Journeys inspired by ideals are assured of success. But so many journeys are nothing but aimless wanderings. Some of us have a map. Some of us don’t. Some of us make progress towards our destination everyday. Some us seem to forever be diverged from where it is we want to go.
What creates this difference? It’s simple: Every purpose under the sun, and the goal of every journey, can best be realized by an application of spiritual law. The primary requisite of spiritual law is a continuous connection to the source, which assures the steady influx of the infinite energies of the universal mind. Just as a computer will be of no avail to the greatest of computer minds if it is not connected to a power source, so it is with applying spiritual laws. Even the greatest metaphysician will make no progress if he is not connected to the source of power, the source of being. Sever a flower from its root and it will wither.
Charles Haanel expressed it like this in his Master Key System:
The only way to keep from going backward is to keep going forward. Eternal vigilance is the price of success. There are three steps, and each one is absolutely essential. You must first have the knowledge of your power; second, the courage to dare; third, the faith to do.
All power comes from within. Every success in life is an unfoldment of thought seeds planted within. But like the homeowner who is trying to create a beautiful yard of grass, weeds also crop up. Somehow those seeds get sown into the yard.
The thought seeds that are the equivalent to weeds are thoughts of fear, anxiety and discouragement. These thought forms take us away from our goal.
What is your ideal? Is it writing a book, buying a house, discovering a new career, connecting with a new romantic partner? It doesn’t matter, as long as your ideal is infused with love. Love is the driving force, the connecting link with the source.
It is no wonder that mankind is beset with so many internal conflicts. Each of us is subject to multiple forces in the subconscious that are compelling and powerful, and which often pull us in opposing directions.
A close look at the subconscious will reveal why this is so. The subconscious is not only a repository of everything we have ever thought and felt in our lifetime, it is also a factory. It works to put forces in motion that will replicate on the outside what has been impressed on the inside. We sow what we reap.
But it is even more complicated than that. The subconscious mind doesn’t die with the death of the physical body. It acts as a storehouse of the impressions imbibed in the previous life and integrates them into its identity, its ego nucleus.
Therefore, these impressions in the mind carry over from lifetime to lifetime. Some children, at a very early age, can be heard talking in their sleep in a foreign language. Some know exactly what they want to do with their life. Some exhibit talents so developed, like Mozart at age five, that it seems obvious that past lifetimes are still being expressed. That is not necessarily a conflict, but others come into this world pulled in several directions. And that is a major source of distress.
The conflict can be in relation to career, relationships, sexual identity, or a host of other, more trivial issues. It could even be a conflict over health. There might be suicidal tendencies. There might be tendencies to totally ignore the components of a healthy lifestyle. There might be a tendency for competition that is so great it alienates friends and acquaintances.
Consider the words of Meher Baba:
The most important requirement for the satisfactory resolution of conflict is motive power or inspiration, which can only come from a burning longing for some comprehensive ideal. Analysis in itself may aid choice, but the choice will remain a barren and ineffective intellectual preference unless it is vitalized by zeal for some ideal appealing to the deepest and most significant strata of human personality.
Ideals that inspire people in a certain direction overcome conflict as effortlessly as airplanes overcome all the traffic on the highways below. An ideal can become so engrained in a person’s consciousness that the energy that once fed the other forces in the subconscious are redirected into the new channel.
The type of ideal referred to here is the ideal of a principle, a way of life, a perception of truth or beauty. An example could be when a man meets a woman and falls so deeply in love that no other concerns of the world trouble him. All of the inner forces are aligned into the same pursuit. There is not an ounce of energy left over for any other purpose.
An ideal (possibly love, truth, beauty, art, or spiritual longing) creates an alignment of energy. Instead of experiencing the conflict that comes from scattered energy, the energy becomes coherent like that of a laser beam. The mind, which formerly knew only noise from thoughts going in every direction, experiences a silence, which is both a source of peace and restlessness at the same time. This is experienced by many as blissful agony. The Sufi poets use the metaphor of the moth being consumed in the candle flame.
Whatever the ideal, it serves the purpose of eliminating internal conflict. There may be external hurdles to cross, but those are irrelevant to the person with a soul on fire, with a vision etched on his or her consciousness. No longer is the person taking one step forward and two steps back. It is now a straight path, as straight as an arrow that has been released from the strongest bow.
This state of mind is the breeding ground that turns the artist into a genius, the spiritual pilgrim into a saint, the philosopher into a visionary, and the lovers into an eternal love story that inspires poets for centuries.
This is the undoing of ages of ignorant action. Life is no longer lived in a cage of its own construction. The soul becomes free to express itself in its own unique way.
I like the way Benjamin Franklin expressed his thoughts on ideals:
Increase in me that wisdom
Which discovers my truest interest,
Strengthen my resolution
To perform that which wisdom dictates.
I think of ideals not as dreams or aspirations, but as portals into the unbounded life of the spirit. To embrace them is to be initiated into a realm of being reserved for only the most daring.
