I Am Spiritual But Not Religious
Fallen
I graduated The Hogwarts School of Wizardry at 12. I was a 4th year student when Harry Potter joined. I moved on to begin my training as a Jedi at 13 but of course the Jedi council said I was to old. They couldn't deny my perfect score on the placement exam, however. During my teenage years I enjoyed wisdom, spiritual knowledge, poetry, mythology. At an early age I realized that "mythology was the edge, the interface between what can be known and what can never be discovered because it is beyond all human research." Mythology is a series of stories that point to something transcendent that cannot be talked about directly.
I learned this language unknowingly, by admiring its beauty and the power it gave me to heal peoples hearts. When I healed the hearts of others, I became healed myself. You see (I like this quote) "human sickness is so severe that few can bare to look at it, but those who do will become well." That's how the "design" functions. It is what it is. I found myself in letting go, I found the center where peace abides.
Then, on Dec 23 1996 my grandmother who raised me passed away. I was there that day by her side. While the family argued, during a moment of quiet while the room was empty I held her hand and told her "Nan, go up to heaven and wait for me." She passed away and I felt a warm light fall through the window (you know the one from the movies?) and onto my shoulder. I did not believe in eternity. I did not believe in God. Belief I would come to find is not as important as some folks lead us to think.
"Being is more important than knowing."
Our character is our destiny. My soul made a choice with those words "go up to heaven and wait for me" and something in me shifted that day. For six months I was "moved" to read. Anything, everything. Psychology, philosophy, metaphysics. Sometimes 3 or more books a week. The human body I was given was giving birth to its soul. The walls fell away and I began to see the world with eyes I never knew I had.
On July 4th 1997 at 12:32 am I was coming home from a late movie (Men in Black) and I pondered the question Will Smith's character was faced with in the show. I pondered deeply in those days.
While I pondered a voice descended from above like the warmth of the spring sun settling on the top of my head and it asked "could you give up everything to be part of something greater?" Instantly my lower self retorted, taken off guard by such a direct approach, "what is the something greater?" The higher voice replied "it is something worth giving up everything for." It was not a question at all but rather an equation.
Math meant to unlock data stored in a living library. Suddenly, as though a gem had been dropped into my awareness, I became conscious that I was in communion with the great(er) I AM.
My eyes dipped below the horizon (as we do during recall) briefly while I searched inside myself, but the search didn't last long. I had already found the answers or I would have never been given the test. "Yes" I replied but not with words, it was a movement in my heart. An "unchaining" occurred, as though the "iron bands encircling my heart were broken." Then my family, my life, my school and work, all the things that I had been attached to in life all raced before my eyes and I let it go.
That was the moment, I died.
"What is your wish?" the voice asked, and I looked into the design with eyes open and read aloud what was to come, as if reading the answers from a cheat sheet of sorts, then presented the answer to myself, there was only one viable option... "I want to teach" was my reply.
But there was something else inside the(my) design, another desire...
What was left of my ego knew what I had done and it rared its head against the roof of my heart with a thunderous roar, "what have you done? You have killed us... You will never have a family now. I am undone." As the walls shook, for a moment, I thought the temple (of Solomon) would fall.
Mara had shown himself and this voice, his voice, was also my own.
And so I felt the panic that comes from dying and my heart raced. But then the higher me said, "be still, this to will pass." I began to cry because the warmth of the sound of the soul is to much sometimes to bare and I shifted my eyes upward above the horizon (as we do during the moment of creation or epiphany) and asked/pleaded/spoke "never leave me!"
At the very same second I asked the higher voice replied, (at the very same time, as though my voice and the higher one were echoes of each other tossed over some void into a mirror realm). The words, "I will never leave you (you will never leave me) were spoken internally. The two vibrations of thought met each other and ripples spread across a veil I never knew existed.
The veil of Isis had parted.
We became one, higher self and lower merged. On the bower of eternity I had met the Goddess. The earth shook for a moment like a great gong had been sounded, perhaps I heard the cosmic "Aum" so many speak about. The Great work had been performed. I had awoke.
For three days it were as if I was dead. I barely had the energy to feel anything emotionally, it seemed as though my brain had to re-boot. On the third day I emerged from my man-cave and the world had changed.
I had been resurrected from the cold dead cross of space and time and the context that every fact was held within had shifted. Cars, concrete roads, buildings, and constructs, both physical and imagined (Microsoft, Honda, spoon, romance, etc) no longer occupied or stood out in my perception. The trees and sky and people and all of life now reached out to me and I was blinded by the beauty of the natural world. It was all right inside me, always right inside me, all along. The world spoke to me in a living language of emotions and told me stories. I roamed in an ancient land where mountains walked and the spirits of trees whispered secrets, inviting me to sit beneath them and listen to their tales. What arose within, during this time, was a peace so profound that it made sitting perfectly still the most exciting experience of ones life.
I was born, again.
For 4 months I spoke with the trees, and sat on the porch of the earth and chatted with the sun as it set, feeling its light dance across my skin in waves. The souls of entire neighborhoods and cities would open their hearts to me as I passed on the freeway and tell me their tales. When I moved it were as though I willed the Universe into motion and I could feel the gravity of the sun and the moon (and all of creation) as they revolved around some central place (that sat inside my chest).
My story is not one with a happy ending however. My mythos is that of Faust, ill with the madness of magic. I am Prometheus, burned by the flame. My epitaph reads "Here lies Phaethon who in phoebes car fared, and though great he failed more greatly he dared!" Paradise was granted to me, for 4 months. Strange, I remember the moment of union but not its loss. Sometime in October I think. The winter wind laid waste to me at the same time of year it laid waste to the garden. "Its colder than before; the seasons took all they had come for. The winter dances here, seems so fitting don't you think? To dress the ground in white and gray." - Beloved, VNV Nation
It's such a lovely song, I'll post a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfc3zcnrWMQ
Four months of paradise, fifteen years of pain, and a lifetime of regret. But you know, I wouldn't change a thing. The moment the ride ended I took my place at the beginning of the line. The summit now high above me and concealed behind the clouds, once again I began the long accent.
The nature of the ego is like a great tanker ship, who even when the engines are cut can coast for miles and still risks running aground. And I did. At such a high altitude even small failings, that others who dwell in the worlds below think little of, can lead us crashing downward. Our senses are so heightened that strong emotion can be to much. The philosophy of Physics teaches that a small stone tossed fast enough can destroy worlds.
My soul's birth into the world was a spiritual miscarriage.
The God I would have been was cast to ash and thrown to the wind. The Gita tells of those who have fallen. George Lucas says that if ever we return from the dark side we will have a "full understanding of the force." But I have yet to find a myth of one who has given birth twice to his soul in one life. Redemption, according to the hero's story, the second time, comes at death (not unlike Darth Vadar).
Imagine reaching the summit and learning to experience life through the hearts of all other beings as if their lives were your own. Naturally, consistently, and at the same time staying centered inside yourself. No desire to pull at you. No fears to push you. Everyone you meet you feel their hearts desires, there pain. When you pass an animal in the park you don't see another being "out there" but rather you see yourself from behind its eyes as you approach, and thus know just what to do to prevent it from being afraid (this is called shape-shifting by the way). Imagine having eyes like this and then one day going blind. It takes many years to recover from such a loss, psychologically the ego (that was completely dissolved) has to reform and that takes about as long as it did the first time (12-15 years). I achieved the Grail but let it slip through my fingers. Like Perceval, my mistake would add years to my quest.
Yes, for years I felt the torment and pain of living without "his grace" so to speak. But you have to let it go, judgment is divine. Meaning, it is inlaid into the fabric of existence. It is not something that happens one day when we die in some kingdom to come. It happens with every choice we make, reality/God does not judge us we judge ourselves by the way we choose to see the world. The mind is a labyrinth, our ego the Minotaur and each time we fail the walls will shift and change, little goblins will go behind us and turn the stones we have marked to mislead us. In other words, recovering can be a lifetime endeavor.
Great suffering stokes the fires of the soul and allows therein to be forged experiences that we would otherwise be denied within the course of a single human lifetime. Like Charon I now lead others to a shore I have not the coin (virtue) to set foot on myself. But I will be no victim, I am the orchestrator of my own demise. I am the beginning and I am the end and within me is the germ seed of a new eternity and whatever will be, will be.
I am Phaethon, son of Helios and this is my story. I tell it "So that perhaps another forlorn and shipwrecked brother, seeing, may take heart again." Where ever I go, I carry my destination with me, I am "one who knows" but I am in exile. I now live in that frozen palace, that season-less realm where I will laugh but only half my laughter, and cry but only half my tears. I have no-thing to teach but that does not mean that you cannot learn from me. "The wise make justice their guide and learn from all. Perhaps in this way the door may be opened again whose key has been lost."
I graduated The Hogwarts School of Wizardry at 12. I was a 4th year student when Harry Potter joined. I moved on to begin my training as a Jedi at 13 but of course the Jedi council said I was to old. They couldn't deny my perfect score on the placement exam, however. During my teenage years I enjoyed wisdom, spiritual knowledge, poetry, mythology. At an early age I realized that "mythology was the edge, the interface between what can be known and what can never be discovered because it is beyond all human research." Mythology is a series of stories that point to something transcendent that cannot be talked about directly.
I learned this language unknowingly, by admiring its beauty and the power it gave me to heal peoples hearts. When I healed the hearts of others, I became healed myself. You see (I like this quote) "human sickness is so severe that few can bare to look at it, but those who do will become well." That's how the "design" functions. It is what it is. I found myself in letting go, I found the center where peace abides.
Then, on Dec 23 1996 my grandmother who raised me passed away. I was there that day by her side. While the family argued, during a moment of quiet while the room was empty I held her hand and told her "Nan, go up to heaven and wait for me." She passed away and I felt a warm light fall through the window (you know the one from the movies?) and onto my shoulder. I did not believe in eternity. I did not believe in God. Belief I would come to find is not as important as some folks lead us to think.
"Being is more important than knowing."
Our character is our destiny. My soul made a choice with those words "go up to heaven and wait for me" and something in me shifted that day. For six months I was "moved" to read. Anything, everything. Psychology, philosophy, metaphysics. Sometimes 3 or more books a week. The human body I was given was giving birth to its soul. The walls fell away and I began to see the world with eyes I never knew I had.
On July 4th 1997 at 12:32 am I was coming home from a late movie (Men in Black) and I pondered the question Will Smith's character was faced with in the show. I pondered deeply in those days.
While I pondered a voice descended from above like the warmth of the spring sun settling on the top of my head and it asked "could you give up everything to be part of something greater?" Instantly my lower self retorted, taken off guard by such a direct approach, "what is the something greater?" The higher voice replied "it is something worth giving up everything for." It was not a question at all but rather an equation.
Math meant to unlock data stored in a living library. Suddenly, as though a gem had been dropped into my awareness, I became conscious that I was in communion with the great(er) I AM.
My eyes dipped below the horizon (as we do during recall) briefly while I searched inside myself, but the search didn't last long. I had already found the answers or I would have never been given the test. "Yes" I replied but not with words, it was a movement in my heart. An "unchaining" occurred, as though the "iron bands encircling my heart were broken." Then my family, my life, my school and work, all the things that I had been attached to in life all raced before my eyes and I let it go.
That was the moment, I died.
"What is your wish?" the voice asked, and I looked into the design with eyes open and read aloud what was to come, as if reading the answers from a cheat sheet of sorts, then presented the answer to myself, there was only one viable option... "I want to teach" was my reply.
But there was something else inside the(my) design, another desire...
What was left of my ego knew what I had done and it rared its head against the roof of my heart with a thunderous roar, "what have you done? You have killed us... You will never have a family now. I am undone." As the walls shook, for a moment, I thought the temple (of Solomon) would fall.
Mara had shown himself and this voice, his voice, was also my own.
And so I felt the panic that comes from dying and my heart raced. But then the higher me said, "be still, this to will pass." I began to cry because the warmth of the sound of the soul is to much sometimes to bare and I shifted my eyes upward above the horizon (as we do during the moment of creation or epiphany) and asked/pleaded/spoke "never leave me!"
At the very same second I asked the higher voice replied, (at the very same time, as though my voice and the higher one were echoes of each other tossed over some void into a mirror realm). The words, "I will never leave you (you will never leave me) were spoken internally. The two vibrations of thought met each other and ripples spread across a veil I never knew existed.
The veil of Isis had parted.
We became one, higher self and lower merged. On the bower of eternity I had met the Goddess. The earth shook for a moment like a great gong had been sounded, perhaps I heard the cosmic "Aum" so many speak about. The Great work had been performed. I had awoke.
For three days it were as if I was dead. I barely had the energy to feel anything emotionally, it seemed as though my brain had to re-boot. On the third day I emerged from my man-cave and the world had changed.
I had been resurrected from the cold dead cross of space and time and the context that every fact was held within had shifted. Cars, concrete roads, buildings, and constructs, both physical and imagined (Microsoft, Honda, spoon, romance, etc) no longer occupied or stood out in my perception. The trees and sky and people and all of life now reached out to me and I was blinded by the beauty of the natural world. It was all right inside me, always right inside me, all along. The world spoke to me in a living language of emotions and told me stories. I roamed in an ancient land where mountains walked and the spirits of trees whispered secrets, inviting me to sit beneath them and listen to their tales. What arose within, during this time, was a peace so profound that it made sitting perfectly still the most exciting experience of ones life.
I was born, again.
For 4 months I spoke with the trees, and sat on the porch of the earth and chatted with the sun as it set, feeling its light dance across my skin in waves. The souls of entire neighborhoods and cities would open their hearts to me as I passed on the freeway and tell me their tales. When I moved it were as though I willed the Universe into motion and I could feel the gravity of the sun and the moon (and all of creation) as they revolved around some central place (that sat inside my chest).
My story is not one with a happy ending however. My mythos is that of Faust, ill with the madness of magic. I am Prometheus, burned by the flame. My epitaph reads "Here lies Phaethon who in phoebes car fared, and though great he failed more greatly he dared!" Paradise was granted to me, for 4 months. Strange, I remember the moment of union but not its loss. Sometime in October I think. The winter wind laid waste to me at the same time of year it laid waste to the garden. "Its colder than before; the seasons took all they had come for. The winter dances here, seems so fitting don't you think? To dress the ground in white and gray." - Beloved, VNV Nation
It's such a lovely song, I'll post a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfc3zcnrWMQ
Four months of paradise, fifteen years of pain, and a lifetime of regret. But you know, I wouldn't change a thing. The moment the ride ended I took my place at the beginning of the line. The summit now high above me and concealed behind the clouds, once again I began the long accent.
The nature of the ego is like a great tanker ship, who even when the engines are cut can coast for miles and still risks running aground. And I did. At such a high altitude even small failings, that others who dwell in the worlds below think little of, can lead us crashing downward. Our senses are so heightened that strong emotion can be to much. The philosophy of Physics teaches that a small stone tossed fast enough can destroy worlds.
My soul's birth into the world was a spiritual miscarriage.
The God I would have been was cast to ash and thrown to the wind. The Gita tells of those who have fallen. George Lucas says that if ever we return from the dark side we will have a "full understanding of the force." But I have yet to find a myth of one who has given birth twice to his soul in one life. Redemption, according to the hero's story, the second time, comes at death (not unlike Darth Vadar).
Imagine reaching the summit and learning to experience life through the hearts of all other beings as if their lives were your own. Naturally, consistently, and at the same time staying centered inside yourself. No desire to pull at you. No fears to push you. Everyone you meet you feel their hearts desires, there pain. When you pass an animal in the park you don't see another being "out there" but rather you see yourself from behind its eyes as you approach, and thus know just what to do to prevent it from being afraid (this is called shape-shifting by the way). Imagine having eyes like this and then one day going blind. It takes many years to recover from such a loss, psychologically the ego (that was completely dissolved) has to reform and that takes about as long as it did the first time (12-15 years). I achieved the Grail but let it slip through my fingers. Like Perceval, my mistake would add years to my quest.
Yes, for years I felt the torment and pain of living without "his grace" so to speak. But you have to let it go, judgment is divine. Meaning, it is inlaid into the fabric of existence. It is not something that happens one day when we die in some kingdom to come. It happens with every choice we make, reality/God does not judge us we judge ourselves by the way we choose to see the world. The mind is a labyrinth, our ego the Minotaur and each time we fail the walls will shift and change, little goblins will go behind us and turn the stones we have marked to mislead us. In other words, recovering can be a lifetime endeavor.
Great suffering stokes the fires of the soul and allows therein to be forged experiences that we would otherwise be denied within the course of a single human lifetime. Like Charon I now lead others to a shore I have not the coin (virtue) to set foot on myself. But I will be no victim, I am the orchestrator of my own demise. I am the beginning and I am the end and within me is the germ seed of a new eternity and whatever will be, will be.
I am Phaethon, son of Helios and this is my story. I tell it "So that perhaps another forlorn and shipwrecked brother, seeing, may take heart again." Where ever I go, I carry my destination with me, I am "one who knows" but I am in exile. I now live in that frozen palace, that season-less realm where I will laugh but only half my laughter, and cry but only half my tears. I have no-thing to teach but that does not mean that you cannot learn from me. "The wise make justice their guide and learn from all. Perhaps in this way the door may be opened again whose key has been lost."
