Joseph Machney
Traditions often define a culture and within these we are held together as a community. Community forms structure and a level of relationship to others as common ground fosters. Structures, like a building or edifice, has longevity that may last ages.
As time moves along and a generation passes, making way for the next to come along, traditions, community and structures are still present. In some situations, they are obscure and are trying to relate to the present generation, as if it has its own consciousness. Can it relate to this present generation? If so, why and how does this part relate, and perhaps other parts do not? What is being tethered to us now that has no longer relevance to our personal and collective growth and yet still it is a part of us, the human condition?
Is this considered human evolution or spiritual digression?
Over the last century or so, we have been on a path of materialism and as the word suggests, it is about giving importance to material. Material is matter manipulated to suit our wants and needs. This is used collectively as a society to move through a certain trajectory. The goal can only be more material, there can be no other. With this as the goal than spiritual digression is a collective result. Yet materialism has taken on a multitude of forms in this day and age. The obsession with the internet and how it has become woven into society to the point that it is akin to breathing. Perhaps that is a bit exaggerated but the focus on the external cannot be denied.
Education comes from the Latin educere, meaning 'to draw out' the pupil. That is to say, true education is less about what you put into the student, and more about what you draw out of them. So how can we say that we are truly educated when we collectively pride ourselves on being educated in the traditional manner? Again, we are tethered to the external to tell us who we are and what the nature of our reality is about as an absurd way of appeasing it. Appeasing who or what, I wonder? Why do we do this? What fear keeps us stuck in this mindset?
Is it selfish to isolate oneself in this manner; meaning to limit one’s connection to the material in all of its manifestations? What is inside us that is so fearful that we have spent generations ignoring? How can we connect with others when we are connected to ourselves? What shifts when this happens? What becomes important to us collectively? Is this worth exploring more than whatever the popular trend is at the moment?
We are taught to be told what is, never are we asked what our thoughts are on what we are told or taught. This road can only take us to where we have been before or to where we are told that we are headed to. There is nothing new for us in this landscape, on this timeline. But how do we release human conditioning that has been drilled into us on such a deep level for so long, for so many generations?
The structures are old and may seem permanent and yet how we are taught to see and understand the world keeps them permanent. They hold station in our awareness because we let them. This is the world that we are born into and yet at that moment we are limitless and untethered in our minds. The close connection to spirit and the unseen dimensions and worlds are how we arrive here. How do we return through all of this baggage? Not just ours, but our family, past and present. Those most familiar with these worlds whom have kept it alive in their own ways create the cracks in this illusion that we have collectively invested our time and our life into. These artists, visionionaries, mystics, saints, musicians and the like broke through the illusions and still what they brought to us cannot often be relatable to how we have been taught to see our reality. This “dream-like” world is reality as well, from a multi-dimensional point of view. Perhaps more real than what we have been molded to know as the complete reality?
Tethered to an illusion.
