Our incarnated existence as human beings is like a circle:
The periphery corresponds to what we think and believe we are and to what most people see and think of us.
The area inside the circle corresponds to our inner thought and feeling life.
And the central point corresponds to the Source of our being, that is, to our Soul and Self.
We all have created the periphery of the circle of our existence by the long search for the satisfaction of our longings outside ourselves during many incarnations. For ages our attention has been directed to this periphery, and with the power contained in our feelings and thoughts we have created and fed what is there.
It is, therefore, at the periphery of the circle of our existence where we are accustomed to experience the workings of the Law of Cause and Effect (i.e., the Law of Karma) usually in ways that seem catastrophic to us. In other words, it is in the periphery of the circle of our existence where we are accustomed to experience the effects of the outward direction that we give to our attention, to our feelings and to our thoughts.
We have directed the Power and Energy flowing through us to the periphery of our existence because we have come to believe that our being is only that periphery.
We have forgotten that our existence is vast and infinite and that the Source of our being is at the very center of our being and at the very center of the circle of our existence.We have come to ignore that we are never at the periphery of our existence, that we are always moving within the circle — the fact is that our entire thought and feeling life always takes place within the circle.
It is only when we get tired of the futile search for the satisfaction of all our longings outside ourselves that we start remembering who we really are and that we long for connecting within.
The difficulty that many have in re-connecting is found in the state of reactivity of their minds and feelings developed by the prolonged use of the attention upon that which is outside ourselves.
Because everything that is outside of us is transitory and impermanent and because countless times we have experienced both the attachment and the loss of it, we have developed this mental and emotional reactivity. Once we understand where the difficulty lies, the mystery disappears and we are ready “to go back home”.
In the symbolism of the circle of our existence, this mental and emotional reactivity is seen in the interior of the circle, close to its periphery, as a turbulent, stormy ocean; we must calm and still this stormy ocean if we want to go back to the very center of our existence.
How can we calm and still the storms of our thought and emotional life?
A way to approach this is suggested in the next essay… “Foundations for Connecting Within”.