Changing Times

From north to south, from the mountains to the sea. From the heartlands of Hinduism to the daily calls to prayer. How does one frame life changes to oneself in a way that allows their safe navigation, without being overwhelmed by them? Images of rafts being tossed upon the white waters of rivers abound, as it used to be back in my Rishikesh days.

Interpretive frameworks have long been my trusted means of navigating life and its convolutions. They are the models that help you make sense of what is happening to you and offer views on potential ways forward. But somewhat inevitably they are also not without their own caveats given they come from somewhere, that somewhere being heavily drawn upon prior life experience complemented by different views from the world.

One of the principal benefits of the pathway of yoga is the way it allows you to become better aware of your conditionings so that they don’t exercise such a blind stranglehold on you. This is also the approach of analytical psychology wherein self awareness allows one to see more deeply into one’s own darker workings.

As Carl Jung himself said:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Across life and time and more especially recently, I have set frameworks of understanding upon whatever my present life experiences have been, and drew upon these heavily across the course of the seven year initiation period that culminated in the Pilgrimage cycles, recently concluded. Without them I would have been floundering around lost in layers of darkness. In spiritual journey terms, especially here in India, it’s why seekers expect to have gurus, to offer them guidance at key stages of the journey, which itself has both strengths and weaknesses (see In the Spirit Gurus, guides or do it yourself ). But in the end you have to be able to trust yourself. You are unique, only you know yourself. Or should do. This is the journey of enlightenment and of Individuation. Know thyself. as Shakespeare cautions.

 

 

The blog post Was it a dream? recounts the experience of 2023 aka ‘The Lost Year’, and my understanding that I had failed the challenges of that period, needing more spiritual maturity which would allow me to withstand the challenges and eventually achieve a transcendence to some higher plane of being. This was drawn on several long thoughtful months grounded in the UK, sifting carefully through my life experiences and backtracking to all I knew about myself to try and get a better view on what happened and why.  In time, as I worked down through layers of myself in the context of the previous year’s experiences, I experienced a resurgence of the old energies and a strong calling from the deeper psyche to return to the place that had burned me our the previous year and simply resume the Pilgrimage, more committed and better aware of my own susceptibilities. And so, at the end of March, I was back on a flight to India and Rishikesh.

The Song is Over recounts the startling and altogether unexpected conclusion of this episode when, with a stark and poignant clarity, I was brought to a completely different outcome. I had in fact been brought there across skies and oceans from a long bleak winter in the northeast of England with its months of taking time to think and trawl for deeper insights, simply to have the whole Pilgrimage dynamic and attendant paraphernalia irrevocably stripped off me, and this achieved in such a  shockingly incontrovertible manner that there could be no denying it. I felt completely set up by the Universe and the succeeding month spent in those high mountain places was to come to terms with this new order of reality. I invented a proxy purpose for being there to offer some interim stability in world where everything had apparently turned upside down and told myself I was there simply for a walking holiday in the mountains, the sort of thing other people, not doing life pilgrimages, do. I have at least one friend who regularly does these sorts of things.

What happened then? What went so wrong with my long evolved framework of understanding that had encouraged me to believe I had needed to develop more spiritual maturity and return to the land of my earlier demise, to continue with the pilgrimage?

Since returning first back to Rishikesh and then down to Kerala, I have had ample time to review this. Life is a work in hand therefore, in part at least, any framework employed for interpreting it will also be that, to be used as seems to fit the circumstances at the time and revised or discarded when the model no longer fits. The same is true of the models we make to understand Reality itself and the scientific paradigms evolved to make sense of what we experience and allow us to navigate it.

It seems what had been needed was the spiritual maturity or vision to see that the Pilgrimage had indeed come to an end, and therefore to drive the point uncompromisingly home, I had been returned to a prior stage and encouraged to re-immerse myself back in the dynamics of the journey, with all its attendant travels and temple pujas, even with a new website and Instagram account to advertise myself, just so that the point could be driven home more forcefully in a way I couldn’t fail to acknowledge. No more forever sadhu for me!

Reviewing all this in the wake of the fall out of this time I have slowly been able to work out a beter understanding of it all. And in so doing began to see more clearly the perils of the spiritual journey, or possibly any major developmental life stage, which one becomes unable to break free from after the necessary developmental changes have taken place. And therein the container for the life journey for that stage becomes its prison or sarcophagus; a chrysalis that was never able to yield its butterfly; a womb that denied the baby its birth. There are many examples of this. But whatever I had experienced through the course of this so vital developmental journey with all its distinctive stages, I had fallen under a kind of spell of it at the end that led me to constantly seek re enchantment within the same dynamics, that, as time wore on, wore out and became merely empty rituals devoid of any significant numinosity. That may indeed be the experience of many people caught up in the dogma of different religions that become self serving and self perpetuating, denying the seeker the opportunity to experience the originality of their journey. That is why I have said that religion can only ever be a vehicle to take you in a particular direction. In and of itself it can never take you all the way to the ultimate goal. There is always a point you must depart from the vehicle and continue the journey alone and on foot. To stay in the same vehicle across your life course without opportunity for question or independent enquiry, something inimical to the more fundamentalist religious mindset with its notions surrounding revealed truth, will simply see you going around in circles.

With me I can see that there was, too, something evidently overseeing my life and journey from some higher independent vantage point that evidently unilaterally decided to give me a re set, in the way I have described above. And this ‘something’ would most certainly be the Self Itself, whether as understood from a Jungian perspective, or from the standpoint of more conventional theology, ‘God’, also understood as the Higher Self or Atman in Yogic philosophy.

So here I am, at present resident in Kerala, as the next stage of my life journey takes shape, that will see me return back into the world with all I have gained in terms of insight, wisdom and yes, finally perhaps, that long sought spiritual maturity!