The other day while listening to Vivaldi’s winter allegro, a powerful sensation of delight, appreciation and gratitude swept over me, an experience so intense that it made me tear up. I imbibed the magnificence of the art, grateful that it exists at all, that someone, somewhere was so sensitive, noble and powerful to be able to perceive it, capture it and render it into such a perfect form that I can experience. When all was done I found myself exhausted and deeply fulfilled with ‘having lived’, unable and unwilling to do anything else. I spent the rest of the evening in satisfied stupor.
As I wondered what caused such depth of feelings, I realized it was not the particular music piece I listened to, but my sensitivity to the essence of what the music was capturing, and to the powerful mode in which this essence was expressed. This same combination of essence and expression I have previously sensed in the exquisiteness of birds, in the sexy step of cats, when igniting joy and light within others, and in humanity when it is standing up for Truth. Trying to find the common thread for all these experiences, I realized it is Spirit: I am awestruck and feel fulfilled to exhaustion when I witness nobility, power, beauty and integrity expressed in any earthly form.
This is because appreciating Spirit is my meaning, and experiencing meaning is every Soul’s direct path to fulfillment. While not all people find meaning in the same manner, all who engage meaning find fulfillment. And vice versa: if you feel awestruck and fulfilled at a deep emotional level, know that you have just connected to your meaning. Meaning is not something we create nor do we assign it to activities. It is a result of many lifetimes of experiences that heightened our sensitivities and formed our preferences, as deprivation gave birth to appreciation, or the Soul’s ability to perceive and receive Spirit in all its sacredness.
The fiery red two-pillar mosaic is a flurry of passion and sensuality. It represents our senses (1st chakra of Body, red) and our meaning (7th chakra of connection to Spirit, purple). It is through our senses that we are able to experience fulfillment and derive joy and pleasure. Senses make life worth living – if you doubt, try sensual deprivation for a longer time and life will lose all color. But while senses help us experience, it is the presence of meaning that makes these experiences fulfilling. Without fulfillment, we continue engaging senses until the law of diminishing returns drains the last bit of pleasure, inducing depression and, if not careful, pushing us into addiction. In contrast, engaging meaning breaks the need for consumption: fulfilled at Spirit level, we are blissful and satisfied, waiting peacefully for a new desire to rise within. Spirit fulfillment is the only true antidote for needs and addictions of all kinds.
And that is, in fact, its intended purpose. While it bestows wonderful feelings and sensations upon mind and body, the true goal of fulfillment is healing: the freeing of the Soul from need. Humanity’s enslavement to need is as ubiquitous as it is indiscernible, its effect on the mind akin to a fabled possession by a demon, or schizophrenia.
Tucked safely away from the mind’s awareness, need takes full control over its perception and feelings, feigning to be Spirit in its righteous place of the mind’s guide and lover. It twists the true desires of the Soul which would place it on the path of purpose, imposing instead strong urges for the gratification and placation of whatever the need is for, power, pleasure or matter. In this way, mind and body service the impostor rather than Spirit, and in doing so deprive themselves of potential and rob Spirit of life. The only way back to true power is for the mind to seek out the impostor and by defeating it, take its Spirit back, an archetypal struggle depicted in all dragon-fighting knight stories of the age.
Since only fulfillment can release the need, and need satisfaction sabotages fulfillment, it follows that the struggle will revolve around the curbing of all need-driven action, followed by the empowering of true desire. The ensuing experience of fulfillment evaporates the need in the form of lifting the mind’s perception: its sees the need that hitherto enslaved it and drove all its activities as nothing more than an illusion, something not truly desired, and releases it with ease.
Below is a list of sources of meaning that connect Soul to Spirit:
Expression: inseminating, dancing, singing, writing, creating
Incubation: appreciating, growing, constructing, baking, nurturing
Love: connecting, empowering, protecting, cleaning, planning
Healing: solving, taking responsibility, fixing
Evil: proving, controlling, consuming, needing, hoarding, wasting, reacting, using
Wisdom: seeking essence, discovery
Truth: beauty, sensitivity