This may seem to be a paradox; but it seems possible to pursue Primary Thinking/ Final Participation in a deliberate and purposeful fashion - and without falling into the trap of trying (and inevitably failing) to coerce the higher consciousness to a lower agenda.
Primary Thinking must come from the real self - so we need to attend to the real self and strengthen its influence. The real self has its own agenda; and that agenda is intrinsically aligned with Creation - because to think with the real self is to participate in divine creation.
The direction, or subject matter, of primary thinking cannot be imposed; but needs to be recognised - having recognised it, we need to harness our will to that matter. This may be resisted by our lower, contingent selves - since the creation agenda does not pursue this-worldly-expedience or advantage; and may not make much sense to us.
But if we can recognise a spontaneous, inner impulse from the Real Self, then by following that, we may experience more Primary Thinking: more explicit, more frequent, more intense...
This has (apparently, so far as I can judge) happened to me over recent months through my reading of the Fourth Gospel (aka. the Gospel of John). I felt a sustained, inner-derived urge to understand this gospel, above all other scriptures; to understand Jesus in light of this gospel; and I have followed this urge.
And I have reported some of the outcomes in this blog; although the primary outcome was actual direct and wordless experience - the blogging is merely a selective summary, expressed in language.
And this activity has been associated with a considerable increase in Primary Thinking, with a considerable increase in intuitive knowledge. I am now better able to recognise Primary Thinking when it happens, and am able to practise attending to it, taking it seriously, and according it authority.
I now, retrospectively, perceive that this wish to read and re-read the Fourth Gospel, to brood over it, was an impulse coming from my Real Self.
This may be a general lesson. If or when we do feel such an impulse - we should evaluate whether it is from the Real Self; is, perhaps, the Real Self trying to break out from the mass of distractions, false personalities, and evil impulses that make up the everyday mind.
This is something that could only be discovered, not imposed; and perhaps that is a quest that many people could benefit-from? The quest - that is - to discover the subject matter, activity, situation, person or whatever it may be - that their Real Self most deeply and sustainedly wishes to be the medium for its own growth and strengthening.
And having discovered it; do it: pursue this as the medium for theosis, by means of an explicit recognition and prioritising of Primary Thinking.
1 comment:
I'm a little disappointed with the term "Real Self", as if the rest of our being that does not reflect divine potential were not real or not our self.
Divine potential, that's a phrase I like. Or rather, I find it more useful as a concept that leads to contemplation of what about our self has eternal worth and capacity for true joy. I feel that there is a classic danger in rejecting personal responsibility and ownership of the parts of our self that are less than divine. Namely, it is the paramount intellectual justification for atheism, to blame God for the evil that was always our own. Not that we should define ourselves by it, but that defining it as not our "self" ultimately (and quite immediately, in many cases) limits our ability to deal with it.
Another way of looking at it is that our choices inevitably lead to a future which will be no less real simply for not fulfilling our divine potential. We are free, it is certain that the children of God will emerge victorious and crowned with honor and glory, but not an inevitability that we will be among them. We choose, now and in every moment before us, not whether God's plan will succeed but what part we will take.
Damnation is as real as salvation. God's joy in the one only deepens His sorrow at the other. And thus that portion of our selves that leads to either outcome also has full claim on being real. Those deep and true divine passions are felt now, not only in some imagined future.
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