Not all events in your life are illuminated or darkened. Not every experience is a sign of self.
There is a third point of self awareness. In cabalism, it’s referred to as the middle pillar, but this middle pillar is the true self.
The first shell of the true self is an expansive feeling, as of being a living sky. It is symbolically linked to the moon, and it’s a huge barrier.
How so? We get there and stop, because people get caught up in it? They get mystified. They come to the realization that the darkness is everything, or the light is everything, and feel they need no more answers. It’s usually at this level that many of the mystical schools stop, because at this point they feel they have achieved unity. They have achieved oblivion.
Below the sphere of the moon is the sphere of the kingdom. The sphere of the flesh. The idea of what you are supposed to do, and most people stay right here. Occasionally touching on the two extremes of the kingdom which is consensus reality, but never really seeking the way to self. Always a creature of their environment.
Above the sphere of the moon, beyond the mystic, is the sphere of Venus. All spheres reflect themselves in the kingdom. It’s written in your flesh and blood whether you like it or not. But the sphere of Venus is the sphere of the passions. This is where the mystics say do not go, and indeed it has been the destruction of many people. This is deeper in your being than the mystic. If I may, I can best describe it with adult subject matter.
It’s best compared to intense lust followed by overwhelming orgasm. It’s not confined to that of course, but this sphere of reality frightens many people or mires them in morbid fascination, even obsession. Everyone who touches the sphere of Venus, knowingly or not, remarks that they “Never felt so alive!” This is manifest in many ways, and has the same two sides; dream and nightmare, sado-masochism and rapturous exaltation. Most of which people never achieve, because they have themselves decreed their being to have its only base in the kingdom, in the consensus. People have the strangest sexual fantasies, and keep them all as their dirty little secret not realizing that all that they encounter in the sphere of Venus has its roots in everyone else and even from before human existence. This level of awareness goes deeper than even the human collective consciousness.
Self awareness is returning to the middle way. Continuing to recognize despite the vastness of it all that you are still present and able to choose. If you choose nothing from the sphere of Venus, you do choose death which confines you to the kingdom, the consensus. Which has for its mirror image the pit, gehenna, the grave, a.k.a. hell. The Vikings embraced the sphere of Venus, but got stuck there. There is a way beyond.
Then there is the sphere of acceptance. The sphere of the sun. It’s the level of pure principle where everything can be experienced for exactly what it is, and it is for the most part inconceivable to normal people. It involves a level of awareness that can form observations of patterns that exist on such a broad level that the person seems to have godlike awareness. They are surprised that as a side effect they tend to seem very detached. They can’t take much of anything as absolute, as mattering as much as those of the kingdom believe it does. At this level, one can begin to exert a seemingly miraculous degree of will. But you can’t get here but through the passions. Some say the passion of the Christ, but the passion of the Christ is your passion. All passion is your passion. Yours to choose from. All knowledge is also yours to choose from, but you cannot make it. You cannot create. You reveal. Thus the Book of Revelation and all the worlds prophecies and prophetic talents, for that matter. People often get very lost here. This is the level of the hermit Saint who just can’t deal with regular reality anymore, but can impart such amazing wisdom that they are seen as akin to God itself.
Beyond this level is the way of the bodhisattva (for lack of a better term). The level of kether in cabalism, the inner sanctum. Here is where you have self awareness, and you can act on true will. Not as a mouth of prophecy, not as a creature of passion, not as a mystical vessel, and not as flesh and blood.
The self is reflected on all these planes, in light or darkness, and on each level you can choose. In any aspect of life, you can choose. Your choices have more power when you see the light, so to speak. Then you feel enlightened when it comes naturally to you.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~