Awakening Oneness IV

If this is the case, if spirit is always not-separate, indivisible, then why does it not always feel that way? While this is the great mystery in one sense, I believe that question can be answered without us needing to understand it. This answer is something we'd rather live than just comprehend or think to ourselves. But the living of this answer can be laid out and has been laid out. (This being the case is part of why the Bhagavad-Gita is seen as a culmination of the Vedas and as a last comment in some sense.)

In the Bhagavad-Gita, the messiah-god Krishna tells Arjuna that he does not care whether Arjuna would prefer to not go to war and become king. Regardless of what Arjuna wishes, it is his karma to war and win at war. But God is not simply judgmental and wrathful, rubbing people's noses in their karma. Krishna, the messiah, counsels Arjuna through his struggles and--as Arjuna fulfills the karma he might not have chosen for himself--helps him towards wisdom concerning his life. God walks step by step with the fallible Arjuna.

The message that stood out to me the first time I read the Gita was, "It is better to do your karma poorly than to do someone else's well." As a young adult, this struck me as very strange indeed. As I age, and hopefully mature, this message means more that there is no other place for me to be right now. There is air for when I am flying, a path for when I walk. But this doesn't mean a passive, fatalistic acceptance of karma is what we do. There is also war for when fighting is necessary, negotiations when war might be avoided.

In a personal sense, then, I believe that there is a path as long as we need a path. The simplest way I can understand that path is to see the differences between struggling towards inspiration, becoming inspired, going further into spirituality, and finishing with a complete recognition of non-separation. As it says in the first chapter of the Book of James:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Taking each step in its time builds steadfastness into our freedom. When this steadfastness does not contradict the freedom, then it is complete. Before that, the imperfection, the incompletion is dissatisfying. And that's okay, that dissatisfaction is the desire for improvement, the desire is the fuel for progress. Not only do we want freedom, inspiration, peaceful abiding, etc., but we also seek completion. Before taking each step, we want more because we know more is possible.

Before we are ready to fly, we end up toiling at building some huge monument, apparently to ourselves or our ideals. We think it's one thing, but it ends up being another. This bonfire and funeral pyre is a harsh task, a great accomplishment, and a torture when we climb to the top and the fire is lit. But the phoenix isn't born from sitting on the couch, eating bon-bons or drinking beer, and watching the latest soap opera or sports competition. It is a phoenix because it is born in flames. Peter Tosh sang, "Everybody wants to go up to heaven, nobody wants to die." In the same way, for most, spiritual ascent is hard work before it becomes torture before it becomes truly liberating. Rather than wishing all of that upon oneself all at once, it is best to just begin at this next step and meet the world as it is. It is free.