Letter to a friend having a crisis

Dear E
There's an aphorism which reads: ‘Life is the only game in which the object is to learn the rules.’
Before I began to receive these channelings I had no views one way or the other on reincarnation. I was aware of course that a vast amount of literature supported the belief but it had no immediacy for me. I have recently been shown most persuasively that it is a central factor in our existence — that we choose to be born, and that we instinctively head for the situation in which we can make most progress in working off past karma, and building it up for the future.
One aspect of the distress often felt in mid life is the sense that what informed our lives in earlier years is no longer relevant. And that is indeed quite true. We come to a point where we have worked thru the karma laid on us by our parents and that built up in a former existence. All of these, and other factors, have contributed to the evolution of our Ego state.
Once we are mature enough, the evolutionary force within us begins to motivate us to progress beyond being a simple chirpy cheapie. Like the caterpillar’s metamorphosis to the butterfly, we progress thru an intermediary chrysalis stage. Of course it can be immensely painful. If our conceptual framework is to be completely remade how could it be otherwise? What’s involved is nothing less than death of the Ego state which has served so well to protect our post-adolescent selves: now the time is for us to assume that more-evolved character for which this and past lives have prepared us.
Amongst other things, we have a reluctance to accept such a calling. ‘Why, me?’ we say. ‘I was quite happy as I was.’ (a lie!) What happens to us happens because there is no other way to achieve the final outcome that is ultimately in our best interest. If you can have the courage to trust the process of your life you are released into a much larger awareness; where you realise you aren’t bounded by the limitation of your own perception (ego state) but become conscious of being a participant in a timeless parade of world evolution.
Surely as a musician you must’ve felt those moments of overwhelming kinship with those who first wrote/played certain pieces — not a head-knowledge but a real heart-perception? At those points you surely felt yourself to be in ‘the company of all true believers’? Time had no more meaning, you were part of a continuum of experience with no begining and no end. And so you were. The point of your current tribulation is that your awareness is being remoulded so that -if you wish- this experience will be available to you as a ‘constant’ state. If you can stand your pavement being dug up for a while you’ll find you have lots of new channels of communication.
The choice is yours. To go on or to go back. Both are possible and both have quite different implications for the rest of your life. I deliberately don’t suggest what would constitute forward for you since (a) I don’t know, and (b) its part of the process that your own awareness evolves to extend what is most deeply within you into the infinity of freedom that lies within your inmost heart.
I have discovered that ‘finding validates both the search itself and the seeker’. Conversely ‘the search validates both what is found and the finder’. Yet ‘its the finder hirself who validates both what is sought and what is found.’ If you repeat to yourself as a meditative affirmation ‘I AM what I AM seeking’ you’ll realise you need nothing outside yourself. The spider doesn’t worry whether s/he can spin the filament to cross from one contact point to the next.
The object of such tribulations is to become perfectly at peace with what we are now. Only by accepting our limitations are we freed from them. Therefore to seek release from mental anguish is but to prolong it. It has a special function within your psyche, if you can accept and be what ... who ... where you are right now you can move on.
This doesn’t mean the pain will go away. It may, but not until you can accept that you no longer want/need it to, are you released. For in fact ‘the pain’ remains, what changes is you! This enhancement of sensitivity is often refered to as a wound. It gives instant access to a range of feelings that the ‘normal’ person doesn’t so readily recall. Its a resource for the service of others. (Like the medieval imagery of the pelican.) Naturally it has to be protected but fortunately that isn’t hard since its hidden within a paradox that is meaningless to the unawakened.
Earlier I said “this experience will be available to you as a ‘constant’ state”. Anybody who has tried it will know, the experience is of itself indeed constant — however, we ourselves are such wayward creatures that it takes a lot of practice (a) to home in on it, and (b) to maintain the so-called ‘constant’ awareness thereafter! Until you’ve reached ‘the very ground of your personality’ you have no stability for that plateau of experience to settle on.
Alas, the excavations will continue until a true foundation is established for your ivory tower. Don’t therefore avoid going to the very bottom of a depression. Accept and love your depressions as an innate part of yourself. Perhaps you’re bored or afraid of your own company? It's the emptiness of the person you’re left alone with that frightens. That too must be accepted and infolded within your experience of your Self.
The spiritual life consists of reconciling ever greater paradoxes within yourself, until you can begin to see that there is no duality to give rise to paradox in the first place. All experience is one — and the ultimate paradox is that there isn’t the paradox you had once thought there was!
As you really trust ‘it’/=id/=yourself you’ll find that when help is needed you’ll attract the most appropriate person to move you onto the next stage. Conversely, if the next move is yours then noone’ll appear until you’ve trusted yourself to do it! What we experience within one lifetime is a microcosm of what our soul undergoes over a progression of lifetimes. Where there’s a hurdle to be cleared we're brought back to it time and time again until its achieved.
I believe that I may have committed suicide in my previous existence, unable to surmount the obstacles to communication to occluded me then. The result was, alas, not escape to oblivion but the need to re-confront them. Fortunately the world’s evolution has moved on since then and there are now so many more evolved souls that I have been able to find assistance/guidance in fulfilling my process.
Don’t be afraid. Nothing has to change. You’ll not be asked to give up or take up anything. Nothing in fact will change until you can accept that it doesn’t need to.
I would strongly recommend treating yourself to Findhorn’s Introductory Week. Its the most powerful -and readily accessible- opportunity for personal transformation I know of.
With all love, M