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ASCENSION

 

The ascension in consciousness is like climbing a set of stairs with seven steps, which the Soul traverses on its path towards wholeness.

Each step is a world of its own, into which the Soul enters following a desire for fulfillment and a belief that this step alone will bring it fulfillment. The Soul enters in a state of ignorance, lacking experience and wisdom, and its sojourn at each step is to teach it the Truth that nothing other than the loving of Spirit can ever bring lasting fulfillment. The Soul learns this Truth by eliminating all other desires, i.e. by experiencing first the culmination and then the shortcomings of all alternatives within one step, and then gradually of all other steps. Its travel across each step will always follow three stages: striving in the beginning, satisfaction at the peak, and elimination at the close.

The ground below the first step is the sphere of matter. Here the Soul is at the foot of the staircase, unconnected to Spirit and investing all its life force into the manifestation and acquisition of stuff and security. Its perceived source of fulfillment is the owning of matter, and it ascribes value to self, matter and Spirit by putting a price tag on it. These are lifetimes in which the Soul in turns commercializes body, creativity, art, beauty, friendships, talents and love, traversing a full three-step cycle for each of them. Once past each peak however, the lack of connection makes the continuous acquisition yield ever less self-worth and fulfillment, leading to a decline into gluttony to maintain a now dying vitality. Once it is overstuffed with matter but feels empty and dead, the Soul realizes the limitations of matter as a source of fulfillment, and begins to understand that feelings are not tied to matter. A desire for feelings arises, marking the very important first step onto the staircase of ascension: the fall to evil.

In the first step the Soul seeks fulfillment by means of vibration. This desire makes it party around the clock, seek sexual encounters and try drugs and adventures, all at the cost of acquiring matter and power. Once fully sated, it discovers that the constant preference for feelings depleted its power to the point of losing control, making it depend on the mercy of others and subject to their force. Here also applies the law of diminishing returns, rendering further consumption less fulfilling, pushing the Soul into various addictions as means to maintain the good vibes. Once at its limits, exhausted in body and jaded in feelings, the Soul realizes the dangers of being ruled by one’s senses. A new desire for self-control emerges, eliminating the first step and opening the door to the second: force.

The Soul enters the second step with a desire to acquire and wield power over self and others, as means to guarantee its fulfillment. Having experienced itself powerless over circumstances and feelings, it now regards power as the holy grail of fulfillment. In this step the Soul will live lifetimes of desiring and experiencing power in all possible ways, via matter, body, community, feelings, mind, faith: each power source will have to run the three-part cycle of striving, peak and elimination. At each peak, the Soul’s hunger for power cuts its abundance in love, making it apply force in ever increasing levels of intensity to make up for other’s vanishing empathy and kindness. Here lives Pandora’s box of evil, bringing unlovingness, cruelty and abuse among others. At the close the Soul finds itself completely deprived of loving relationships as result of its own force and unlovingness. Dry, bitter and hardened like a rock, it suffers greatly from its inability to be sensitive to anything at all, needing intense stimuli to awaken its deadened nerves. This is where the trend for violent movies, sex perversions, extreme experiences and high-risk behaviour stems from. Once the Soul has resided long enough in a rock-like state of obtuseness, it will reach the point of suicide out of misery. At that point it begins to appreciate love above power, and craves the presence of others, bringing it to the third step: need.

The third step is one of sensitivity to others as their presence and approval brings a renewed sense of meaning and vitality. The Soul discovers that its kindness yields fulfillment in terms of loving relationships and community. The fulfillment thus derived is like medicine to its sore wounds, which makes the Soul willing to do anything to keep it flowing, including giving up its preferences, desires and power in return for affection. Too easily does it slide into neediness for others’ validation, support or praise, sacrificing ever more integrity and loosing its fulfillment in the process. This step brings lifetimes of prostitution, in which the Soul sells various assets for gain: its body, talents, matter, feelings and potential, all with the aim of receiving fulfillment from others’ love. At each close it finds itself betrayed as its voluntary sacrifice is increasingly taken for granted, lowering the Soul’s value to others, who now permit themselves rejection, unlovingness and cruelty. Deprived and hurt, the Soul blames others for its lack, sacrifice and betrayal. Here then live vindication and violence, both the feeling of being used by others as well as the reactive engaging in revenge. Such acts of reactivity, however, kill the only source of fulfillment that the sacrificing Soul relied on, namely other people. Deeply wounded, the now heartbroken Soul turns to its mind as a safer and people-free way to fulfillment, which brings it to the fourth step: knowledge.

Learning is the path of the fourth step. Here is where the Soul hungers for the laws that govern the world and everything in it. A deep immersion into discovery via science, psychology and spirituality follows, lifting the Soul out of the dirty world of relationships into the purity of mind. In the mind, so it now believes, lies its power over fulfillment. These are lifetimes in which the Soul discovers all about matter, body, and feelings, each time traversing the three-step cycle. In a frenzy of discovery, it moves its focus inward and resides within a world of thoughts and concepts, increasingly cutting its contact with others. Fiercely independent in its self-sufficiency, it becomes estranged from the vibrations of life, making it push for ever more knowledge as compensation. Akin to a bird that acquires ever broader views the higher it flies but also loses detail and ability to feed in the process, the Soul loses connection with earth and life, with people and body, with pleasure and joy, until it reaches such mind heights where the air is freezing and unmoving, oxygen sparse, and breathing – and living – unsustainable.

At the close it finds itself cold, lonely and life-depleted, realizing its mistake too late, as such distance from the dirt of life has made its psychic and physical immune systems unable to support any life engagement without damage to self. Like a patient recovering from a heavy illness, the Soul is oversensitive to people and life, unable to support high-vibrational feelings and sensual experiences, and requires great love from others to even make it. A great appreciation for life hits the Soul, as it understands that the essence of life is the true source of fulfillment and power, as opposed to the isolating coldness of knowledge. This realization takes the Soul out of the mind and into the fifth step: sacrifice.

Its newly gained appreciation for life’s vibration has made the Soul deeply loving and forgiving of all its impurities, faults and mess. Hungry for vitality, the Soul embraces its existence in gulps, laughing, playing and frolicking with no incentive from others. Happy to be alive, it is like a baby, rediscovering a world it disdained until recently and loving it from the depths of its heart. This love of life itself fulfills the Soul from within, and frees it from need, fear and force, making it forgiving of others’ evildoing and trespassing. Instead of reacting to hurtful actions, the Soul chooses to forgive and forget, giving others the impression that they can get away with anything. Yet forgiveness is a sacrifice of Truth to love, and brings abuse within relationships: others interpret the Soul’s loving act as a carte blanche for ever increasing carelessness and unlovingness, wounding the loving Soul deeply. At the close, the Soul lies dead on the floor like the Tarot card figure of ten swords, stabbed in the back, broken in body and spirit. Its only desire is for healing, which guides it into the sixth step: purification.

The sixth step is the first one where the Soul does not seek fulfillment, but healing, which connects it to Spirit. The path of purification is one of eliminating the Soul’s perception of victimization via the delivery of Truth. While traversing this step, the Soul is given the opportunity to experience all its wounds anew, but this time from a perspective that was not there before: the other’s Truth. The Soul thus relives the same situation that wounded it, but from the viewpoint of the other, making it experience their exact circumstances and feelings at the time of wounding, as well as their perception of the Soul as it was at that time. The Soul realizes that it would and did, once in their shoes, act in the same exact way as they did towards it, and not out of malice but out of being hurt and protecting their integrity.

This discovery is the Soul’s deepest shadow: seeing its past behaviour from its new consciousness of Truth, it realizes how forceful and unloving it was then, and understands that others had no choice but to react to its evil. The Soul releases all blame and victimization, losing the desire for vindication and justice. Yet the wounds so re-experienced now need mending. Turning to Spirit for help and wisdom, it learns that the only way to heal is by receiving Spirit. A fervent desire for Spirit takes it to the seventh and final step: healing Spirit.

The seventh step represents the ascension into the union with Spirit, by means of which the Soul attains creative power over its life experience. But with such power comes great responsibility, and the final exam is one of wisdom and love: only when the Soul has attained both is it worthy of Spirit. The Soul is truly wise when it realizes that the ultimate fulfillment comes not from consuming any source of fulfillment, but from becoming a tool for Spirit’s fulfillment, enabling its unencumbered expression and manifestation of life. When it desires nothing more than to love in this way, the Soul is finally able to receive Spirit, by means of which all its wounds heal.

On a practical note, one should not judge one’s step immersion too swiftly, lest there be confusion. Engaging sensory experiences (first step) is not always from a desire for such experience, but can very well be a temporary refuge from the wounding of a thwarted desire for power (second step). Likewise, spiritual seeking can stem from a desire for power over others (second step), rather than a desire for knowledge (fourth step) or a connection to healing (sixth step). Alternatively, one can live the life of dream-like success and wealth powered by Spirit sacrifice, never noticing that there is no growth at all, i.e. that one is stagnating from Spirit’s perspective, until an abrupt change in life circumstances renders one feeling victimized and powerless, in a state of shock.