Matter and Limitation
Our relationship to Matter can have a variety of powerful impacts upon us, depending on the nature of the relationship. Physical objects or dense Matter especially, can trap us in the most severe patterns of limitation. However, our physical possessions are not themselves the true problem, it is our relationship to them, and I do not mean attachment – although this brings its own inherent issues – but how intertwined we are with our stuff. Once incarnate, we identify with Matter, and thus, trap ourselves in spiritual, if not manifest, mediocrity.
Everywhere we feel that sense of physical familiarity around us, this is the most common bog that binds. It is this safety in what we know, this dense comfort zone, that can hold us in limitation. We might avoid a degree of this clinging bog by shedding belongings or moving house, but, in truth, even then, we still drag us with us. No matter where we go, all our core baggage, both literal and internal, comes along! The moving only stops some of the bog from concretising around and within us. Hence, it would be foolish, rash, and unwise to go crazy throwing all our belongings away. For Matter does not matter, it is our identification with it that binds us into limitation.
Identification and Bonding with Matter
Identification follows a similar principle to The Line of Least Resistance. Identity stays with the familiar. “We will always be who we’ve always been, if we always live how we’ve always lived, and with Matter to which we’ve bonded and carry with us.” And this is just as true for astral and concrete-mental matter as it is for dense-physical or etheric-physical matter. All Matter we incarnate into and relate to usually becomes the very stuff that perpetuates limitation rather than creating a space that fosters liberation. It can foster presence – in the lowest level of now, we can be “Present in Matter” – but sadly, this focus often leads to inertia and stagnancy. Liberation requires expansion, action, and change, not just presence!
The primary limiting problem is Bonding or Identification with Matter. The energies of our familiar Devas of Matter, firmly hold the patterns of comfort around us and we simply fall into and live within these patterns, like a well-worn neural pathway, we are addicted to the familiar. It is like a specific morphogenic field we carry with us, and even when we get rid of certain belongings, the patterns remain, are simply reenergised, and new Matter is drawn in to recreate the same or very similar prevailing conditions. This is our Identity Pattern of Least Resistance.
This Human Identity pattern is what binds us to the wheel of rebirth, stopping us from identifying with and as our Higher Self, and therefore, achieving enlightenment and liberation into the Divine or Spiritual Kingdom.
Matter Grasping and Aversion
The grip of Matter is one of the primary reasons people choose to travel or go on holidays – it is an outer attempt to solve an inner problem. But be aware… frequent travelling, moving, or shedding belongings, while a little helpful, Never Solves the true inner problem, it merely creates temporary space from it and usually the patterns will fully reassert themselves soon after stepping back into the mandala of our lives. People attest to this happening a few weeks after their holidays, when they find themselves back in their familiar rut. This can be avoided to a degree, if we use the space while away to work on ourselves rather than simply enjoying sensory gratification and stimulation.
Know too, that choosing to frequently shed belongings, move house, or travel are also patterns that can crystallise around and within us, just as clearly as do the opposing patterns of staying put and accumulating – all are patterns that avoid the true problem – Liberation from Identification with Matter. Some of these patterns are based in Aversion to Matter, the others in Grasping of Matter, and all such reactions ensure a strong and enduring relationship to these dense levels of Matter.
That said… in the matter of Matter, it is often considered easier to achieve self-mastery from Aversion rather than Grasping. But know, the person suffering with anorexia, a manifestation of extreme Aversion, struggles just as much as a person suffering obesity. And sometimes Aversion is more potent and crippling than Grasping – the degree of suffering will depend upon individual psychology.
When it comes to Matter, Aversion and Grasping are desire-based reactive impediments built upon dense identity. This reactive identity actively blocks Liberation, and perpetuates the dipole of excessive disintegration, linked to Aversion, or over-concretisation, linked to Grasping.
It’s All About Balance and Nonattachment
Whether our usual pattern is Aversion or Grasping, or we tend to swing back and forth between both, as we mature and age, we commonly fall towards Concretisation in Matter – and this is the true cause behind infirmity. When we are young, we do not yet have patterns reinforced by decades of living, nor are we surrounded by Matter we are bonded and attached to, and as such, we are fluid, changeable, and limber – even if unstable and prone to patterns of disintegration or destruction. As we age, bond with Matter, concretise, and often stagnate within, as we lose our ability to flow with great change, so too do our bodies stagnate and infirm – the outer seeming always reflects the inner reality.
This does not mean I am advocating that we all live without responsibility, the right and needed belongings, or plans steeped in wisdom, nor with some idealised concept of youthfulness – we must strive to find the midpoint between the opposing forces of rigid aging concretisation, and free-flowing youthful disintegration. And this midpoint we must seek within, dealing with the inner causality before attending to the outer effects. Too much of either concretisation or disintegration, of stabilisation or destruction, or of comfort or discomfort, can constitute a way to imbalance and deeper limitation. Both the person who has acquired many possessions and the one living in stark minimalism are expressions of imbalance and the extreme – and often, the one needs to embrace the patterns of the other on their way to find the midpoint, golden middle way, and true wisdom. We do not want to be Matter Anorexic or Matter Obese! We must dance lightly with, but remain unattached to, our partner called Matter.
All I have said is not to Deny Matter. Even when I say, “Matter doesn’t matter,” this is not an absolute statement, it is one of relativity. If Matter truly did not matter, it would not exist. Matter is an essential part of the Divine experiencing itself, as they say, “To know itself by knowing what it is not” – another paradoxical statement of relativity, for all is Divine in essence. All existence is one, but again, this is only true in relative terms, for functionally, this is not the case – else we would all exist in and as, a vast glob of inertia, and the Universe is vastly differentiated and dynamically active.
So, Matter matters, especially when identification with it is the cause of limiting stagnancy or suffering. Like everything in existence, it does not matter until it matters, and it only matters until it does not matter – all is relative to where and how one is in space and time.
Engaging Wisdom with Matter
As we mature, and with a bit of conscious awareness, we find “what works best” for us, and we choose this, usually with the exclusion of all we found less favourable. However, if we only ever choose what is favourable or comfortable, and avoid all that is uncomfortable, while efficient, we lose valuable opportunities for growth. Why? Because a little bit of uncomfortable grit, when consciously engaged, forms Pearls of Wisdom. And this wisdom would warn us that too much of a good thing itself becomes a problem – too much healing remedy becomes a poison. If we continue to consciously grow, all that serves us now, eventually will not. So, we must grasp things lightly. Some things stand the test of time, from the human perspective, but some favourable things that serve us well, become the time-anchored habitual ruts of stagnation, which cause rigidity of mind and body! To avoid efficiency-created stagnation, we must continue to see and embrace the grit, not avoid it. We must continually Seek Questions, and thus, open doors to greater and greater insights, change, and growth.
And we should consider this truth… Always doing what we have always done, could also be considered a definition of Black Magic, because if we anchor ourselves to old or ancient practices, as the world continues in its evolution, we are ostensibly going backwards – contrary to evolutionary flow. If we always do what we’ve always done, no matter how brilliantly it worked for us in the past, we’ll not always get what we’ve always got, as, despite any personality rigidity, we perpetually change within and without, and certainly, the world around us ever changes. Therefore, our ways must change in like measure. All practices must evolve in alignment with the forward motion of the Universe and the context of our current time and place. As our vessel or apparatus changes through time, so too must our practices, else we become discordant or disharmonious, and we break inside.
To avoid concretisation stagnation, or inadvertently participating in Black Magic, we must cultivate Beginners Mind throughout our lives – without dispensing of our acquired wisdom. We must question even “what worked best for us” as we continue to change and grow, and we must keep pace with human and planetary growth and evolution – this is essential!
Higher Identification Informs Lower Actions
In the end, it becomes crystal clear that where we place and rest our awareness is key. Therefore, the following thoughts and questions may prove valuable to sit with – opening to answers outside or beyond our current sense of self or incarnate personality.
What we find and note as favourable, comfortable, or “working for us,” may only be true for our current personality, with its unique set of patterns, karma, and beliefs, etc. But, in truth, we are so much more than this current vehicle of incarnation.
If we fixate on living or embodying only “what works for this current lower self,” we are inadvertently blocking the way for the insights, wisdom, or genius of our Higher Self. We are then closed to other possibilities that may in fact be better than what we currently know.
Q: Am I focused downwards onto, into, and As Matter – the Past, the outer manifestation, or effects of previous causalities – or am I focused upwards onto, into, and As Spirit – the True Now, the inner place or state of dynamic possibilities, the realm of causes?
Or put another way…
Am I fixated onto and within the realm of effects and limitation, or am I striving to free myself from the stagnating grip of Identification with Matter and open up to the realm of causes and liberation that is Soul or Spirit – without denying Matter?
Stated simply as “Am I truly on the Spiritual Path or the Path of Materialism?”
Q: Am I a victim of my Identity Pattern of Least Resistance, or am I destroying the walls that limit and separate me from Identification with the Great Flow of All Possibility?
Q: Am I stuck in the low-vibrational manifestation of The Past, which most call The Now, or am I living in the high-vibrational Ocean of All Possibility which is the True Now – which most label as The Future?
The True Now looks like The Future to those stuck in The Past or mistaken now, but it is alive with presence for those liberated people living therein!
To keep all in true balance we must remember that the genuinely Heart-Based Person knows we are all one, and that there can be no personal liberation without striving for Liberation for All. Just as we cannot have full health without all organs, glands, and cells in our body being healthy, so too within the body of human society and the Earth.
Wisdom tells us that we struggle to contemplate deeper spiritual matters when we are caught up in lower daily stresses, therefore, once our orientation is anchored towards, into, and as our true selves, as Universal Spirit, we should ask ourselves these questions:
Q: Am I working to bring conditions in the dense world, to a state of peace, balance, beauty, and freedom for all life on earth, thus affording all beings their best chance of seeking and achieving liberation?
Q: What conditions, beliefs, and way of living would my Greater Self find conducive to thriving, self-mastery, and opening the way to Enlightenment, for my Self and All Life?
Tools for Transformation
Some exercises to help transform our relationship to Matter and pave the way to Liberation…
When you look around at all of your belongings, you can see the note they embody. This note is a mix of energies from you, the personality, and your Higher Self. The work and path ahead, requires each of us to retune or reorient our note of living to the note of our Higher Self. We must strive to embody and represent its reality, right down to the dense level. We know the value of such embodiment in principle but must find the way to make it manifest in our lives.
We do not need to obliterate all evidence of our Lower Selves; this is an extreme reaction. But our expressed personality notes must become minor accompaniments to the symphony of purpose which our Higher Selves embody. At present, for most of us, it is the reverse.
Now to get personal…
It is possible that there is nothing inherently wrong with any of your possessions or styling, other than they embody an Identity Pattern of Least Resistance which makes expansion difficult and concretisation and stagnancy easy. They are how you’ve expressed “you” in this world.
The Work:
- Start with asking “How would “I” (the Higher Self) express in this world?”
- Next, your primary meditation is to seek and find the midpoint between the pairs of opposites: concretisation and disintegration, stabilisation and destruction, comfort and discomfort, grasping and aversion, stagnancy and growth. You could insert any of these pairs into the following question, as a self-inquiry tool: “What lies at the midpoint between ………… and …………?”
- And finally, explore how to transmute each midpoint you find, into a lived expression of its greater version, embodied within your Higher Self – find the midpoint and raise it to its higher form. The two, Lower and Higher Selves, must become one, and this requires a renewed relationship to Matter via changing and balancing the causative entrenched patterns within.
We may or may not be able to achieve this while we are surrounded by all that is familiar and therefore comfortable – there is a reason monks retreat to caves at a certain stage of their journey. But, while living in the modern world, there is only so much physical stuff we can remove before our spaces would become dysfunctional for our work, or uncomfortable to the point of being abrasive! And getting rid of all, that is by its nature impersonal, does little to clear the personality patterns. It is the very personal, without and within, that comprises the greatest blocks to spiritual union. The patterns we may describe as “So close to who I am, that they feel like me, or who I am.” Those patterns that all people struggle to get enough vantage to even recognise are “patterns” on top of who they are! These are the greatest blocks. And they are powerful because they are reinforced by Matter and usually unconscious.
Knowing that our Higher Selves have lived so many lives, with so many different personality types, in so many different cultures and times… Ask and deeply investigate: What would work, be possible, or favourable, if my Lower and Higher Selves were aligned and then fused as One Self?
A Concluding Analogy and Paradox
It is not without note that that which blocks the Higher Light the most, is also that which is most difficult to see. Think of it within this analogy…
As you open to Higher Reality, at first you are looking at everything around you, illuminated by the Light from above, all appears easy to see – this is what people call “Awakening,” but it is not the end goal, just a necessary step on the path. Eventually you must seek that which stands between you and the Light, and this means your gaze is now set towards the Light, and thus, at first, you are more blinded rather than less. The powerful limiting patterns you most need to see, that which blocks your Higher Light, requires you to purify your vehicles so you too are Of The Light. This then allows clear seeing – for only dense impure eyes struggle to see when facing the Higher Light.
This advanced stage of being blinded by the light is a paradox of the path, is one reason why many give up, and is why the number of Enlightened Souls remains few on earth. Don’t be such a person. Stay true, stay strong, and stay the path.
To Liberation from Matter
Azure Seer