The following was written by Wes Annac for the ‘planetary healing’ section of The Aquarius Paradigm Weekly Newsletter. Income from the newsletter helps my family and I get by, and the option to subscribe will be given below.I think it goes without saying that finding enlightenment is the best way to change ourselves and the world around us. Lately, I’ve been writing our planetary healing with the intent of exploring how we can become enlightened and heal the world in the process, and in doing so, I’ve noticed that there are simple but powerful solutions to the problems we face.
In my opinion, all of our problems can be solved by a collective shift out of the ego and into the brimming heart space. It’s very simple, and most people can’t touch such a level of simplicity because of the conditioning we’ve experienced. We’ve grown up in a materialistic society that teaches matter over spirit, and breaking this spell can certainly be difficult.
In our own ways, we’re all experiencing a shift away from materialism and into love and spiritual wholeness. We’re rediscovering the vibrant spirituality of our existence, and we’re starting to understand the finite nature of the reality around us.
Western society is obsessed with material things, and it seems as if we’ve been led away from our deeper purpose and into a reality that’s void of any deeper value or meaning.
We’re transcending the illusion of physicality as we open up to the greater, more blissful states of consciousness beyond it, and stepping away from materiality and the consumerist culture is essential to finding enlightenment and changing the planet.
As consciousness grows, we’ll work harder than ever before to change the planet with myriad projects that’ll be intended to help the people who need it the most. Moving out of a materialistic mindset will help us focus on what we can do to help the people around us, but remaining mentally and spiritually enslaved will only make us miserable.
Let’s break the bonds of self-instated oppression as we recognize the things that need done to change the world, and aptly get to work. Let’s allow love to replace selfishness and give us the endless desire to be of service to others and help the planet evolve, because we’re here on an important mission.
Let’s hold the self-serving forces who’ve polluted the earth accountable, and come together to establish a new way of life that respects and nurtures the earth instead of ravaging it. We’re blessed to exist on this beautiful planet, and if we can only realize its beauty and work to heal it, we’ll learn things about it and ourselves that we wouldn’t expect.
I think we should celebrate the earth’s existence and move away from materiality to live a greater and more disciplined life, because there’s a lot here to be excited about that, for the most part, we haven’t yet discovered.
The material we’re going to examine for this week’s planetary healing is focused on moving away from physicality and into the fullness of the heart space, and I’m convinced that we should embrace spirit over matter if we want to attain true enlightenment or make any significantly positive change.
Spirit has much more to offer us than this material world, and the path we take is entirely up to us. The sunny path of spiritual reality is before us, but while we’re here, we can also walk an empty path of cultural materiality that’ll delay our higher growth and make us subtly forget about spirit.
The material world will fill us with distracting, unimportant things that keep us plugged into a limited reality, but we can walk a path that few people even know exists. We can re-reach heaven if we move away from physicality and focus on spirit, and we’ve been encouraged to by a lot of enlightened teachers who’ve traversed the higher path from the earth.
Some of the material we’re going to examine has been taken from the Upanishads, which, according to Wikipedia, are “a collection of Vedic texts which contain the earliest emergence of some of the central religious concepts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism”. (1)
There seem to be a lot of valuable teachings in these texts, and they’ve given us a great deal of information about the transcendence of the physical self.
First, we’re encouraged to “give no thought to transient things”.
“It is not by works that one gains the Eternal. Let [dedicated aspirants] give no thought to transient things, but, absorbed in meditation, let him renounce the world.” (2)
It’s been suggested elsewhere that, instead of completely “renouncing the world”, we should take solace in the good things it has to offer. I agree that we should renounce the consumerist culture fed by society, but the earth itself offers things (like nature) that have genuine substance.
This planet offers richness that we won’t find anywhere else, even when we’re in a greater state of consciousness. Seeing this planet through a higher-dimensional lens is probably wonderful and disheartening, but there are good things here that’ll help us develop. It’s up to us to seek them, however.
According to the Upanishads, people who embrace spirit over matter are rare on this planet.
“The Self-Existent made the senses turn outward. Accordingly, man looks toward what is without, and sees not what is within. Rare is he who, longing for immortality, shuts his eyes to what is without and beholds the Self.” (2)
The sacred Self waits for us to rediscover it in all of its fullness, and turning away from the lusts of the world will give us a purer glimpse into the inner-workings of our divine existence. Our higher selves and guides have a lot to offer us in the way of potent information and energy, and it feels good to take solace in that energy when the density of the earth gets too heavy.
Embracing spirit will help us soar in the face of stress, frustration, and all of the other lower qualities that keep us chained to our emotions. When we’re rooted in spirit, we’re able to experience things that could ordinarily drive us crazy from a calmer and more enthusiastic perspective.
We’re then told about the absence of sorrow and the purifying of the senses liberation offers.
“When a man is free from desire, his mind and senses purified, he beholds the glory of the Self and is without sorrow.” (2)
Being completely without sorrow must be great, and part of the reason we’re here is to master our emotions (and especially our lower emotions) and use them for our greater good and that of humanity. Emotions can be beautiful and awful, and our experience of them will depend on our ability to master them.
Nothing stops us from mastering lower-dimensionality, and when we do, we’ll move on to the more blissful states of consciousness that await. We’ve come here to take on darkness so we could anchor an incredible amount of light to it, and we’re doing this now as we move beyond consumerism and embrace our greater roles.
As we’re told below, spirit exists vibrantly beyond our ego-driven perception.
“Above the senses is the mind. Above the mind is the intellect. Above the intellect is the ego. Above the ego is the unmanifested seed…. And verily beyond the unmanifested seed is Brahman, the All-pervading Spirit, the unconditioned.” (2)
We can allow spirit’s “water” to flow into the seedlings of potential that exist beyond the ego, and when we make an effort to see beyond the world we’ve grown used to, we’ll perceive the “All-pervading Spirit” in a much greater way.
The Lord Ahuramazda tells us about the five vices we’re tasked with transcending if we want to evolve.
“That man is the strongest who can fight his own evil passions, especially he who repels from himself these five vices: avarice, anger, lust, disgrace and discontent.” (3)
Disconnecting from the destructive qualities mentioned above will cease our spiritual inhibition, and with an understanding of spirit and the willingness to transcend physicality, we’ll soar to new heights and fill the hearts of the people around us with inspiration.
We’ll provide a shining light for everyone to unconsciously absorb and benefit from, and in turn, they’ll start awakening and remembering the light they hold within.
In our final quote for this week, Zarathustra tells us about “fasting” from “committing sin”.
“This is the keeping of the fast with us — that we fast from committing sin with our eyes and tongue and ears and hands and feet.” (3)
I think we should be careful when we talk about “sin”, because in a sense, it’s individually defined. “Sin” as defined above is probably a basic, immoral, and destructive thing that the common seeker knows to stay away from, but the term itself has been used to persecute people for centuries.
I think Zarathustra is suggesting that we remain firmly on the path of the light and refrain from letting the dark’s temptations bring us down, and not that we follow a rigid set of rules that’re defined by someone else and call ourselves sinners if we don’t. At the end of the day, we know what is and isn’t destructive to our greater growth and development.
I’m confident in our respective abilities to move beyond matter and embrace spirit in deeper ways than we yet have, and even if a greater perception seems unattainable, it isn’t. We need only to detach from the cultural noise around us and remain centered and focused on our desire to re-reach Source.
We can enjoy the developmentally-positive things this planet has to offer, however sparse they may seem, and take much more from this existence than we would’ve if we focused only on matter or only on spirit, because spirit can be found in unexpected places.
You’re encouraged to appreciate the positive things that exist here and detach from the negative, because we’re being called to rediscover spirit from the earth and heal this beautiful celestial body that graciously hosts our life. The only question left is if we’re up for the task.
Footnotes:
(1)- Wikipedia: “Upanishads” at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads
(2)- Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester, trans., The Upanishads. Breath of the Eternal. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1957; c1948.
(3)- Duncan Greenlees, trans. The Gospel of Zarathushtra. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978.
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This concludes this week’s planetary healing.