Third eye and I Am

Now that we’ve found that inner place, I have a few thoughts. First is that the enlightenment is probably never fully awakened in this lifetime, and if we claim it is, we’re basically claiming we’re a god or some similar deity. Second, We have to stop being spiritual gluttons for fuzzy feelings. There are still reassurances, but we can’t have everything, even the Buddha died from poisoning, everything is not going to go our way all of the time. It’s a series of checks and balances. Third is that our light comes and goes. There are a lot of things that can reassure us of our progress, though, and they are not hard to find.

First we have to look at Hinduism and their “Crown Chakra.” Buddhism combines the third eye  and the crown (remember, if the term “third eye” causes you stress, then you can replace every time it’s used with “wisdom,” there is no difference here) into one seamless progression, however I like to look at the Indians to formulate my idea of this progression. Like I said, this progression is probably never complete in a mortal lifetime, except maybe by exceptionally “emergent souls” like The Buddha,.or Krishna, or Jesus (Yeshua), so we should not get in a hurry. Lotuses are used to represent the chakras in Hinduism and Buddhism to show the beauty and natural blooming of the human soul. The crown chakra lotus flower has 1000 petals, whereas the third eye lotus has only two. Of course to open the third eye “bloom” you have to open five other chakras with 46 petals in total first (I put a list of chakras and some info in an earlier post, pt.10). But these 1000 petals show us that this final progression is by far a greater undertaking than the ones of our early lives, so what do we make of this? We should not be determined to become a god all at once, is my answer. We have to take this one day at a time and one meditation at a time. It’s taken me some eight years to get to this point and I had a lot of hard lessons in my youth to prepare me.

The key is the present moment, we can’t look forward or backward all the time. When we do that, we forget that the only place we are is now. When I say to you, “where do you live?“ The only answer is, “right now”  We have to be our authentic selves in the moment. When we let strange philosophies cause us fear, we let ourselves, our true selves, fade. I do think, however, that we must avoid violence and evil, but some of us are both of those things, so what do we do? We awaken one soul at a time until there are no violent souls left.

If there is no strife or bitterness in us, then we are better, so to speak, than much of the world. This is wisdom, rooted in compassion. This is the goal. We have to love our fellows, whether or not they deserve it. This is very hard. Mark my words.

When we begin to awaken, we learn that we are desperate for community, but we begin to notice that the community is sparse. We must be rooted. We must act out of wisdom. You must find our community in Heaven, Nirvana, Bliss. There is no other way. Zen teaches us to be unresponsive to negativity. This is hard to do, and I fail frequently. All the same we must try, we must train ourselves. The path is now, right now. When we can start a practice, we can start to heal.

A mindfulness practice is key to realizing my words, I’ll say again, I’m just sharing what I’ve learned. There are three influential teachers that have helped me, Richard Rohr, Thich Nhat Hahn, and Eckhart Tolle. You would do well to research them. 

Remember, don’t accept every thought in your mind as fact. Friends, have wisdom rooted in compassion, and wise action. More to come…