Untroubled Joy: The Destiny of Every Soul

By Hunter Reynolds, on August 19th, 2023

This morning, I asked my soul, What is our natural state?

The answer arrived as a testimonial:

I’m more concerned with what I’m wading “through” than the direction of my sloshing; more drawn to stroking the texture of Consciousness than forming a sexy bond with a particular expression of it.

Conditions and characters, after all, are “float toys” on the heaving ocean of Samsara. What steadies the seasick soul?

Why is mind so obsessed with worldly ambition, direction and branding? Is it the the money? The promise of security, status and belonging? As real as these desires appear, they are all symptoms of a deeper attachment: being a “solid, separate somebody” with 100% autonomy.

Could it be that we are born haunted by lifetimes of accumulated guilt for refusing to attune, and gracefully yield to, the Shepherding Presence and that our primary purpose is to heal this broken relationship?

Mother of All Ambitions

Ego imagines itself moving forward. In truth, it spends most of its time sprinting away from the larger Being it rises and falls in. Alas, there is no escape.

Amputation from Source hurts, so we call in feelings of vexation, guilt and despair to steer our attention back to the business of divine repair.

Each and every lifetime begins with Aries Individuation (ego) and ends with Pisces reabsorption into the undifferentiated Being. In this way, life patiently prods us to take refuge at the center of this murderous, magnificent wheel and witness the play of form as “eternity with eyes.”

This is our natural state and it takes constant stressful effort not to rest here.

How many lifetimes have we spent refusing to infiltrate ego with presence, limply succumbing to the momentum of divine forgetfulness?

And how perfect that we out-picture this prideful orphanedness, lifetime after lifetime, by clothing our soul in the world’s evidence of separation, so we can get realtime feedback as to what separation from Source actually feels like, so we can “choose again?”

Deep inside, we all know: reunion with God (the eternal rest of our true nature) is the mother of all ambitions and our day to day activity on this earthy stage should be guided, first and foremost, by this luminous aspiration.

Our Inner Career

Most of us were born into frighteningly materialistic cultures that numb us to this “inner career.” “Success” requires a heavy investment in the time-bound sense of self. Indeed, the awakened ones are often those who sacrifice the hollow victories of status and ambition for a more spacious vocation that leaves time for meditation, self-inquiry and meditative relating.

Meditation reveals we are one interpenetrating psyche.

This carries with it a great responsibility. No longer can we pretend to have private moods and thoughts. How we inhabit consciousness flies through every wall like a Wi-Fi signal. The best we can do is humbly “own” the wake we leave behind us and cultivate a more virtuous virus.

This daily meditative cleansing of our aura is our “luminous career.” All other ambitions: avocations.

Walking hand in hand with the Shepherding Presence, we are never unemployed. Gone is the restless search for direction and meaning. Gone, the need to see the world as corrupt or “in crisis” to justify the hardening of our egoic edges. Gone, the need for drama and emergency to feel the “one sure, right thing to do.”

Gone, also, is the feeling of “not making a difference.” Even now, as we correct our slumpy posture, the whole world shakes.

Not Showing Up For Work

To the extent we fail to “turn up for work” and, instead, add fresh tears to our torn cartilage with God, we limp through the world with a nameless anxiety; a nagging sense of orphanedness that seeps through every niceness.

This aerosolized orphanedness, wafting off of us in all directions- infecting the casual passerby as much as the one’s we claim to know and love- is an essential ingredient in the Creator’s great conspiracy of love.

Why? Because sensing the minute and major ways others suffer from our egoic automation provides immediate, gut-wrenching feedback and motivation to drop our egoic posturing so the Merciful Witness can re-warm our inner atmosphere.

Tracking Our Levels of Orphanedness

As the Buddhists say: waking up isn’t something we do for ourselves. Wise loving descends into us as we learn to meditatively track our rising and falling levels of orphanedness, measure their real world impacts on others and compassionately uplift the Friendless and forsaken in others.

Thank God for the contagious nature of consciousness- prodding us to become models of well-being!

How, then, shall we design each day? Dostoyevsky said it well:

Love every leaf… Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy.

Healthy Regret

As the beauty of the Divine Presence infiltrates more and more of our days, we develop a strong enough foundation of soul-esteem to endure healthy regret. We make amends without descending into toxic guilt and through this habit of dignified confession and repentance, a kind of spiritual community grows up around us. We learn to lean on others and invite them to lean on us. We pray for them, even as they pray for us.

Day by day, the wheel of suffering becomes a wheel of grace. Ego-strutting gives way to compassionate attunement. A rock steady purpose dawns:

I am here to become a soul-mirror, embodying as much untroubled joy as humanly possible, so I can be an inspiring way-shower for others in times of stability and crisis.

Hunter Reynolds
astrodharma.org