This fine specimen of a male turkey has been coming down off the ridge to our bird feeder every day with his harem of females, strutting around and putting on a colorful display. He's magnificent, so I thought I would share a picture of him with readers.
This question of an intimate sensation of self, connected with the action of breathing, is itself connected to the subject matter in the post entitled "everything." The more intimate the sensation of Being becomes, the more deeply connected we are to the sacred act of breathing, in so far as it feeds the development of our higher centers, the closer we are to God.
Why else live unless one wishes to become closer to God? One taste of this honey will leave you wanting nothing else, for the rest of your life. There is no sensation sweeter than the sensation of the Lord; everything ever written about it in the
Psalms, which are a true and
very ancient source of higher teachings on the subject, cannot even begin to touch the least understanding of what the actual experience is like. There is no other reason to live, and no other reason to work, but to seek God and to continually see one's own inadequacy and sin, until one moves closer and closer to a possibility where Grace can remove some of these contaminating influences.
Of course Mr. Gurdjieff might have put all of these things in markedly different terms; but all of us who follow his path are in danger, if we just parrot his words and ideas, of becoming lifeless clones who imitate the outer form of his teaching, clinging to the husk as though the outward appearance were the essence of the grain. So one must discover one's own understanding, and pass it on according to one's own words.
If we truly see what we are, and what God is, we see that we are not God — not as we are. The Divine influence can be received, but we are actually opposed to it in our ordinary being. What we consider as ourselves, the part that reacts to the world, is filled with falseness and selfishness, which is constantly in action—arrogant, egoistic, and uncaring of others.
The action of God stands in direct opposition to all of these characteristics, and it is only through seeing exactly how we are — and, in fact, intentionally suffering ourselves as we are, knowing that we are this way — that any hope can be gained.
The intimate action of
prana, that is,
the Holy Spirit, in the body, increases sensitivity to this possibility. It is more than just a life energy; it is a Divine energy, the active agent of what Swedenborg called inflow, the intimate arrival and action of the divine upon humankind. Our careful attention and sensitivity to this force helps to create an inner magnetism that attracts it in greater quantity; for the particles of God, having found their brothers, want nothing more than to join with them again, and every human being who participates in the collection of these particles, their concentration and coating of parts to form their higher Being-bodies, performs an inestimable service not for themselves, but for creation. We mistakenly think we are here to serve ourselves; but in reality, if we attain even a single particle of enlightenment — and enlightenment, like everything else, is a substance that exists according to degree of concentration — then we
know what we ought to serve, and despite our ongoing delusions, that service is never unto ourselves.
May your soul be filled with light.