Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Fire of Oblivion

In my previous post, I explained something about perception and the cyclic nature of time. With the understanding of those concepts, we can move on to the primary subject:

In this cyclic world that we live in, we cycle ever closer to breaking through the barriers that bind us.

We are souls trapped in physical bodies that severely inhibit our perception and understanding of the world, ourselves, and God. These physical bodies are trapped in the cycle of time and the physical realm. We are like fish in a fish tank, water is placed in the tank for the fish, and around the tank is no water. To the fish, the tank walls themselves are an indescribable and strange force which hold the water in place. To the fish, the outside of the tank would seem like a vacuum because there would be nothing to allow them to breathe, it would lack the viscosity of the medium they normally move through, and they would not be able to travel in all directions as they can in water... in fact they wouldn't have the means to move about at all.

To those fish, everything outside that tank is the same impression as everything in space is to us. Yet, we can move beyond our need to survive in this fish tank. We can meld our body, mind and soul to form a stronger being than any of the three could be on it's own. Even in our present state, of body, mind and soul sort of working together but not really communicating, we're terribly weak.

As time cycles, human efforts experience and ebb and flow, just like the tides. Over a period of history, we make great advances and then fall into darkness, make even greater advances and fall into greater darkness, make astonishingly greater advances and fall into seemingly astonishing darkness. However, through this progress continues to be made.

Every day, we come closer to realizing our greatest potential as human beings. All of our trials and triumphs, our mistakes and accidents, they are teaching us how to evolve. What we endure daily will ultimately show us how to love, and forgive, and to surpass the baser needs of the physical world.

As we live, we also die. We reincarnate into new bodies, bringing with us lessons learned from previous lives and choosing new challenges for ourselves to further develop and shape ourselves. We started out staring into blackness and as we learn, tiny holes are poked into the fabric and eventually where there was only blackness there will be only light.

However, being in the midst of this, it seems rather hopeless. We feel the pull of our eternal selves but we don't understand what it is we're feeling. To us, it seems to be a feeling of loss or emptiness, a hole in the core of our being that we want to fill more than anything. We will try every single physical means of filling that hole - through drugs, food, sex, power, accomplishment, money, controlling others, you name it, we have or will try it. We may spend several of our lifetimes in the same pursuit, until we finally realize that it holds nothing for us.

Until we finally realize that nothing in the physical world can heal our perceived wound. Until we finally begin to look inward and seek out something greater than ourselves.

Even then, we have no shortage of tests and difficulties ahead of us. Our path is difficult and it is such for a reason. Only by walking through the fire can we burn off what is unnecessary and make ourselves pure. The cycle of reincarnation is the fire of purification, and no where does it burn hotter than here on Earth.

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