Have you ever noticed that some people hold attitudes and beliefs for a lifetime? There is a reason for that, and it is also the reason why making spiritual progress can be so hard. That reason , according to the late psychiatrist David Shainberg (he died in December 1993) is that thoughts are like vortices in a river.
If that doesn’t mean anything to you, perhaps you never have got caught in a river’s vortex. It happened to me once. I got caught once while white water rafting. It took great effort to get out of it. It took every ounce of my strength. It was scary.
To appreciate the significance of that very literal metaphor, consider that the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, which is a giant vortex of gas over 25,000 miles wide. It hasn’t changed since it was first discovered over 300 years ago. And I’m sure it will still be the same 300 years from now.
Dr. Shainberg, who realized that our opinions and ideas tend to become cemented in our consciousness, gave up psychiatry towards the end of his relatively short life to pursue abstract painting. Did he realize he was in a vortex? Perhaps. He had the great fortune of knowing both David Bohm and Krishnamurti, both of whom had a great influence on his thinking about the mind.
Shainberg thought that the permanence of vortices is often detrimental to our consciousness growth. He believed that it was vortices of thought that caused people to become repetitious and suffer diminished creativity. He also thought vortices of thought perpetuated separateness and prevented the realization of wholeness within ourselves.
It takes great concentration to get out of a vortex of thought and to drop habitual ego-definitions and cut through the veil over consciousness — veils created by vortices of impressioned thought. (See Meher Baba’s God Speaks for the most complete treatment of this line of thought.)
But when we can make some headway in breaking free of the vortex, bindings of consciousness are loosened. And with that loosening we gain inner vision. We discover a new dimension of inner truth. That truth gives us a new foundation to stand up and rise above the whirling waters of the mind that keep us stuck.
When you can escape the vortex, you can continue the journey. And every river, no matter how many vortices it contains, eventually finds its way to the ocean. On our personal journey to Higher Consciousness, that represents an Ocean without limits.
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how do you recognize your own personal vortexes? do you jot down these veils and try to eliminate them in your own way? is there a right or wrong way in approaching this exercise?
We recognize them by utilizing consciousness, by looking at what patterns of life keep appearing, and if they are resonating with the higher self or are they simply triggered from unconscious habit patterns.
Why do we do what we do? Do our actions stem from love, or from addictions to illusion?
If you take a look at something like slavery as it existed in the United States before the Civil War, you will see an example of a collective vortex. where an entire society was blind to the higher truths of oneness and humanity.
If you have integrity of purpose, you will find your way free of any vortex. But it takes absolute honesty with oneself.
Eventually, which could mean several lifetimes, everyone moves beyond them, though it often it takes a lot of suffering.
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