Into the Mist

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”…..Joseph Campbell

A core of my belief system is that no one I go to work with, visit with, or share this writing with is actually experiencing the same world/reality that I am. It’s easy enough to accept that there is a wide distinction in the practical reality of people with significantly different resources, experiences, or opportunities. From a pyschological perspective one could make a case that people in agreement about any subject are more accurately in a “practical agreement”—not some supreme, unqualified concordance that we sometimes imagine.  

But what about the people that I share the closest connections with in this life? My wife? My dearest friends? From my point of view, even these dear intimates do not truly share the exact perceptual space from which my experience originates. We alone see from our particular point of observation.—Of course others’ existence in their own realities are vital in the creation  of our unique experience. 

This group of people that I love and percieve myself interacting with, as a whole, has a finely defined balance of (spiritual/energetic) agreements including that there is not a lone reality (until we rejoin the infinite energy source). It so happens that we have enough mutual connection points for a illusory experience of a common reality. We are interdependent of—co-creating—each other,  but we do not exist in the same place—in fact, we do not exist in any space, but that is for another “what is not time.” 

When focused on our human experience, we are a completely unique in our perception, therefore, alone in our reality. You experience through the definition of your reality but everyone else does not experience your perception—therefore, it exists only in concept for them. As you believe, it is so….but only for you.

One reason this idea of an isolated reality does not trouble me is that in fact (for me, but not someone whose soul chooses otherwise) realities are illusion, the momentary perception of choice. The only real existence is the intelligent energy field that people give infinite characteristics (wants, rules, names, etc). That is all that is out there and we are points of perception for that ultimate intelligence. In truth you and I, and all you hold dear are not separate; we are the One Mind, the Absolute.

Human consciousness is a filtration system, a segmentation of the immeasurable signals in the Collective Consciousness. This is vital for the experience that we know. Just as one must block some light signals to perceive something other than white light, to experience the rainbow we need a filtration system. Our experience of reality is the result of that filtration system for the Absolute.

This is the best example I know to explain the concept of each of us being a channel of perception for the Absolute: Close one eye only. Open it while closing the other.

Each eye sees a slightly different variation on the scene before it, yet the brain is able to blend two different signals into a collective view that gives greater depth perception and detail. So the greater complexity of the Infinite Intelligence is able to simultaneously perceive the “eye” of billions of individuals (and other lifeforms) in every moment through all time and realities.

We each continually perceive exclusive aspects of the collective reality—different personal realities. For the most part, when we believe we are sharing a reality—a world—we are actually experiencing overlaps of similarity in our unique realities. It is only the vagueness of language and our inability to accurately communicate (consciously) that provides the illusion that we are in complete agreement, seeing the same things before us.   

You may ask if I do not feel lonely with holding such a perspective. No, I do not. For I know that segmentation is only an illusion to experience the joy of an otherwise impossible phenomena, the rainbow—a radiant expression of filtered energy that is human life. Besides you and I are ultimately aspects of the Absolute—One—and there is no space or time vast enough to separate us.

copyright 2008 CG Walters

C.G. Walters primarily writes fiction that focuses on the mystical, metaphysical, and mythical insight that we all possess. His current novel, Sacred Vow is a metaphysical love story, a tale of soul mates—twin flames—a journey toward our one true love…in its infinite expressions…bringing together two individuals from disparate realities—but one spirit—to heal the rift in the Collective Consciousness.

Receive new editions of Into the Mist through a reader  http://feeds.feedburner.com/IntoTheMist

Get the full length FREE PDF of Sacred Vow by going to www.cgwalters.com/spirit_story.htm and clicking on the link in the page to download the eBook. This will allow you to save the book to your disk.
Purchase a signed paperback copy from http://sacredvow.dragonsbeard.com/ – or buy from your favorite brick and mortar, or online store (Amazon.com ).

This copyrighted article may be freely reprinted as long as the entire article and complete by line is included.

It is not the teacher before you that manifests what you perceive as an awakening, but the awakening within you that manifests what you perceive as a teacher. *
 
For most of my years, I sought my idea of a traditional spiritual teacher to provide me with truth, teach me knowledge. I sought that rarefied being, flawless and wise who could give to me the connection to the Absolute that I imagined I was living uncomfortably without. In the end, much to my dismay, I repeatedly found my appointees inadequate. Over and over I concluded that I had not found the right person, but I have come to realize that it was the “right perception” I was lacking.
 
Not that my efforts were in vain—I am thankful for them. Obsessively staring into a mirror, trying to focus on the horizon, can induce some pretty profound results. The horizon seen turns out not to be “out there.”
 
“The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”  William Blake
 
I found that it was my criterion for a teacher that was flawed, not any of the individuals that I tried to project the title onto. My efforts eventually brought me to the realization that in subtle mysteries like wisdom and spirit—the student/teacher relationship is not linear or well-defined, but more amorphous in nature. One moment I was comfortable in the compliant role I imaged to be a student and then I was scared to death to realize that the roles had reversed…and then back to being ‘student’, and then reversed again.
 
In truth, we all teacher and student—involved in a multi-faceted process, perfectly balanced as every one of us being teacher to and student of every other, simultaneously. To consider oneself as more one aspect of the process than the other is an illusion, and limits our collective experience.
 
Many of my best teachers—those who have given me lessons that have remained as significant tenets of my belief system—are people I no longer allow to have an active part in my life. There are two distinct reasons for this:
1.     One does not have to be wise to instill wisdom, virtuous to promote virtue.
2.     Once you complete the 1st grade, you do not continue to go back to that teacher’s classroom. There is undoubtedly more the teacher could teach you, but it is a matter of diminishing return—the final lesson of the student is to move on. Not to do so is to fail the teaching.
 
I do not discount those remarkable individuals that have obtained conscious levels of awareness of their connection to the Absolute that I do not consistently maintain at this time. They do indeed exist, I can feel the uniqueness of them whenever I encounter such a person—even those who do not, themselves, know of the power of their connection.
 
Even with such a person universally acknowledged as a teacher, my perspective is that instruction is offered most often because it is what ’students’ expect/demand. It is like getting someone about to panic to focus on your moving finger—a hypnotic induction to calm, allowing the student to return to a natural state of their own knowledge/wisdom.
 
It is not the mystic’s perspective that changes our reality, but experiencing their reality that changes our perspective.*
 
The real change comes about within us from spending time in the higher vibrational field of a true teacher…either directly in their presence or indirectly in the rhythm of their teaching (as a mantra may introduce peacefulness in meditation). They have seen the ‘face’ of the Absolute, they remember it, and the memory of that experience radiates from them—within or without word. One way or another, a true teacher holds open a sacred, safe place for the student to explore and lay claim to their own truth. A teacher reawakens one to the resonance of the Absolute so that the student can–on their own–find their way home to the Absolute, to their true Self.     
 
A teacher, or at least a skilled teacher, is someone with perceptive enough to comprehend the information most needed by the student, intelligent enough to purposely construct the means of the instruction, adept enough to elicit the learning without being intrusive on the student’s experience, and wise enough to realize he or she was the led in the process by the spirit of student.*
 
A teacher should not give so much of self or knowledge, but give to the student themself.*
 
A true teacher does not impart wisdom or learning, but draws forth the student’s own wisdom. The act of who is drawing forth—and not any defined role—shows us who is teacher and who is student at that moment.*
 
The order of need is no respecter of hierarchy.One may follow a path without a teacher, but to be a teacher, One needs a student.*

 Spiritual teaching is not something that you can choose, but rather something that chooses you.
 
copyright 2008 CG Walters
 
* Strike a Chord of Silence—CGW (a 20+ year old, unfinished manuscript still teaching me) 

C.G. Walters primarily writes fiction that focuses on the mystical, metaphysical, and mythical insight that we all possess. His current novel, Sacred Vow is first and foremost a metaphysical love story, a tale of soul mates—twin flames—a journey toward our one true love…in its infinite expressions…bringing together two individuals from disparate realities—but one spirit—to heal the rift in the Collective Consciousness. 

Receive new editions of Into the Mist through a reader  http://feeds.feedburner.com/IntoTheMist  

Get the full length FREE PDF of Sacred Vow by going to www.cgwalters.com/spirit_story.htm and clicking on the link in the page to download the eBook. This will allow you to save the book to your disk. Purchase a signed paperback copy from http://sacredvow.dragonsbeard.com/ – or buy from your favorite brick and mortar, or online store (Amazon.com ).  

This copyrighted article may be freely reprinted as long as the entire article and complete by line is included. 

This excerpted article is from the novel, Sacred Vow (Dragon’s Beard Publishing, ISBN: 978-0-9774271-4-7, paperback, Fiction: Visionary/Metaphysical). There is a rift in the Collective Consciousness because people are not bonding one to another. The Sisterhood of Crones (a description of the order, not their name–as their name is without word) is about to perform a ritual to receive a message from the Collective Consciousness….

Prologue

Choice of the ritual location was dictated by nature just days before. Hundreds of people had roamed hill and field, dowsing for the place possessing the energy necessary for their purpose. The intended process could not take place on one of their customary ceremonial sites, but only the spot identified as radiating the strongest flow of earth energy at the anticipated time of the rite.        Three ley lines, channels of the land’s energy, crossed a wooded hillside in a small patch of flat ground. Two ancient hardwood trees, one standing on either side of the rear of the opening, leaned forward before the rocky slope that bordered the backside of the level area. Their leaves filtered what little light could make its way from above.        Between the trees, at the base of the slope, there was a large greenish-gray stone. Its jagged face rose some twenty feet in the air. Three small streams, swollen with recent rains, flowed down the slope, marking the perimeter of the flat plot of land in front of the stone, before converging and flowing downward over a small waterfall. The stream-encircled ground was carpeted with a thick, soft moss.        Once the location had been identified and verified, the holy women who would use that place and its energy consecrated it. On the appointed evening, shortly after midnight, a ceremonial procession of The Nine—which consisted of the Crone Mother, leader of their mystic order, and eight more of the wisest women of their society—Katerina, understudy to the Crone Mother, and their considerable entourage made their way to the location. For several hours, from their village to the south, those who remained behind could see the winding line of torches, and hear the repetitive chants as the group made their way to the anointed site.        Once the group arrived, still in the dark of the night, attendants placed torches around the perimeter of the chosen site. Then they spread seating mats in a large circle on the ground for those who would perform the ritual, with the Crone Mother’s back to the large boulder at the head of the flat ground. Katerina took her position, in the center of the circle, facing the Crone Mother. Once the members of the ceremony were seated, their retinue withdrew some distance from the site, in order not to disrupt the proceedings.

This copyrighted article may be freely reprinted as long as it is reprinted in its entirety, along with the by-line.