Progress sometimes comes disguised as misery; the unwanted balm of the soul that gives off a stench of unworthiness, pain and emotions that may make us want to end it all and go to this place that Christians call heaven. It casts upon us a pit of darkness which we are thrown into. It is a pit that is bottomless and we keep falling deeper and deeper. The more we try to grope at the sides and clutch onto something, misery’s walls become slimy and we slide off. Some of us give up and resign to our fate but a few of us, see life testing us through this illusion and thus transcend this bleak appearance. The question now becomes, whom do you choose to be? It is the latter person’s attitude that fuels progress.
From birth, your spirit (a perpetual light that never goes off) is cast upon darkness with the candle torch given to the soul as its guide. The soul has the blueprint. It has the map to the maze upon which you have found yourself and you have a choice to refer to it or not. When we shut this guiding torch from our realm, then the illusion (voiced as ego) becomes our reality and as a result, misery, which is ego’s close ally, comes holding its hand. The torment then begins.
Why are we cast into darkness you may ask? Why not be born knowing everything? Why not be born knowing that we are the light? Why does it have to disguise itself or only announce its presence to the soul, the part of us that many scoffs at mostly because religion has left a bad taste in our mouths? The soul is your highest self and it is the guiding spirit. We are here to evolve into our highest beings. We are here to experience what we can only conceptualize in spirit form. Confused? Let me explain. We are born with light. We are born whole but it is hidden from view because we are to evolve. This evolution is otherwise known as progress.
At the spirit level, we are perfect. At the physical level, we seem imperfect just as we were designed to be. One of life’s purpose is to evolve or progress so that the physical realises itself as the perfection of the spirit or in other words, life’s purpose is for the physical self to match the perfection of the spirit self. Psychology’s term for this is self-actualisation. The spirit self knows how this is done but most of us have shut out this part of ourselves and resigned to believe that progress in the human aspect is in acquiring riches or gaining power. This view is dipped in the ocean of ego’s realm which I have already described as an illusion and with it comes matching misery, ready to dip its fangs on whatever victims ego holds as captive.
As with anything in life, progress begins with a series of tests, but they are tests bathed in love and acceptance that keep cheering you on. When you pass the test at one level, you progress to the next set of experience. When you keep going through a similar set of experiences, again and again, it is mostly an indication that you have not passed that test yet and life is trying to help you remember something. Something that will elevate you to the next level. Something else, there is no end to how high you can go. The development is sort of circular. Think of your life as you drawing a circle and that once the circle is complete, then you have realised your highest self physically. There will be no beginning and no end. There will only be phases and a continuation of what is as life supposed to be.
How do we evolve or progress? First, you need to realise that you are a three-part being made up of the mind, body and soul. Some might call this the physical, the non-physical and the metaphysical self. Some might call it the ”Id”, the ego and the superego or the conscious, the subconscious and the superconscious. Some might call it, ether, matter and energy. In the African sense, we have known it as God, the spirit world of the ancestors who have died and now live in another dimension which we honour through practices such as libation, and the present world in which we live.
There is a dance of existence within this three-part being with the spirit being the lead dancer. When we are led by the soul then we are introduced to the world of infinite intelligence from which wisdom and knowledge transcend all knowledge as we know it presently. From it have come insight, sparks of inspiration whose fruits we eat today through the wheels of world invention and civilization that we now enjoy. These fruits were once idea seeds that took root in the minds of the brilliant minds that bore them through desire, which then took root as dominant thoughts. The thoughts were given a plan through the power of imagination and acted upon with the spirit of persistence up until they became realized in humanity’s world.
Progress comes when we are in tune with this realm of the spirit where infinite intellect resides. It comes from knowing who we are at our core. By this, I do not mean what we are, and whatever labels we have been given from birth starting with our names. By knowing who we are, we are once again in touch with our wholeness at birth, and we are introduced to the world of the spirit, which is way deeper than most of us are able to comprehend in our physical states. When I ask myself, “Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose?” then I begin to retrace my steps and gain access to the torch that is to guide me through this life maze. I gain access to the map. I start becoming the original self I was to become, and bless the world with the original gifts that only I can give it! This is the core of progress and evolution.
In this space, misery simply becomes a friend whom I sit with and ask, “I can see that you have knocked on my doors again. What are you here to teach me dear one?” From then I open myself to my soul’s voice and listen to what it is it has to say. In this space, I realize that essentially life is for me and never against me. I realize that each moment is a blessing, for the soul is here to guide and help me through my evolution. The experiences that present themselves in my life are not good or bad. They simply are. I am the one who gives them meaning through perception, liking some and deciding to call them good, while disliking others because they are unpleasant and deciding to call it misery.
We are one energy. Within each is a torch and inside that realm is infinite intelligence. Access to this world is what entails the process of evolution.
Read – Misery; The Silent Killer – An Article by Rawat Luqmaan, South Africa
