How are we to end this series of posts? Each of these nine has been a glimpse into an aspect of true ‘spiritual’ knowledge … but only that. I’ve comes to trust that the correct alignment of ordinary knowledge will result in it becoming a channel of deeper and truer knowing. That truer knowing is alive and waiting to serve our outer self – the personality, which has a vital part to play in our development; in fact, we could say that it is the raw material of our development, since it is like a set of clothes, rather than the real person in them.

We considered how a certain ‘movie’ of our lives was formed in our early experience of life by reactions to powerful events that imprinted their foundational nature upon us. This crystallised into a set of fixed views, in the language of the spiritual enneagram – the fixations,, which bestowed us attitudes and expectations about life, and these we find recurring, though disguises, in everything we experience, even though that childhood is long gone.

We looked at how that act of ‘experiencing’ has a life of its own in the form of the Soul – portrayed as giant set of ‘sails’ which reacted to the prevailing winds of events and our choice of course – powering the boat along a course set by desire, determination and, as we mature, spiritual aspiration to discover our own true nature.

In our nautical analogy, that true nature is nothing less than the hull – the body – of our boat, with its giant rudder. The sails we can consider as grown from, and projections of this Self (capital ‘S’), whose nature is perfect but not of this world of matter, though it is its heart. Between the Self and the self (the personality, attempting to recreate the Self, via the mind) lies the soul, in contact with both inner and outer aspects of ourselves..

The problem with all of this is that it is theory, and therefore only has ‘life’ in the mind. To bring it alive in our lives, we need to actualise it. To do that we need to go beyond the ordinary perceptions of the discursive self to a place of greater intrinsic power.

People are often shocked to find – when they close their eyes and actually listen to their internal state – that there is a constant dialogue of chatter based on words.

Our outer world is a complex representation or image in the mind, based on the conditioned harvesting of events we have decided are important to us. Our reactions may appear logical, but most of them are emotional. Emotions are mysterious. We know how they feel, but few of us have ever stopped to consider what their nature might be.

Emotions are a release of energy; but where energy originates is the key to its nature. There are many form of energy.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, to end the series with a technique that holds a great degree of power and immediacy: that of an ‘enquiry into emotion’.

Emotions are powerful; they can be friend or foe. By this, I don’t mean that good feelings are friends and nasty ones, foes. I mean that all emotions, made truly conscious are friends. Left as ‘background’ effects in our lives, emotions are utilised at far less than their potential and can act like unseeen ‘anchors’, dragging back our efforts as the interfere, very powerfully, with our resolve.

Next time you find yourself experiencing a strong emotion – say, a sense of rejection – instead of putting your energy into denying it: ‘Don’t be so childish…’ – embrace the feelings being experienced. Try not to judge or mentally ‘comment’ on the feelings; simply let them be what they are. If you can do this without reacting, simply accepting, then you will find a secondary effect arises in your body. In the case of ‘rejection’ you will find a pleasant ‘glow’ of warmth and love arises in your torso.

The effect of this is to show us that the false nature of the emotion is generated by the personality, according to its ‘reactive processing’. This kind of experience often affects our sense of internal value: our self-worth. In the above example, it is the real and eternal self-worth, ‘our real value’ that arises as a feeling of love. Experience this goes beyond logic and so-called rationality. The reality of the feeling is self-evident. To feel this is to know the edge of Being.

That love generated by a successful use of the exercise belongs to our Self – in other words, it is ours in the deepest sense of the word, No-one can ever take it away. It is one of our Self’s primary ‘essential aspects’. When we see and feel this, the theory drops away and we glimpse the new reality of life and its potential.

Once you have tasted and felt that assured sense of contact with a deeper part of you, you can carry on and extend the exercise to other situations where there is strong emotion. At the end of this you will have come to know the existence and nature of some key parts of your own inner architecture.

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End of Part 9, the final part of the series.

To join our monthly SE-Explore Zoom meetings, simply send an email to Rivingtide@gmail.com. There are no prerequisites and you will be very welcome.

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Other Parts of this series:

Part One: The Human Hologram

Part Two: The look of Love

Part Three: The Fall

Part Four: The Edge of the Known

Part Five: The Giant Sail

Nine Keys (6) An uprising of Self

Nine Keys (7) Dying for Love

Nine Keys (8) When experience grows dull

©Copyright Stephen Tanham

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.