Who Wants to Live Forever?

Most spiritual and philosophical paths speak of the transcendence of man over his nature. By definition, one can never transcend one’s self. He or she can only raise it to its highest fulfillment. So the question becomes, “how do I embody my highest nature?”

This question contains some interesting ambiguities:

1. What is highest?

2. Who am I?

3. What is my nature?

“Highest,” we will imagine the greatest fulfillment of all aspects of an individual’s character. If you are warrior, it is your battle. If you are a martyr it is your sacrifice-these two are not as far different as one would imagine.

“I” can be thought of as “knowingness” that can only be described as awareness of existence. It requires neither subject, nor object, this is the natural state of being of which everyone is endowed without any external stimulus. Think of it as the mind and attention span of a beautiful loved baby.

“Nature” may be the hardest concept to describe concisely here. It is the collection of characteristics which one tries to raise to the highest fulfillment described above. In other words, the nature of a dancer is to dance, or oftentimes, to fight. Becoming the greatest dancer and martial artists describes this embodiment.

By nature you are already divinity. Your awareness can be neither created nor destroyed. In fact, there is no point in your existence where you remember or can imagine that you do not exist. Hence your “Self” is immortal.  Thus the challenge in life is to become human, for you are already eternal.

In an interesting twist then, we can imagine all spiritual paths as methods of reaching humanity instead of God.

By | 2018-01-04T07:04:19+00:00 March 12th, 2008|Esoteric Wisdom, Love, Perspectives, Philosophy, Politics, Religion|8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. Peter March 12, 2008 at 11:54 am - Reply

    1. What is highest? – To know the Truth
    2. Who am I? – I am the Spirit
    3. What is my nature? – Spiritual
    “Nosce te ipsum” – Know thyself
    http://sahajapower.wordpress.com/

    🙂

  2. perfectparadox March 12, 2008 at 12:52 pm - Reply

    Agreed.

    Since you are a fellow Seeker into the universal questions I may go a bit further.

    1. The Truth is The All, the Infinite
    2. You are consciousness-that Infinite
    3. Your nature is that Infinite Awareness once again

    Thus, to know one’s self is to know that infinite awareness, your eternal nature, which by virtue of the earlier definitions, you already are.

    So the question then becomes “How do I not confuse that which I already am?”

    (I did not come up with these dialectics, there are well known in Vedanta.)

    🙂

  3. Peter March 12, 2008 at 1:08 pm - Reply

    I don’t want to believe I want to experience what I am.

  4. perfectparadox March 13, 2008 at 10:01 am - Reply

    I am sorry…did I right “believe” in my post anywhere?

    No.

    In fact, I said Know, know, know….etc.

    Good luck.
    G

  5. Ned March 28, 2008 at 9:05 pm - Reply

    I don’t like your premise, though I do appreciate your conclusion. I have found that I embody my highest nature when I accept my own imperfection– that is, my humanity.

    I’ll have to write that down somewhere.

  6. Church of Ned » Imperfection March 28, 2008 at 9:18 pm - Reply

    […] wrote this in the comments on this person’s blog and I wanted to put it for a reminder to […]

  7. Silent Screaming July 5, 2009 at 7:42 pm - Reply

    man, what is reality, im always looking at it, and its like theres something there, one day youre born and youre experiencing this stuff, red, blue, fly etc, thats where im currently stuck (and what is this search, i always thought of it as a broadening of ones life perspective based on awareness (but then people have different pursuits, notice different things etc)

  8. MarieMonDieu May 31, 2010 at 11:34 am - Reply

    Nice stuff, man. Now answer me this:

    Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? A play on an Oscar Wilde quote 😉

    Rock on. Good stuff here!

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