Three Steps of Formation

INTRODUCTION

Before transformation we had formation. The most important reason for understanding formation is to recognize that: 1) our consternating, conflicts, and traumas, are the grist that yields the "pearl of great price," and 2) our origins are holy and life is a sacred journey. In a sense, life sacrifices itself for the sake of enhancing the soul. The greatest gift that life can give us is character and a true soul-centered existence. Each discovery, epiphany, and passage is a sacrament. The three steps of formation are: seminal, involutional, reversal. In the seminal event a genetic code impressed itself into our holiness as our soul nature. The involutional imperative of these codes placed us into the creative worlds of our life journey, and we began to "muck things up." The soul intentionality, then, is blocked or distorted by the reversal and must unfold through the life mirror, which we encounter as an adverse experience. In Jungian terms this is the shadow.

Seminal

alternative medicine Since it seems universal to wonder where we came from, perhaps that wondering is our first clue to our origins. Whatever the mystery that gave us birth, it gave us the inclination to wonder about our origins. Creationists believe that a supernatural force one day created us as we are. Evolutionists say that synchronistic biochemical events occurred which resulted in an evolution of life into greater and greater complexities which, eventually, resulted in human life. It seems to me that both are materialistic viewpoints based on the physical appearance of humanity, as we know it, on this planet. The evolutionist say that consciousness evolved from form. The creationists say that consciousness and form were created spontaneously from nothing. I suggest that both are true. Consciousness preceded and created the psychic and material worlds, and our consciousness matures with experience. In any case, awe and wonder will discover the truth quicker than dogmatism, polarization and contraction. The keys to understanding the greater mystery will not yield to domination, whether scientific or religious. It is our nature to discover and know the mysteries of life.

Every time I reflect on my origins, I hear the phrase: "In the beginning was the word...." Then the question: What must it have been like to be "spoken" into awareness? The universe is an expression of holiness. My intuition tells me that in some deep inextricable way my essence is the same stuff as this holiness in a way that makes my expression, its expression. My sense is that we existed, before we became self aware, as an undifferentiated state of wholeness.

Beginning denotes that something was initiated that did not exist. This may be half true. What was the nature of existence preceding the awareness of beginning? Before it existed as something, there was nothing. David Bohm in his cosmology of quantum physics conveys an image of something unfolding from nothing, from no-thing, implying that something unfolds from nothing and then returns, enfolds, to nothing. Provocative. Time, too, is a phenomenon of sequence, of beginning followed by duration. Is time a thing? When our holiness unfolded from universal holiness did an encoding process occur, that seeded the tendencies of our nature and the parameters of our enlightenment? Perhaps universal holiness encoded itself and, then, said "awaken" and thus became us? Can you feel your origins when you touch your heart and whisper, "I AM."

Our time-line began with awareness. In a moment, once upon a time, you said "I AM." Perhaps this is too much for our minds to grasp; however, our imagination can stretch to it and our knowing can deliver it to us. We, you, are the consciousness that is located at the place of its own awareness. Consider, then, that we are a "timeless" truth, unfolding time in order to have time for what ever we want to develop in ourselves. Perhaps our sense of ancientness comes from an awareness of "always is?" Are we self-evident?

Long ago, or long within, as the case may be, our unfolding holiness became a location. We journeyed from "no place" to "some place," a seminal event. Universal holiness condensed into a viewpoint. Holiness pressed into a seed-event, carrying the stamp of our essence, with an engrammic intentionality to fulfill itself. Here we are. Along with the urge to wonder about our origins, we cannot stop the urge to "fulfill our nature." As participants in the pre-form holiness that initiated our advent, we are also a "party to it?" Was there some enthusiasm on our part? So much the better if it were so.

When I read the story of creation in the Christian Bible, my soul ignites. For me, the Biblical creation story is a metaphor of natural history, impelled by the movement of it own holiness to actualize and fulfill its nature. Consider: A consciousness so vast and so deep that it encompasses all eternity. Space appears as a void, yet is filled with energy. The space around us is filled with our consciousness. That which appears as space, as empty, as void, in one dimension is teaming with life and reality on another. The Biblical "face of the deep" is a void that enfolds all that possibility, now existing as a small portion of itself in the natural wonder all around us, let alone as the wonder of each of us. Unfolding as one spirit it moved on the face of itself, causing emptiness to be filled with something that appeared as light and dark. It gave birth, out of itself, to the first thing. The first spirit is created as an intention to differentiate into all possible creations. As revelation continues the prototype of all creation forms and, in that process, the human seed is impressed into the fabric of creation. Creation is complete, and yet to be fulfilled. Who are we that we carry the archetype of creation within our genetic soul? Once upon a time we unfolded from "no-thing" with the archetype of creation etched upon the fabric of our soul.

Involutional

All the mystery teaching from around the world for which we have some record have their own rendition of the soul's code and how we began our journey in the spiritual world. For the purposes of noegenesis, we emerged as if through a mirror, reverse in image.

We each took on a basic nature which predisposes us to attract and be attracted to experiences in line with our nature. We seek out and call to us situations and circumstances that will get the soul-us where we want to, or need to be.

The boundary of the realm of pure holiness appears to the new soul as a mirror, as a limit beyond which there is nothing. The archetypal persona is mirror image of the genetic soul.

When we look in a mirror we see a reverse image. When we look into the mirror or formation the image is reversed. If we believe that the mirror image is true, we stop and admire our reflection, instead of seeing the face of God. The mirror of formation appears at the boundary between no-thing and thing. Some mystery teachings call it the cosmic mirror. This mirror holds the archetypal formation of our life plan.

At first, our experience of this is all occurring unconsciously. Another element of our forming intentionality is to awaken to our self through discovering our holiness through life experience. That which is unconscious mirrors back to us through life as metaphor. The archetypal patterns on the mirror of formation unfold onto the mirror of life. Our reflective/reactive activity constructs and modifies our persona.

Reversal

Because the mirror of formation and soul awareness are at first unconscious, we tend, in our innocence, to formulate our persona based on the life as it is reflected back to us, concluding that what we believe about our experience is truth. We create reversals. Reversals are internal defining structures that are opposite to the nature of the genetic soul. Our perception interprets life inversely to the soul standard. We substitute reversals for truth and act as if they are truth. As the reversals came to dominate, we increasingly centered ourselves in our ego formation. The ego formation became the standard.

Our soul's codes carry the intentionality that motivates us into our life journey. The Soul's codes are the integrated formation of our life fulfillment. As we complete our intentional life aims and resolve our reversals the mirror of formation translates experience into expanded soul substance.

Gift of Life

Formation is a sacramental process. It is a gift to life. The "muck" is precious, because it holds the key to our transformation and actualizing our promise. The stumbling block is the stepping stone of transformation. Without formation there is no transformation. In a sense the "heavens give birth to our souls and the daemons give birth to our salvation." The point is that we must honor our wounding, and not judge ourselves, unless self judgment is clearly intended to be preparation of the sacrament. It is a sacrifice; yet, we must avoid enshrining it or building monument to it. When the shadow appears, ask for your gift.

Life goes on and we become "deeper in debt." Next, in the seven steps of transformation, we distill from our life formation the formation of the soul body. Depending on the mystery teaching the soul body may be called: the light body, philosopher's stone, diamond body, Buddha nature, inner Christ, Shaman's body, pearl of great price, etc. As a consequence of this process our center shifts from our ego-self to our soul nature, and our rationality converts from material mind to soul or noetic mind.

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