Moving Forward
We, as human beings, lead a double existence. We have two lives, so to say. The first one with which we are generally more familiar is the surface life centred on the surface ego-identity. It is about the job we do and the money we make, the people who are associated with us through birth and other circumstances of our outer existence. This life consists of events and situations that move like shifting scenes, to which we react with pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow and so on and so forth.
There is however another life that runs more as an undercurrent that surfaces from time to time, giving us a rare glimpse of concealed possibilities and hidden doors that open to the Infinite that surrounds our brief finite existence. It is the life of the soul centred on the Divine Presence and focused on the blossoming of the divine possibility within us. It is a life of constant progress, of a deep peace, unconditional love and unmixed joy.
Our real life, the true life, begins when we become aware of this deeper life of the soul within us. The soul life and its values are very different from the values of our surface existence. The soul within us does not care about success and failure or victory and defeat but about a growing closeness to Truth and Beauty and Love and Harmony and Peace, in one word about the Divine. Its idea of Justice is not pecuniary, measured by outer gains and losses but a growth of inner riches. The soul in us can well choose the most challenging outer circumstances, the most trying and hard conditions of life if that is necessary for its blossoming. On the other hand, it may consciously and deliberately refuse the pleasures and satisfaction of our indulgent outer nature. These may be seen as limiting iron chains tied around its growing wings.
It is only when we have tasted something of this life that we can begin to understand the mystery of God’s Play in this world where often evil seems to succeed, outwardly and for the moment at least, and good seems to face endless difficulties and challenges. The soul rejoices in what the ego abhors.
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