If you want to build a mansion, you need knowledge/knowhow and action/effort. The same applies to mastery and enlightenment.
1) Understand what needs to be done 2) Make effort. Sounds simple, but it’s really not.
Why isn’t it easy?
1) What needs to be done isn’t really obvious to us.
There are so many layers to our Being, that our deep underlying misunderstandings remain mostly hidden from us. These “issues” are called egos, more or less, and they are what keeps your consciousness contracted and bottled up. Fear, lust, greed, vanity…the 7 deadly “sins” are examples of egos whose desires keep us bound to suffering and unable to experience higher states of consciousness. You may not think that life is suffering as the Buddhists claim. But as you peel away layers of false understanding, a deeper peace emerges and the old contracted “you” seems a very undesirable place to be.
2) Effort needs to happen on multiple aspects of our being (Physical, emotional, mental, astral, causal bodies, etc.). If you can’t perceive outside of your 5 senses, it will be impossible to completely unroot egos. To do so in totality requires you achieve mastery; Hey, Jesus and Buddha did it, and you can do it, too!
*Note: Most people can’t perceive outside of the 5 senses, but that automatically develops with sincere and focused effort–meditation, self observation, sacrifice, attention, working on your emotional and mental blocks…
Below are two models that I have used to help me along the way. The first is a very simple model that I based of Gurdjieff’s ideas of the vertical and horizontal worlds. Note that our day-to-day life is seen along the horizontal, time-based plane.
The vertical column shows that each being lives at a certain level of consciousness. This can fluctuate slightly throughout life; those who work hard can see a great jump in the level of their Inner Being. “Heaven” is a higher state of consciousness–peaceful, egoless, with mastery over the 4 elements and internal planes (like Jesus walking on water). “Hell” is a contracted state of being–full of negative thoughts, anger, mechanicalness, brutality, and extreme suffering.
The second illustration is called “The Tree of Life,” a Kabbalistic symbol that simultaneously models the macrocosmic world (structure of the Universe) and the microcosmic world (structure of the human being in relation to the Universe). It is said to be transmitted from high Masters, so that beings on Earth have a sound method to escape suffering and attain true mastery and enlightenment.
We can relate the top of the model (Kether) with “the Void,” “God,” or eternity, structureless space. From here, the Light of Creation (energy) descends downward through the different dimensions. The energy comes down through different filters, such as planetary/zodiacal energies as well as more dense subdivisions such as the four elements–fire, water, earth, air. In the physical dimension, we find it so hard to experience God because there are so many of these filters that are obscuring our view. We can see through these filters by developing mastery of our different bodies and strengthening our consciousness.
Using the Tree of Life on the physical, mundane level, we can help to balance our energies by working with the four elements and our food. For example, somebody who is sluggish and depressed may have a heavy water+earth constitution (called “Kapha” in Ayurveda). Balancing it out would most likely involve adding fire (spicy, more stimulating foods) and air (lighter, more sattvic foods to counteract the heavy earth). Balancing energies in this manner helps us to conserve energy for higher Work.
There are many, many ways to work with the Tree of Life. The following example was a down-to-earth one, not to scare the wits out of you (yet)! While some people simply study this model to a mental understanding of it, true progress only takes shape when we apply the model intuitively to our lives, on all dimensions.
