We live in a world with many ways – pathways, byways, expressways, ways of thinking, feeling, ways of acting. We can be told which way to go, or choose to go our own way. We can openly express our feelings, give vent to our emotions, or firmly suppress them. We have freedom of thought and, to a degree, freedom of action. But do any of these ways lead to freedom? To liberation? Do they not keep us treading the same old pathways, round and round, on the roads of life?
Take feelings for example. Our feelings, our emotions, can go many ways. There are myriads of ways of expressing them, and many colours accompanying them. Think of the red of anger, the moody blues, the bright yellows of happiness and joy, the dark somberness of fear and depression. Each has an opposite expression and we can use our heart to express whatever emotion comes over us. Thoughts too can be observed likewise – light, happy emotions give way to carefree thoughts, dark gloomy emotions to black, sordid thoughts. The range of thoughts is vast and endless, and again we can use our thinking apparatus, our brain, to express any number of them. And that we most certainly do! If we dare to look more deeply we can see a connection between our feelings, our thoughts and our actions, and quite often that leads to an inner conflict – our heart responds one way, our thoughts another and our actions are of confusion, our inner conflict revealing itself. But how many can actually see this? How many take the time to reflect on it and see what is happening? Aren’t we all too busy, too pre-occupied to find the time, let alone the inclination, to actually stop, look and ask why? Why do we feel/think/act the way we do? What effect does it have on us, on others, on the world around us? What are our ways of the world and what are we doing with them?
Suppose for a moment …
Is there another way of the world that we are missing?
We hear more and more nowadays of another way – a way of finding inner peace. There are many, many ways that suggest we may find that peace – ways of thinking, ways of feeling, ways of acting. But are these not also ways of the world, ways upon which ultimately we need to depend in order to maintain that semblance of inner peace? Once we stop the practice, the thought patterns, the meditation, we find ourselves back where we started – lost in the byways, the pathways of the world.
There must be another way, if indeed inner peace is to be found, if true freedom really exists. And there is – there is another way to go! This other way also depends on something – but this time on US! We still must think, feel and act, but in another way, on another basis, a different basis. If we have been able to reflect on our ways of thinking, feeling and acting as suggested previously, we might reach a point of dissatisfaction, of disillusionment. We might see that the ways of the world are simply that – ways that keep us attached to the world. Not a path, not even a road, to freedom. We may have also tried the many alternative ways mentioned in our search for inner peace, but again perhaps they have led us to the realisation that they are ways of imitation, leading back to our starting point. Again that point of disillusionment. Can we then find that truly other way, the way that leads to lasting inner peace?
And so, we have done much looking much searching outwardly for this elusive freedom, for peace. We have tried many ways and reached a realisation that nothing out there, none of those roads, even the expressways, are able to satisfy us, to satisfy the inner longing that still remains. So where else can we look? What stone have we left unturned? Why not within, the only road left? When we dare to do that, what might we find? Might there be a yearning, a deep inner craving for something else , something that we can’t see, we can’t pinpoint or describe, but nevertheless something that has been there for a long, long time? Slowly we may realise that there is another reality, another way that we have not acknowledged before. And also we realise that we are not alone!
For each of us that newly discovered way is going to be different, the things we will uncover will be unique to each person – but more and more, as we proceed on this path, we will find fellow travellers, all moving in the same direction, towards the same inner peace, but individually, in their own way. As like attracts like, groups have formed and you may now have come across one such group, the School of the Golden Rosycross. You will have discovered that we are all individuals yet our common way, our common path, keeps us together, builds a unity. And by coming together, by attending meetings, services, conferences – but also by our own inner efforts – something grows, something radiates. A new way develops, a way that is in the world yet leads away from the world. A higher unworldly vibration that is capable of touching anyone who tires of the old ways and seeks a new direction.
Is that you? Then be brave – set your foot on this new way and see where it leads you!
