Sulum Factum Magus

An inevitable step in the process of spiritual maturity, at least for people brought up in the typical western milieu, is the Great Struggle. This comes about after a person commits themselves to the spiritual path, and commits themselves to realising their spiritual nature, however conceived. The reason is that we develop, in our society, various strong ideas about who we are, and what we ought to do, and then confuse these various ideas with our self. We attach importance to them. We attach certain dreams to ourselves and then proceed to use them to give our lives motivation and meaning. In short, we make our conception of self revolve around various beliefs about who and what we are, and what we ought to do with our lives. For most people, this is all very well, and no big deal. After all, in our society, unless you hold firm to a goal, you will achieve nothing, or at least that is the prevailing wisdom that we are taught in our society, and accept without question.

However, the Higher Self, the Holy Guardian Angel, the Soul Self, or whatever you call that aspect of you which is linked directly to the source of all, often has different ideas. It has its agenda as well, an agenda that is often stifled by the typical process of maturation and socialisation in our society. This leads to a soul sickness that manifests as depression, listlessness, joylessness, or hopelessness, and a failure to derives satisfaction from one’s achievements. One’s successes seem hollow. Our response is often to stamp out the voice of the Higher Self even more, we are so attached to our ideas of who we are and what we should be doing.

The path of spiritual development, as conceived in the Western Tradition, is to open up a full connection and communication with the Higher Self, and to begin to act on its agenda, to work with the Higher Will, instead of the lower will. This brings immense satisfaction and fulfilment. It seems very simple, and, once the methods of communication are in place, it is. If only it were not for our image of who we are, and what we ought to be doing! Typically a great struggle ensues, between the lower self and its goals and aspirations, and the simple agenda of the Higher Self. We devote all our time to the pursuit of the goals and aspirations of the lower self, and almost none to the agenda of the Higher Self. However once we begin to embrace the intention of manifesting the Higher Self, as we do in some way on any path of magical development or training worth its salt, this great struggle begins. In fact, it may seem a battle for supremacy in your life, a battle for control of your time and energy. The battle is between the Higher Self, and the lower self, that is, your personality which hugs so tightly the precious ideas of who you are and the goals you have adopted. This battle continues unabated until one surrenders to the Higher Self. However, this may take many years. Eventually, the forces of Spirit contrive to place us in a situation where surrender is the only option, the alternative being a complete nervous breakdown and the falling apart of one’s life. Well, that’s to put it dramatically…of course it doesn’t have to be that extreme…surrender to the Higher Self is possible in an instant. However most of us need to be ground down into a state of surrender by the implacable forces of life.

The reason it works this way in our society is because our society places such a strong emphasis on individuality, and a sense of self that is located in the rational, decision making part of ourselves, based on our store of ideas and beliefs. Indeed, so great is our fixation on this, that most people find it hard to comprehend that there are other ways of constructing a sense of self. The magical journey, at its highest, is, I believe, fundamentally concerned with unmaking this socialised sense of self, to make way for a new sense of self based on the Higher Self and its agenda.

The irony is that the Higher Self is the true you, while the lower self is a construction which we all make in response to our upbringing. This construction wants to run the show. Once we start intending the Higher Self to run the show, the lower self feels threatened. We feel threatened. Our precious dreams are threatened. A step into spiritual maturity is to surrender, to allow the Higher Self to run our lives. Many people construct this idea as surrendering to something outside of themselves. But this is not the case at all. It is you, yourself, that you must surrender to. It is you, yourself, that you must make way for. There is nothing so precious as the agenda of the Higher Self manifesting in your life. But you will have to lose your precious ideas of who and what you are. And for westerners, it is a great struggle, though it doesn’t need to be. For some, it may take the form of a nervous breakdown, or an illness that forces a total re-evaluation of life. For the person on the magical path, the process can be less outwardly disrupting, as through knowledge and awareness, one is able to work with the process, instead of resisting it to the bitter end.

Blessings on your journey…

Robyn

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Pagan Phliosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.