Where do I begin? Where do I begin to build a structure that would have me approach a culminating realization of the ultimate in personal fulfillment?
In my document, Be Here Now, which I wrote just over five years ago, I used a mandala as my structure to realize a general sense of the ultimate in personal fulfillment. Here, I endeavor to rely on this sense of ultimate fulfillment to articulate a practical basis to realize same.
To do this, I use a tree approaching its peak as an analogy for a soul (that is, a spiritual being experiencing the evolution of consciousness and expressing itself in human form) approaching a realization of the ultimate in personal fulfillment, where the roots form the basis of fulfillment, the trunk and branches forms the essence of fulfillment, and the twigs and leaves form the ideal of fulfillment. In this post, I will concentrate on outlining the roots.
On my home page, which I prepared and published not long after I started this site on personal fulfillment, I outlined the major facets of my current approach, as follows: a clear focus, a buoyant mood, a serene outlook, and a vital spirit. In the Law of One series, we human beings are portrayed as complexes of body, mind, and spirit, but for me, this impersonal characterization misses the heart and soul. This absence of heart and soul is the height of irony, given that the social complex known as Ra (yet another impersonal characterization) could only have reached sixth density by way of heart and soul. It is as if Ra is taking heart and soul for granted while focusing exclusively on the complex object of its inquiry.
Here is how I outline the facets of my approach, in this order: body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit. More precisely: an energetic body that is calm (rather than anxious) as a basis for maintaining a clear focus; warm (rather than numb) as a basis for claiming a buoyant mood; relaxed (rather than tense) as a basis for perpetuating a serene outlook, and rested (rather than tired) as a basis for sustaining a vital spirit.
This outline suggests to me that if I am feeling anxious for any reason, I have lost my mind and I need to get clear; if I am feeling numb for any reason, I have betrayed my heart and I need to reclaim buoyancy; if I am feeling tense for any reason, I have neglected my soul and I need to relax to find my serenity; and if I am feeling tired for any reason, I have burdened my spirit and I need to restore my vitality.
To nourish the roots of a realization that would have us experience the ultimate in personal fulfillment requires a liquid solution with four simple yet potent ingredients: presence (of mind) for clarity; peace (of heart) for buoyancy; promise (of soul) for serenity; power (of spirit) for vitality.
In that order.
With presence, I have my peace; at peace, I find my promise; in promise, I feel my power.
Nothing complicated here.
To illustrate these roots, I feel it necessary to broach the centrality of sexuality.
When we think of the ultimate in fulfillment, we cannot help but think of the Big O, which is the ultimate pleasure, especially when the roots of personal fullfillment have been wholly nourished.
Before I go there, let me offer this continuum for your consideration.
I touched on these dimensions of experience in the final post of my ultimate fulfillment series. At the extreme left, you find the Zen Mistress in her mastery of No Self. At the extreme right, you find the Mother Superior in her mastery of True Self. In between, you find everyone else, exploring and expressing some variation and combination of the personal and interpersonal dimensions in their lives, with rare or occasional trips to the extreme ends of this continuum of experience.
Ideally, the exploration, expression, and expansion of sexual experience is a culmination of four underlying realms of intimate experience: sensuous, romantic, erotic, and sensual. Together, these five realms of intimate desire exist regardless of sexual orientation, whether it be asexual, bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual, or pansexual (or any other sexual orientation with which you can identify).
To highlight the impersonal and transpersonal extremes, and everything in between, let me illustrate this range of intimate experience with these fictional narratives, which I approach with care:
When I see her in the garden, my heart skips a beat. We already had the pleasure of conversing quietly and mindfully by the shore of a lake not too far from here, delighting in sights and sounds and smells typical of a cool autumn morning, but in spite of my very best intentions, there was nary a spark of romantic interest on her part, as if she had shut that part of herself off, as part of her strict mental discipline. Nevertheless, when she sees me in the garden, she offers me the hint of a welcoming smile before resuming her focus on the object of her contemplation. I approach her tentatively, as I would a rare gemstone, having the wayward impulse to caress her pristine head with exquisite care. I carry this impulse with me until at last I stand before her for some very long seconds, my focus squarely on her immeasurably beautiful round bald head. When I switch my focus to her face, I see her smile beatifically, and then she closes her eyes, as if she knows exactly what to expect next from me, and so I raise my trembling hand and run my all-too-eager fingertips along the smooth contour of her head, watching her face for some visible response, but there is none – no responsiveness, no encouragement. Disappointed, I disengage my now steady fingers, realizing how deeply and firmly she has sought to realize and fulfill the ultimate impersonality of the One, and how oblivious she has become to the intimately personal and interpersonal dimensions of exquisite love, pleasure, and desire. I can not help but wonder: how many times had she been brutally beaten or tortured in lives past by men too damaged or deranged to see through their own emotional dysfunction? Perhaps none, perhaps none at all . . .
I retreat into a residential building nearby, feeling sad by my failure to connect with a woman who embodies her transcendence impersonally, but I console myself, knowing we had some meaningful interaction earlier that day. As I enter the building and pass an open door to a room that is sparsely furnished, I am astonished to see yet another exemplar of spiritual beauty. She is easily as attractive as the impersonal one from the East, but here her garb of protection makes it almost impossible for me to experience any kind of erotic impulse, save the impulse to caress the fullness of her lips with my fingertips. Nevertheless, I knock respectfully at her door, and she beckons subtly with a tilt of her head for me to enter. I pull up a chair eagerly and sit with her. As this is a silent retreat for the inter-faithful within the bounds of this compound, I hold my silence. When she isn’t meeting my gaze of wonder squarely with a serene countenance, she is tilting her head skyward, gazing through a skylight window in reverence of her One and Only, while I take it upon myself to survey photographs neatly arranged on a circular corkboard nearby, showing her as consoling and consulting others as nothing less than the saint of embodied compassionate wisdom she has become. When she lowers her eyes to meet my gaze, I tentatively raise my tremulous fingertips to her lips, but in spite of the fact that I meet not even a hint of resistance to this audacious gesture, I just can not bring myself to follow through on the caress. Her identity as wholly transpersonal gives her a distinctive edge, a solid energetic shield with which to repel any such touch by default, and so I wonder: how many selfless acts of service had she performed in her journey as a soul? I cannot help but imagine she had conducted, in and out of her habit, in the roles of wife, mother, daughter, sister, and nun, countless such acts over countless lifetimes.
Eventually, I find my peace alone in presence and leave the compound, heading toward town, fantasizing shamelessly about bringing the bald beauty from the East alive to a fervent love of sharing endless erotic and sensual pleasures and desires. As I pass a lively pub, I decide to head back through the front door for a drink. Much to my chagrin, a bevy of slutty characters descend on my person. I am in no mood for game, and so I feign disinterest even as I keep a furtive eye on their assets. They taunt me for my seeming indifference and attempt to play with me, to draw me out, but to no avail. I remain a staunch observer. In terms of the continuum portrayed above, these girls are firmly embedded in the personal realm, and although their conduct might suggest a modicum of interpersonal involvement, even skill, it is clear to me that they are in this game for themselves, to sate their impossibly high sex drives, or to reassure themselves that they’re still desirable, or to experience a newfound freedom in new clothes after dropping a load of weight, or to go in search of all manner of commodities in exchange for a good time, or to enjoy the thrill of bedding yet another married or committed man, or to repeat the endless cycle of finding just one more man to love and desire, or . . . I run out of steam in my thinking, and I don’t wait to finish my drink. My impulse is to run, and so I do, outrunning just a few of the many lusty ladies past the edge of town, relieved to know that I can now keep my peace and see another day with my dignity intact.
Ever since childhood, I have enjoyed leisurely walks along country roads, and today is no different. I walk at my leisure along a dusty road flanked by strips of dried grasses running in parallel with weather-beaten fences, surrounded by fields of green dotted with trees whose canopies of leaves invite me to spend time in their shade as protection against the hot afternoon sun. Thankfully, a horse pulling an old-fashioned buggy stops next to me and a comely young woman in her late teens or early twenties calls out for me to join her, which I do, intrigued by this possibility for gainful companionship, although her presence gives me pause, as everything about her seems unusually prim and proper – a stark contrast to the appearance and manner of girls seeking a respite from their incessant urges. We talk at length about topics safe and proper, like the weather, and what I do for a living, and what she does as a young lady of leisure, and about the fact that her father is presently waiting to take her horse-back riding. I feel the strain of contrived conversation, and so I indulge a naughty impulse to pull out a scrap of paper and a pencil and quickly sketch a naked woman blessed with unusually large breasts in the throes of riding a man like a goddess. Needless to say, she is aghast by this sudden turn of events. At first, she ignores me, and then she commands the driver to stop. I get the hint and I jump to the ground, but not before the buggy speeds off without so much as a wave of goodbye. I contemplate that this girl is deeply and firmly embedded in the interpersonal dimension of intimate experience. Whereas the slutty girls aim directly for sensual and sexual experience, this lovely girl remains safely ensconced in the sensuous realm of pleasant sights and sounds, dropping mere hints of romantic desire. Eros denied is yet again confirmed in my growing experience of all things intimate, especially with the fairer (or perhaps not so fairer) sex.
I grow weary of the sun beating down on my head. I am sweaty and dirty and thirsty. Closing my eyes, I visualize stepping into the back seat of an air-conditioned vehicle and finding a pretty young woman sitting next to me. In mere minutes, I am blessed by a synchronous realization of this very desire. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me. As I chat aimlessly with the driver from the back seat, I am vaguely aware of a young woman sitting next to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that she is engrossed in her smart device, tapping and texting furiously, as if her life depends on it. I am reminded of a none-too-flattering illustration that speaks to this widespread obsession. I wait for a break in her absorption with the object of her desire but one never comes. This is someone who is firmly embedded in a realm both personal and interpersonal, where the boundaries are blurred and the possibilities for intimate experience restricted solely to the objects of her tapping and texting. I resign myself to watching the world go by through the window, accepting the fact that yet another female of our species has been claimed by the absorption of an incessant technology that seemingly seeks to devour and erase any last vestiges of our humanity.
By the time I hit the next town, the natural light is fading. I enter the first variety store I find, make a quick purchase, and slake my thirst with a bottle of ice cold water. As I do, I remind myself of this maxim: with presence, I have my peace; at peace, I find my promise; in promise, I feel my power. I don’t need a woman’s comfort and I don’t need her pleasure in passion, but I sure do miss her love of value through the fire of desire. I close my eyes and visualize a woman of substance and style – young or at least young at heart; a woman who knows her worth, who can negotiate and navigate that impossible relation between human and divine; a woman who finds an easy balance in all things intimate through sensuous, romantic, erotic, sensual, and sexual experience; and a woman who moves with uncommon grace and ease through all dimensions of experience – impersonal, personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal – such that love and desire, pleasure and passion, come easily to her, whether she be by turns a girl, a woman, or a lady, flexibly and spontaneously, effectively and effortlessly. To be is to have, this I know, and I do not expect to find such a woman anytime soon, but I do allow for the paradox that such a woman will appear to me when I least expect it.
To reiterate …
To nourish the roots of a realization that would have us experience the ultimate in personal fulfillment requires a liquid solution with four simple yet potent ingredients: presence (of mind) for clarity; peace (of heart) for buoyancy; promise (of soul) for serenity; power (of spirit) for vitality.
In that order.
For me personally, through all things naturally beautiful and harmonious, I find my serenity, which bodes well for tasting the depths of intimacy and (if I am fortunate) the heights of ecstasy.
Note: my evolving outline on approaching a realization of the ultimate in personal fulfillment can be found here, accessible from the nav menu under the page “Be Here Now”.
Next: Ultimate Outline 02
Note: this ever growing perspective began here: Ultimate Perspective