There are 3 philosophies which I regularly: Conscious Contact spirituality of 12 Steps, A Course in Miracles, and now, Plotinus Enneads. Integration is about melding the various words into one truth. The truth is true; there can't be several of them. I'm excited to be putting together Plotinus and ACIM. The words are incredibly diverse, but the truth in constant.
Plotinus 2.9.18 says: "...those that have become good and are no longer body but embodied Soul and of a quality to inhabit the body in a mode very closely resembling the indwelling pf the All-Soul in the universal frame. And this means continence, self-restraint, holding staunch against outside pleasure and against outer spectacle, allowing no hardship to disturb the mind. The All-Soul is immune from shock, there is nothing that can affect it; but we, in our passage here, must call on virtue in repelling these assault, reduced for us from the beginning by a great conception of life, annulled by matured strength.
Attaining to something of this immunity, we begin to reproduce within ourselves the Soul of the vast All and of the heavenly bodies: when we are come to the very closest resemblance, all the effort of our fervid pursuit will be towards that goal to which they also tend, their contemplative vision becomes ours, prepared as we are, first by natural disposition and afterwards by all this training, for that state which is theirs by the Principle of their Being."
My ACIM workbook lesson for the day is: Light and joy and peace abide in me.
The lesson immediately lets me off the hook for all my expectations and struggles. And it gives me a way to change what I believe about myself in my mind. My innermost being is already the Sage, an embodied Soul. I don't have to work on that. I merely need to stop believing the surface chatter in my head.
It is not arrogant to become an embodied Soul. It is not evil to stop participating in society. I don't at all mind celibacy, simplicity, austerity, sobriety.
At an early age, I chose "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner." I haven't changed.
No comments:
Post a Comment