Using a ‘physical’ metaphor to explain a ‘spiritual’ principle is useful. However there comes a point when such metaphors break down. These are two different energies which ‘tend’ to work in different, if not opposite ways, eventually. While the processes they describe may be similar and ‘descriptive’ words can make them seem the same, there is usually always a difference between the two. For example, while the caterpillar’s journey to the emergence of a beautiful butterfly is often used to describe the transformation of the soul or consciousness, such a metaphor does break down, eventually. While the caterpillar changes its form (transformation) completely, as a result of consumption, the soul (consciousness) simply returns to what it always was and indeed is, as the result of seeing through the illusions within itself!
There is often a crisis point in many lives, when the soul suffers (not the same as ‘pain’) so much and is brought down so low that it stops them in their tracks. The suffering is caused when the illusions about life and living, already consumed, become paralysing. That is often the point at which the mind opens and there is a readiness and humility to start learning. There is a willingness to listen and accept that there may be another way to be and do life. And that the world is not what it is believed (learned) to be. As realisation gathers momentum the human being steps fully onto a spiritual path often referred to as awakening.
Some souls will be led to believe they are now on a track towards ‘personal development’ which really means the development and enhancement of their personality. They believe they will become a better person, that their character might be improved. The aim of spirituality though, is to realise that you are not your personality. In so doing there is the discovery that you are already, and always were, an authentic and fully integrated being of conscious awareness that is beyond personality and character. Even beyond any mental and intellectual abilities. That is why anyone on a spiritual journey gives value to silence and stillness.
But it is OK to go down the road of personal development and to fit spiritual teachings under that heading, to begin with. The soul, the conscious being, is making its own unique way back to itself, which often begins with a period of learning ‘how to be and do’ as an improved version of one’s self. But there comes a point when it may dawn on that being that ‘consuming more information’, just as the caterpillar might consume more food, is no longer an effective and indeed relevant strategy on their quest for spiritual awakening. There is a recognition of how more information simply gets in the way of being one’s natural self. What is natural in us all is simply buried under the mountains of information we have already consumed.
That’s why the soul/self senses it is often trapped by the concepts, ideas and even insights it is consuming and cries inwardly and/or outwardly, “But I just want to be natural, I just want to be real”. This is a sign that it is almost there! If there is such a thing as ‘an arrival’ it is that moment when it realises that it never was anything other than its own perfection. Though it will not ‘think’ this for long, as it realises such thinking is enough to restore illusion. It will just be, and be content in just being, while doing what seems appropriate.
Personality or character fall away, it will be natural to be natural and suffering will be no more. Occasional lapses will happen as the soul encounters a block or distortion that still subtly remains in their consciousness. At which point just looking at that distortion, just being with that aberration of the energy of consciousness, is enough to heal. Such is the power of one’s spiritual light.
Now: What might God’s role be in that process, which is not really a process, more a re-awakening?
Mike George is an author of 16 books around self-awareness and emotional intelligence.