Theos-Talk Archives (November 1995 Message tl00026)

Jerry S:

[I'm still getting to a reply to Coherence but wanted to add
a brief comment to something you've written.]

>"living the life" is a lot more than a "perceived
>difficulty" - it is hard as hell. Few can do it effectively.
>But I agree that we should all try.

The experience of "hard as hell" to living the light is when
the higher inspiration has left us for a moment and we're
carrying on in the personality feeling a sense of pain from
our effort. But when we reconnect with our direct perception
of life we return to the sense of eternal delight and we
are living a life out of the pure love joy and inexpressible
creativity it brings. The personality may still have a sense
of pain but that is completely overshadowed by a higher
feeling or perception. The technique here is to dwell in the
highest within and the other will naturally readjust itself.
That readjustment may have "growth pains" but *there is no
suffering*. The experience of suffering arises in the
perception of a separate self and when we transcend it
and dwell in buddhi-manas it ceases to exist.

>But you don't just tell a new member to go live the life.
>Go be a good girl scout and help old people cross streets
>and then in your next life continue this way and seven lifetimes
>on down the road you will be a Chela and have wisdom and etc.
>This kind of stuff doesn't work on most people.

Here we're dealing with the two paths: the gradual path and
the sudden path. From one standpoint we can attain enlightenment
immediately if only we'd wake up to the fact of our ever-present
divine nature. From another standpoint we exist as a creature in
the world and are subject to time. We must in this standpoint
go through a process of growth over time and gradually come to
flower spiritually.

I'd say that both paths are true but describe the experience
of the process from the standpoint of different parts of our
nature or different modes of consciousness from which we can
perceive the world. We must travel both paths. This means that
we *sieze the spiritual* with the same intensity as a man with
held held under water longs for air. And we *effortlessly grow
and flower* over vast eternities without looking at our watches
every five minutes to see if the times up yet or not!

There are two approaches to the timeless: right now! and over
vast eternities without regard to the passage of time. Both
are real but we're usually taught only one as an approach to
the spiritual and taught to discount the other.

Coherence seems to be talking about the approach of being
good and not thinking about oneself and letting the spiritual
flower in its own time. You're discussion addresses the sudden
approach. I'd suggest both are useful and need to be
incorporated into a theosophical practice.

-- Eldon