The weekend is almost over.....

Today I saw the early signs of autumn. I was transfixed by leaves that were spotted with yellow. The beauty of this stopped me in my tracks as I was walking to the gym and for an instant I was those leaves. This was a strange experience. The only way I can describe it is that my consciousness seemed to expand so that the leaves and me were one. I always get stopped by beauty especially rainbows. Whenever I see a rainbow my entire mind goes blank, there is nothing there but the experience of the rainbow. The rainbow reflects the energetic chakras in the body. The colours of the chakras follow the same colours as the rainbow. I connect most powerfully with the rainbow because of its transient and impermanent nature. For me it is a real gift when I look out of my window at the right time and catch the rainbow, these are such precious and special moments for me when everything else goes out of my mind and there is a unity and a dissolving of the sense of separation.

This sense of merging is so difficult to explain using words. No words can do justice to experiences like these. In fact writing this seems in some way to diminish its power. I know that this is not the case and it is important to write it as part of a spiritual blog like this is, to give a flavour of the experience no matter how clumsy it may appear to be. An experience where all boundaries dissolve is like no other and once experienced can never be forgotten. It gives the proof that there is more to be known than what is known already. The lesson from it is not to crave for another experience like that. The next time I am walking along and see leaves like this, I may not have a repeat of this experience and that is OK too. I can stop and appreciate the beauty and perfection without my consciousness expanding and the sense of time and place disappearing.

On the other side of the coin things of life are becoming increasingly difficult and confusing. On Sunday morning I do one class of aerobics and one class of body pump and afterwards some of the class and the instructor meet in the cafe for breakfast. My conversation with the guys are clumsy and awkward. It is like I have a lot of sleeping people in front of me who act as men guards. Whenever there is a man who wants to speak to me to they all stand up in front of me and distort the communication, acting like shields so that I do not understand the meanings or significance of what is said. I don't pick up on veiled hints about going out, or invitations. These men guards are so effective in ensuring that any conversation which could be interpreted or viewed as flirtatious does not get through to me. I know rationally that this cannot be true but the number of times things go pear shaped around men makes me wonder if this self-sabotage mechanism is part of this path. It's like when you commit to this path that the choice is between the path with everything it involves or nothing. The path is without any distractions of any kind. This would explain the one-pointedness which is necessary and it seems to be that at a certain point on this path this one-pointedness is imposed.

I don't recall having these issues on the first cycle. Relationships did happen even if they were short! On this cycle it's all distorted and I don't seem to have any desire. Normally this doesn't bother me but occasionally I get a thought that I should try to be a bit more normal and do normal things like have a relationship and all my efforts get distorted. When this isn't frustrating it is intriguing. It is like my deepening of the spiritual comes at the price of the fading away of the material. Once the material with its desires is transcended, there there is no way back. It's like getting so far up a ladder and when you turn and look down, the rungs are gone so there is no way back.

I took a bus today and sat by the window. My attention was drawn to a wasp that was on the next window. It was making its way up the window. I was suddenly struck by how even a tiny wasp has an inner urge to move upwards with all the risks it involves. There is the risk of falling at any moment and having to begin again. In the efforts of that wasp I saw the spiritual path. Unlike the wasp that made it to the top without falling, the spiritual journey for a human is full of falls. I know that I have my fair share of falls but with every fall I pick myself up, dust myself off and start again.

I see the spiritual path as having two main phases. The first is transformation which is where the distinction between the me of the mind with its wants and desire and the I of the soul is seen. The former is made more weak and the latter made stronger. The second phase is that of transcendence where the lower is surrrendered to the higher. The transition period is the most difficult where there is a letting go of the lower but not yet contact with the higher. There is a sense of the higher and occasional glimpses of the higher but not yet an enduring stable consciousness anchored in the higher. I'm aware that this writing is esoteric and requires thinking about but I feel sure that there is a message there for the willing and patient reader.

Oh well...tomorrow is the start of another week. I have 2 weeks to promote my 1 September workshop. It is something I feel compelled to do. I don't have any great desire to do it, it just seems like something I have to do. As I write this I am reminded of the words 'you teach what it is you have to learn'. Perhaps I have come as far as I can with book learning on my own and now in the process of me giving what I have learned and experienced I will discover what it is I have to learn. It's easy when you're sitting at home with spiritual books which confirm one's own thoughts to get complacent. What will be more challenging is listening to others point and view and their spiritual journey without judging or wanting to interfere with the direction that the path is taking for them. This is tempting because I find that I can identify what is going on in people's lives. I'm not clairvoyant and I don't claim to be but there are gifts which develop as one perseveres with this path. These gifts are increased sensitivity and intuitiveness. They allow a certain kind of non-mind intelligence.