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of the moments I spend in that state flow over into the rest of my day more and more. Also, the inspirations and promptings that I get while in that state lead me to find elliptic solutions to any physical, material or emotional problems that I may encounter.
A reasonable question may be asked, "can I just experience the highs but not the lows?" Spiritually, yes. The deepest levels of worshipful meditation is the utmost of highs. It is the greatest pleasure that can be experienced, as it is being one with the All, direct communion with the source of all creation. But it is not the high of material gratification. It is a pleasure that is experienced with the soul, and not the flesh. The lows will be when we are not in that state, but we can all eventually attain the personal growth level where we are always in a high state of spiritual consciousness.
Experiencing the eternal, now; spiritual paradise in the material life, is our immediate destination. That is our short term goal: Transcendence.
Experiencing the now eternally; material life evolving into spiritual reality, is our ultimate destination. That is our long term goal: Perfection.
Mastery
How many ways are there for you to be perfect? Externally, you can become better physically; more fit, healthier and stronger. Mindally, you can become more knowledgeable, more understanding and wiser.
Spiritually, you can become a more loving person exhibiting an abundance of the "fruits of the spirit". How about as a total being?
Are you, as a person, making any headway in becoming perfect? Are you even getting better everyday at something? Can you tell if you're going anywhere?
Now is a good time to discuss how the human vehicle can negotiate the terrain that was discussed in the last chapter.
In driving an automobile to arrive at a destination, we get there not by just driving straight, but also by making turns and going downhill and uphill. Personality has a similar range of cosmic dimensional performance and they are all relative to each other. Even in just trying to go straight ahead, a car cannot. If one looks closely at the movements of a car, or any vehicle for that matter, one will notice that there are minute course changes happening all the time. At the same time that one goes forward, one is also going either slightly right or left, and at the same time up and down. It is the same with the range of movement of Personality.
The Personality has the ability to master itself in three dimensions:
I. Mastery of Destiny (Relationship with God - Length)
II. Mastery of Self (Relationship with ourselves -Depth)
III. Mastery of Environment (Relationship with other people and things - Breadth)
The body, mind and soul changes and evolves in quality as we move in these dimensions and the Personality keeps them together and moving as one. The explorations of these dimensions are often facilitated through worshipful meditation (length), prayer (depth), and service (breadth).
I. Mastery of Destiny - Length
Personality length represents 1. The direction and nature of progression 2. Movement through space and according to time--evolution. 3. Upgrading from lower spiritual influences to higher spiritual influences.
This is the lengthy progress of our bodies, minds and souls unified by the Personality matrix in the upward movement towards the universal First Source and Center. By analogy, this would be the ability of the car to move forward to get closer to the destination; the positive forward progression of the body, mind and soul in this life and continuous life afterwards. This forward progression is greatly influenced by the dimension of depth of self-realization. A car goes faster forward when it is going downhill.
1. Direction and Nature Of Progression
The concept that as we evolve spiritually, we are transformed, not just figuratively but literally is not that fantastic to those who have considered what may come after this life. That we turn into angels is one idea from the past, an idea that is still held by some. A winged human being is not that unreasonable if we consider that a butterfly is but a winged caterpillar. But the image of a human being with wings made from feathers such a bird seems rather incongruous. It works as a metaphoric symbol but nothing more. Describing what form we would take, even if we knew for sure, would be rather pointless, as without proof it would just become another jaunt into the realm of the fantastic. However, we can explore the nature and progression of our evolutionary forms.
The direction, of course, would be towards perfection. We would become more and more perfect as we draw nearer to God. We have progressed from the material, the substance which composes our body, to the animal and to becoming human. Our soul is the embryo for the next stage of existence. Without going into what that form may look like, I think we can logically deduce from looking at natural evolution
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