Theos-Talk Archives (December 1995 Message tl00323)

Lewis:

>The idea that it the change in us is a gradual one seems to
>contradict other ideas that indicate that enlightenment or awakening
>to the next level is a sudden break through in consciousness.

There are two ways to picture our growth. One is according to the
gradual school. In this approach we slowly persistently with
sustained effort grow towards an eventually awakening.

In the sudden school we can achieve an immediate realization. It
can come as quickly as the popping of a balloon.

I'd say that both approaches describe different aspects of the process.
We do ripen over time. A flowerbud slowly grows to maturity; it is
not immediately ready to open. But we also have a dramatic awakening.
The flowerbud one day is mature and opens to the sunlight. Both the
*process* of growth over time is needed as well as the dramatic
breakthrough.

As an analogy I think of my 14-month-old boy. He is now a toddler
having just started getting serious about walking in the last week.
For many months he was standing up and holding onto things and getting
ready to start walking. One day with sufficient readiness he took
some steps and started to walk. One moment he was a crawler the
next a walker. The dramatic nature of the change came in a moment
but the growth and ripening happened over many months.

My discussion with Jerry S. on the dark night of the soul though
was not with regard to how sudden or dramatic the experience is.

I mentioned that if there is sufficient experience of the higher
principles there is no "dark night" when one shifts away from the
lower. One has been embraced in Atma-Buddhi and continues to be
embraced in it during the transition so it is not seen as a time
of darkness and abandonment. There is not a feeling of collapse when
the mind stops creating an objective world because the *something more*
has already been filling one's nature. The transition is sudden
dramatic but not like the scared jump that we might do when someone
unexpectedly pops a balloon! It's more like an immediate gasp of
amazement when gazing upon something incredibly beautiful.

-- Eldon