Spiritual Autobiography – Part 2 of 2

Part 1 of this article looked at thought, action, and emotion. In Part 2, we explore wholeness, transformation, and true nature.

The fourth autobiography: wholeness

And it is so. Over the last hundred years we have had the concept of all-inclusiveness or holism. We can aspire less to being a specialist in life, a thinking, acting, or feeling individual and more toward addressing the challenges of being all of these at once. The idea is that we embrace all of our faculties and, including the context in which we find ourselves, interact, identify, and harmonize so the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts, a greater vision, a more expansive aspiration, a more inclusive experience of human existence.

This then is the fourth level of autobiography and it includes the perspective, specialties, and focuses of the first three with the extra component of the whole, the greater whole through the integration of all the parts.

This holistic point of view is incredibly important. We should briefly take a historical perspective on this, because for much of its life humanity has tended toward specialism out of necessity. Interdependence was perhaps more apparent, more obvious in pre-twentieth century societies. Technological, educational, psychological, and philosophical advances have not only changed our attitude toward our understanding of our self, our individuality, and our personal destiny, they have also expanded our potential, our capacity, and our perception of our place in the world.

Now perhaps for the first time we may see that through our refined self-consciousness of individuality that each one of us has a unique destiny, a personal fulfillment, and a distinct path to the satisfaction of our deepest self-nature.

By living our wholeness, working into the truth of ourselves as feeling, being, doing-acting, psycho-spiritual organisms, we can achieve and attain far more than any one specialty would allow. And this combined with our sense of self may prove to be invaluable in our search for fulfillment and Self-realization.

The fifth autobiography: transformation

Our thinking autobiography, our doing autobiography, our emotional autobiography, and our autobiography of holism lead us now one step further and this step is into transformation. The life of transformation may be the only life worth living, the one that sufficiently meets the obligation of being a conscious human being.

Not everyone is inclined toward transformation. At this stage in human evolution it seems that it is a minority only. Apart from the obvious challenges, risks, and obstacles is the fact that in this dark era—and perhaps in any era this is true—there are many superficial, trivial, and phony ways to personal change on offer. People today don't seem to know the difference between the authentic and the fake.

As rare as it may be, transformation represents the natural life for a human being. Most people today are living in a remedial state of early childhood conditioning. By the time they enter middle years, old age, and prepare for death, little has changed. Their expectations, assumptions, and strategies in life are fairly much the same as they were when they were very young. Not much if anything has really changed.

This is no way to live a human life. To accept the gift of human existence is to live life, to live spontaneously, vibrantly, pleasurably, with satisfaction in fulfillment and the realization of one's authentic heart-nature. To live life fully is to open the packaging, take off the wrapper, not to merely sit nursing the wrapped gift and saying thank you. Open the gift, see what is there, take the risk of revelation, come out from behind the veil of concealment. Transformation is all this and more and the fortunate human being who realizes him or herself in this way can be said to truly live life, to truly embrace life, to feel truly grateful for life, and to meet the inherent obligation we all have to life to respond, to celebrate, to take part in the ritual, existential litany of reciprocity, becoming one with Life.

The sixth autobiography: true nature

The life of transformation is curiously the start, the very beginning, of true life and it augurs an exciting event. As the heart fills with love and compassion so the receptacle or vehicle of your earthly being overflows with life-force and life-energy. This overflowing reveals the impersonal nature of love, life, compassion, and relationship itself. It reveals the truly authentic nature of relationship: that authentic relationship is not two. No separation exists in real relationship, no division, no prejudice, no sides, no partisanship, no giving, no taking, no individual stories meeting, colliding, rebuffing, no potential, possible, or actual conflict, and neither confluence or harmony or forgiveness or anything at all. You and the other in authentic relationship are not two, so there is nothing between you, nothing separating you from each other, not even love. In love, real love that is impersonal, there is only this one single consciousness, experienced as a flow, as an ocean, as play, as an inherent being state. However it appears to your senses, it goes beyond. True love is beyond any and all experience, interpretation, and objectification.

This sixth level of autobiography is the flowering of the human life. The true heart-nature of love, compassion, authenticity, and inherent unity in the human experience is lived, not merely thought, acted upon, or even felt, it is lived as a central and consistent reality of life, since it is the actual reality of human form.

Richard Harvey is a psycho-spiritual psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and author. He is the founder of The Center for Human Awakening and has developed a form of depth-psychotherapy called Sacred Attention Therapy (SAT) that proposes a 3-stage model of human awakening. Richard can be reached at [email protected].