This past week saw me spend a very pleasant afternoon on top of the world.
The weather that day was perfect for the occasion: sunny, warm, and windy.
I knew the general direction I wanted to take after consulting a Google map online, on my laptop, and I followed my nose, trusting it to take me through parts of the city I had never seen before, along residential streets, into parking lots, across roads, through a cemetery, over a bridge, to get there.
The hill I climbed was tall and steep, but no match for my physical conditioning. When I reached a small parking space half way to the top, I turned around and surrendered my gaze to a sweeping view running north and south along the eastern side of this prosperous city I now call home.
I watched a jet take off from the international airport, I surveyed the city core with its skyscrapers standing huddled together as if to seek warmth and safety from the prairie that sweeps all around them, and I noted the general vicinity of my own neighbourhood near the core.
I came here to have a commanding view of the world and I was not disappointed.
As I continued my climb along a trail past dark, upright shrubs and dried, windswept grasses to one of two peaks that marked this ginormous mound, a panorama of the city and its environs came into view, with snow-capped mountains that stretched across the western horizon.
With my outcome realized, I could relax into the experience of surrender, my heart expanding to feed my soul with the experience of wonder at just how big and small I could feel. When the wind subsided, I marvelled in a whisper, “it is so quiet up here,” and then the mind chatter fell away …
I know this sounds like a cliché, but … no words could adequately describe what I saw and felt that day.
A most curious paradox: I went there intent on fulfilling my ego (which I did), but I ended up satisfying the heart of my soul as “the man of no ego.” In retrospect, the most interesting result of this experience was that it raised me to new heights even as it grounded me in new depths.
As/when we assume the way to do is to be (thank you, Lao Tzu), who might we be to be free?
When I ask this question, I am addressing those of you who identify as receptive, reflective, and responsive; as sensitive, introspective, and contemplative; as intuitive, creative, and progressive.
Who might we be to be free? In other words, who might we dare to be to be alive to be alive?
In a world whose traumatic ancestral memories play out daily through heavy doses of egoic negativity, it is all too easy to feel caught in a web from which we presently see no escape, but just know this: a deeper, broader, higher perspective of cosmic proportions awaits you, waiting to serve you profoundly to expand your view of yourself into your Self, as well as your view of your place in this world.
As I continue to keep my focus on coming to terms with fate, I feel compelled to go ever deeper into knowing and meeting my legitimate needs, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. I say “legitimate” because all too often we conflate our needs and desires; when you say “I need this”, what you really mean is “I want this”. I bring all of this up because it behooves us to satisfy our legitimate needs before we make any serious attempts to fulfill our genuine desires. Indeed, the energy that arises from meeting our legitimate needs is perfectly suited to taking on the task of fulfilling our genuine desires and enjoying the fulfillment of these genuine desires. I say “genuine” because all too often we risk falling into the trap of wanting what others want. We don’t want what others want; we want what we want. In this light, I see value in being true to my desires as a result of being true to meeting my own needs in the right place at the right time for the right reasons in the right measure, and I present this point of view to keep my efforts focused on approaching the realization of the ultimate in personal fulfillment.
I have added much more content to my resource on coming to terms with fate, starting here: “We would do well to start with articulating two assessments concerning the matter of my fate, …”.
This additional content is as much a context for crafting a cosmic narrative for your life as a cosmic being, as it is an education on coming to terms with the matter of fate through the substance of life.
As long as we persist in being spiritual beings inhabiting biological human forms with psychological imperatives, we are bound to remain creaturely – creatures of desire with persistent needs – and as long as we continue to occupy these human forms, this is how I will see others in relation to me, and conversely, this is how I will see myself in relation to others: as divine beings who nevertheless pose as creatures whose four green spindly legs of legitimate need – physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual – run around in spite of ourselves, ceaselessly propelling us forward, compelling us to think and feel and take action on our own behalf, in service to whatever genuine desires we have the energy left over to fulfill (after tending to our needs). Perhaps in that one glorious moment when we know we have satisfied all of our legitimate needs and fulfilled all of our genuine desires will we have arrived at that moment of Truth when the ultimate in fulfillment has been realized personally and impersonally, which involves having easy access to a shared collective consciousness from individuated points of view.
In the meantime …
If the satisfaction of our legitimate needs gives us a life worth living, then the fulfillment of our genuine desires (as and when we are willing and able to fulfill them) gives us a lifestyle worth crafting.
To spell this out more clearly, I would add this: where a shared collected consciousness could serve to support the satisfaction of need, individuated points of view make possible the fulfillment of desire.
Need and desire, soul and spirit, fate and destiny, life and lifestyle: are these not the two most vital threads with which and from which to weave satisfaction and fulfillment into ultimate realization?
Note: my evolving outline on the ultimate in personal fulfillment can now be found here, accessible from the nav menu under “Be Here Now”. I’ll be sure to inform readers of any updates.
Next: Ultimate Fulfillment 53
Note: this ever growing perspective began here: Ultimate Perspective