On the trail of mystery (email and comments thread from May 13, 2009)

It occurs to me what I've been missing in my life recently is the search for the mystery of everything. The Bible says it's for kings to search out a mystery. I did that with B influence and mesoteric and esoteric subject matter, but stopped. No more 12 tribes, conspiracy, following lines of ideas from book to book, writer to writer, even the mystery of C influence school. It all stopped. I got exoteric. Well, when Jesus - God - says with faith you can tell a mountain to move and it will move I believe it, but it moves in ways an exoteric mind can't or refuses to see. The exoteric Christians pulled me down (oh, I can't blame them). Believe the Bible. Fear only God. Search out mysteries. Be a king.

In Search of the Miraculous may not just be a commercially drummed-up title.

I.e. the element of being on the *trail of mysteries* when one is coming up the mountain of influences and developing understanding is really a very big element in it all when you stop to think of it.

All the life you see around you seems so *short cycle* and dead (and I don't say that like a teenager but like a Christian who knows sin and being dead in sin). By short cycle I mean the patterns of activity, the cars going and coming, the routine of daily living, over and over, and the veneer of it all that seems to hide anything deeper.

I was very much adept at pursuing that *deeper* behind the veneer, but then once I came to the Work and the Bible that pursuit seemed to have come to an end. Yet it shouldn't.

Pro 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

I, as usual, overstate my own indictment to make my point. I of course continued the search within the context of the Work and of biblical doctrine and the plan of redemption. Yet I think what I lost was being conscious of being in pursuit of mystery. - C.

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Paul's reply:

In a significant way, this post is a beautiful statement and despite the great number of preceeding posts, for me, by far one of the most significant statements you've made. It resonates deeply with me and it is something that I'm always drawn back to - my deepest connection with the Work is at that level of mystery. Always, that is where we are awakened. Base camp. We awake into the mystery of Creation. It's what atheist materialist deny, the mystery of being. It's what distinguishes a Bach - that in some way he was in contact with that mystery and was able to express that. It is the great mystery that some of us feel the mystery and others cannot even imagine it. It has always been a frustration or annoyance to me that whenever we get to talking about real time battles and the nitty gritty of practical work efforts we come over as utterly trapped in the most mundane of events, emotions and expressions - as if it is impossible to be honest with oneself and not be at that dull uninspired level - yet ironically, we are not there at all, it's just that we are in the heat of battle in those fields. I think I have always tried to express how often the langauge just runs out on us and we are left with the mystery.

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Paul's second reply:

Abraham understand the depth of the mystery.

Remember this?

http://www.wellsprings.org.uk/rublevs_icon/trinity.htm

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My follow-up:

That is a great site. Simple (and I can't find anything unorthodox!).

Here's what should be done, as a king, searching the mysteries of what God conceals. We know how to contact higher centers. When I would come across something in the Work sources I didn't understand I would eventually understand it with self-remembering and so on. I would come into understanding of it. This is searching out mysteries.

What should be actively done is when we come upon something in the Work or the Bible we should actively search it out using higher centers. For me I mean *going back to that.*

Like, I'd walk around thinking what did Ouspensky mean that you can't disagree with someone if you understand them? That type of thing. I mean getting above how the world would answer that. All those little things you come across in the Work that are truly hard to grasp at first. Then all the ideas and practices that you have to look at differently to see them practically and be able to explain them. This is searching out mysteries.

Systematic theologians usually avoid such difficulties in the Words of Jesus Himself. Love your enemy. You have to come to see this not as the moralizing world sees it but see it in terms of self-interest and inner command and God's will and higher aims. The opportunity to see in yourself what you dislike in others, so to see what you were blind to in yourself. That kind of opportunity.

I obviously could go on forever with examples (and better examples), but the point is made. - C.

ps- Then of course there's the living cosmos of school called C Influence, perhaps evasive, unforgiving maybe, serious, not to be trifled with, but there if one seizes it...

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My further follow-up:

Reading your reply again I'm thinking, also, that we still have to be practical. My following of ideas in books, in Emerson, Nietzsche, even in self-help books (in everything), culminated in Work language and practices, and all the other things found in B Influence culminated in the Bible. History culminates in the history of redemption, for instance.

The other day I looked through an old copy of the Upanishads I had and it struck me 1. how simple they seem now, and 2. how much of Work ideas are in them.

We have to remember how 'new world' it is to be presented with the Way and have no where to go but on that Way or stagnation or backwards. Once you learn of conscious shocks, and once you truly value biblical teaching (which means you have been born again and actually have the Spirit in you) the practical thing, the only thing, to do is set off into that trackless forest and face the battles and transcend to the higher worlds. (Oh, that's all?) - C.

ps- A good prayer I've said for a few years now is to ask God for guidance. As Him to actually guide you in your way. To give you His will to act from. I've seen it happen in my life in the past and recently. Psalm 27 is the psalm I guess I associate with, and it says guide me in a plain path. 'Plain' in Scripture means complete, right, foundational, simple and beautiful and contained. Not vain or empty.

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Mike (Jason Slaughter) replied:

This reply and the post that inspired it deals with an importatnt subject... for me, some of this loss of a feeling of mystery has to do with growing older; I mean, youth is full of that sense of mystery (or at least mine was)... but the Work and the process of following God, that is santification tends to deepen and keep that 'tremendem mysterium'. High ppoints of Remembering contain that wonderful deep mystery...
my eye is doing much better and I thank you for asking.

I do thimk that Alyosha is a more successful rendering than Myshkin; as for female characters it is hard to beat Grushenka from Brothers K. I am not really trying to convince you of anything here.... just some meanderings... of course Grushenka is great because she epitomozes the dark side of Shakti...no noble lady... very dark indeed, one of those famous Russian beauties with dark hair and fair skin... a boxom, sloppy little soul destroying whore.

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Mike's (Jason Slaughter) further reply:

mmm.. the Upanishads, the Gita, Rammayanna... that hindu stuff really resonates with me, aesthetically speaking... no I am not straying from the Messiah... I just like the Indian stuff...

Its no wonder the world swamped your lists; she is doing her job... the world is a vampire... but you have stronger medicine. Yashuah knew all about this world...
I have become one of these anoying people who use either the Greek: Iesous Cristos. or the Hebrew: Yashua ha Massiach... because too many devils are hissing "jesussssss" all the time ...

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My further follow-up:

I also read that Brothers K. has good, or a good, female character. Actually Brothers K., according to the intro in the Bantam Classics edition, is like the other three great previous novels all rolled into one.

"...one of those famous Russian beauties with dark hair and fair skin... a boxom, sloppy little soul destroying whore."

You see a lot of those girls in internet porn these days. As someone recently said on television: "Eastern Europe is kicking our ass in porn."

That's a good observation on getting older. But as I write that I'm thinking it's possible to get older and never develop real understanding of yourself and the world around you (and in the context of what we are talking about I mean the mystery stuff that you chase can be pursued in youth or probably any time but once it's caught then hello martyrdom; nothing else but to get stoned to death, or something). You develop 'some' kind no matter what. I think what I did though was actively exhaust influences available and then pretty much challenged myself to find the summit and take it from there. . . . There...? The path above the summit, or the long slide downward... - C.

ps- I know more than I write. I'm just in a holding pattern currently.

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Here is my final follow-up, the final comment in the thread:

And some *do* hiss it too, don't they?

I don't need all the drama and church language (as is known I know). I get enough drama when I pray to God and in that act having to do battle with my vanity and Old Man within. "Excuse me, I need help, Old Man. I'm going straight to the Creator! Get out of my way. Stop making me feel embarrassed! Go! (Father in Heaven...) I know that sounds churchy! I don't care, go away!"

- C.

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You see how threads fizzle, I guess. Natural. I fizzled it, by the way. It was an interesting thread. I remembered it and had to find it. I didn't know the year, so it took awhile. The theme is really what is central to my current experience. And others I suppose.