Measures of success

"We are here to learn about love, compassion, kindness, and nonviolence. Success should be measured by these qualities. Are we becoming a more understanding and empathic person? If so, we are successful. The soul clings to such learning, because these are spiritual truths. With my clients who excelled professionally yet still felt unhappy, we worked on focusing on the core values of being a better, kinder person. At that point, their outlook began to improve. That is, after all, why they are here on Earth--and why we are here. Our purpose in life is not to be a bestselling author, or to have a financially lucrative career, or to be a star. It is to be a more loving, compassionate person. Successes can be used to further the spiritual path and to reach many people, but they are merely one possible means and not the end. The true goal is to help others, and if you make that your goal, eventually you'll become that bestselling author, or the multimillionaire--or not. It won't matter. Once you open your heart, those other things will take care of themselves." (pp. 78-79)

Brian Weiss and Amy Weiss (2012). Miracles Happen: The Transformational Healing Power of Past Life Memories. 

Evolution of a soul is not a single, linear path. It includes many lessons to learn. For love or divine wisdom has many aspects, and there are numbers of methods of acquisition. Kindness, compassion, and empathy are only part of the wisdom. There are other qualities, such as patience, generosity, courage, or perseverance, to name but a few, as well.

Find light within

You stand in darkness and cannot get out however hard you try. Even your closest friends or family members cannot be of any help.

When that happens, think that you are being given a divine opportunity to find light within. This light is connected to light of the whole universe, the ultimate source of our being. You need darkness around you to be aware of gleaming light inside you.

This is far more grateful than you think it is, being awakened to your own divinity during your earthly sojourn.

Be rejoiced at the opportunity of spiritual awareness with all your heart and spirit. The divine intervention shall never ever fail you.

Kisha-Gotami (3)

When we understand that philosophy (love of wisdom arrived at through personal effort and experience) is the ultimate medicine for all our psychological ills, we shall free ourselves from the bonds of sorrows. What is needed is philosophy in the sense of a lived, visceral experience like that of Kisha-Gotami. . . . (p. 76)

Negativities can be transmuted by cultivating positive qualities. This takes time to accomplish. If there is darkness in a room, all we need to do is switch on a light. We might need help, from a counselor, spiritual leader or friend; even an ordinary task like driving a car requires a few lessons.

In the story above, the Buddah as a friend and facilitator headed Kisha-Gotami in the right direction, and she was able to move from her painful intimate loss to loss as a general human issue. He helped her successfully move from a particular to the general. This is the way of wisdom. This gave her distancing. Wisdom is what makes us rise above life's miseries, not unrealistically but rather in the same timely existential way that Kisha-Gotami did. She confronted the main challenge of her life as she went from door to door. Little by little wisdom awakened in her like the morning sun.

True release from suffering is never effected by harping ad infinitum on the personally toned material of a painful complex. Freedom comes when, bearing our scars, we are able to rise above the personal to the level of the transpersonal . . . . (p. 77)

Eugene Pascal (1992). Jung to Live by.

Emphases are mine again. 

Real wisdom is noticed or learned usually through personal difficulties. Spiritual awakening does happen that way.

Kisha-Gotami's story (2)

"He told her empathetically that he would surely help her, but she must first accomplish a simple task. She must go back down to the village and beg for a few grains of mustard seeds and bring them back up to him on the mountain. These grains must come, however, from a house where no one had ever died.

She rushed away, still clutching her baby and at the first house she saw she begged for some mustard seeds. These were readily given to her, as mustard seeds were a common household item. As she was departing she remembered to ask if anyone had died in that house, and the woman answered that only last week, her old father-in-law had died in the very premises. Kisha sadly gave back the seeds and went on to the next house, only to find that there too a death had recently taken place. And from house to house she went throughout the entire village, and the neighboring village as well, disappointed at every turn, as she discovered that Death had stalked every door.

She climbed back up the mountain without any mustard seeds and knelt before the Buddah, placing the dead baby at his feet. She said but two words, "I understand," and wept. The scriptures go on to tell how she became a dedicated disciple of the sacred teachings that free one from suffering . . . ."

Eugene Pascal (1992). Jung to Live by. pp. 75-6.

Kisha-Gotami's story (1)

"A poignant story from Buddhist legend tells about the tragedy of a young and pretty Indian woman named Kisha-Gotami illustrating that no one can help us except ourselves. As a young girl she always dreamed about being married, having children and engaging in a happy household and family life. She lived in a society in which marriages are arranged by the parents, but she was more than satisfied when her parents chose a young man that she herself would have picked. They were happy with each other from their first moments together, but a year after their wedding tragedy struck. Her husband died in an anccident and Kisha-Gotami tried desperately to console herself by focusing all of her energies on her new baby, who looked exactly like her husband. 

One fatal morning soon after her husband's demise, the young widow woke up to find her baby lying lifeless beside her. Her grief was infinite, and she went mad. She walked holding her dead baby through the highways and byways of her village, holding her dead baby, unwilling to release the decaying corpse for a proper funeral. Though countless friends and neighbors tried to convince her to hand over the dead child, she would not relent. When some tried snatching the dead child from her arms, she ran away and began raving if anyone approached her.

An old woman told Kisha-Gotami that a very wise and powerful holy man was camped on a nearby mountain, and that it was rumored that he performed miracles of all kinds and even brought the dead back to life.

Kisha-Gotami ran at full speed up the mountain to see the Buddah sitting serenely in the shade of a banyan tree, instructing some of his disciples. She implored him on her knees to bring her baby back to life by use of his miraculous powers." (pp. 74-75)

Eugene Pascal (1992).  Jung to Live by: A Guide to the Practical Application of Jungian Principles for Everyday Life.  

Emptiness

Don't be afraid of emptiness within you. 

People try to fill the emptiness with tangible materials or by having things, such as money, status, friends, etc. They never really fill it. The harder you try, the stronger and larger the emptiness will feel.

Turn the emptiness into a space for light. Find light of wisdom to fill it in. Then you will find yourself in the emptiness, rather than emptiness inside you.

When you are surrounded by the light, you can be a giving person, a person who is ready to give others this light of love.

Age of Aquarius

"In terms of prophesy," Teabing said, "we are currently in an epoch of enormous change. The millennium has recently passed, and with it has ended the two-thousand-year-long astrological Age of Pisces--the fish, which is also the sign of Jesus. As any astrological symbologist will tell you, the Piscean ideal believes that man must be told what to do by higher powers because man is incapable of thinking for himself. Hence it has been a time of fervent religion. Now, however, we are entering the Age of Aquarius--the water bearer--whose ideals claim that man will learn the truth and be able to think for himself. The ideological shift is enormous, and it is occurring right now."

Dan Brown. (2003) Da Vinci Code. pp.289-290.

Emphases are mine.

And yet Jesus seems to be behind this enormous ideological shift anyway.