Paradox Paradox Paradox
by William Bloom
I feel like ranting and being flip about serious stuff. This is a
protest to the Great Joker who set up the cosmos and created a particularly
weird outpost for these peculiar little creatures we call humans, us.
Oh yes, I know that we are all supposed to have some level of
choice about who and where we are, but I don’t remember ever being asked
whether I wanted to exist in the first place. I don’t remember ever being
presented with a simple tick-box question. Yes or No. Would you like to enter
the time/space dimension? Would you like to become a conscious being? Would you
like to be caught in the long suck of time, perpetually drawing you forward into
change? Would you like to be a soul that can make choices?
That last question is of course very tricky, because at some point
presumably I could not make choices – so I could never have chosen to be able
to make choices, could I!!
But here, for me, is the biggest paradox. It is totally bizarre
that as a human being (who was given no choice in having choice) I am able
simultaneously to be both a primal self-interested reptilian creature and a soul
with cosmic consciousness. Arghhh. Now I know full well that some of my readers
may be squeaky clean and only focus on the Light, always wear freshly ironed
clothes and never fart, but sometimes, you know, you just have to let rip!
Don’t you? Don’t you ever just go mad and need to scream and rant? (What’s
that, missus? You’re nicely controlled and never do that kind of thing? Well,
loosen up, sister, loosen up.)
One Good Meditation
Why all this explosive communication? Because over the last six months I have
had the greatest expansions of consciousness and sensations of Love that I have
ever experienced – and it has shaken me up! They have happened mainly in
meditation.
Since my early twenties I have had a daily meditation practice
which I love. Most importantly, it gives me the space and time to relax and
centre into myself – and then let my heart, mind and body, my full
consciousness and psyche, be aware of what exists – be aware of the ‘rain
cloud of knowable things.’ There is no greater pleasure than to sit like a
great radar disk, open, receptive, allowing impressions, sensing the wave
fields, beings and dimensions that permeate this wondrous, multidimensional
cosmos. As Sogyal Rinpoche once said about meditation, ‘If you don’t come
out of it feeling better than when you went in, you’re doing something
wrong.’
In a good meditation, I can pass through dozens of different
states. First, there are all the changes to my feelings and energy field, as I
slow down, centre and breathe through my various levels of agitation. Second,
there are all the impressions and sensations that belong to my relationships,
social life and work. Then I just breathe and witness the flow of the infinite
field. No wonder Yogananda in his classic biography stated, ‘One good
meditation is worth a year’s living.’
And sometimes what happens in meditation is startling and dramatic.
On my website journal in August last year I began to describe a new
consciousness I was experiencing, but then I couldn’t write any more about it.
It was too complex, challenging and intense.
On one side, I was ecstatic. I was finally passing through a
threshold that I had first felt some twenty-five years ago. I knew this new
state of consciousness was there, but I had not been able to expand into it.
Trying to achieve it only made it more distant. At last I was calm, soft and
open enough that my psyche was able to melt and stretch into a new form of
awareness, witnessing the witness, and connecting with new fields of benevolent
bliss in dimensions I hardly understand.
This was and is a huge and profound blessing that I am still
integrating. But I don’t want to sound as if I’m boasting: Look at how
expanded my consciousness is! Admire my shiny new awareness and deeper
connection!
The Challenges of the Cycles
I can’t boast about it because there is another rougher side to all this,
which all of us experience in the cycles of spiritual growth.
When we open, sense and receive new impressions and fields, there
are wonderful sensations, expansions, enlightenments and illuminations. But, at
the same time, our nervous systems and psyches are more vulnerable. As we open,
we also become more raw. New energy floods into us. It is benevolent but it is
also powerful and we can become over-stimulated. At the same time too, our usual
everyday sense of self may be shaken up, transformed and fragmented – and our
reptilian survival psychology may become agitated, anxious and taut.
Already vulnerable, the new energy fuels and vitalizes every aspect
of ourselves. Everything we are is amplified. Not only are love, wisdom and
goodwill greater than before, but so too are all our negative patterns of
insecurity, defensiveness and aggression. Our soul consciousness is expanded but
so also is our primal unconscious. Stuff lurking in our psyches’ underworld
slithers out of the dark recesses of our shadow self to experience light and
transformation.
This is the normal rhythm of spiritual growth, initiation and
expansion. More energy, more connection, more consciousness – will all
stimulate challenges.
So here I am, folks. In a new state of connection and awareness –
and also in a new state of challenge. Luckily, gracefully, I am almost through
the turbulence of that piece of growth and I can feel the solid base of
integration. Thankfully I have been here before many times and I know this cycle
of expansion and challenge. It is normal and healthy. I even teach about it and
try to help others with it.
So here’s the gist, brothers and sisters. Be prepared. When
spiritual growth surges, new energy flows in and it will vitalize and shake up
everything within you. And right now it would be completely inauthentic of me to
write about all that in a sweet, poetic prose style. Mystics are also intrepid
explorers, aren’t we?
I look forward to the next test on the journey, because it is
always worth it. I’ll meet you there, on the next swerve.
All my love, William
www.williambloom.com
William Bloom is one of the UK’s most experienced teachers,
healers and authors in the field of holistic development. His work has helped
thousands of people.
His mainstream career includes a doctorate in psychology from the
LSE where he lectured in Psychological Problems in International Politics, ten
years working with adults and adolescents with special needs, and delivering
hundreds of trainings, many in the NHS.
His holistic background includes a two-year spiritual retreat
living amongst the Saharan Berbers in the High Atlas Mountains, 30 years on the
faculty of the Findhorn Foundation, co-founder and director for 10 years of the
St. James’s Church Alternatives Programme in London.
He is a meditation master and his books include the seminal
The
Endorphin Effect, Feeling Safe and Psychic Protection – and most recently
Soulution:
The Holistic Manifesto.
He is director of The Holism Network and well known for his clear,
practical and friendly style of teaching.
Updated: 7/10/10