FROM RITUAL TO REALITY
J. Dean Fagerstrom
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Please note that every single paragraph listed below has a corresponding meaning which is can be completely electronically and digitally isolated, measured, compared and factored.
But I won't get into this aspect in this post. For these words sing a this beautiful melody which is right on perfect key.
PLO & GO!!
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(1) A former book entitled A World Beyond used the above as a sub-title, and the present work is a continuation of the same. Everyone's life from birth to death involves a certain ritualistic form. Certain kinds of ritualistic forms seem necessary in order to give one a sense of direction and purpose. As a young person one will procure a social security number, a driver's license, or one may join a club or fraternity or a union, a religious organization, all of these acts part of an expected ritualistic procedure aside from any end in view.
(2) The concern of this book is to point out what ritual actually means in terms of a spiritual pursuit, that point in life when one begins to contemplate a greater meaning and purpose in life. There comes a time when any thinking individual must say: What is the significance of this job I have ? Is there anything about it that acts in behalf of my fulfillment - or is it basically a time-wasting occupation meant to provide an income so that I will not become an embarrassment to friends and family ? Where am I really going ? What do I really want ? Would I know fulfillment even were it to occur ?
(3) These questions surely deserve an answer and a sincere exploration of motive and spiritual aspiration.
(4) Many persons never bother to examine their ritualistic acts of life. One gets up in the morning and goes to work, and later in the day seeks recreation or association with friends or entertainment of some kind. There may be harmless rites performed each day, and yet much of one's preoccupation with sustaining life may become distracting to a deeper exploration of a hidden reality, one that lies deep within one's sources and is seldom talked about much less acted from.
(5) The above description, not unlike so many experiences of present society, correctly identifies my own attitude and behavior as depicted in A World Beyond. What is it that brings about a vital and dynamic spiritual change ? What is it that addresses us at the deepest level of feeling and thought ? Visiting a therapist may not be very helpful since a psychologist is not without unresolved problems, either, and may inadvertently project certain of those aspects to a client. This is also a prominent ritual of society, the belief that someone else has an answer that only the person himself or herself will ever recognize the moment it occurs.
(6) Our real search can only begin within the part of our being which is both the problem-area and the solution. This is not a contradiction but a description of a divine design. We are soul, mind and body. If one's emphasis is limited to only physical needs and gratification it only follows that the more profound aspects of our being will suffer neglect.
(7) A ritualistic mind may believe that the substance of this book, for example, is about a religious pathway meant to solve the problems and associated ills that inspired the search in the first place. Nothing would be further from the truth. Religion, too, may become hardly more than a ritualistic habit, one depending on blind faith and a reliance upon authority.
(8) As A World Beyond described my earliest indoctrination was religious of nature, and for a time it was believed all the answers to life's mysterious problems would be answered via a strong belief system. I never realized that an honest 'sinner' was closer to God's divine help than one with a proud piety. When the dynamic change occurred I found that people in the so-called secular world already knew the difference of what is just said. A dependence on a ritualistic way of life had prevented me from acting in a spontaneous manner, a seminarian among seminarians and all of whom had the same problem. The problem, as it had always been, was to install a program of rules of conduct, a behavior system and externalized appearance which, it was believed, would somehow impress those 'sinners' we seminarians were out to 'save'. Only God saves, and He begins by saving us from ourselves and our pretenses, our foolish pieties and all the other rituals of a pretended way of life.
(9) After the encounter described in the book cited above I entered a new pathway, what I later termed the royal highway back to God, back to the languishing soul within who had always known of my mistakes and misguided pursuits. This return to God in anyone's similar experience will always be the revelation of love. Love's only 'ritual' -if it has one-is to create the capacity within to experience joy, peace and even ecstasy. I discovered that God's only real plan was to make a human being as happy and as honest as one permitted. This heavenly program was not necessarily in accord with that of my instructors. They emphasized the individual's sense of shame, guilt, one's inherent defiance of a loving God as well as the need to perform a kind of rite in order to enter the realm of the 'blessed' and be 'one of them'. Once I had relinquished these attitudes, along with all of their condemnation, guilt and shame programs it was as though a completely new heavenly program installed itself in my thinking and feeling. I called this the heavenly 'mainframe' event, one with my own e mail address which would often say: My child, you have mail ! These messages were always about love, about happiness, joy, peace and sometimes about the happiness of those I have always loved as well as the 'royal highway' already filled with many transformed lives as part of the human continuum, souls filled with rejoicing that the reality they had always sought was a very present and dynamic experience.
(10) Passing from a ritualistic life of tedious piety and countless stipulations into one of spontaneity and joyous delight is not a state of life needing 'proof', an accounting for one's new activity; it is a non-prescribed movement of life filled with a wonderful sense of unity and purpose. This new realm of being caused me to compose a prayer as each new day began: Lord, I have no plans of my own for today other than those You reveal. I am at Your divine disposal, do with me as You will and all shall be well. In this expression there is a removal of personal conditions and stipulations, and one variation of the prayer says: Let me be able to instigate love in the hearts of my friends and neighbors that we may all share in the music of this great procession on the royal highway.
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That's all I am going to share in this post. Keep in mind that this gentleman has been knee-deep in prime numbers in this massive divinely revelatory work which is The Book of Anglion. But he also knows, as the Lord also knows, that we all need to be downloaded into the right frame of mind to unconditionally receive this New Program which represents a complete new way of thinking and viewing ourselves, others and the world around us.
Moving to this " World Beyond" is all about giving up on these insane claims that are all tied up in rituals which tend to overshadow and obscure the voice of perfect divine truth that is calling us all from the depths of our soul.
Peace.
Light!
ONE - LOVE!
GO!! |
