A Work in Progress
One of the most revealing, if shocking revelations of my recent experiences in the mountains, was as though seeing briefly and clearly behind a veil across a dimension to reality normally hidden. It showed me this: all my life, all the different happenings, choices, events, outcomes were all designed to lead me exactly to the point where I was then. There had been no other pont or purpose to them whatever. I saw this in the way I do as an inner vision or revelation, difficult to explain to people who don’t have these. This occurred shortly after my arrival coincident with the experience of having the entire Pilgrimage dynamic fall away, leaving me ostensibly abandoned and purposeless at the journey destination (1).
You are the work. The point and purpose of your life is you. Your outputs are simply the means undertaken to produce the unique you, not ends in their own right. For anyone raised in the highly achievement orientated societies we live in in the global north, or so called ‘West’ this is probably the hardest truth to come to terms with.
As we journey through life, hopefully upwards as well as onwards, there are different points reached where we can review our progress, the insights gained to that point and consider the way forward. This has been alluded to in the earlier post Revelations, Realisations and Epiphanies (2) with people who have had mystical, revelationary experiences. I would also contend that part of this experiential process triggers different archetypal motifs not necessarily specifically relevant to that stage, but to the the one that will emerge from it. A helpful analogy might be with Orienteering, or similar, wherein the affirmative of having reached the correct point in the overall journey and the clue to the next stage is found contained in some recepticle. A subversion or misreading of this, however, can lead the orienteerer to conclude that they have reached the journey’s end and assume the credentials relevant to that, prematurely. Egoic inflations that conflate themselves with the identity of the Higher Self are examples of this. The ‘Saviour’complex would be another, wherein the experiencer feels called upon to give themselves and their lives, either literally or symbolically, to the world and/ or humanity, and that only they have this mystical power to do so.
What should more correctly emerge from these experiences is a clue or a preparation of the individual as to that Higher Self’s purpose, which possibly may indeed involve some ultimate sacrificial dynamic, which is, after all, an occasional part of the overall range of human experience. It might be observed here that many individuals who have found themselves making such a sacrifice of their life in some high profile way had not apparently ever set themselves up for it, or seen how earlier life choices had predisposed them to their ultimate end. In other words, no ego inflation of any kind was ever involved.
To bring these two rather disparate threads of narrative together into a sensible whole, I would contend that we need to have life stage containers, for our developing selves that serve the purpose of evolving higher qualities in and versions of us. It’s a kind of masquerade that is played with ourselves, that our lives really are about our goals and career pathways and the ego identities that go with these. We carry within us as part of our archetypal heritage motifs that we encounter upon stages of our journey, which does not necessarily mean we literally have to become these. They are the indicators of the range of potentialities that the Higher Self draws upon as an artist might a palette of colours. It is for that Self to determine our overall destiny, not us, although certainly we can and should be inspired by these to take the best symbolic analogies for ourselves in our lives. In this do they serve the Individuation process.
1. See The Song is Over: https://turbulentpriest.net/2024/05/18/the-song-is-over/
2. https://turbulentpriest.net/2024/07/23/revelations-realisations-and-epiphanies/
