It's coming to an end..... this rollercoaster year...

And what a year it has been. I have done more in this year than I have done in the preceeding 3o years. How has this been possible? It has happened because of a process of gently and at times not so gently unconcealing all of the conditioning that I put myself as a human being from a young age. Like peeling off the layers of an onion to reveal the core essence from which I came and to which I will return. I have gone through a kind of purification process where everything that is 'not me' and hence not authentic has to be exposed in order to move to the next level. It is a process similar to buring wood, an analogy I have often used. When wood is first burned you don't get the brilliant red, all you get for a while is the acrid smoke. This corresponds to the impurities in the wood that have to be got rid off before the brilliance of the wood can emerge vibrant and alive. It is the same for us as human beings we have to firstly recognise what is our smoke and then transform it.

Transformation is simply another word for enlightenment where the old is transformed to reveal the new. When I say new I don't mean new as in better or different I mean new in terms of the original essence of who we are before we learned language and had conversations with ourselves where we decided the kind of person we had to be to survive in life. The way to enlightenment is take
seriously the study of ontology which is the study of what it means to be a human being and to use yourself as the case study. I know that I am not enlightened but without arrogance I believe that I am on the path that will lead to it. In 1988 when I first heard the Buddhist concept of the Bodhissatva as one who understands the nature of suffering and can relieve others of their suffering I was gripped by an intense desire to be that. I had no idea how it was going to happen. When I look back I see that the intense desire I experienced then was my declaration. It came from nothing because I had no past knowledge and was only hearing the concept for the first time so there was no history and no past. When we are young and we make a declaration then the fact that there is no past makes that declaration very powerful and from the moment it is made it starts to give us a kind of life that is in tune with that declaration.

Making the declaration I did so late in life meant that there was a lot of stuff that had to be cleaned out before the declaration could manifest itself in my life. I see the process so clearly now. And yet I must never lose sight of that it is the process as it is occuring for me, it is not the process that is the Truth. If it was the truth then all spiritually advanced people would go through the same thing and it is obvious that they don't. The great Masters like Sri Aurobindo and Maharishi didn't write endless tomes on the game of being human that I have done. They seemed to reside permanently in what I call the third stage of spiritual enlightenment which is residing in 'THE ONE' where all is bliss and peace. So clearly the journey I am on and the fire I am going through is specific to me. This blog is just an example of one way to arrive at the goal at which the human consciousness is yearning for. For me it is involving the stripping away of everything that I thought was 'me' to reveal that which is 'not me'. Some of this has been easy and obvious and some of it as this blog has revealed has been painful and hidden. But it's all in the nature of how we have been put together as human beings. The challenge for us if we are to move to the next level is to take on the game of exposing the game called human being but this takes courage and a willingness to be ruthlessly and insightfully honest with ourselves which is a challenge.