'You know when it's not joy,' she said, 'because you feel incomplete, you feel separate. When there is no separation between you and anybody or anything around you, when there is no separation between you and yourself, that is joy. That is peace. That is love. Joy is love. Our natural state.'
I thought about Croescia and Jarok. Croescia says we don't spend enough time together. I must remember to choose joy every moment now when I get home. I really must. Can I do it? Ha! Easier said that done.
'So to conclude on that question of time,' continued Xendo, 'as there is no past and no future, everything that has happened, or will happen, is already present.'
'What? You mean the future has already happened?'
'You could put it that way if it helps you to understand it.'
'But what about free will? Do we not have any free will? I mean, if everything is already mapped out for us?'
'First of all, we do have free will. How could we not have free will? If we didn't, life itself would be in breach of the Prime Directive. Unfortunately, most people in your society exercise their so-called free will unconsciously, without realising it. This is so because of social conditioning and the fact that people have not awakened yet to the illusion of separateness in their lives. Very few of you exercise your free will consciously, even though you think you do, every day, every moment. Most of your actions are reactions, sourced in your conditioned, unconscious selves. Nevertheless, when you shift into the new parallel reality based on your transformational vibration of that moment, you are exercising your free will. You are choosing your so-called future, a future which is already there. In the present moment. This is what we mean when we say, you create your own reality. Or as you phrased it in your question earlier, we choose our own reality. Look at it this way, Jordan. Reality is a fuzz of beautifully humming, colour-rich vibrations. It is only when we shine our consciousness on this fuzz, like you'd shine a laser beam on an incoherent swirl of interference patterns to create the image of a hologram, that it actually looks real and coherent to us. If we can do this with reality, we can also do it with anything we imagine and wish to create in our lives. '
'But if it's all an illusion out there, what about love? Is love an illusion too?'
'I think you may be referring to romantic love, no?' Solari giggled.
'Well, yes, actually.'
'To write it off as an illusion doesn't mean that it's not there,' explained Xendo. 'It doesn't mean that it's not a real experience for us. Romantic love is, of course, magical, because we recognise our original nature in one another, we feel inseparable from the other. But it is particularly so when both lovers understand the nature of reality. The subtle bodies - for example, our chakras or our auras - energise one another to the highest possible degree because the lovers share a deeper awareness of the nature of reality. Do people who fall in love ask themselves why it is this particular person and not that? If the attachment creates that feeling of oneness and inseparability based merely on co-dependency, on mutually physical, mental and emotional needs, or on lack, or want, of some kind or other, then those attributes are subject to fluctuation, volatility, diminishment, evanescence.'
'Why do you think we are born to feel separate from everything to begin with?' I asked. 'What is behind the notion of having to decode a tree or a person and seeing them, ostensibly, as separate from one another? Why does life present us with this challenge, this illusion of separation?'
'Life on Earth is like a fun-fair, full of thrills and spills. If we didn't have the illusion of separation, the illusory appearance of the other person or thing or event to interact with, there would be no fun-fair here on Earth. And, of course, there would be no fun! Obviously, most people in your society don't see it that way. For many of you, it's like a scary ghost-train you got on by mistake at the fun-fair. You think you are victims of the force of destiny, as you like to call it, being dealt a bad hand by the great croupier in the sky, who drops you unceremoniously onto a runaway roller-coaster at the fair and forces you to barrel along relentlessly on a white-knuckle dash from crisis to crisis all the way to the grave!'
'Ha-ha! Thank you for that rhetorical flourish, Xendo! I'll bear it in mind! So why did we choose to see life like that? I mean, you don't, obviously. Do you?'
'The answer is quite simple, Jordan. The reason people from your society don't see life as a fun-fair through the eyes of a child is because you have removed yourselves too far from the innocence of childhood and from your original nature, which is joy.'
Xendo laughed. 'People are unhappy, not because they act according to the expectations of their chronological age and circumstances, but because they have buried or forgotten, or even abandoned, their true nature.'
'Excuse the interruption, Xendo, and forgive me if this sounds untrusting, but you and Solari keep saying joy is our true nature, our natural state. How do you know? How do you know joy is our true nature? How can I tell the people back home if I don't understand it myself?'
'I love it when you interrupt me, Jordan! Please keep interrupting!'
'He means it Jordan,' chuckled Solari. 'You see, it's such a new experience for us! In Lemuria, nobody ever interrupts!'
Oops. I just didn't know what to say. Or think. Phew, at least they were taking it all in good spirits.
'Your question is an important one, Jordan,' Xendo proceeded. 'All living things gravitate towards sources of energy, energy that is positive or life-enhancing. Sadly, there are many people from your continent who do not believe that other species can experience joy, even though they see every day how birds, for example, are thrilled by the joy of flight. Although energy, which your scientists cannot define, and joy, and love, which your scientists do not include in their vocabulary, although they all amount to the same thing, which is the source of all life, of all existence, animate and inanimate, there is still no obvious way in which we could demonstrate for you that joy is our original nature.'
'So you don't know? I mean, you can't prove it. Right?'
Xendo laughed heartily.
'He hasn't finished!' laughed Solari.
'Sorry! Sorry, Xendo!' I spurted out. 'Or no, maybe I shouldn't be. I mean, as you like being interrupted...Haha!...Just kidding! No, truly, I am sorry, I'm sorry because right now, I'm beginning to feel like a proper idiot!'
Solari kissed me on the cheek.
'Well, if you're an idiot, you're a loveable idiot!' she smiled. 'But you're right to interrupt. Xendo can be so long-winded sometimes! One might say that he likes the sound of his own voice, but such a quaint expression would be incongruous in Lemuria!'
'What I wanted to say, Jordan,' continued Xendo, pretending not to be amused, 'was that we can't prove it to you. You can only prove it to yourself.'
'Not forgetting the fact,' added Solari, 'that we have direct contact with our ancestors, our witnesses to joy.'
'Indeed, with anybody at all who has departed before us, depending on their availability! Sometimes they're too busy enjoying themselves!' added Xendo perkily.
'Anybody can communicate with the departed, Jordan,' added Solari. 'Sadly, most people in your society either don't believe it or just choose to ignore it, or both.'
'Is it like communicating with the animals? With the birds?'
'It's easier. After all, our ancestors are the same species as we are, aren't they?'
'I would love to be able to talk to my parents. Even if only to say sorry. But the idea of reaching them sounds too bizarre for me to even contemplate. I know about séances, Ouija boards and all that, but I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for it all. It's just that, well, it would be nice to have some proof, you know? Hard evidence. Ha-ha! Back home they say that proof of direct contact with an ET would change the world overnight. But can you imagine if we had proof of direct contact with the afterlife? It would turn everything on its head!'
'We can't prove it either, Jordan. Even here. But it's not just a question of belief. It's a question of knowingness.'
'So why, in your opinion, Xendo, why is proof not made available to us? I mean, by your ancestors, for example?'
'Proof of the afterlife, as you call it, is not made explicitly available to us,' he answered, 'because it would spoil the experience. It would spoil the fun. Well, that would be our way of putting it here in Lemuria. But it would also dilute the challenge. It would diminish the joy of overcoming the challenge. Imagine you are a film-star and you want to gain experience of what it is like to live in one of your slums. Sleeping on the street, you always know that you have a comfortable home to return to, so you can bear it more easily, the experience is less than authentic, the challenge is as artificial, as superficial, as the part you are asked to play on the film-set. That's why we forget everything when we are born into the illusion of separation. So that the experience can be authentic.'
'You said knowingness, not knowledge. What's the difference?'
'We know what we know, not by reading books, but by looking inward. Sure, we may be able to communicate at will with the departed but we can never know what it is like to retUrn until we go there. It's a unique experience for everybody. Any information the departed may reveal to us about the so-called future, by the way, is speculation based on the probability of choice which, in turn, is based on a version of the present. They too, of course, live in the present moment.'
'Is it possible for Lemurians to fall off the wagon?'
'Ha-ha! Of course! Although that might not be the most appropriate expression. Slip out of alignment is probably more accurate.We have been awakened to the purpose of life, yes, but nevertheless, it is our own choice, it is up to us to remain awake. We're only human too, you know, although our challenges are not as great as yours. Our society has not been designed by somnambulists for people who wish to remain asleep. Every moment, however, invites the possibility that we in Lemuria would allow ourselves to fall asleep and become hypnotised by form and by the illusion of separation.'
'Could you tell me a little bit more about this illusion of separation?'
'You, as the body of energy and intelligence that you are,' explained Xendo, 'you and everything else in the universe are all interconnected, you are all part of the same whole. There is no happiness or fulfilment to be gained from out there because there is no out there. Not as you perceive it.'
'Why is it there at all?'
'The illusion of separation is there for us to experience things with our senses. It's about experiencing all the infinitely different ways of interacting. For that, we need the illusion of duality. Many of you forget this. You forget that it's an illusion. You still believe in comfort and aspire to various degrees of security, wealth, achievement, success and all the trappings of recognition or fame. You strive for these things every day. And even though you're still unhappy with all of that, you still don't get the point. We are here to recognise the fact that we are spiritual beings enjoying a human experience.'
'Yes, yes, of course! But what about sickness? Death? War, hunger, suffering, poverty?'
'Sickness is the outcome of being unaware of yourself as a spiritual being. It is an alarm-call to help you awaken and restore the body to its natural state of equilibrium. Death, as you call it, is what happened when you were born; when you were born, you became separated, albeit only as part of the hologram, part of the illusion of separation needed for contrast and for our Earth experience. Leaving the Earth experience, you retUrn to your natural state of pure joy. Between lives, you yourself decide what needs to come next for you. As for war, hunger, poverty and suffering, all of this comes about through choice, through choosing a world of fear and separation and not a world of love.'
'But if a child is born into this misery, how can you blame the child for choosing fear?'
'There is no blame. We ourselves choose an Earth experience between lives. That's the big challenge, that's the big contrast we choose. Such a soul who chooses this experience would not necessarily choose to be born here in Lemuria because the challenge, the contrast, would not be significant enough to complete the experience.
'What Xendo means, Jordan, is that life is too good here in Lemuria for an experience of sharp contrast. That's why your continent is more popular between lives!'
'True enough, we do have a much bigger population, back home. More popular, you say? Ha! Just the exact opposite of what anybody at home would have imagined!'
'It's not about comfort. The real heroes in your society, Jordan,' Solari continued, 'are the deprived, the disabled, those who live without opportunities, those children born into war and hunger and disease and suffering.'
'Which,' interjected Xendo, 'we hasten to add, is unnecessary! The suffering created by the human species is not necessary. Those people are heroes for choosing this extant experience, yes, but suffering is an experience that should never have to happen. It's not what life is about. They choose it because it's there - even though it shouldn't be there! - and they choose it because of the high degree of its contrast, its stubborn density!'
'But why exactly do we do that? Why do we choose to be born into a life of misery? I mean, I presume that you are also challenged here, in Lemuria, moment by moment, and that you also have to respond to that challenge. Would the mild challenges of Lemuria not be enough for everybody? Why do we need such a big, stubborn, miserable, tough, unhappy contrast, as we do back home?'
'Well, the fact that we live here in Lemuria must mean that between lives, we decided we just didn't need the contrast this time round. There are also many other countless planets and galaxies we might have chosen. We are even free to choose a life of little or no contrast, somewhere with no visible form at all!'
'Ghosts!'
'Yes, I suppose you could say that. You can imagine the relative absence of contrast in a place like that. It's closer to spirit and to joy, of course, but at the same time, there is less contrast, less challenge. But having said all of that, Jordan, we don't really know the whole truth of it. The heroes may be back to experience something they just didn't know or understand in another life. So maybe it's not all about being the mountain-climber, who sets out to complete a challenge and chooses the highest mountain. But remember - and this is important - they're not only doing it for themselves alone; they're doing it for you and for me, for everybody. For all that is.'
'Oh?'
'Remember the hologram analogy? We are all part of the hologram. Each piece of the hologram contains the whole!'
'But how? I mean, if each individual benefits the whole, how would you define benefit?'
'Great questions like that one, Jordan, are unanswerable! We simply cannot know until we get there. And even then, we may not know! Some people use the term 'spiritual evolution', others prefer 'spiritual expansion' or even 'enlightenment of all that exists'. But it isn't possible, even for Lemurians, to truly understand what those terms actually mean. The meaning of creation - if, indeed, we can even use the word meaning - is far too wildly magnificent to be confined to something we can understand with our little intellects.'
'It is, indeed, hard for anyone to imagine,' Solari added, 'why between lives we would choose to be born into a life of extreme hardship, Jordan. But the hope, the aspiration, is to transform that life of fear and suffering into a life of love.'
'To choose love. Every moment. Instead of fear,' I uttered, revealingly. It was as if I were reciting a line from a poem I might have remembered from school but never actually understood until now.
'Yes. But it is also very hard to discover this liberation on your own. If even one other person on the planet is awake and aware, even someone you don't know or will never meet, it makes the challenge more endurable. How old are you, by the way?' she asked.
'How old? Forty-four,' I sighed. 'Mid-way in life's journey, as they say.'
On hearing that, the two Lemurians burst into a fit of laughter.
'What's so funny?'
'Forty-four is a toddler's age here!' she laughed.
'So the age myth in Lemuria that we laugh about at home...is actually true? How old are you two? Are you a couple, by the way?'
'A couple!' she laughed. 'Yes, we're a couple! A couple of centenarians! Xendo is one hundred and seventy-seven and I'm one hundred and sixty-eight!'
Tears of laughter appearing in her fabulous eyes. The average lifespan in Lemuria was about eight hundred and fifty, they told me, although many people live to be at least a thousand. Solari and Xendo were teenagers!
I then reminded Xendo of what he had said about all illness having one root cause. What was the root cause? I asked.
'Fear. Fear separates. Love unites. A long time ago, we realised that the cause of ageing, of chronic illness, of disease, of early death, was that we were living our lives in fear. We lived out of alignment with our true nature.'
'Joy,' I nodded, recalling their words. 'Our natural state.'
'Or you can call it love,' smiled Xendo. 'Same thing.'
We descended as softly and as quietly as a soap-bubble. I alighted from the vehicle onto the grass of the most magnificent garden I had ever seen.
Gardens are for healing, she told me, for energising. The land, the soil, is sacred and alive. I saw a wild horse in the distance and a cow. Solari said that tourists had normally no access to the gardens of Lemuria. As a young girl, she was taught that the reason for this was that tourists simply did not know how to live with nature in their own homeland. Tragically, this carelessness affected the planet at large. If they were allowed to roam about in the Lemurian gardens, the tourists would give off negative vibrations which would be disturbing to the animals.
My friends will crack up when I tell them that the cows are wild in Lemuria!
www.gregoryrosenstock.com
No comments:
Post a Comment