Excerpts from 'THE JEWEL OF PARADOX:

SOUL MAKING

"Yes, my friend. Yes...", the Wizard began speaking, his eyes fixed on mine. He coughed a few times to clear his throat, then, as he spoke, his tone personal and intent, he gazed from one to another in the audience, but often coming back to me.

"We have received the topic for our Talk this evening. It seems we would like to explore this question of dedication. A question that touches us all. Deeply." His tenor voice was age ripened and his honeyed accent gentled the consonants' edges and tilted the vowels.

For some moments more he sat unmelodiously humming to himself, his head wagging from side to side. Strange, but all quite dignified and self-possessed.

"First, I must counsel you, my friend, I must advise from the start that our viewpoint here is not the commercial one. We do not seek the common gold." He pointedly stared at me, his expression a gentle demand for attention. "There is no product here to buy or sell, nothing of mundane value. We are purely involved in soul-making. Believe me, if you find gold here, it is because you take part in creating it. And if you go out with the same lead you came in with, it is simply because you did not follow the means to transform it. Do I explain myself?" He grinned widely and clapped with child0like amusement.

"So, to take part in this soul-making, you must begin in innocence. You must accept the worthlessness of all our
scheming, our limited and lopsided efforts in trying to change this hopeless situation of being at odds with ourselves. A concern that touches us all, our whole world, to the core.

"This soul-making you are involved in, this search for the meaning and wholeness in our lives, is of the most personal concern. It is a question of dedication, of self-devotion, you might say, because you must merge with our own shadow and reflection, the parts of ourselves that are hidden or projected. Such a thing is possible, but only one who truly knows his own face and heart is capable of taking part in such a transformation.

"No organization or society, school, church and suchlike, can bring one to the proper dedication. No one and no thing outside one's self can bring us to such a state. It is an inner action and only individuals have 'inners', if I explain myself.

"When we talk of dedication, it is this we mean. That you understand that as long as you put trust in anything other than what is essentially you and yours, looking outwardly for your needs, healings and answers, rather than into our true, whole Self, then you are losing the way to that place of transformation. To be controlled by some thing outside us is not dedication, but possession. Simply a kind of mania. When we talk about the Call beyond the Spiral of Time, it is this calling inward that we mean, of course.

"Dedication is the focus to reach the goal of soul-making. Leave everything else behind to be guided and provided for from Above. Aim yourself with that intention only, like a warrior throwing his spear, piercing the mark. "But do not imagine that, because you are dissatisfied with your life as it is and so motivated to change, that you can envision what this life of dedication is like. You can not even imagine how it feels, its implications and possibilities, from what you've heard or perhaps fleetingly experienced.

"So...We have understood that this is not about profit and loss and that it calls for total dedication to your truth."
He explained all this with such honest sympathy that coaxed me to stay open. And it touched some core part of me, and, as if it had been waiting to hear this, suddenly came alive. Waves of release expanded through my mind and body -relief and a kind of happy anticipation.

The old Wizard shifted and refolded his legs, stretched slightly, gathered his wrinkled face into a another grin and released a deep sigh. "This and That. These are the step ways of the Spiral that take us up, then take us down again," he chuckled. "Of course, you have clung to the This and That until our mind has torn apart and left you aching and bleeding. And that too has prepared us to hear these words.

"All your pretends, those self-dreams you must believe in order to survive. Enough! What you seek is beyond your present comprehension. It could never be what you imagine, not even by accident. Now, in your delusion of self-separation, it is as if you are other than your shadow and reflection. So you are frightened at the shimmerings at the edge of your awareness, a shimmering that is beyond the This and That. A place and state of mind that transcends duality's hold. An ending to the eternal partings and reunions with yourself. Your dearest friend. Your total stranger. Know, this Other that haunts is also you.

"Through dedication to our wholeness, we can learn to hold the This and That at the same time. It is a matter of Heart, a different way to hold them. Distinctions between the This and That don't disappear, but in this way of holding them perception changes totally. It sets them free of the mind's cage of like and dislike, accept and reject. Then This and That can interplay, can dance. They can create new patterns and forms that will open wide the way to soul-making.

"We are drawn by the Light and pushed by the Dark. There is our imponderable guidance towards the Goal. Accept the utter hopelessness of all those pretends of the soulless self. Open to the utter wonderment of what awaits when you and your Other become not-two. Then your base, leaden self will truly be transmuted into gold.

"You are dizzy at the mere taste of this truth. But this is the romance you seek in your life. This is the truest, highest adventure. Because when you and your Other -your shadow and reflection- are not separate but are joined, what fulfillment there will be. You will be One and can live from your True-self, beyond the grasp of the Spiral. You will discover that your own aliveness is the source and goal of all that you seek.

"And from that state of being, wholesome relationship with others will naturally come of itself, unimpeded. Because for each of us these things are so. Across the gulfs of our separate forms and destinies, similar mysteries unfold."

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Copyright 2003 Gill Schwartz