[The New Pagan Way] =?utf-8?Q?=E2=80=9CIt’s_Not_Personal,_Really=E2=80=9D?=

=E2=80=9CIt’s
Not Personal, Really=E2=80=9D
or Beyond
the Walls of the Individual and Collective Personality

=E2=80=9CEverything
that has a beginning comes to an end.=E2=80=9D Marcus Fabius Quintilian (35
CE -100 CE)

Marcus
Quintilian was born about 600 years after the Buddha, but he came to
the same conclusion as the Enlightened One. Buddha said it a little
differently =E2=80=94 that all forms pass =E2=80=94
but
the meaning is the same. Until recently, most people agreed with
this, except they thought that the stars and the soul were eternal.
Now we know that stars are born, live, and die just like the rest of
us. Whether the soul is eternal is still debatable.

One answer
is this: Souls exist =E2=80=94 maybe in Heaven, hell, purgatory, the astral
plane, or some other dimension, but in any case, they live somewhere
in the universe. And the universe, having a beginning, will have an
end. When that happens, everything within it will end too. That
applies to souls and to God (if He has confined Himself to the
universe, which is unlikely. Some religious traditions picture Him as
such though).

This leads to an observation: if everything
dies, then death is not personal. It is indiscriminate and
impersonal. It is simply the end of a process, a process that begins
at birth. Life, then, is like a length of string with birth at one
end and death at the other. From this we can see that life
is not personal.
Just as death happens to everybody, so does life.

If life is
impersonal, then everything is just happening. Nothing personal is
taking place. Thoughts, feelings, planets, stars, and human bodies =E2=80=
=93
they appear, unfold, and vanish, as if the universe was a magic
theater, which in a way, it is.

The
Ego and the Personal Life
Living
personally is not a matter of how we act, but a state of mind,
although that state directs our actions. The ego functions
personally. This invites fear, disappointment, judgment, hate, and a
host of other personality triggered emotions. It also provides
doorways for negative astral influences to enter.

On the
positive side, living personally is at once a luxury and an
indulgence. We can feel triumphant, sensuous, elated, and a full
range of sentiments. Once the thrill passes, though, we desire more
and may slide into any number of negative feelings until the next fix
arrives. The same applies to fame, wealth, and power, but we don’t
even have to lose them before we can feel empty. They don’t equate to
happiness.

Taking life personally is the ego dancing with Maya
=E2=80=94 a dance of shadows, unaware of their true nature. It’s extremely
difficult, maybe impossible, for the ego to fathom this, because the
ego imagines itself as real. That is its nature. However, in reality
it is at one with Maya and is an illusory identity.

Science
has shed some light on our situation. String theory states that the
universe is composed of incredibly small =E2=80=9Cstrings=E2=80=9D of light=
that
cascade down from the tenth dimension. These sub-quantum light
strings vibrate or =E2=80=9Cdance=E2=80=9D and create the appearance of mat=
ter.
Form, then, is dancing light, changing color, shape, and texture as
time passes. =C2=A0The result is the momentary appearance of you and
me and everything we see. We see light. We are light. Everything is
light in infinite
variation,
one of God’s favorite tools of creation. However, none of the forms,
which compose this cosmic light show, are designed to
last.

Implications
of the Impersonal Life

Living
impersonally is not a matter of how we act, but a state of mind. Our
state of mind is in sync with our beliefs, and we base our actions on
them. The impersonal life is the state of mind where life is not
about us, or at least, not about who we commonly think we are. Life
is simply happening. In this sense, knowing we (ego) don’t really
exist can be liberating. (If you’re undergoing therapy, don’t mention
this to your therapist. If it slips out, be sure to add, =E2=80=9CI don’t
exist, at
least as who I think I am.=E2=80=9D)

This
can bring up the idea of free will. Free will appears to exist at a
certain level. That level is the level where time is a reality. You
choose to do something, do it, then it’s done: free will. At the
level of reality where everything simply is,
though, time does not exist.

When you live impersonally and
embody love and compassion, you hover in a state of awareness
untouched by the cosmic drama. You know that nothing can be outside
the all-encompassing All-That-Is. It’s like this: existentially, all
humans =E2=80=94 our
brothers and sisters =E2=80=94 are in the same boat; Spirit is the one
Ocean on which the boat floats. And the Ocean is imagining the boat.
And its passengers.

A
Broader Scope

There’s
more. Old age, adulthood, and childhood aren’t personal, and neither
is birth. We are born by either chance or fate. Science believes
chance is responsible of course, but fate is just as likely. If fate
is responsible, then our b

Long message truncated by MailBucket.

Original post by WP-AutoBlog Import