Readers who are familiar with my previous writing on the Esoteric Teaching website and Yahoo group (now defunct) may wonder what this new site is all about. I guess you could say it’s about my Thanksgiving realization.
Over Thanksgiving week this year, I found myself in a state of deep contemplation. Astrologically, Saturn was transiting my natal Pluto; not just transiting, but creeping up on it, slowing down to a dead stop, and leaning on it hard for a few days, before grudgingly backing off in retrograde motion.
Externally, my whole life went into slow motion—like those dreams where you’re trying to run from something, but the air is as thick as jello and you can’t get anywhere. Luckily I am a senior monk in a rural spiritual community, and have the time and leisure to slow way down when I need to.
Internally, I was in a profoundly contemplative state of concentration. Whenever I get opportunities like this, I try to consolidate previous breakthroughs and perceptions into new insights. So I was thinking deeply about our Esoteric Teaching and how to express it in a simple, concise way that anyone could understand. That’s when it happened.
The new insight appeared with all the thundering suddenness of pouring molasses on a cold winter morning. In other words, it didn’t just flash instantly into my mind, but gradually, ponderously emerged into consciousness over a period of days. I felt like my mind was stuck, unable to think, until the entire huge conception was revealed.
At first I was struck with wonder over the scope of this breakthrough. Finally I was able to apprehend, in one view, the entire range and scope of the Esoteric Teaching from a subjective point of view! This was wondrous and amazing, but it also put me into great difficulty: how could I ever express this insight to anyone else?
For days I wandered through my mental landscape, overwhelmed with the vast scale and weight of the insight that had revealed itself. I despaired of ever being able to share it with anyone. Yet after several days of such dumbstruck cogitation, I found myself getting up in the middle of the night and grabbing the pen and notebook that sit ever by my bedside, precisely to record such unscheduled inspirations.
To my amazement, I was able to express the essence of my insight in a form almost identical to what you can read here in the post Esoteric Psychology. Still, I doubted that anyone would be able to grasp such a sweeping insight from such a concise expression. It reminded me of Einstein’s famous little equation, E = mc²: anyone can quote it, but it takes a Ph.D. in Physics to understand or explain it properly. So I reluctantly accepted that I would very likely spend the rest of my life explaining my insight to people.
Last Sunday, I was invited to give the class at our Sunday community gathering. I hesitatingly accepted, knowing that all I could speak about—indeed, all I could think about—was my new realization. Surprisingly, the class was very well-received. In fact, it was the topic of much discussion in our community for several days thereafter. Of course, the audience was composed mostly of very experienced transcendentalists and advanced yogis.
Nevertheless, I began to see that with the proper preparation and careful explanation, any sufficiently intelligent person could understand my new realization. So after some more careful consideration, I decided to create this blog. As a writer friend of mine once joked, “I always feel compelled to share my latest insights with my community of faithful readers. Sometimes I wonder if I’m an exscribitionist.”
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