spur or paddle upriver back to the source.

But although we all bang on about consciousness, it too will, when all are gathered up, recede back into and as the void. It too, might be labelled an aberration.

We are meant to get lost, for it seems the divine in its Absolute state is unknowing and therefore needs contrast, billions of tiny shards sent forth in order for life to be experienced and known.

As the planet shifts, there appears to be a harvesting, a separation of wheat from chaff with some going deeper into the separation that ‘I’ brings while others are homeward bound.

Attacks online seem to promulgate this division with the assumption that each individual is a concrete form rather than energy shifting and flowing, following what the Sufis call the hint in the heart.

Freedom is allowing that flow and recognizing we are not static. It is why Rumi compared his poetry to bread — get it while it’s hot, he said. We have not understood that in casting people and their beliefs in marble, in fixed position, we cannot meet in the heart, that place we share.

It’s why I rarely get involved with people who want to argue the toss on here, tempting as it is. If the ‘I’ is not in fact real, why waste time and needed energy?

The best discovery is that the divine is sublimely innocent and loving and, divested of mind and individuality, I Am That.

Postscript: I am pleased to note that my award-winning costume above depicts more angel than devil. Thank you Grandmother!

Copyright Simon Heathcote