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Separation Of Spirit & Body
November 17, 2008 by Ray Baskerville · 1 Comment
In its true nature, the body is the manifest aspect of spirit*, and capable of existing in far less density and limitation than we experience it. The body is only limited by what it is ‘holding’. The body holds the subconscious, which holds all the places of karmic separation. This fractured nature of the soul** creates the internally fractured state of egoic personality.
The body then is holding these karmic experiences of separation, including those which have the lowest and slowest vibrational frequencies, our deepest pains and fears. As a result the body’s own frequency is slowed to their level – hence the body’s density and limitation. Because the body holds these places of limitation, it is mistakenly seen as the cause of the limitations rather than simply what is holding them. Spirit is at the other end of the polarity, holding the highest and fastest frequencies where we can experience expansive states of consciousness.
Whole spiritual traditions, philosophies and practices are based on this illusory separation and its judgments of the body/world. We’ve seen the development of traditions where the body is to be disciplined, overcome by penance, controlled, transcended. Also monastic traditions where spiritual pursuit is separate from the world, separate from worldliness and all it’s ‘temptation’. This separation between spirit and body is so old that no written record exists of a time when it was not so. Separation between spirit and body – and how that has become manifest and interpreted through our entire culture – is the fundamental cause of why things have perpetuated to their current level of separation and disconnection. It is increasingly apparent that as human culture has become more and more materialistic we have become increasingly disconnected from the consequence is of how we do things. We have taken this so far now that we have begun to imperil life on the planet as we know it.
In the religious traditions that dominate our belief systems, we find this separation between the spiritual and the worldly, sacred and profane. There is judgment/denial of both the profane and of the body, which are viewed as illusory, unspiritual, even unclean. The body/world are seen as the means of our downfall and the cause of separation, needing to be transcended to attain the true nature, which is pure spirit. The other polarity is the profane/materia, which is viewed as the only dimension of our existence and spirit is denied.
In this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the body, it became seen as something that had to be overcome to attain liberation and freedom of spirit. Or seen as a transient existence in a random universe to be exploited for sensual pleasure. As a result of this separation, we have become disconnected from both body and spirit from each side of the polarity – and consequently from the planet that supports us.
Because many of the spiritual traditions reside inside this equation, they do not have the complete answers – they hold one polarity and reflect the separation. That is not to say there is not immense value in them and a huge body of knowledge from which we can draw, but we need to be clear as to what they can offer us and the areas where they are limited. In the past this transcendent model has been the primary spiritual evolutionary model. Liberation has been believed to be a progression of ascendance to higher planes of consciousness with the body/world being left behind. Using the chakra system, we can see this as ignoring what is held in the lower three chakras and only focusing on developing the upper four. Spiritual systems of strictly disciplined and dictated ways of life developed to facilitate spiritual development in the model of these misunderstandings. In the potpourri of today’s spiritual materialism there are innumerable distortions and interwievings of pieces from either side of the polarity. The great danger today is the DIY spirituality that is a pick and mix of beliefs that suits us at the time.
*(true nature – eternal, timeless immutable)
**(soul as the vehicle of spirit that carries karmas from life to life)
Life Is A Spiritual Process
October 20, 2008 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
What is the meaning of life?
Humanity has struggled with this question across the ages. This question has birthed religions and philosophies in every race on earth. Libraries are full of the writings arising from this question. When realized, not intellectually, but directly, the answer beneath all the complexity is simply this.
In the great mystery of life only one thing is going on – the evolution and expansion of consciousness.
The evolution and expansion of consciousness is the very nature, the very essence of what is occurring in life, in manifest existence, regardless of apparent appearance, form and action. Expansion is movement, opening; their absence is resistance to, and denial of, life.The understanding of this one simple and all pervasive truth opens the perspective of life to a view of infinite proportions.
Atomic physics has provided the confirmation of the mystics knowing, that all forms in creation are essentially energy. The same basic sub-atomic energies appear, again and again, in slightly varying combinations, as the manifest universes of form. Quantum physics shows us that all energy is interconnected, and there is increasing evidence that this connection is a unified ‘field’.
As the New Physics has continued to explore deeper and deeper into the nature of energy it reveals the ever smaller and subtler components of what we perceive as solid matter, to exist as matter, because it is perceived as matter. As those in the fields of science continue to explore the nature of our universe the time is coming when our hard sciences will be advanced enough to reveal the deeper truth that all energy is the manifestation of consciousness. Form is the manifestation of a specific component combination of energies in consciousness.
There is only consciousness, vast and undivided. The divisions are merely our perception, or the limitations of our perception, and it is this perception of separation that is ‘the great illusion’. The process of liberation is the healing of what in us perpetuates and maintains our illusion of separation.
A Thriving Spirit
October 9, 2008 by Ray Baskerville · 1 Comment
In my opinion thriving cannot be separated from personal development, growth and our spiritual evolution. Once we are in our mid to late teens we don’t really grow physically any more (upwards at least!). So to thrive our growth must be within as more of our desires and needs become aligned with our evolutionary process.
You may say, what about thriving materially, financially? That is the yardstick our culture holds up, true. But doesn’t thriving indicate health, vitality and vigour as well as peace and happiness? So there have to be other elements for the presence of true thriving. Indeed truthfully for each of us, what the combination of elements will look like will be different.
A common belief is that in some way health in the dimensions of body, mind, emotion and spirit are common to all of us when we are thriving. And the artful blend of these elements creates thriving when harmonious. I prefer harmonious to balanced because balance seems precarious and harmony seems fluid. For example we can become obsessive in one area, taking care of
our body for example and lose harmony in our mental and emotional lives as we anxiously think about what we are eating, breathing, drinking being ok for us and so on. So stress on any level seems counter to thriving.
Thriving also seems to indicate that we are taking care of ourselves; we have what we need to nurture and develop. We cannot grow without food and nourishment in all the ways we need it. Just as a growing plant takes up more room as it grows, so we too need to be expanding beyond the outgrown limitations of our past.
It is easy to follow such ways of thinking when pursuing them as a lifestyle, when physical health is at least a possibility, when the possibility of change and expansion is entertained. A year ago my article might have ended around here, or continued in the same vein. I have in the last year however had the privilege of working extensively with someone at the end of their life, as their body and mind withered. Inside them, beyond the scope of physical detection this person was thriving in a way they hadn’t chosen or believed possible in life. The spirit, in large part through the love and commitment of a daughter awakened to inner growth with a passion. I served in my capacity as a healer to facilitate and keep opening this new vista of possibilities in spiritual growth. In the same way I have found working with children, things went very quickly because there was little or no egoic resistance. As the months passed this courageous spirit hung on to the woman’s body as the body gave access to the karma we were clearing. So in complete contradiction to the first three paragraphs, here was a woman growing weaker and more decrepit as the months passed, both physically and mentally, yet flourishing in probably the most important ways beyond the perception of normal sight.
So now I can conclude this article in the remembrance that we are all so easily fooled by appearance and form. We build beliefs and philosophies for life on this mirage foundation in the forgetting of the true power that moves within all life, whose only purpose is spiritual evolving.
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