Happy Monday!
I hope you all had a chance to practice creating your own happiness over the weekend.
I had a great day off Friday. I got a massage, took a steam bath, and met with some friends I haven’t seen in quite a while. That was fun.
I also drew a picture of the Atman, the Divine Spark or Soul. We will begin discussing the Atman-Soul today.
Saturday, I relaxed, read, played in my garden, enjoyed great food and had a good sleep. Sunday I came to work and finished writing the new chapter on breathing and movement for my How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy! update. At about 3:00, I headed home to read in my garden and enjoy being lazy so I’d have plenty of juice in me to get me through a productive week.
I did a nice, intense lunging and infant development workout Sunday so my back side is making its presence known to me today J.
We now have the list of presenters and their sessions up on www.chekconference2011/presenters.com so you can all see who’s presenting and what they are presenting at the upcoming CHEK Conference.
I’m really excited to share this event with all of you! I’m sure if you take a moment to have a look at the quality of the presenters and their presentations, you’ll be motivated to be there too.
This won’t be a conference full of information that you can’t use. I’ve made sure there was a high level of practicality and applicability in each session so people could leave empowered, not just with a head full of potentially confusing information!
Today, I’d like to begin a series on the soul, what it is, and why it is that achieving Soul-Union is the Ultimate Spiritual Practice. The topics I will cover in this series are:
1. Part 1: What is the soul?
2. Part 2: How does the soul function.
3. Part 3: The relationship of the soul with the ego-mind and the shadow.
4. Part 4: Simple tips for achieving soul union – your own spiritual practice!
After studying and practicing the application of religion, metaphysics, and all related body-mind sciences, including physics and quantum physics for much of my waking life, I’ve come to an experiential understanding of the soul.
I’ve been practicing Soul~Union for many years now and have found that practice to be far more rewarding than any prior spiritual practice I’ve exercised, and there have been many. It is my dream for this series to help you become aware of the freedom and beauty of an unbound spiritual practice that eliminates ideas of self-imposed hardship, bondage and the follies that are typically manifest of religious confusion.
The confusion in religion and modern spirituality emerges largely from people writing and teaching about God or the soul who have not yet become aware of their own soul. Without awareness in relationship with our own soul, every idea or process we experience comes by way of the body and mind (the body-mind construct).
The body and mind serve to individuate, which can only occur through via the principle of exclusion. When we practice a specific religious doctrine without awareness of the foundation principles of all legitimate spiritual teachings and practice, we do what a child does when wanting a piece of pie; the child chooses a piece (usually the biggest one!) of the pie.
Yet, in so doing, excludes the experience of (enjoying) the WHOLE PIE!
(1) The philosopher-Saint “Shankara” gives us a very important explanation as to why people are so confused about God and the soul in the world even though the world is overflowing with spiritual teachers. He states:
“The study of scriptures is fruitless as long as Brahman (God) has not been experienced. And when Brahman has been experienced, it is useless to read the scriptures.”
What he’s saying, just to be sure you are clear here, is that anyone who has not achieved Soul-Union can only experience scriptures as ideas. Just as you can’t effectively explain what an orgasm feels like to a child, or anyone that hasn’t experience one without your explanation becoming an idea in their mind; explanations about Soul and/or God Union (THE ULTIMATE ORGASM!) become ideas that rarely match up to the experience!
They not only become ideas, they become viruses of the mind that make people mentally-emotionally and physically ill; willing to fight and kill in the name of their god-ideas!
Many believe that because they’ve memorized words from scripture or various books and texts, that they have achieved Soul-Union. This is no different than thinking because you’ve read books about space travel that you are an astronaut!
What do you think would happen if such self proclaimed astronauts began teaching courses on how to fly the space shuttle to the moon and such people were given a chance to fly it?… I’ll give you a hint!your tax bill would go up radically with every attempt! And to the degree that you fall in love with mind-viruses (ideas), you too will experience a progressive increase in the taxation of ego-mind.
In this series, I will share my own experiential understanding of the soul and Soul-Union. You can read my words all you want. You can believe them or not believe them. I’m not attached to, nor in need of your approval or agreement because what I share comes from my own authentic experiences.
The only way you will ever know if I’m sharing wisdom is to practice the exercises I share so you can begin having “your own experiences”.
I can only guide you to the experience of soul that I enjoy as my guiding light. When we all meet at the point of mutual, practical, experiential understanding, we will have the opportunity to hold hands as we walk together as healthy lovers. That’s all I can authentically offer anyone in hopes of authentic companionship.
So let’s get started!
SOUL UNION ~ THE ULTIMATE SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
Part 1. What Is The Soul?
Your soul is the Union between THE ABSOLOUTE (GOD) and your Relative reality – your Whole-mind or God. Your soul is your “personal God”. It is a word that means the God in you.
In my diagram above, the dotted lines represent THE ABSOLUTE GOD; the GOD THAT IS immeasurable, unknowable as this, or that. GOD IS PRIME SOURCE. PRIME SOURCE is FIRST LEVEL CREATION (1LC).
God is represented as the outer circle of the tai-chi symbol. God represents MIND as Existence; without Existence, there would be no use or function for God – nothing God could embody; nothing to “God” in or as.
God represents The First Relationship. The First Relationship emerges when the two essential qualities of GOD interact with each other. GOD – THE ABSOLUTE, has only 2 qualities:
1. That which is ABSOLUTELY EMPTY – NO-THING – PURE POTENTIAL; the inherent emptiness of ZERO.
2. THAT which is ABSOLUTELY FULL – EVERY-THING – PURE POTENTIAL; The inherent fullness of ZERO.
Personal Exercise: Let’s do a thought experiment together. Einstein was famous for his thought experiments. If you began in an imagined state of GOD AS EMPTY or NO-THING and began counting EVERY-THING, what number would you come up with?
Hint 1: What number do you get when your odometer reaches its highest possible mile count? What happens when it counts the last mile?
“God” represents the meeting of the two qualities of ZERO, THE EMPTY meeting THE FULL. God represents MIND. MIND exemplifies All Possible vibrational realities from STILLNESS (Zero vibration) to Infinity (All possible vibrations).
All vibrations have a beginning, middle and end. Though all manifestation is created in MIND, from MIND, and are expressions of MIND, they can’t possibly be GOD because we can see, touch, feel, smell, taste, and measure the products (expressions) of God. Therefore, “God” represents 2nd Level Creation (2LC); God depends upon GOD, but GOD doesn’t depend on God; If GOD is THE MIRROR, God is the “Looker” (Relationship).
2nd Level Creations are transitory because we know Existence – The Universe – is here, but!Ever-Changing. By definition, Uni-verse means ONE. “God” means THE ONE. Regardless of how many times THE ONE is divided or multiplied, there is, and can only be The ONE God.
Symbolically, one could replace the perfect circle with the infinity symbol as a symbolic means of exemplifying God. This forms the basis of the circle within which the tai-chi symbol arises.
The “S” created in the tai-chi symbol exemplifies transition; yin becoming yang – yang becoming yin. The “S”, representing transition exemplifies SPIRIT. SOUL means ALL CONSCIOUSNESS ,and SPIRIT is All that SOUL (God) is conscious of, in and as experience.
Where do individual souls come from?
The same place the stars come from. GOD as God; all stars are made of matter. Matter is the marriage of no-thing and something. Yet, atoms are 99.9999999% empty! Quantum physics shows us that all “things”, such as atoms or otherwise, come into and out of existence at the speed of “NOW” – ZERO.
A soul represents “consciousness in” something. All matter exemplifies seeds of potential expression. Asking where souls come from is no different than asking where seeds come from.
Though the earth was once a ball of molten rock, with no signs of life whatsoever, the seeds of life had to have been in-folded in matter, while the consciousness to un-fold the seed must also be in, and around matter.
In this photo of the forest floor, we see that matter, earth, is the source of embodiment. The seed of the tree holds the image, bodily potential, and consciousness to unfold the seed to become the tree. Therefore, we can surmise that like seeds, souls have always been! We have All-Ways been present in the Universe; souls are expressions of the Universe like trees are expressions of seeds.
In my drawing of the soul, you see a point of emergence, from which the OM symbol is being expressed. That is my representation of the Atman (original man) or soul. The soul and the OM symbol (vibration, MIND, and your mind) are contained within ZERO. ZERO is dotted to exemplify that is IS and it ISN’T. ZERO is non-local and in my model represents CONSCIOUSNESS.
Your soul is the point of Union between Consciousness (God, The ONE, The Perfect Circle or Sphere) and Spirit; Spirit exemplifies transition, which can only occur in relationship.
Your soul is your consciousness in and of “relationship”; self relating to other.
The OM symbol exemplifies relationship, just as the tai-chi symbol does. The next circle or bubble outward from ZERO in my diagram represents the embodiment of consciousness “in” and/or “as”. Human beings have human souls and are capable of becoming conscious of All Things Knowable; CHRIST, Buddha or Krishna Consciousness – FULL ENLIGHTENMENT.
The soul is a seed of God. And like any seed, the soul carries all the potential of its source, God. This second circle also represents 2nd LC, movement, time, vibration, and emotion; we must feel to know.
Practical Exercise:
Meditate for a few minutes. As you allow your mind to go silent, witness any thoughts that arise within your mind. Next, ask yourself the question, “If I could not feel myself thinking, would I be capable of knowing that I was thinking?” (Thought is synonymous with movement)
Next, spend a few minutes being present with the witness that “is feeling” but not doing -that’s your soul! You look out through the window of your soul at God and God looks in through the same window and sees “God’s self”. God’s self is an aspect of God” SELF; The World-Soul.
Note: In metaphysics, the term “World” is exchangeable with the word “Universe” when conjoined to the word “soul” (World-Soul)
The outer circle of my drawing represents your ego-mind, which is your seed of THE MIND (of God). The human ego-mind can, through spiritual training and practice, expand its awareness to the point of merging with God. This is what the term Samadhi means. This is called an enlightenment experience.
This is what Shankara was referring to when he said:
“The study of scriptures is fruitless as long as Brahman (God) has not been experienced. And when Brahman has been experienced, it is useless to read the scriptures.”
I hope you’ve enjoyed our visit together today.
Tomorrow, we will continue with tomorrow with:
Part 2. How does the soul function?
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
Upcoming:
Part 3: The relationship of the soul with the ego-mind and the shadow.
Part 4: Simple tips for achieving soul union – your own spiritual practice!
References:
1. Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination – Timeless Teachings on Nondualilty, Translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood. Author: Viveka-Chudamani Vadanta Press, Hollywood Ca. 1947, 1975 (p.41)
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