Treading the Path I

 

Teachings of the Sea Gods

 

 The Adept and the Path

 

 By

 Valerie Bonwick

 And

Jonathon Bigras

 

Treading the Path

 

 The proclamation of virtue is simple enough,

 The practice of virtue is a habit acquired,

 The understanding of virtue is complex indeed.

 

 Doing and Being

 

 

   It would perhaps appear to be more than trite if we were to make the very pertinent observation that, an Adept evolves by evolving. Yet it is quite accurate to say that an Adept becomes adept, by doing as well as by being and that by so doing, all levels of consciousness are actively involved and employed.

 

   In order to arrive at your ultimate goal, you become more positively involved with the physical plane, as well as increasingly attuned to the higher planes, but you cannot achieve this balance by escaping this world in which we all live.

 

   We will take for granted in discussing positive and negative traits of character, that you have already recognized and purged from your daily life such attitudes as intolerance, bigotry and eschew not only those habits that are detrimental to your physical health, but of even greater importance to every area of your life, you completely avoid the intake of mind-altering substances.

 

   The above statements are quite obvious. But perhaps less obvious, because they present seemingly little challenge to your will power, are the following habits which you would be wise to discard now if they have become part of your everyday life. These are habits which do nothing to enrich your everyday life and inflect a great deal harm by diminishing your control of available time. After some years of indulging in them, they develop into character traits which blur your true grasp of many a situation.

 

   It is because habits are somewhat nebulous in character, that they are perhaps, more difficult to keep in mind than the self-imposed injunctions of the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism which many of you already know so well and yet, although seemingly unimportant habits may become absorbed in the more dramatic sounding injunctions of the Path, you will not succeed in reaching your goal without governing them. In an examination of conscience, a Quester may be in complete agreement with guidelines of the Noble Eightfold Path and yet continue to practice habits which ensure that it remains a wishful exercise of fantasy.

 

   Most of you have already recognized these seemingly innocuous habits which are inclined to creep up on you, for what they are, so please forgive me for including them in this chapter. Their number is more than balanced by the discussion of the following habits we consider to be tools of positivity.

 

Detrimental Habits

 

   We prefer to discard negative habits by substituting positive habits, leaving the former no further room for growth in our lives. The main ones which should be discarded are:

 

1. Daydreaming

2. Inadequate attention

3. Sleepwalking

4. Thoughtlessness

5. Procrastination

6. Avoiding responsibility

7. Ignoring Reality

 

1. Daydreaming: A more or less innocuous habit, depending of course upon the content of the daydream. Yet daydreaming, both pleasant and unpleasant, remains a very unproductive form of mental escapism and a veritable time waster, particularly for those of you who complain that you have difficulty in finding adequate time to meditate regularly on a daily basis.

 

2. Inadequate Attention: Quite often results in the lapse of concentration. Sometimes it occurs when you are weary and in the quietness of meditation, your mind will perhaps return to listing your unfinished chores or the choice of location for your next vacation.

 

When your attention lapses during meditation, just pull your thoughts together, clear your mind and complete your meditation. Do not try to make up for lost time, remember, it is your time that has lost, so allow yourself to feel deprived, just as if someone else had interrupted you and stolen your time.

 

3. Sleepwalking: We will use this term to describe the metal lassitude which in extreme cases, results in people crossing the street in front of an oncoming bus without thinking or driving across a railroad track in front of an oncoming train without looking. Fortunately, this habit applies to very few Questers, but for the Questers to whom it does apply, it is such an ingrained habit, that they could spend most of their lifetime without ever being fully awake. It is quite easy to slip into the habit of “sleepwalking“ out of boredom which is sometimes due to lack of effort or perhaps results from a lack of challenge in your life, without ever realizing how boring you yourself may have become. This often results in the waste of a lifetime with little accomplished in redressing your balance of karma.

 

    Do you pay adequate attention to what is going on around you or do you miss opportunities to expand your field of endeavor by sleepwalking through life? Do not confuse a self-invoked, “not of this world“ attitude with that of spirituality. A vague, impractical expression of saintliness falsely acquired, will never prepare you for the sometimes harsh reality of sainthood.

 

4. Thoughtlessness: This bad habit sometimes expresses itself as vagueness in one’s character or indifference to the pertinent needs of others. But you can certainly rule out any Master appearing in your life in answer to your prayer to become an accepted disciple, if you lack concern when you should be concerned or you are too lazy to care.

 

   In exaggerated cases, it is possible to fall into the habit separating your consciousness from what is going on around you. This is an unsafe habit which renders you temporarily “mindless,“ literally the brain remains in place but the thinker is away. This is quite a different situation from that of a genuine trance mediumship, when it is initiated from highest levels, subject to adequate protection from negative forces and carefully supervised in preparation and training.

 

5. Procrastination: As opposed to the use of judicious caution, is another character trait that demands weeding out. You may very well have acquired the habit in your present life time, but you are not sure of that, you are not certain that it is not a holdover from previous incarnations and perhaps is the reason you have not progressed further in your evolutionary experience.

 

   Procrastination is the antithesis of decision making. Do not allow it to block your efforts to make progress now or entrench itself so deeply your consciousness that it will hinder you in future incarnations.

 

6. Avoiding Responsibility: There are as many excuses for avoiding responsibility as there are opportunities to shoulder it. We do not advise anyone to interfere in the working out of the law of cause and effect by carrying someone else’s karma unless they have been asked to do so, but when responsibility seeks you out and it bears your name and you avoid it, by your avoidance of it and however cleverly you may justify your avoidance of it, you can only postpone the responsibility in question and it revisits you in a more serious circumstance at some future date. Therefore, meet your responsibilities whenever possible, solve your problems to the best of your ability and when ever you can, resolve them in your present incarnation.

 

7. Ignoring Reality: Perhaps ignoring reality is a shortcut to acquiring a temporary peace of mind, but represents a long-term hurdle, which will at some point in your progress prevent you from achieving your goal, unless it is met head-on and vanquished. Do not allow your mind to recede into a half-alive, Semi-automatic world, where reality slides further and further away from you when either clouds of minor cares or situations of devastating worry occur, to do so drains your vitality and adds to the burden of solving your problems positively.

 

   A very few Questers equate spirituality with mental escapism, but such an attitude cannot be further from the truth. You may skew awareness of vice and bloodshed in the world and the lack of integrity around you by avoiding newscasts and newspapers, you may also excuse your lack of involvement on the grounds that “by thinking the world to be wonderful, it will be so,“ but how can you help the world become perfect projecting a positive thought responsibly, if you do not know where to direct that thought?

 

   Undirected positive thought accomplishes very little, you might as well concentrate your effort upon expressing goodwill or the will-to-good in general, thereby creating a positive mini-environment wherever you happen to be.

 

   Nevertheless, it is sometimes stated by the unknowing, that in practice their harmless form of avoiding reality, they are emulating the Hermit in his cave-“the Adept ignoring the world’s trappings.“

 

If an individual is an Adept, he may be ignoring the world’s trappings, but he is not necessarily ignoring the world. The advanced Adept chooses this path may be working very closely with righting the woes of the world, for his mind and energies are not trapped in his body, but what makes anyone think that he would advertise the above?

 

Soul Work

 

   We would like to say a few words now regarding your personal Soul-work. I am using this connotation very carefully. You see, the reason that either you or we decide to reincarnate, is to progress more swiftly with the work of the Soul. I am deliberately using terminology that evokes the same response from the majority of readers, no matter to which religion they may belong. I am also using the term “Soul“ to signify that immortal spark of life which continues from incarnation to incarnation and in between them on the planes. The point that I wish to make, is Soul-work rarely progresses’ positively and obstinately in the face of all obstacles unless or until, contact with your real self is established.

 

   If you continue to express your life in an unawakened state, consider how vague your fleeting contact with your real self must be. If your contact with your real self is so tenuous, then realize how weak and frail your Soul-work must be.

 

   Surprisingly, it is a rare individual in times of stress or crisis, who finds his real self through effort or need. Most individuals look outside of themselves, as if they are truly automations waiting for someone else to press the button marked “right“ for them, because of their inability to press the button marked “wrong“ off for themselves.

 

   You are not that weak and you are not so lacking in initiative that you have lost the ability to think for yourself or remain truly awake. By awake, I do not necessarily mean with your eyes open. There are more sleepwalkers in this world walking around with their eyes open than is generally realized and the few true Seers remaining in the flesh, see most clearly with lowered eyelids.

 

Time the Tool

 

The young seek to waste Time ,

The middle aged seek to save Time

And the elderly seek to kill Time.

 

   The above rather trite observation is sometimes made by visitors to Earth when monitoring the progress of average Man. Perhaps there is some foundation to that viewpoint but if that is so, there is all the more reason to rise above the average.

 

   Do not waste time. If or when you waste time, it is your own time you are wasting, even when it appears to be your friend’s time or your employer’s time. If you do not realize this, you are laboring under an illusion and all illusions that are accepted, woven or cosseted by Man, all ultimately lead to disillusionment, this is a natural law. Even teachers who are revered on Earth occasionally break themselves on this “wheel“ when they dwell the physical plane. But of this law, nothing will remain once the cause of effect has wasted away through disuse, disillusionment like illusion will evaporate into Earth’s past like a mist lit by the rays of the sun.

 

   Until the golden age arrives, you must withstand the bitterness that so often besets the Quester who attempts to stop the wheel of cause and effect turning in battle consistently to change yourself permanently into your potential self. Prepare to meet the real you with compassion when you reach out to the reality of your awakened self in your Soul-work.

 

 

Pages 179-187

 

 

 

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