“And that’s what the Bible is: an astral story; a very groovy astral story, at one level anyway. It’s a good astral story, but illusions are illusions.”
I saw that printed on a poster for a show here in town several years ago, and it made me chuckle so I wrote it down. I like it because it unifies what I perceive as the wisdom of the ancient mystics with the revelatory cynicism of the Post-Modern realist. Following this metaphysical thread, I want to use this opportunity to contribute what could only be the most trite, prosaic, and insufferable Listserve topic available: my take on the Meaning of Life.
As of Right Now, I perceive reality as a high precision mirror, reflecting to each of us, literally and metaphorically, who we really are. Further, our emotional reactions to these perceived impressions, memories, and thoughts intend to facilitate our self-remembering and the expansion of our consciousness--to show ourselves to ourselves. Further still, we are indistinguishable from all in the mirror that we perceive, but more on that in a minute.
As fragments of a singular Consciousness, I believe that we are the means in which Source Energy creates itself and knows itself. This quest(ion?) isn't best addressed through the pursuit and attainment of material objects, physical attractiveness, superficial pleasures, or in some cases, even knowledge. More so, presence to the direct experience of what is happening now, whether in our relationships, desires, dramas, beliefs, or recurring events, can effectively lead us to discover what is necessary for our soul’s expansion.
As active participants in a dualistic and relativistic universe, no object, thought, or event has any fixed reality--even consensus reality can shift if brought about by the collective’s consciousness. Modern physicists have discovered activity within the atom clearly mimicking the activity within our minds, in that the intent of the individual determines the existence and behavior of particles. As to whether we can assume that macroscopic reality mirrors the subatomic, I turn to the timeless statement first written on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, "As above, so below.”
Perhaps less aligned with modes testable under our current scientific method, many attest to the relevance of dimensions beyond the three in which we are familiar. Three-dimensional reality possesses the basic qualities of time, space and matter, thereby creating the experiences of separation, death and mass/volume. It has been proposed that we enter the fourth dimension when we dream or when folks with the capacity, travel astrally. The fourth dimension and higher are said to allow a stronger perception of pure energy, unity, and soul, accompanied by the omnipresence of eternity, where past and future simultaneously co-exist in the eternal moment of Now. And the interplay of all dimensions is happening Now; as just like in the case of the aforementioned hypothetical mirror, there is no such thing as distinction.
I know much of this sounds like a bunch of uncitable, woo-woo, New Age mumbo-jumbo, which in a sense, it is. But I also think that we only have such nonsensical words to describe similarly esoteric concepts because we don’t yet have language available to us to describe them. As a mere fractal of this whole beautiful mess, I know that if theories such as these struck the fancy of an ordinary, introspective seeker like myself, there are those out there with inklings of the same! Regardless, please feel free to let me know how it has impacted you, if you feel so inclined!
Alexandra
[email protected]
Seattle, Washington, USA