High ideas that show up as ideals are archetypal in nature. They have to do with our spiritual origins and are deeply rooted in us. Therefore, it is not surprising if we want to express them. They even urge us to do so. But it becomes apparent that they cannot be permanently realised in our world, indeed that they ignite many destructive fires. They come from another world, the world of divine-spiritual fire. We can “condense” them into ideas of ideal forms of life and finally also into ideologies, which we then often want to enforce fanatically. Experience shows that enormous resistance arises in the process.
Why is that? Doesn’t the ideal, doesn’t the high idea point to truth? Does it not belong to our inner substance? We want to open up what is true for ourselves. Does such an endeavour have to end in an ideology in which we end up worshipping idols?
Behind every high creative idea vibrates a certain force, an energy, a “primary-substantial” impulse. But suggestive forces that have developed in our world are connected with it. The luminous vibration darkens, its vibrancy is lowered, it is instrumentalised. What was originally full of light is transformed, its energies, when misused, becoming the consuming fire that rages so often in our world.
On a higher level, freedom, harmony and love cannot be separated. Love in the spiritual world consists in perfect freedom, without conditions and restrictions. To love is to be free. Freedom, in turn, is synonymous with love. In perfect harmony between Creator and creature there is unrestricted love and freedom.
In cosmic harmony all aspects or qualities complement each other, they work together harmoniously. Each aspect is an integral part of wholeness. Multiplicity and unity are not contradictory. Unity or wholeness finds expression in multiplicity.
In ancient Indian philosophy, the domain of wholeness is expressed by the word Brahman. The world of Brahman is the actual reality. In it, the absolute, transcendent and immanent Spirit shows itself as the primordial source of being, without beginning and without end.
The ideals of our imaginary worlds and the idols we create for ourselves lead us into delusion. They are human interpretations of an original, divine ideality. The connection with the divine that we so intimately strive for can entrap us in the greatest illusions. Ultimately, it is because we separate our notions and ideas from those of others. We do not live out of the overall context, out of the integration of everything. That’s why our relationships with each other are always in crisis. In addition, our thinking is largely a linguistic thinking based on delimited, semantic concepts. The tendency to demarcate in our thinking is also emphasised in the Bible verse: “…the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive”. (2 Corinthians 3:6)
But how are we to deal with it when the Spirit that makes us alive awakens feelings and streams of thoughts in us? What would our world be without the inner impulse of ideals?
So far, it has been a fiery burning place, partly due to the urge of ideals. The aroused feelings and thoughts gain power over us and tempt us to use this power – with the best of intentions. This is what happened with the great thought systems of communism and socialism. In today’s world, digital and social media provide a platform for the mass propagation of idealistic concepts.
There are effective ideals that are more traditional and are passed down from generation to generation. Other ideals can be called “modern” because they emerge from the current world situation. Traditional ideals are often very familiar to us, so that we no longer notice them, like the air we constantly breathe in and out.
Especially in today’s time of cosmic transformation and a profound systemic change, there is a certain drive to want to take refuge in authoritarian ideological patterns. Traditional values and normative systems are losing importance. An increasing disorientation and emptiness spreads, which can lead to states of mental and physical existential distress. The old system is crumbling and deep cracks are showing. On the other hand, the new is not yet here; at best it shows itself dimly on the horizon.
Today’s chaos offers the possibility of an evolutionary leap in the development of consciousness. Such a leap does not happen automatically, but requires a conscious decision, in the midst of enormous obstacles. Numerous “forces” do not want humanity to make a liberating step in consciousness. In esoteric and gnostic literature, archons and aeons are also spoken of in this context, atmospheric forces in which life forms of the past have been stored. Among other things, they use ideological structures and dress them up in modern garb to be effective in a suggestive way. That is why it is so important to ask where we are serving old dogmatic patterns that have no real liberating value.
Let us look again at the inner workings that lead us into illusions and delusions.
We desire freedom because it is inherent in the depth of our being. Thinking enables us to perceive ourselves as independent beings. We make decisions on our own responsibility and can thereby determine our lives more or less ourselves. We try to expand the boundaries of our consciousness and our reality inwards and outwards.
In doing so, we encounter a multitude of obstacles. We distance ourselves from them, fight them, want to overcome them. Our feelings surge and finally we burn for our ideal, our idea. Imperceptibly, we lose ourselves in a self-created fiery emotional world.
We have created a fog of deluded feelings, sometimes coloured with happiness and joy, sometimes with frustration and sadness. In it can develop exaggerated and obsessive ideas of morality, adherence to principle, discipline and self-control, which we ultimately cannot live up to. The ideal, initially striven for rather sporadically, may then be pursued ever more fanatically and single-mindedly. Setbacks are interpreted as personal failures, followed by feelings of guilt. People are revered as idols onto whom one projects success.
But in wanting to manifest our own ideas and ideals in the physical world, we are also in a sense “testing” them. This reality testing gives us immediate feedback on their “rightness” or “wrongness”. Progressive learning can be achieved when we experience the consequences of our self-creations and then learn from the mistakes. In this respect, this situation is also a grace because it enables healing. The firebrand then becomes a purification fire. If we were to avoid this “reality test”, then our over-idealisations could remain permanently – with the accompanying loss of reality.
Thinking is an important focus of consciousness for us today. In doing so, there is a danger that we live ourselves into worlds of thought where we are no longer even aware of the origin of their contents. We move along in an ever faster rotating whirlwind of information.
What can we do? We can pause. We can perceive the impulses emanating from our innermost being in silence and openness, without interpreting them. They bring light with them, light of the soul. This light enables a new inner perception. And very slowly a new way of thinking develops in which the impulses are reflected.
An intuitive thinking unfolds, held by the light of the soul. Mental clarity emerges, free from obstructive emotions. An intuitive, calm thinking that becomes a tool of reflection of truth and light. It shows us what our previous reality looks like and how much we are manipulated by it. More and more we receive impressions of the all-embracing wholeness and begin to understand.
Sometimes intuition shows itself as a lightning-like flash of insight. Unexpected understanding then floods the consciousness.
The path from delusion to truth lies in the steady dissolution of the previous form. This includes all the ideas, interpretations, projections, emotional patterns, ideals, norms and judgements we have created over time. The crucial thing is that we are willing to surrender them to dissolution and allow the “empty space” to emerge within us, where everything shows itself in its true form in the light of the soul.
We step out of the fire of struggle into which we have entered through our self-creations, our self-created ideals and expectations. The matter of concrete things shows itself to us in a new way. All living things in nature are reflections of something higher. The relationship between the forms of life known to us and the apparent formlessness of the divine-spiritual world starts to be revealed. The higher light of intuition opens the true essence of ideality to the eye of the soul. In order to recognise the unseparated truth, we must rise to the truth. Guided by the light of the soul, we open up, as far as we are able, the inner worlds of truth. A connection develops between us and the spiritual world that profoundly changes our consciousness.
We no longer identify with the world of separateness, nor with the form in which we live and which we temporarily need. The soul light leads us to a gradually growing connection and oneness with our spiritual original source. We can then perceive all differences in form as expressions in an all-encompassing energy field. Mental clarity connects with a power of love such as we have never known before. It is love enlightened by wisdom, as a union of mind and devotion. The oneness of all life makes itself felt in the heart and its insightful application becomes effective in a new active life.
