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.In Christian terms, your soul isredeemed and returned to innocence.What is my greatest strength?.Insight.What is my biggest hurdle?.Delusion.I said earlier that in stage four all the moorings are cut loose.Now weknow why.The inner quest is all about undoing attachments.These do notcome free all at once, nor is every attachment equal.It is entirelynormal to arrive at profound insights about yourself and still feel asashamed or guilty as a little child over certain things.The soul is likea ragged army on the march.Some aspects push ahead; others lag behind.The reason for this is again karmic: not all our past actions leave equalimprints.Some people are haunted for life by incidents from their pastthat are seemingly small.I know a man who has had to fire hundreds ofemployees, reorganize businesses that eventually went under, and invarious ways decide the fate of many people.His decisions caused griefand complaints every time, no matter how well intentioned they were.Hesleeps undisturbed by any of that, while in his heart of hearts he cannotforgive himself for not being at his mother's bedside when she died.Thethought of having left so much unsaid makes him guilty every day.He knowsat some level that his love for his mother is felt by her, but thatdoesn't heal the guilty wound.Because of its intense subjectivity, stage four requires new tactics.Noone outside yourself can offer absolution.To get past an obstaclerequires your own insight; if you can't get past it, you keep fighting offdelusion until you do.In this man's case, his delusion is that he is badfor not being with his mother (he had in fact no choice, since his triphome was delayed beyond his control); the insight is that his genuine lovedoesn't have to have an outward show.But beyond these particulars, thereis only one insight and one delusion in stage four.The insight is thateverything is all right; the delusion is that we have made unforgivablemistakes.The reason that everything is all right goes back to redemption;in the eyes of God, all souls are innocent.The same reason tells us thatwe are deluded to keep holding on to past mistakes.They cannot blemishour souls, and their residual effect, in terms of guilt, shame, andpayback, will be washed away in good time.What is my greatest temptation?.Deception.This is meant both in terms of self-deception and deceiving others.Everystage of inner growth contains more freedom than the one before.Breakingfree from sin is a great accomplishment in stage four, but the price ofredemption is constant vigilance.It is hard to keep examining yourselfall of the time.A voice inside often urges you to be easier on yourself,take things as they are, act the way everyone else does.To follow thisadvice would make existence much more pleasant.Socrates could haveapologized for offending the morals of Athens; he could have preached theaccepted wisdom instead of his own.But to fall into this easy way amountsto deception, because the inner march of wisdom cannot be stopped.(Platoput it eloquently: "Once lit, the flame of truth will never go out.")Unless you are willing to deceive yourself into believing otherwise, aperson in stage four really is free of outside values.How long this temptation lasts varies with each person.In myth one isredeemed instantly by a merciful God when in fact it is a long processwith many turnings."I think my soul is like one of those squirrels in thepark," someone once remarked to me."When you try to feed a squirrel, hewon't take the peanut from your hand in one go.He darts toward you, thenhe loses his nerve and darts away.The slightest gesture scares him off,and only after a few feints will he get up the nerve to reach out for whathe wants." The parallel is exact.At some level everyone wants to be ridof guilt.As Rumi says in one aphorism, "Outside all notions of right andwrong there is a field—will you meet me there?" However much you want to,it isn't possible to dash toward this place.Our old imprints are verystrong; guilt and shame arise as a reminder that it takes more than an actof will to escape notions of right and wrong.The process has to continuewithout deception.You can't fool your sense of being imperfect orsinful—choose your terms—in the hope that the slate can be wiped cleanonce and for all.There is a lot of work to do in the form of meditation,self-reflection, taking responsibility.You have to act on the truth as itoccurs to you.Every step forward must be tested, and the temptation to gobackward persists until the very end.Whatever is involved in totalself-acceptance has to be met.The triumph of stage four turns out to be aparadox in the end.At the very point when you see that you are all right,that you need never worry about good and evil again, the realization dawnsthat you never did wrong to begin with.Redemption returns the soul to asense of innocence that never actually went away.Or to put it moresimply, the whole process of being true to yourself brings as its reward ahigher level of awareness.At this level, the issues of duality have beenleft behind, and when that happens, the subjective feeling is one of beingredeemed.STAGE FIVE:GOD THE CREATOR(Creative Response)There is a level of creativity that goes far beyond anything we havediscussed so far.It dawns when intuition becomes so powerful it mustbreak out into the environment.This "super-intuition" controls events andmakes wishes come true, as though an artist is working not in paint andcanvas but in the raw material of life.The following example from my ownlife began in mundane circumstances that grew more and more amazing:Some months ago I was in my office looking over a project that needed somecover art, but I knew no professional illustrators.As soon as I had thethought "I wonder whom I can find?" the phone rang.It was my growndaughter, Mallika, calling from India, and when I mentioned my problem,she immediately suggested an Irish artist named Suzanne Malcolm (not herreal name).Neither of us had any idea where she lived [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]