=kit099.txt  

[ I ain't got no SOS hardcopy of this KIT. (sa) ]

KIT 99 - Awakening Beyond Life; Awakening in Life

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

The usual inadequacy in our understanding of what is being enacted
in our lives presents a resistance to further unfurling of our
personality potentials. The resultant vulnerable self-image and
dissatisfaction in our accomplishments is owing to our being
entrapped in our personal perspective, thus we fail to avail
ourselves of all the resourcefulness of our being. This is the
crux which may determine ultimately "whom we are."

How can we free ourselves from such constraint of personal
perspective, or complete ourselves with additional wider
perspectives? 

If you look at a cube drawn on a black-board, you can toggle your
glance and alternate between seeing it "this way" or "that way" in
what may be considered complementary perspectives. How does the
set-up of our nervous circuits operate that fluctuation? The
unconscious automated programming of our neurological sensory
pathways is sensitively balanced in a state of near-equilibrium so
that it may shift easily from one pattern to its complementary
function. That precarious balance (Kemal in Sufi terms) eschews
the disadvantage of a system getting bogged into a sclerosed
impasse which resists change, and therefore favors the advance of
the evolutionary thrust.

In our psyche, this delicate balance is ensured by the antinomy
between interest and indifference, which is one of the important
themes in our Murshid's message. Hence the chance of freeing
ourselves from the rut into which we may easily slip lies in the
degree of our enthusiasm for, dedication to, and motivation for
what we value. This is sometimes accessed by our intuition, in
what at first seems a hunch: regarding an alternate perspective to
the commonplace one, heartening in its excellence and splendor. To
this alternative one may toggle the setting of ones consciousness
f rom the commonplace perspective in which one gets so easily
entrapped.

Secondly, this chance lies in giving vent to our nostalgia for
freedom, our ability to extract, redeem ourselves from our
dependence, addiction, selfishness. This provides the power to
shift the perspective of our consciousness in meditation as in
real life situations. Murshid defines this nostalgia as "the quest
for the unattainable" which has the power of shifting our
perspective from the compulsiveness of "maya". The choice of that
word "unattainable" indicates that it always lies further - we can
never claim to have "got it".

However, the paradox lies in that it is the power of love that
involves us in the existential condition (the way of the
householder according to the Sufis),while it is the power of
freedom (the way of the ascetic) that frees us from being
entrapped in a constrained and deluding perspective. Toggle
between joy and pain and ecstasy, between awakening in life or
beyond life. Now try to extrapolate between these two poles of
your being which are of necessity interrelated and interdependent,
rather than toggle. To reach beyond the middle range, we need not
just to shift our sense of bodiness and self image into
discovering ourselves as subtle bodies, or better still as auras
of light, but also activate the process of transmutation of matter
into spirit in our very constitution - an alchemical process. 

Our quest for the unattainable actuates our curiosity to "peer
beyond the veil"; to espy not only the "programming" of our lives
and life in general, but what is the originating intention set up
in the "software", and more so to apprise the way that our
incentives affect and update the programming of our lives and of
life in general. Let us bear in mind that, much as the knowledge
of the programming exhilarates us by stirring our understanding
beyond its limits, it is for the sake of the house that the blue-
print is designed. The blue-print only enlists a small sampling of
all the creative potentialities that it customizes. This could be
illustrated by the fact that the radio simplifies the bounty of
the wave-interference network from which the sounds that we hear
are derived by limiting the frequencies in a manner that our ears
can handle.

The paradox is upon us in our life as soon as we seek to make
sense of it. We are shattered by joy flawed with pain, and
overwhelmed by pain, illuminated by flashes of joy, and ecstasy
beyond. The precious gift, which is it? Hope, despair, interwoven?
Like a kaleidoscope, the scene or rather the scenario of life
passes on unaccountably. 

The encounters of beings are tokens of our involvement in life.
Sometimes ephemerally like ships in the night, sometimes
compellingly involving, they may bid rapture or wreak constraint
upon our freedom; their impact may prove intrusive or enriching
and healing. One may be lucky to come across such encounters that
trigger off illumination, realization, a break-through of alacrity
apparently providentially or those that spark a sense of deja-vu
that shatters and enchants our soul. What a miracle - life!  

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