Self-centered Metaphysics

Self-centered metaphysics is a contradiction in terms. It’s a curious and often unnoticed fact that most schools and teachings termed metaphysical, place the major emphasis on more or less mundane egocentric concerns:  awaken your psychic powers, get money, exercise influence, find love and romance, achieve personal enlightenment easily and quickly, and so on.  There is a wide spectrum of desire-appeal in these that ranges from the “metaphysics” of winning a lottery to subtler goals like general self-improvement and gaining knowledge.

Given the current nature of humans, such motivations and appeals are to be expected.  But they are not about metaphysics but “physics,” that is, the physics of bodies and their desires.  In the normal course of life, we do need metaphysics to awaken personal powers, get money, exercise influence, and find love.  With the exception of the last—and depending on what level of “love” we mean—these normal human goals are achievable without the confusion of redefining them as a spiritual path.   But in a curious way, selfish appeals and methods get wrapped up in various “spiritual” and “supernormal” packaging.  The seduction of that is that we can go on living an ordinary life while while entertaining the ego satisfying illusion that we are on a special spiritual path.

Goals like self-improvement, gaining knowledge, or getting clear of personality limitations can began to shade up toward something spiritual since they can support a healthy and more integrated personality.   And we need some measure of progressive normalcy before we can expect safe progress toward spiritual or supernormal.   Our practical pursuits are useful training and develop faculties in us that are a fitting prelude to spiritual progress, and moving toward the future our earthly abilities lend themselves to use on higher turns of the spiral of life.  But, as often happens, more or less egocentric concerns saturates the beginning, the middle, and the end of pseudo-metaphysical teachings.

We search for happiness, and real happiness is spiritual sunlight.  When approaching the spiritual, any desire emphasizing our egocentric concerns dims the light, and acts as a barrier separating us from the goal.  We achieve happiness not by grabbing for it, but as a byproduct of love, a radiant sun-like disposition and motivation.  For spiritual things, we achieve is by radiance.  But the ego in us is not radiant, not giving.  It is like a grasping hand, whereas the higher symbol is an open hand.  Spiritual receptivity is like this open hand held out to the sun.  If we try to grab the light, our hand closes on darkness. 

Sunflower Cosmos

We are light spheres. The sun is clearly also a light sphere, and the planets of our solar system borrow sunlight in imitation of star-like radiance. Our evolution takes place within the Sun’s aura, and within the Earth’s aura.

The magnetism of the Earth and its fiery core are as essential to us as the sun. We spread light on the surface, where from space, the cities of Earth shine as patterned lights. The photosynthetic green of Earth incorporates less apparent luminosity for there are numberless realms of hidden light. Clairvoyant vision reports light spheres everywhere, including centers within our ethereal bodies as well as in the countless spheres of space. Everywhere there are centers within centers in a hierarchy of lights.

Light and forms follow laws, and the laws of evolution are the laws not only of form, but of light. Forms themselves appear to be crystallized light, and on light we are absolutely dependent. But as beings of light, we are also self-dependent, and the more so as sun-self rises. We give and receive, and the greater ways of it only show in the steps of our more full awakening to inner and outer radiance.

Our being is rooted in cosmic star stuff, whether conceived as the big bang of science or the big bloom of metaphysics. We live our life within the forms and light patterns of cosmic entities, spheres within spheres on an ever-ascending scale. It is no wonder that ancient cultures saw God in the Sun, and Gods in the stars. From our planetary to our cosmic matrix we are continuous with light and life. Someone rightly said we “Live by an invisible sun within us.” It is no great leap to the thought that the whole solar system lives by an invisible sun of which visible light is the analog. And if we find the roots of our physical life in the objective sun, it is not hard to imagine a higher counterpart from which our spiritual life is inspired. So, along this line of adventure, the ancient symbolism of self as sun takes on new meaning, and in its fuller assimilation our own life takes on new meaning. It is only left for us to intuit the profound workings and sacred mysteries of the laws of light.

Beauty as Transformative Power

“I was lifted high,
In sun-bright healing winds—desiring now
A greater beauty…”

— Marion Wentworth

Usually, people think of beauty as something perceived, something we subjectively attribute to an object or a person. But I find the spiritual meaning of beauty is different. Spiritual beauty is not a passive perception but an active and transformative power. It is the energy of the intuitional world. We commune with such beauty, we enter into it and it enters into us. It is unity and Fire. It is “the world of pure meaning.” This beauty is not our personal response to an object in the world. Rather, beauty is itself a multidimensional world of rainbow archetypes.

In the archetypal world the divine mosaic shines in beauty. We encounter considerable fidelity problems in translating this world of pure meaning into its best correspondences in thought and words. It is a valiant effort, yet the lesser cannot fully include the greater. Still we try to mirror it. Fortunately, the mental mirror is itself in long-term evolutionary motion.

“…beyond the Beauty that is predicated of various forms and relationships, there is a pure Transcendent Beauty, and this is a mode of the very Being of the SELF. This Beauty is not something that is beautiful. It is Self-existent and casts its luster upon all things… Ecstasy is pure Beauty, as well as pure Joy and Knowledge.”

— Pathways Through to Space, Franklin Merrell-Wolff

Breathing in and Out

Inspiration and expiration are automatic, inherent in physical life. By analogy, spiritual inspiration and expiration are inherent in our inner life, are virtually a definition of it. We inhale (receive) and exhale (give), and these two are a natural law and rhythm. But in our human egotism we have broken the sacred rhythm—we would take in and not give forth. We would breath in with little breathing out, and we choke and sputter on our own egotism. We try to absorb the beauty of creation, but do not create beauty—we read, but do not write, we receive but do not transmit, we want love, but are poor at giving it, and on it goes… I’m reminded of the fellow who noted only two types of people in the world: lawn-sprinkler people and vacuum-cleaner people, with the vacuum-cleaner types being predominant. In the homely image of a lawn-sprinkler person we have a picture of an individual who is reestablishing the sacred rhythm, bringing life back into balance. This concept has been named “service.”