Sat Yoga Archives, Gnosis, Spiritual Texts

The ego is a miasma of emotion-tinged thoughts. It is in order to be released from its chaotic swamp of anxiety, frustration, rage, and depression that most people begin to seek a spiritual path.

Seekers have traditionally been classified into one of three types. The contemporary Indian sage Sri Ramana Maharshi humorously referred to these classes as gunpowder, dry charcoal, and wet charcoal.

The gunpowder type of seeker is one who, upon hearing spiritual truth or meeting a true teacher, immediately explodes into enlightenment. Such a rare soul is one who has achieved great capacity for discernment between the false and the real, is weary of the world and its illusory lures, and is ready to discard the false egoic identity for the bliss of the true Self.

The second type, the dry charcoal, requires a little more help: some inflammable fire starter, a match, and the company of other hot coals will do the trick. In other words, accurate spiritual knowledge, a teacher who is on fire with divine love, a rigorous practice of meditation, and the support of a healthy spiritual community will make all the difference. In a relatively short time, such a soul will be able to transcend the ego mind and enter into the sacred silence of pure awareness.

The third type, the wet charcoal, needs a far lengthier process of drying out before combustion is possible. Most souls today are of this type, due to a number of factors, ranging from the false assumptions about reality taught in school, the materialist cultural norms, the competitive and pseudo-individualistic egoic milieu, the insecurity and other traumas that are part of most people’s upbringing, and the general fragmentation of the mind that is consequent on a poor psycho-spiritual educational formation.

Many paths will suffice to take one beyond the mire of the false ego identity—particularly for those who are gunpowder or dry charcoal. But for those who are in the wet charcoal condition, a special kind of path is necessary to accelerate the drying-out process. To determine in advance if a particular path can successfully lead such a person to Self-realization, the seeker should make sure that the approach has four characteristics that can be summarized in the acronym PURE.

A PURE path will provide processing, understanding, reunion, and expression.

The initial need is for patient, wise, compassionate processing of the unconscious roots of the issues that are causing suffering. There are generally going to be found many layers of unconscious phantasies, assumptions, self-images, superego voices and commands, traumatic energies, hidden censoring agencies and self-attack formations, splitting and projective tendencies, and a host of other defense mechanisms. All of this must be worked through before authentic spiritual insight is possible.

At the same time, a new understanding of reality must be cultivated on a conscious level, a map that integrates the repressed unconscious with the transcendent superconscious, the inner with the outer, the knower with the known. It must be an incisive understanding that will bear scientific scrutiny and is capable of translating every experience into a new key, one that opens the door to the Supreme Reality.

A PURE path is one that will provide the energetic support for ascension to reunion with the Absolute, the ultimate attainment of meditation, contemplative prayer, and Self-realization. Reunion with the One follows upon the complete emptying out of the ego, becoming an utter zero of pure awareness. In this state of surrendered presence, the light and love of God become fully emergent in a supernal unity that transcends the Creation.

The final step in a PURE path is creative expression, the transformation of the holy eternal moment of supreme union into the Word made flesh. By transmitting the highest truth in words, art, music, dance, cooking, and every other offering of creativity and charity, the attainment is made palpably real, and has a profound effect on other coals that are not yet dry or hot, speeding up their process of transfiguration as well. Through this gift of cultural renaissance, the world as a whole suddenly becomes once more the scene of divine theatre, the place of boundless love and endless celebration, as the world was meant to be.

We have all been on a long journey away from our Source, through the defiles of time and history, of triumph and defeat in the phenomenal world, until we have reached the endpoint of utter exhaustion. All the hopes and sensual pleasures that this plane of Maya has to offer have been tasted and found lacking. There is no juice in the egoic world any more. It has all become as dust in the mouth. There is nothing left but to make the journey home.

Now we are all returning to the Source to be revived. And on our return journey, we bring uncountable riches in the form of raw trauma that will be distilled into the nectar of wisdom that we have gained through experience, through falling and rising again, through knowing the dark side and feeling the sting of remorse, through learning the hard way what is truly important.

All the poison we collected will be turned into medicine that will heal other souls. In the end, all will fall away except the One Without a Second. We can find that One in a second, when we are ready. And then we shall become springs of the water of life, direct gateways to the Source for all who are thirsty. This is the way the world ends, not with a whimper, but the blissful explosion of a new beginning.

Namaste,

Shunyamurti

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