Human beings can't really understand the question of dependence and service until we come under solar influences. We can understand it intellectually, that is; but we cannot understand it physically or emotionally, which are the chief deficiencies we experience in our lack during day to day life. All the great teachings teach about the necessaries of service and dependency, but these only enter through the intellectual part, and are treated, at best, superficially by the emotions, unless very great suffering creates an opening for them to enter more deeply.
On the other hand, once we come under solar influences, we clearly learn that we are entirely dependent for our spiritual development upon much higher forces, and that none of this is really done by us. We are basically incapable of making a move without assistance from a higher level; yet we labor under the constant delusion that we can do things.
Nothing drills this point home more thoroughly than a long period of time, when under solar influences, in which the sun is very quiet and does not emit any flares whatsoever. In periods of this kind, we are, so to speak, in the desert, because there are few or no emanations to support the deeper kinds of inner work that are necessary. This isn't a matter of just having the sun shine or not shine; it is a matter of the higher material that we need for development being available. Gurdjieff called this process solioonensius; and I suppose an unknown and impenetrable word makes as much sense as any, since the process is so mysterious.
When deprived of solar influences, and within conditions that require them, one sees nothing so clearly as one's own inability to become open to the higher forces that are needed for one's spiritual well-being. It is like having the food taken out of your mouth or the air from your lungs; because only divine food and divine air can feed the inner parts that need to grow towards God.
Both Ibn Arabi and Swedenborg explained that a steady diet of these foods would be bad for us; we need to be kept in a condition of hunger in order to desire the gifts of God. If they were given freely and at all times, we wouldn't care less about them, because we only value that which we can develop a wish for or desire for, not those things we already have. It is, in some ways, our desire for God that makes God real for us; in the absence of desire for God, why would one want God at all?
And we see, in this way, that Desire is one of the divine forces or principles that helps run the universe.
We are entirely dependent upon these forces. To discover this in a practical sense, rather than by reading complex technical manuals about it, is a humbling experience, because we discovered that there is only one way that we can truly open, and that's through submission and surrender.
In a serendipitous development, these posts coincide with a
period of high activity; conditions for inner work are quite favorable right now. One more post on the subject tomorrow.
May your soul be filled with light.