Question for Bagua: Does the Self Pre-Exist Birth?

… on this subject yet.

>>our
true self wants it all . . . whatever “all” means.<<

… 🙂

Bagua's attitude, which factually speaking is quite correct of course, is that the immortal part of oneself is always available, and represents contentment and an end of uselessly striving for things in one's imagination, to realize in real life, which one hopes will provide the necessary experience of self – when in fact, as I always say (quoting Saint Francis I think, or was it Saint Augustine?), 'What we are looking for is what is looking', and for the deep sustenance of our souls, we need nothing but what is already in us.

All this is completely true, and is not 'taoist' as I say but universal. An almost literal rewriting of that quote is what is said by some zen people – "what you are seeking is causing you to seek". This understanding is the absolute ground base of spirituality worldwide. It is this that allows one to act freely in the world, without feeling a need for completion from what one is doing.

My understanding diverges with Bagua's though when it comes to the question of human life. To me it is very plain that, although indeed this part of oneself is always present – how could it be absent, since we are alive, and it's our connection to the source of all life? – it is something which most people will not be able to apprehend without a strong *aim* of doing so. When we are born we are helpless and physically dependent upon our parents. As we go on, we are simply bound to have all manner of attachments presenting themselves, we cannot possibly begin in a state of detachment when our love for our mother is loud in us, so connected with the food from her breast. Our families are attachments, our schools, the desire for continuing food and love, how to get it, how to be safe, our friends, the distractions and entertainments… etc.

All of these things make aims in us. We need to get the qualification, the job, the marriage, the house, the holiday, the money, that will take away the needs for completion that these attachments arouse in us. Those who come to spiritual practice for a solution to these desires find in the end (if they are lucky enough to discover a practice that suits them) that to fulfil their aims they must let them go and *allow* them to come to pass. Because what completes us is ourselves. Gradually we see what we never would have seen if we had not been determined to seek – that seeking is not necessary once one has *found*.

Nonetheless, this realizing, each time it happens in a human being, is different. The circumstances of each life, the things experienced in the family and in all the other situations, the configurations of the stars, the body and mind of the person, are all unique and individual. Each person who does this during an incarnation is not only doing something universal but also something unique. It is just those individual things that we come here to solve and to understand and to forgive and make peace with, just our own things, what matters to *us*. It matters not only that it is done generally, but that we ourselves each individually with our unique focusses and goals achieve it. This already is evolution. A certain family will be different, transformed, because of the spiritual actions of a generation. The aims which led the person to look for themselves do not disappear simply because the person found themselves – they reappear refreshed, in the light of calm clarity, no longer desperate but solid and earthed and realizable without delusion. This is transformation, becoming, evolution.

In magic for example, to be successful one must have no thought of results. This is known to everyone who practices magic – some call it 'neutrality', some 'positive non-desiring', some ' focussed indifference', etc. Through seeing that without striving, without trying, things come to pass, one gradually understands through practicing magic that if one lets go of *all* aims to complete oneself, *all* things come to pass as one would wish. One then is deeply content, living the 'peace profound', able to enter the 'great now' with no distraction and no obstacle. All the things for which one had to watch carefully, all the reasons to be stiff and attempt to block out life, all these have vanished. Aleister Crowley, no less ^_^, described tao te ching as an essay on being 'permanently delivered from the lust of result'. And this too is evolution. Because this is achieved, in one more member of the human race, life is now able to work more freely and be enjoyed and do something real in that person – *and in whatever that person touches*.

There's so much more. And I cannot regard what remains as 'playing' only, nor as 'having my cake and eating it'. In all the aims one has experienced arising in one's soul throughout one's life, in all the desires, all the dreams, all the fantasies, all the plans – there are *many* in everyone which are *not* a question of feeling the reflexive need to complete the self. When the self realizes itself in an incarnation, its journey is only beginning. The whole world remains. There are many worthwhile things to do, deep things, profound things. And from a more spiritual perspective, devoid of the need for 'providing for me', 'looking after number one', etc. – which is now already and permanently looked after no matter what – all these worthwhile things are seen in a very different light.

One can look in a new way. Where others struggle, one need not struggle. One can be confident because one's own life is in a constant state of being guided. Many of the aims one had turn out to have a real and not an illusory basis. There is still work to be done in the world. It might be in the nature of healing – I cannot look on the healings Christ did, or Bardon etc., as playing, or having one's cake and eating it. They are the direct result of spiritual awareness and growth. Tesla is talked about on here, I believe a naturally spiritual person – did not the work he did have profound implications for everyone else, and was not this a direct result of his spirituality? I mean I could name a hundred. The earth and the cosmos speak to someone they trust, they gently reveal secrets of incredible beauty, or glory, or truth; they trust this person because this person trusts themselves; there is no difference; the more we are part of it the more we are part of ourselves and of everyone.

The same is true of the idea of 'spiritual science' – through the understanding, the vision, the heart-love, gained by spiritual practice, one sees more and more profoundly into the true nature of things, and is able to form new understandings which can be passed on. One is evolving in oneself, perhaps this aim in itself (as with Michael) will be important. One is also evolving humanity, one has become a teacher, with something universal but also something personal to impart. This never ends. There is always more awakeness to be obtained, more understanding, more love. And one's doings in the world are not separate from one's greater understanding but absolutely intertwined with it. When people achieve this they can indeed sometimes find things which seem miraculous to others. But they are not miracles – they are natural outgrowths of human evolution and of the greater wisdom that results. There is nothing unnatural anywhere. Bagua talks of fools seeking to becoming Jedi, he does not seem to take into account that (unlike lame movie versions of the same) a true spiritual scientist or artist, a magician or an alchemist, an inventor or a healer, is not 'seeking to become a jedi' since all 'seeking' as normally understood goes away in that person long before deeper things become apparent, let alone actualized, in him or her.

To me, what is in tao te ching is the ground base of something which is changing, evolving, growing symphonically. It is the root of a plant with ten thousand different flowers. We find what we seek when we find ourselves, but there is and there never could be any *end* to finding ourselves. And we find it in spiritual things, in physical things, everywhere – there is no difference.

Because we are human beings, free agents, we have the power to evolve and to become more than what we were. Because this happens from freedom and connection, this is not forced and this is not the satisfaction of idle curiosities. This is becoming who we are meant to be, who (I believe) the universe is designed to make us. We find our new understandings of love and wisdom, and indeed power, not from the ego and not from desperation to be something we are not, but from continuing to be what we are and can be, to the fullest. The insights gained from this process remain to deepen everyone else's quest for their own self, which also never ends, and the truth as it is realized on earth continues to evolve, as it is designed to do, precisely correlated to the level of our achievements in being who we really are, which is always, more and more, the only thing we ever wish to be.

j

… about what the discussion is, and I’m not hoping for a ‘winner’ – just to be understood. My view as you know is that when you ‘realize’ this version of yourself it involves a definite change in this linear time zone. This is important because here, evolution manifests. Naturally all is still present outside of time, in eternity nothing changes since the time there is beyond change. All IS eternally. However what manifests in the present moment on earth is a matter of human choice and human evolution, earth evolution, things progressing in time.

To me it is because this evolution matters that the opportunity for it to occur in linear time, by means of free will, is granted to us. Thus we make manifest in ourselves and in the world what was unmanifest.

Here in this zone at this moment in history, we have many incarnating now desiring to fulfil some important purpose. We have many here who have been returning and returning, deliberately. The Tibetans plan their next incarnations sometimes down to relating to their friends what they will be like ‘next time’, who their family will be, etc. Things like this are reported in Judaism and Celtic pantheons also, and of the old Egyptian priests. These are just the ones I know about. The bodhisattva vows to return. The dalai lama says, as long as sentient beings need me I will remain to serve.

Well why? What is there to serve? If all is ‘already there and already done’, there is nothing to do. Yet it appears something must still be done. I suspect this something is evolution. j

>>I see his discussion is bringing out true eloquence in your last few posts<< j

Thanks for your opinion. Please remember that it is just your opinion – it appears that we are arguing when we try to say our opinions as FACT that negate the other, so I’m glad to hear how you feel, although I have a different take, and enjoy being different.

It appears that we agree on experiencing an everchanging centerpoint, but differ in that I build a particular energetic structure to experience it with and you prefer to let go of structure.

My opinion, in this world where we have free will to create, is that by bringing Yuan Qi here, giving substance to spirit, giving immortality to the physical essence through alchemical process, and deeply experiencing the virtue qualities of the five elements in harmony, I/we complete my worldly and spiritual destiny, and feel satisfied. I don’t view creation as a cause of suffering but as a process with yin and yang – ups and downs that ultimately find the center if we aim for it (the center is always changing!). I am creating through a process of refinement an everchanging convergence, a meeting point for my experience(s). a method of amplifying their dissolving into the center, a balance point for outside forces to harmonize through my center.