TO HEAL OURSELVES AND OUR NATIONS, WE MUST ACCEPT THIS: THAT OUR PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE SYMPTOMS ARE SYMBOLS: SYMBOLS TO BE INTERPRETED. THAT IS THE SPIRITUAL TRUTH OF ALL THAT WE EXPERIENCE, AND IT IS THE SPIRITUAL, MYSTICAL AND SACRED CHALLENGE OF OUR LIVES ON OUR MOTHER EARTH, OUR HOLY GAIA, AND IS THE SPIRITUAL, MYSTICAL AND SACRED CHALLENGE OF OUR LONG QUEST OR PILGRIMAGE TO OUR ONENESS WITH THE ALL.
Two young girls, perhaps identical twins, ponder what they hold in their hands. What they hold is a puzzle, and is at the same time a key to their own journeys and also a key to the purpose and destiny of our Mother Earth. Behind the girls are Egyptian hieroglyphics. These two, in their day, have been puzzles, and at the same time have been the key to our understanding of ancient Egypt, and indeed our understanding of the spiritual way of ancient Egypt.
To heal ourselves and our nations, we must accept this: that our personal and collective symptoms are symbols. Symbols to be interpreted. Symptoms, be they medical, social or political, are symbols of underlying and fundamental truths about ourselves. Symptoms that are symbols are the keys to ourselves. Our task, as always, is to unravel their meaning, to get into the truth that they are displaying for us. This is why symbols are so important. What we read in a good novel may not be true – Darcy and Lizzie Bennet, for example, never existed – but that good novel will be deep-set with truths. As we follow the adventures of the made-up Mr Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet, we learn something that is universally true about relationships, betrayals, vanities etc. So is it also with our dreams, or what we might sense in our meditations. A good novel, and a seemingly significant dream will require investigation, will require unravelling. We will always need to go deep, and that process alone will be part of the voyage of discovery that leads ultimately to ourselves, that leads ultimately to truths about ourselves. Likewise, we are called upon to go deep into the meaning of the symptoms – medical, social or political – that can afflict us. What are they hiding? And more interestingly, what are they saying?
How we interpret dreams provides a useful insight to this key point about our spiritual lives, about that mystical and sacred pilgrimage that we are all on. So many books will suggest that there are certain general images that will be the same for most people and that with those books’ keys, the mystery behind any individual’s dreams can be revealed. But that is not a useful approach. We really are all so different, and the fundamental point here is that we really are in our own stories. Understanding the true key to dreams will help us the better to understand ourselves generally, and to in particular help us to understand the underlying truth of our lives: that we are all spiritual pilgrims, deep in our mystical and sacred quest for our true selves and for our ultimate connection with the eternal infinite.
To unravel the meaning of our dreams we need to enter into the story of our dreams, we need to talk or think our way into them. Our dreams are stories, and our dreams are tightly woven into the stories of our own lives. There is no quick and easy trick to this. It is a meditative process, a slow voyage or pilgrimage into the dream’s story. This is always the true and mystical way, the way to unravel the sacred spirituality of our own lives, our own journeys through our lives. This is true of ourselves and is true of our societies, our neighbourhoods, and our nations. It is true of the world itself: the world story that we are all part of.
Every personal symptom that we experience, and every social and political symptom that we as citizens of our countries, and citizens of our world, is telling us something about ourselves through the deep-set power of symbols: symbols that are themselves deep-set into the stories of our lives. The key to our lives, individual and collectively, can never be a brutal process; that always leads to further problems, further unwelcome stories. The key is to go deep into the meaning of our lives, to unfold the truths that lie deep within the stories of our lives. All good novels show us the way. We watch the stories within novels and films unravel and unfold before our eyes, to reveal the great truths and to bring into manifestation the healing connections that can bring resolution to those stories.
Symptoms are symbols, and as symbols they are clues to the underlying story of our lives. To achieve personal and collective wellness, we must seek beyond the outer symptoms, and must enter into the story that they are products of, and within the story we shall find the symbols of truths about ourselves, about our societies and about our nations: indeed about the world entire. This is the great spiritual meaning if our time: to understand our individual and collective stories, our individual and collective sacred pilgrimages that await our understanding.
There is no escaping this. We are spiritual pilgrims, set upon our mystical and sacred quest, and that pilgrimage, that journey that is central and fundamental to our spiritual lives, can only be properly understood through the unravelling of the symbolic resonances of what is happening to us and what we are doing. And the unravelling is a fundamental part of our spiritual awakening and thereby our spiritual unfolding into what we are destined to be. At the same time, the unravelling of the spiritual story at the sacred heart of ourselves is a profound healing process that, by the very nature of healing, brings us ever closer to the reality of our true selves, our true selves as part of the infinite eternity of the ALL. This point is also reinforced by the fact that by entering into the unravelling of our own spiritual stories, we are becoming spiritually inclusive in terms of our becoming ONE with the meaning of our own spiritual stories. Inclusivity it the key to all spiritual progress: ALWAYS.