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..:: Communion ::..

By

Alan Schneider

              This essay treats the subject of communion, our special spiritual communication with the higher states of consciousness associated with the Divine level of manifestation.  In essence, communion is how we interact with the Soul, our personal Conscience, and God.  

            The complex of physical perceptions that has been classified in these essays as the body, the central nervous system, the physical senses, personal emotions, and the ego unquestionably acts as the collective suppressor of Divine awareness, along with the expression of all higher conscious states.  On the other hand, meditation, chanting (at least in Hindu and Buddhist contexts), and various Yoga practices have the effect of directing attention away from the Physical Plane and toward the higher Spiritual Planes of expression.  One action of the “Kundalini Detector” (the subject of a recent series of SYNERGY essays, Evidence I, II, and III) which was substantially consistent was that its responses to the Chakra sites associated with the physical body, and the Soul vibration present in the vicinity of that body, was either substantially reduced or lost altogether in the presence of ego-motivated perception of any kind.  The strident effect of ego-influenced thought patterns is far more potent within the physical consciousness than the much subtler, quieter vibration of the Soul. 

            It is a safe bet in the case of the vast majority of human observers that they will be either consciously or unconsciously engaged in ego-based motivational processing for most or all of their waking hours.  The exceptions to this condition are those few among us who have learned to identify the presence of the ego, recognize the threat it represents to spiritual Truth, and learned to use one of the techniques previously noted to switch it off, while leaving the observational consciousness on.  Simply attempting to use conscious thought to attain the perceptual level of the Soul or the Divine Mind will be unsuccessful – both experiences are completely beyond thought and intent as we know them.  And the emotional wishes that may be present within us as ego-drivers – the  wish to succeed, the wish to achieve, the wish to control, the wish to be superior – will only compound this failure by goading us further into subsequent attempts.  The mind, ego, and emotions must be laid aside for spiritual exercise to bare fruit.  

            Why is this necessary?  Because the Divine Consciousness operates in a context that is completely different – 180 degrees removed – from our perception of reality as experienced on the Physical Plane. For starters, God does not even have an “environment” per se – as the “I AM PRESENCE”, God just is, and does not require anything to sustain an infinite, eternal manifestation everywhere. God is all manifestation, including the manifestations of place and time.  Although I cannot prove this in any objective sense, I ask the reader to take my word for my statement that I have been in this Presence and experienced total freedom from any sort of constraint.  God is total freedom of consciousness in universal conscious expression. 

            There is absolutely no negativity or division in the Divine Presence – God is Perfect Love and Omnipresent Light.  Because God Is Love, Creation radiates forth from the I AM PRESENCE as an eternal, limitless expression of that Love.  But, this is not like human love, which is inevitably self-oriented and perspective bound.  God Loves both the prey and the predator, the good and the fallen, the oppressor and the oppressed.  This is the case because God only “sees” the Soul in all things, especially things that are apparently “temporary” in the temporal illusion.  This Soul is part of the Divine Truth, and is, like God, imperishable.  If this physical life is fundamentally illusory, and only God is the Truth, then it can be said that God ultimately Loves God alone, that the whole of existence observable on any level in any context amounts to God pouring God into God, as Love pouring Love into Love.  The coming and going of Karma on the Physical Plane is significant to God only to the extent that Enlightenment produces Dharma and enables the experience of the Truth.  And the physical forms and processes of this life are all Karma with the sole aforementioned exception noted in the previous sentences – even the physicality of our experience is another example of God pouring God into God as Infinite Divine Love, another Aspect of the universal Divine Presence.  

            The Soul is God’s Loving gift, as the possibility of Enlightenment in the context of the limitation imposed by sensory experience here on the Physical Plane, primarily occurring in, and represented by, the body of flesh.  This even makes perfect “logical” ego sense – the one consistent lesson of events on the Physical Plane is that limitation exists – the body is limited, the natural “laws” that determine events here are limiting, and the ego itself is supremely limiting and limited.  Since God is the sum total of all Manifestation and Truth, this would necessarily have to include the truth of limitation as part of the Divine Being, and this, for once, is a part of the Supreme Absolute Truth that we can perceive with the senses, notwithstanding the fact that we may still literally have trouble distinguishing “the forest from the trees”! What is universally present is often most difficult to perceive...            

            The nature of the human “Fall of Consciousness” consists of our understandable tendency to “fall” back into the illusory experience of sense perception, and away from intuitive, Divinely inspired, states of extra-sensory perception.  Intuition is the Voice of the Soul speaking in our consciousness. A significant portion of this phenomenon is frequently called “The Still, Small Voice of the Conscience” in spiritual literature.  The conscience is our inherent perception of the moral valence of life on the Physical Plane, and is all too often opposed to the much more strident voices of our personal desires, attached as they are to the transitory gratifications of the ego, and the physical immediacy of the senses.  Like all the other facets of intuition, the conscience must be identified, accepted, and validated by human experience on the Physical Plane, and this can be a painful, difficult, and frustrating process.  The ego is addicted to logic as its primary decision-making modality, and logic is frequently opposed to intuition on the stage of life.  How compelling it is to simply do what is outwardly “sensible” and “convenient” in this existence, rather than perform the often far more difficult actions required by moral responsibility and selfless compassion, intuition’s partner in the Heart and Soul! 

            Along with the Manifestation of Perfect Love is God’s Aspect as the Divine Light, and, like everything else on the highest of spiritual planes, this is also far removed from our human sensory perspective on illumination.  The literal fact is that light itself is a Living Spirit that is both integrated as a field of Consciousness, and segregated as the waves and particles of physics.  Just as everything is reducible ultimately to light – that is, radiant energy – either in the wave or photonic particle manifestation (even electrons, neutrons, protons, and other nuclear particles are so reducible), so everything is expressible as an element of the Divine Consciousness manifest in the form of universal radiant expression.  In this way, the “ideas” of God, carrying the Divine Presence, are sent throughout the universe to take manifest form eventually under auspicious circumstances.  In the human expression, this form is the Light of the Soul associated with the physical body of Karma.  As the Soul learns and experiences through the association with the body (as the vessel of limitation), Karma becomes Dharma, and the Soul becomes more and more present and perceptible in our consciousness as the Guiding Light of compassion, shining ever more brightly in the physical edifice.  This process is why we are here.  

            The total expression of the physical manifestation of limitation is extremely complex, and accounts for all the births and deaths of all the physical and sentient conditions of all time, expressed as the Physical Plane. God’s outpouring of Love is absolutely perfect, leaving nothing incomplete anywhere.  Even the apparent darkness and fragmentation of physical existence is still perfect as a Karmic vehicle under God.  It is our greatest challenge as sentient creatures to know this as the Truth, building on the initial foundation of the senses and sensory experience, as Jacob’s Ladder extends from the Physical Plane back to the Heavens and the Divine Presence.  Communion is the process of climbing this ladder of perception in both directions, repeatedly Ascending to the Divine, and descending back to mundane physicality with a new set of spiritual perceptions to offer our fellow human beings – perceptions of Love, Light, and Hope. 

                                                                                - With Love, Alan -

                                                               (Copyright 2009, by Alan Schneider)

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