On the road to your inner journey

In our modern society which goes so fast and evolves so rapidly, most of the people want all quickly, without having the patience to reach things sometimes. Very often we want all easy, effortless and almost pre-matched in a certain way.

An Egyptian proverb written in a Luxor temple says “true teaching is not an accumulation of knowledge; it is an awakening of consciousness which goes through successive stages”.

The key point or the master key to understanding (I even should say to “innerstand”) “the true teaching” to soak it, to infuse is clearly indicated that it can be done only through different steps. We cannot obtain in a few minutes, with an expectation of precipitation. On the contrary, too much desire obstruct the process of evolution. When we observe nature, it has its own pace, its own rhythm: the tree takes 30-40 years to grow up and nothing artificial can speed it up. This is a natural process also because the learning is comparable to a dam which would break overwhelm the arid valley destroying all instead of hydrate it.

In most of the initiatory journeys, the insider had to start most of the time by 2 years of the thankless tasks like cleaning, moving heavy things and always with the main rule: to keep silent, he/she was not allowed to ask some questions.

Most of the time people think that the revelation, the miracle, the change, the awakening, the enlightenment is coming from outside. It is a lure. And this is the first step to understand that mistake, that preconceived idea. Our world is an illusion as the Hindu call it “Mayas” and this is the first misunderstanding. To reach the outer harmony, one needs to achieve to inside harmony corresponding to the inwards access to unity.

Concretely this is the springboard to achieve the oneness and thereby the inwards and outward harmony without any dissociation. It is possible to have a master, a guide (physical or invisible) but this person (or entity) just show some ways, without opening the doors for us. That’s why Khalil Gibran said: “No man can not reveal anything to you except what is already half-asleep”.

The ancient Greek philosophy reveals that “know yourself you will know the universe and the gods”.

The first step of the infinite* journey enlightenment is the introspection. The existential questions like “Who I am?” “Why am I here?” “What do I like?” “what am I useful for?” “What is my reason of being?” are making the world going around and turning around since ages.

*infinite because the enlightenment is like the tide, it comes and goes back and so one, it is not permanent like the soap bubble you cannot master it or seize fully, you can just flirt with the illusion of seizing the instant.

How do we call a person who has been taught, who is initiated? We call him or her an “insider”. It means clearly that all is “inside” not outside. The process is inward.

The process is a kind of alchemic method essentially in three steps: 1-destruction, 2-cleansing, 3-transcendence (raising). The destruction of the ego does not mean that you become Mister or madam nobody without any identity but you accepted the faces of yourself (the persona in Latin the masks fruit of your education, your culture, your environment and the interaction with it: rejection, adhesion…). You have to dig down very deeply to cope with your fears to discharge the negative energies which block the good circulation of your enlightenment.

The goal is to be in peace with your self: your present and your past. In addition in the second step of cleansing, there is the notion of being in peace with your past and the different actors of it in that life and in previous lives. An extract from Ariadne’s papyrus, vizier of Séti II, in the fourteenth century before Christ says something really beautiful:

“Man comes into existence many times; however, he knows nothing of his past lives, except that, occasionally, a dream or thought brings him back to some circumstance of a previous incarnation. But he can not remember when, where this event happened. He recognizes only something familiar. In the end, however, all his past lives will be revealed to him. The spirits or souls who have known each other in one incarnation may meet in another incarnation, attracted to each other; but for what cause, both will ignore it … ”

Paulo Coelho said something really interesting regarding the principle of karma in his book Aleph:

“It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.”

It exists different technics like psychoanalysis, regression, family constellation, spiritual retreats, lonely trip…  All the Roads lead to Rome and to Home.

These are some ways that we propose in Shambali for you to succeed on the way of your inner journey as happiness can occur on the road not only at the destination.

Issa ~ AM