=kit045.txt

KIT 45 - The Critical Issues

Our self-esteem is the real issue in our lives. This is usually
precariously suspended on our own fallible assessment or that of
others. That on this thin thread of a mind's notion hangs our
performance in achievement, our prospects of unfurling our
personality, and our joys and pains calls for serious soul-
searching and some restructuring of our thinking. For here lies
the critical issue.

At a time when in our present day civilizations the struggle for
survival has become so desperate, the distress of the destitute so
appalling, competition so ruthless, emotions so callous, the clue
to material survival has become psychological survival founded
upon our Self-respect. Thus the key to fulfillment is a function
of our self-image.

Realizing how crucial our self-image is, it is the more amazing
that it is really a projection of our inherent creative
imagination. Our performance in life, our success or failure, is
suspended upon an act of imagination! So the question becomes, how
do we work with our self-image in order to upgrade it?

We are touching upon the very crux of psychology, and yet we must
also include and honor our spiritual dimension since it would be a
violation of the holistic paradigm to neglect or underestimate the
value and role of this transcendent dimension of our psyche. Our
self-image is the product of scores of unassociated factors and it
gels easily into a tenuous Gestalt which resists change. This
process is insidious. It can even become compelling and obsessive
and may ultimately lead to self-defeat.

The clue is then to earmark the essential ingredients enmeshed in
the particular admixture that is our personality. This is not easy
since this is an enormous spectrum. After this we need to identify
with these, that is, really convince ourselves that they are
latently present within us and can be unfurled, reinforced,
nurtured, and protected as they grow.

A perfunctory probe of our idiosyncrasies will evidence the degree
of our parental, ancestral even evolutionary inheritance, as well
as the imprint of our culture, upbringing, schooling, and social
environment. The transpersonal elements in our psyche are more
difficult to earmark, and are inevitably, inextricably intermeshed
with the ancestral ones. To cull these, one needs to apply methods
of modulating consciousness into its transcendental setting. This
is just exactly what meditation is about.

At this stage, it gradually occurs to one that indeed one does
inherit from the genes of the entire physical universe including
the stars, the galaxies, and cosmic rays. One inherits from other
dimensions of the universe as well, such as: the thinking of the
universe, the emotion of the universe, its programming,
motivation, hopes, expectations, fears, precarity,
disappointments, and more generally, its magic.

If the way you interpret the term God is: the universe as a being
endowed with a body, mind, emotions, consciousness, will, etc.,
then truly one might say with Pir-o-Murshid Pir-o-Murshid Inayat
Khan that we carry within us the divine inheritance. Seen
holistically, this would also include a material inheritance as
transmitted bodily through parents, for indeed our bodies are
formations of Planet Earth and made of the fabric of the universe,
including the sun, the galaxy, and traced ultimately to the Big
Bang. And if we recognize that the universe is not just a physical
reality, we will realize that we also inherit from the
personality, consciousness, and will of that being whose body is
the sun. This is the being the Sufis call Prince Huraksh, and who
was looked upon by Suhrawardhi as an archangel. By expanding the
envelope, we would discover our inheritance from that being whose
body is our galaxy, the Milky Way, and whom the Sufis consider as
a super archangel incorporating the psyche of Prince Huraksh and
many more, including yours and mine.

And if this sounds disconcerting, there is more, because we have
to include the clusters of galax- ies, and ultimately the whole of
that being whose body is the physical universe. This indeed makes
sense of that term: divine inheritance.  Most importantly, what
does it take to be able to experience this? The theory will not
suffice. Perhaps the clue resides in the fact that while the
peripheral and readily retrievable storage of our memory only
covers data inputted since our birth (generally after a year or
more), the ordinarily unfathomable depths of our unconscious store
a host of data that never cease to overwhelm psychotherapists and
especially those carrying out research in the unconscious, with
utter dismay. 

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