Mastering The Spiritual World.
The masters live between two worlds. Our heroes reside in the eternal and the temporal receiving information and actualizing them in present time. Becoming symbols; however, one must prevent this tendency, and use them as a vehicle of communication. For the yogis that taught us how to bend. The spiritualists that refresh our memory, and the anointed matriarchs become examples of our possibility. Mastering is being responsible for our becoming.
We are responsible for being connected to the eternal world while applying the principles to our life. In this way we assist people in living a meaningful, loving, and deeply felt life. The master reaches into the Akashic and peels the flesh from our eyes revealing the mystery of the world. We must believe life contains the potential for rebirth. When overcoming our fears, and believing in beauty we die. Its a spiritual, metaphorical, and symbolic death necessary for growth. We must become masters in order to trust our hearts and our eyes. In The Hero With a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell guides us on the path of mastering the spiritual world. In a particular section titled Master of Two Worlds he says:
[T]here is nothing to say about life. It has no meaning. You make meaning. If you want a meaning in your life, find a meaning and bring it into your life, but life won’t give you a meaning. Meaning is a concept. It is a notion of an end toward which you are going. The point of Buddhism is This Is It.
Joseph provides an example of a myth that dominates our time: Jesus the guide, the way, the vision, and the companion of the return. The disciples are his initiates, not themselves masters of the mystery, which is a reflection of our spirit in the beginning of our journey, yet introduced to the full experience of the paradox of the two worlds in one. Peter was so frightened he babbled, a symbol of our reaction to seeing anything beyond this world for the first time. Flesh had dissolved before their eyes to reveal the Word. They fell upon their faces, and when they arose the door again had closed. The story goes as one on the path to mastering the spiritual world.:
Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here; if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.
Our mythology must concern itself with solving the problems of the contemporary existence, and not concern ourselves over the color, historicity, and facts about the existence of Jesus. Without the prayers from matriarchs, postures from Yogis, and the lessons from adequate story-tellers. We need guidance on the path towards mastering the spiritual world.
Of course, it may be dismissed. We may doubt whether such a scene ever actually took place. But that would not help us any; for we are concerned, at present, with problems of symbolism, not of historicity. We do not particularly care whether Rip van Winkle, Kamar al-Zaman, or Jesus Christ ever actually lived. The stressing of this historical element will lead to confusion; it will simply obfuscate the picture message.
We surrender to life by moving through the world with love, and recognize that we must open ourselves to living for our collective destiny. Through this recognition we live alongside the Cosmic Men that have mastered this realm. The masters understood that living is about caring for the collective rather than the individual; the symbols aid us in our hero journey. We must treat them as tools rather the final term; people believe they know Christ because they wear a cross, or they believe their chakras are aligned from amethyst crystals hanging from their fingers and necks. The symbols is a vehicle of mastering the spiritual world. Joseph says:
No matter how attractive or impressive they may seem, they remain but convenient means, accommodated to the understanding. Hence the personality or personalities of God — whether represented in trinitarian, dualistic, or unitarian terms, in polytheistic, monotheistic, or henotheistic terms, pictorially or verbally, as documented fact or as apocalyptic vision — no one should attempt to read or interpret as the final thing.
Through a devotion to living we become masters; the acceptance of our emotions, a commitment to peace, and the faith to walk away from situations not serving us we learn to trust spirit while walking in temporality. We are meant to become Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed, Big Mama, and every other person anointed to the status of a symbol. Joseph Campbell points us toward mastering the spiritual world saying:
The meaning is very clear; it is the meaning of all religious practice. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. The Law lives in him with his unreserved consent.
Through the cycle of initiation, separation, and return, the hero undergoes great trials and tribulations, experiences death and rebirth, and gains new powers that enable mankind’s ultimate redemption. Far from being obsolete relics from long-extinguished civilizations, the myths of the ancients have profound lessons for today’s reader. By studying the struggles, transformations, and redemptions of the great heroes, we come closer to discovering the universal truths of the human condition and unlocking the divine potential that lies inside us all.
