Spiritual Death Is Positive Disintegration

Since you find yourself reading this, maybe it´s because you are already experiencing a painful clash between your inmost needs and the sociopathic environments and tendencies of a "sick culture" that crumbles; in other words, maybe you are amidst of what the psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski called "positive disintegration". In that case, don´t worry, that is a good sign. 

The emergence of anxiety, nervous agitation, existential anguish, depression or even skin rashes and physical diseases are very often external symptoms of deep needs, and not just the consequence of living in a decadent world full of food poisons, pollution, poverty, economic crises, loss of jobs, cruelty, violence...

"The term disintegration is used to refer to a broad range of processes, from emotional disharmony to the complete fragmentation of the personality structure, all of which are usually regarded as negative” (Dabrowski 1964, p.5)

As strange as it might sound, inner conflicts can  degenerate into utter madness and even suicidal tendencies, result of a "negative disintegration", or else lead to the creative and enriching processes of "positive disintegration", unleashing an accelerated transformation, something that can never take place mechanically, since it requires "effort".

“Crises are periods of increased insight into oneself, creativity and personality development” (Dabrowski 1964, p.18)

“Experiences of shock, stress and trauma, may accelerate development in individuals with innate potential for development” (Dabrowski 1970 p.20)

“Crises, in our view, are brought about through thousands of different internal and external conflicts, resulting from collisions of the developing personality with negative elements of the inner and external milieu” (Dabrowski 1972, p.245)

Isn´t it true that the more light-awareness we access, the more darkness appears, both inside and around us? Even darkness feels attracted to light, as when insects gather around the light of the bulb.

Yet, one should not panic nor get discouraged. The problem does not reside in the forces of life that make us suffer, but in our attitude towards them. 

Actually, every process of co-creation involves a "negative force" that must be "resisted" –not destroyed– with an "affirmative force" so that both can be "reconciled" in a broader domain.

It is precisely at the point of maximum tension, doubt and suffering that there is a huge chance to move deeper into a new level of unity and experience –a reconciliation–, always provided we understand the process and stay firm, without succumbing to confusion and weakness.

There is always a tendency to escape that "passing tension" with surrogates –the false lights, loves and peace of entertainment and pseudo-enlightenment– that drive humans away from the experience of true understanding, true happiness and creative values such as Truth, Beauty and Justice.

And every time there is "reconciliation of inner conflict", nothing remains on the same level as before; something grows, and one cannot doubt it is happening, for there is relief and insights that take away us from the destructive spiral of mechanical suffering. 

New understanding, values and interests emerge in a new human being, making one experience those moments of "partial happiness" that open the window to glimpses of true bliss, which is just the beginning of what has no limits. 

Once one sees and feels these new values, it´s unbearable to live in darkness again, as it happens to the prisoner in Plato´s allegory of the cave.

On an individual level, this leads to the formation of what Dabrowski called "authentic personality", very much in line with what Gurdjieff described as development of the essence, "the true Self". 

In esoteric Christianity this means embodying the Holy Trinity: Holy Affirming, Holy Denying and Holy Reconciling.

Likewise, ancient teachings –including Christianity– stressed the need of "spiritual death and rebirth in life", as hinted in the Sufi proverb: Die before you die. 

And far for being a self-negation, this is a complete affirmation of our integral life experience and essence, for every true heart is unique, carrying  a tiny bit of the Truth, a spark that must become a Flame, as the Persian poet Rumi said in his poems.

By understanding inner disintegration, one can feel more compassion, seeing what makes us and others bring darkness blindly. 

And when one sees what needs to be done, this is followed by the urge to do it. So this also leads to the impulse towards perfection, which is true unconditional love –not animal love or emotional love, which always end in conflict.

When one stops living for whims and has the courage to "resist harmful inertias", transforming inner dumps into gardens, seeking for deeper understanding, one starts releasing creative influences around, becoming really human in the process.

“We are human inasmuch as we experience disharmony and dissatisfaction, inherent in the process of disintegration” (Dabrowski 1970, p.122)

Thus one can see how this positive disintegration or spiritual death is a literal transformation of darkness, not a supression or negation of it. Humans are nor here to kill symptoms –which is what modern medicine and psychiatry try to do by means of calming drugs, causing further damage.

Last but not least, such a transmutation is what turns us into "human vessels" that can receive enough Light from the Cosmos –now arriving in greater waves–, sow it into the planet and turn this beautiful blue globe into a true Eden, a Heaven on Earth. For this is one of the main purposes of human existence, as told in countless myths and legends of old. 

The main source of unhappiness and darkness are ignorance and weakness before the Truth of what is happening. We choose. 

________________________________

Quotes from:

http://positivedisintegration.com/Dabrowski101.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E87VlzrSXYQ

To Let Go is To Forgive

Our false mind and heart always wants to be right, clinging to ideas of “you” and “I”, pleasant and unpleasant, wrong or right. And yet that is a chance to live a brighter Heart-Mind where one observes and lets go of tensions, unveiling that true common Being in which we are free and love without condition.

And this is indeed an act of forgiving ourselves and the world. As Peter Russell writes in his web:

The conventional understanding of forgiveness is of some absolution or pardon–something along the lines, "I know you did wrong, but I’ll overlook it this time." But the original meaning of forgiveness is very different. The ancient Greek word for "forgiveness", is aphesis, meaning "to let go." When we forgive another we let go of the judgments we may have projected onto them. We release them from all our interpretations and evaluations, all our thoughts of right or wrong, of friend or foe.

Instead we see that here is another human being caught up in their own illusions about themselves and the world around them. Like us, they feel the need for security, control, recognition, approval, or stimulus. They too probably feel threatened by people and things that prevent them finding fulfillment. And, like us, they sometimes make mistakes. Yet, behind all these errors, there is another child of God simply looking for peace of mind. http://www.peterrussell.com/SG/Ch7.php

May we all have an insightful 2015.

The Light of Balance

I move in an ocean of stupendous light,

Joining my depths to His eternal height

–Sri Aurobindo–

Everything is made of light; everything is alive

–Mellen Thomas Benedict and his Near Death Experience

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life –John 8:12

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house –Matthew 5:14

Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth...Light upon light. –Coran, Verse of Light, v35, s24

Light cannot be seen, it can only be known. Light is still. The sense of sight cannot respond to stillness. That which the eyes “feel” and believe to be Light is but wave motion simulating the idea of Light.

–Light does not travel, by Walter Russell–

From light´s point of view there is no space, no time, no mass. Light does not exist within the world of spacetime and matter.

–Peter Russell, The Primacy of Consciousness video–

We are living times of noise, tension and agitation, from whence comes confusion, distress and violence in all its forms. And this is because we are easily deluded by “false lights”. We mistake the rainbow for the Light, when in reality, our body and the world around are simply an ephimeral “simulation of light”, but not the true Light, source of balance, stillness, goodness, beauty, truth, creativity and bliss.

As Walter Russell proved with geometric art and artistic cosmology, Light rests in magnetic stillness, unifying and balancing all things, which are but electric, false light, contractions of the true Light.

Of course, this was known long ago. Actually, much can be said about the ancient symbolism of the white light and its difraction into the rainbow. 

But more urgent is to remember what we really are, so that we can cross this rainbow world of deception safely. And the only effective Way is the Art of Relaxed Stillness, the natural state of Light.

Be still and know I am God –Psalm 46:10

Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind

–Yogasutras of Patanjali–

Yet this is not so simple, for our electric mind is always moving from one pole to the another: confort-disconfort, good-bad, black-white... And we can´t pretend to have relaxed stillness of perception as long as we keep trying to escape the world with the electric mind.

It´s true we need moments of physical and mental stillness everyday, but the true need and challenge is to find magnetic stillness through the movement of daily activities, learning to let go of the tensions that build our electric hallucinations. The stillness of Light is not like the immobility of a stone, but more an expansive, flowing stillness.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.

–Matthew 6:22–

We don´t need to search far to realize this “lamp of the body” corresponds to the famous Pineal Gland. However, this cannot be lit unless our magnetic centre, the vagus nerve that links heart, solar plexus and brain, brings enough relaxation to unite mind and senses within the common sense.

Yet, above all, we need to keep in mind that we cannot stabilize our Light awareness without the formation of “light containers”. Yeshua was not kidding when telling we need “wedding garments” to enter the Kingdom (Mateo 22:12).

With this in mind, let´s see if we manage to relax the mental and physical fists to find silent stillness amidst this mad world of noise and flashy spectacle. That would be really a true Winter Solstice within, Light dissolving Darkness.

Free now, nothing ahead

Lovers think they're looking for each other, 


but there's only one search: 

wandering 
this world is wandering that transparent sky, both inside
. 

In here there is 
no dogma and no heresy. 



The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said 
or did about the future. Forget the future. 
I'd worship someone who could do that. 



On the way you may want to look back, or not. 
But if you can say "There's nothing ahead", 
there will be nothing there. 
        

    

Stretch your arms 
and take hold of the cloth of your clothes 
with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain. 
Good and bad are mixed. 

If you don't have both, 
you don't belong with us. 
           
 When one of us gets lost, 
is not here, he must be inside us. 

There's no 
place like that anywhere in the world.

–Rumi–

One was lying on a blanket, over a plank, invaded by distress and physically impeded, with a mind trying to find solutions and future possibilities chaotically; all vain speculations. But it was a sacred moment in the morning, dedicated to silence, and a more serene side of oneself decided to return to body sensation and pure feeling of relax, dropping "mirages" and "tensions"; the stillness of the heart arrived soon and flashes of something profound, different, shone by itself: what is and will never stop being; infinite heart-mind-space, serenity beyond shadows and beliefs. Almost an hour later, one stood up, grabbed the crutches and started the day. Flashes of the spacious serenity followed and continue to resonate, inspiring harmonic thoughts and emotions. 

We always tend to impose ourselves futures and goals that become obstacles, for we rarely live the present moment, the instant. Trying to flee from the unrest and seek better futures only increases our misery. There never was and never will be "pasts" or "futures", for these are all "presents" connected to our present, and very often the mind pictures them inaccurately. As a wise man said, "if you want tomorrow to be different, you must make today different". We can only live and die here and now, in the Eternal Present, in the Kingdom of Heaven that is within and without. We choose how to perceive it. 

Why Hearts Cry

In moments of pain and despair, the cry of the heart becomes more sincere and it can thus reach the ears of Divine Essence, which is in need of Attention in itself through us, for our hearts are in Its Heart:

Maharaj, why did God created this world full of troubles? Why did he created me to endure all those sufferings?

[...] "Why has he created the world? That you should be in it. Why has he created you? He is alone; He needs you".

–Bhai Sahib replying to Irina Tweedie, collected in her diary Daughter Of Fire, p.800

Text 2:

When love reveals its real nature we come to know that there is neither lover nor Beloved. There is no one to pray and no one to pray to. We do not even know that we are lost; we return from these states of merging knowing only that we gave our self and were taken. Our gift of our self was accepted so completely that we knew nothing of the encounter. 

But when we return from this merging of oneness, when the mind again surrounds us, we can see the footprints that led us to this shore, to the place where the two worlds meet. We can tell stories of the journey that led us to the edge of the heart’s infinite ocean, of the nights we called out, and the tears we cried in our calling, of our need that was for so many years all that we knew, a need born of the despair of separation, the deepest despair known to the soul.

This need was our first prayer, planted in the soul by the One who loves us, who wants us. This need of the soul is the bond of love, the mystic’s pledge to remember God. We awaken to this remembrance with the knowledge of our forgetfulness, the experience of separation. We are made to experience that we are separate from our Beloved, that we have forgotten Him. This experience brings into consciousness our soul’s need to return Home, to journey from separation to union. The first prayer is the sigh in the soul, the reed flute’s lament that it has been torn from the reed-bed and longs to return.

[...] As we walk homeward, often going one step backwards for every two we go forward, our Beloved comes to meet us. And for every step we make towards love, love makes ten towards us.  At first we do not know this, so great is the apparent distance between us. But one day we realize that the desolation is no longer there. There is a sense of peace that has arrived unnoticed; the wind is not bitter and cold but soft. 

–Lewellyn Vaughan Lee, Prayer of The Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism, Chapter: The Circle of Love–

Text 3:

Everything, without exception, all sound logic as well as all historical data, reveal and affirm that God represents absolute goodness; He is all-loving and all-forgiving. He is the just pacifier of all that exists.

At the same time why should He, being as He is, send away from Himself one of His nearest, by Him animated, beloved sons, only for the "way of pride" proper to any young and still incompletely formed individual, and bestow upon him a force equal but opposite to His own? . . . I refer to the "Devil."

This idea illuminated the condition of my inner world like the sun, and rendered it obvious that in the great world for the possibility of harmonious construction there was inevitably required some kind of continuous perpetuation of the reminding factor.

For this reason our Maker Himself, in the name of all that He had created, was compelled to place one of His beloved sons in such an, in the objective sense, invidious situation.

Therefore I also have now for my small inner world to create out of myself, from some factor beloved by me, an alike unending source. 

There arises now a question like this:

What is there contained in my general presence which, if I should remove it from myself, would always in my various general states be reminding me of itself?

–G.I.Gurdjieff, from Prologue in Life is Real only then when I Am–

Our being shapes our world

The world is the mind 

–Siddharta Gautama The Buddha–

The Kingdom of God is inside you, and it is outside of you 

–Gospel of Thomas–

The level of your being attracts the experiences you live

–Old Sufi proverb–

The realization that every act, every word, every thought of ours not only influences our environment but for some mysterious reason forms an integral and important part of the Universe, fits into it as if by necessity, so to say, in the very moment we do, or say, or think it - is an overwhelming and even shattering experience. The tremendous responsibility of it is terrifying. 

If all of us only knew that the smallest act of ours, or a tiny thought, has such far-reaching effects as to set in motion forces which perhaps could shatter a galaxy…If we know it deeply and absolutely, if this realization becomes engraved permanently on our hearts, on our minds, how careful we would act and speak and think. How precious life would become in its integral oneness. 

–Irina Tweedie, in her Diary, Daughter of Fire–

Noticing how the template of our being attracts our particular life experiences, should make us more aware of the importance of cleansing and polishing the mirror, as mystics say. And this is a good aspect to ask for in prayer; in other words, rather than asking for a whim, would it not be better to ask for help to clean our mind and heart, so that we can receive the abundance that is always arriving from the Divine spheres, and thus give it to others. We only receive what we can receive, and only give what we can give. No matter how many prayers and good attitudes we may have for a few moments, if our actions and attitudes are not consistent all day long, not even God can help us, and the outer world will always stink, being a perfect reflection of our inner chaos.

.

Silent Wisdom

There are "ordinary silences" and Silence. We can remain quiet and yet chattering inside. That is not Silence. We can be in an empty, quiet room, and yet full of mental noise. That is not Silence. We can decide not to speak in a particular situation and yet be swearing aloud. And one can be listening, reading, playing an instrument or singing, and yet be feeling the Quietness in which everything becomes possible. How are we going to listen to the divine whispers if we live as noisy savages?

Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation –Rumi

To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard –Søren Kierkegaard

My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him –Salm 62:5

She said, “Drink, my lord.” And she quickly let down her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink. When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, “I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.” So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water, and she drew for all his camels. The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord had prospered his journey or not 

–Genesis 24:18-2

Then a spirit passed by my face; The hair of my flesh bristled up."It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; A form was before my eyes; There was silence, then I heard a voice: 'Can mankind be just before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?…

–Job 4:15-17

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Silence is the true friend that never betrays 

–Confucius

A man is master of his silences and a slave of his words –Old Proverb

Silence does not always mark wisdom 

–Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything –John Grossman

When I am silent, I have thunder hidden inside –Rumi