As your Spirit awakens, arises, and beckons you out of The Caves and beyond The Boundary, you will find yourself beset by chains, ties, and bondage.
Just like in the mythical tales that are True, it may feel as if a thousand little ties and little beings are attached to you and holding you down.
Everyone who advances towards Mastery must inevitably break with the Old in order to bring forth the New that they are destined to give birth to.
There was a master we called Shihan. He was an ancient warrior spirit who found himself thrown into modern day Syria. Over his lifetime of focused attention, he distilled the wisdom from many arts around the year, taught for over 50 years, and became one of two 7th degree black belts in the world in a traditional martial art.
We walked together over the last 10+ years of his life, as we wrestled with the pain and discomfort of transcending the limitations and strictures and corruption of the Old forms, in order to rediscover and return to the most True and Eternal Way. For Shihan, it was a shocking moral, spiritual, and intellectual battle, for in exchange for Knowledge he had pledged to honor and advance the Old until his death. Yet the farther he progressed and the higher he rose and the closer he got to pinnacle of that pyramid of knowledge, the more he realized that he was stuck inside of something that wasn't absolutely True, and could not contain his expression of his Current Best Understanding. It was obvious that there was something far transcendent of the pyramid of dogmatic understanding.
We rediscovered the ancient Truism that New wine cannot be poured into Old wineskins, or the Old will burst, and both the New and the Old will be ruined. Instead, the New wine must be poured into New wineskins. In the end, we discovered a Way to honor the Old, while forthrightly recognizing its corruption and limitations, and forging New structure through which we could freely express the New yet Eternal that was re-revealing itself to us and through us. It followed the eternal pattern of Realization.
However it is excruciatingly difficult to have your feet planted in both words. There are very few who can stand with one foot in the Old and one in the New in order to create a Bridge across the Chasm. yet some of us are called to it.
In contrast to the Old that stood at one end of The Chasm, the New was completely clean, new, pure, soft, supple. It was beyond any one named thing. It was the One Thing that united All things present in the Old. It was an entirely New Order that we had discovered how to forge out of the disjointed pieces and Chaos of the Old. Yet because it was True, it did not conflict with any of the True principles of the Old. It only conflicted with the Corruption and Misunderstandings of narrow, provincial, siloed pyramids of Knowledge. Yet it harmonized with the core Wisdom and spirit of all elements of Old that were Wise, Right, True and Good.
After years of struggle, when we finally discovered the freedom to transcend, we found true joyful liberty of expression. There were no rules and no limitations except One.
Yet there was an important crucible that we had to be willing to pass through. We had to be wiling to give up our degrees, our recognition, and our places and positions of honor in the Old. We had to be willing to be rejected, and if necessary killed by the Old, so that something New could emerge.
Finally we stood there, having laid down every element of the Old. We had dropped every name, we had dropped every form, we had dropped every pretense, we had dropped every certification issued by the Old Authorities, and all that remained was the Truth of what would or would not work in Reality when confronted with the moment of life or death, and the Truth of what world or would not work in the Eternity that transcended all moments.
We were uncertified. We were once again white belts. We had laid down our Old life and returned to the beginning. And because we were willing to allow the Old to pass away in its entirety without fear, even for our own lives, we were free.
We spent the next 5 years until he released his physical body working together in earnest to to rediscover and redevelop the Martial elements of the New yet Eternal Way that is always present and alive beyond the pyramids and Caves of the Old that separate, bind, and blind us.
Predictably, we lost part of our Old life to human-caused disease of the body, and part of our Old life to the disease of corruption in the Old Authorities who plotted against us when we spoke the Truth. However the Spirit never dies, and always rises. In the moments before his physical body returned to the earth, he prayed that God would allow his spirit to remain here on earth to protect and help the weak, vulnerable, suffering, and exploited in his destroyed and corrupted homeland.
This story is told to help preserve a memory, and prepare everyone who would set their feet on this path for the coming point at which they must break from the Old and cross The Boundary towards Liberty.
To reach the point of Liberty and Right Relationship, we lost life, we lost homes, we lost businesses, we lost properties, we lost reputation, we lost our place in society, we lost religious community, we lost relationships of privilege with the powers of church and state. We were unjustly oppressed and attacked by the authorities we had looked to for leadership and protection. In the darkest hours we were abandoned by friends, forsaken by family, robbed by those we trusted as they fled, forsaken by systems of injustice, called insane, accused by religious fundamentalists of being in league with Satan himself, coerced into writing apologies, dispossessed in the most merciless ways available, and then charged by the authorities for the time and effort they spent administering our demise.
We went through this willingly with the recognition that darkness cannot be overcome except through willingness to descend into and shine Light into it. We went through this willingly understanding that the brightness of the Light that is available to shine is directly proportionate to the Darkness through which one has descended.
You will likely not have to experience this, because every individual that is liberated from the bondage of the Old makes it easier for all who come after, especially if they take the care to build infrastructure and bridges to help others beyond The Boundary and across The Chasm. We have done a lot of hard work, and we hope that it makes the Way easier for you to progress in.
This story is being told to illustrate in some archetypical way the pain, suffering, loss, and sacrifice that one must be willing to undergo in order to walk in this Way.
When you give up the certainty and bondage of The Caves in order to directly experience for yourself Light, Truth, Love, Beauty, and Awe, you loose the privilege of reentering The Caves without betraying your Soul.
This is because in order to be welcomed in The Caves you have to be willing to repeat the words that are spoken by the Authorities there.
And once you Realize that those Words are not True, and that speaking untrue Words betrays your Spirit and Soul, you lose entry.
It may be a long time until your family, your friends, or your community discover life outside The Caves.
So the choice to Cross The Chasm inherently must involve within itself the willingness to be rejected by them, and if necessary, leave them behind in order to prepare the Way for them. For the only thing you can do to liberate them, or any from the Bondage of the Old is to advance towards The Goal with all your being, and to help as many others as you can advance along with you.
Having once see something New that is Better and more True and Good than the Old, one betrays their own soul and Truth itself if they are unwilling to transcend the Old in pursuit of it. If one is not willing to leave behind family, friends, businesses, property, degrees, positions, wealth and power to conform themselves to Truth, they are not fit for the New, and they will suffer and perish in their Caves, or perish wandering in The Wilderness that separates the Old and the New.
One of the first and most important steps in the Quest of any individual towards the New, is their liberation from the Old frameworks, structures, and stories of their past.
Are you willing to exit the security of bondage in the Old in order to Cross The Chasm and be free in the New?
There is indeed much security in remaining bound in the Old, but it is quite limiting, and a betrayal to your soul. There is New and beautiful world that lies ahead. Let us meet each other there, and help each other along the Way.
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