It's been such a struggle today....

Today my mind has been very turbulent and so critical about everything I have done. Frustration is such a common part of this path. Frustration keeps the mind in a high state of tension. My mind at the moment has created this fantasy about a guy who I meet every Sunday. When I don't see him I'm missing him and fantasing what I will say when we meet again. Then we meet and nothing goes the way I planned. I want to say one thing and something else comes out of my mouth, and I think 'shit, where did that come from' and it throws me into such confusion. I have written before about the men guards that are sleeping in front of me until this guy comes on the scene and then they overwork themselves distorting the communication so the whole thing is fraught. Then I have to take myself out of the situation and am then lonely and then the fantasy kicks in again only stronger. This is wearing me out.

I am so looking forward to working for this organisation because the focus won't be on me, it will be on others. I think if I had a strong enough desire I wouldn't be in this position. That is the confusing thing is that I don't seem to have any desire so there's no fire in the communication, no flirting, nothing when I am in the company of this guy. Then when I'm on my own. I keep thinking and fantasising. Sometimes I feel like I am going mad. I think I am a late developer because I didn't know what it was to fancy someone until I was in my mid-30's. I used to hear friends saying 'I fancy x' and I used to think 'what is fancy'. Then someone came along who was a lot younger than me and then I was in no doubt what it meant to fancy someone, I didn't know what had hit me. When it ended I was devastated and since then haven't experienced the same attraction for anyone else.

What I think I am experiencing is the result of stunted emotional development due to the overemphasis on the spiritual which I took on consciously when I was 11. I'm lucky that the other lines of development have not been stunted. If the physical line was stunted I would be a dwarf - which I'm not, I'm not that tall but am in line with normal physical development. My social development has also been OK, my intellectual development - debatable because of an uncorrected lazy right eye which I am convinced has resulted in my inability to do mathematics and other left brain tasks. It seems to be the emotional line of development which has been the slowest and most effected. Which as I write this I have seen for the first time the link - that spiritual and emotional cannot occupy the same space. The spiritual is all about transcending the emotional. It is not about transcending feelings. Feelings and emotions are different for me. The spiritual uses feelings it doesn't transcend them.

Feelings have a low charge and are what I call slow in that one can see them when they arise. They are what are responsible for our growth and when allowed to be expressed enhance spiritual development. What often happens though is that feelings are not allowed to be expressed. When this happens the feeling gets a strong energetic charge which changes it to an emotion. Anger is a natural feeling, it is there for growth. When it is not allowed natural expression it becomes suppressed and charged and then is expressed as the emotion of rage. Love is a natural feeling. If it is not allowed free expression, it becomes energetically charged and becomes possession or jealousy. These are what I call fast emotions. Fast in the sense that they explode without the person being aware of them until after the event. I often hear 'I don't know what happened to me, I just got so angry'. This is the natural anger which has been suppressed and pent up so that when it is expressed, it is so fast that while it is happening it is outside the persons awareness.

Yesterday I was thinking about the whole area of desire. I was amazed to come across a paragraph in The Quality of the Soul book about desire. It said that desire was of the personality. The urge to serve is of the soul. I quote from page 138 'Service is a life demonstration. It is the outstanding characteristic of the soul, just as desire is the outstanding characteristic of the lower nature' Is this what is happening to me? I have no desire in terms of wants and needs for myself but I have such a strong urge to serve. This is meant to be the path - the transcendence of the personality to the soul. Then the transcendence of the soul to the spirit. With this last stage comes the end of duality.

Before one begins the spiritual path it is the material world which dominates. The ego works to satisfy all the needs and wants of the personality. But this satisfying is only temporary. No sooner has the personality got one thing it wants, it then wants another. This desire comes about as a result of the senses. We see something nice, then we want it. At some point there will come a realization that this endless craving and wanting does not bring contentment. This is the first shift on the spiritual path. Then instead of the ego indulging the personality it works to discipline it. It does this by allowing the desire to be experienced without satisfying it. After some time doing this the personality will be sufficiently controlled by the ego that the soul can then touch the ego.

Once the ego experiences the touch of the soul it works to serve the soul. This is the point where insight and intuition which is the language of the soul begins to make its presence felt. The first initation which is done energetically is where the consciousness shifts its attention from the ego personality to the soul. After this first initiation there is a definite sense of a path being walked. When the ego merges into the soul one becomes the path. I can use yoga as an example. At the beginning of the path one chooses a form of yoga whether this is Hatha, Raja, Tantra and they appear to be different. After a time they become one. All yoga is aimed at the one thing which is the union of body and mind. What I understand that to mean is the union of the three elements of the personality, the physical (body), emotional (emotions) and mental(thoughts, ideas). When these are in harmony there is more energy available to contact the soul. While the various elements of the personality are in tension and conflict no contact of the soul is possible or if there is, it is fleeting, a glimpse. Soul contact can only be made when the personality is calm, controlled and disciplined. At this point the glimpse becomes stable and enduring.

So today has been a struggle. I have learned though not to resist this but to accept that this is what is there. It's not right or wrong, it is just what is there. Why it's like this today and it wasn't yesterday is of no importance. The spiritual path is totally concerned with surrender, at every moment to surrender what one wants to what IS. This is not an easy thing to do. And I am no saint.....