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How are we to understand the soul? What is the purpose of Spirituality? What do we need to live Spiritually? What does Spirituality Involve? What kind of work should I be doing? |
Getting Real
Moving
on the New Age 'Everything
we do, everything we are rests on our personal power. If we have enough of
it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our
lives. But if we don’t have enough personal power, the most magnificent
piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won’t make a
damn bit of difference.’ Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s Tales of Power Introduction This
book is offered by way of a return to the countless people with whom I
have spoken in the past ten years in my capacity as a professional
astrologer. There
are now well over one thousand charts in my filing system, all of which
have been discussed at some length with their ‘owners’, and many of
them on more than one occasion. From
this ten year period of client work has emerged a clear impression of the
kind of questions, which motivate people with spiritual awareness to seek
the guidance of an astrologer. Why an astrologer? By no means, have all my
clients been sure why they have consulted me in this capacity, or what to
expect, but somewhere, at some level, there appears to have been a trust
that astrology can supply a perspective which the other psychic arts
cannot, a perspective that is ‘scientific’ and objective in a way
other techniques are not and, therefore, is capable of supplying spiritual
guidance. This
trust is well-founded, although it does not follow that all astrologers
are working in a way, with the kind of knowledge, which enables astrology
to fulfil this role. Indeed, it is probably true to say that, as interest
in astrology was increasing during the 1970s and 1980s, so the standard of
practice was falling dramatically, a deterioration aided and abetted by
the wide usage of computer software which made a would-be astrologer
functional without even a fig leaf to cover his nakedness when it came to
an understanding of how and why his or her discipline worked. But
this is not a book about astrology; it is a book about contemporary
spirituality in which astrology has a place As regards astrological
practice, let us hope that the tide is turning and that a growing
awareness of what the discipline can offer when it is conscientiously
studied and practised, will see the public demanding a higher standard. Some
fifty years ago, through the medium of Alice Bailey, the Tibetan Master
Djwhal Khul wrote: “One thing you must constantly bear in mind. Now that the war is over,
and the time of acute trial and tribulation has come to an end, a great
spiritual awakening (of a quality and a nature quite unpredictable today)
will arrive. The war will have taught humanity many lessons and will have
torn the veil of self away from many eyes. Values which have been hitherto
expressed and understood only by those whose “eyes are on God” will be
the goal and desire of untold thousands........” That
time is here. It is now. It was brought by the New Age in a relatively
short but intense flurry of literary, artistic, healing and educational
activity and political rapprochements which gathered momentum as Europe
began to rebuild itself in the aftermath of World War II, reached
something of a climax at the end of the 1980s and which, ten years on from
that, has become less structured and more commercialised. Candles,
aromatherapy oils, alternative remedies and paraphernalia adorned with
suns, moons and stars have found their way into a range of high street
outlets and even onto shelves amid the grocery and household items in the
outlets of those bastions of corporate culture and Establishment values in
the U.K, the major supermarket chains.
Magazines and newspapers, which historically, have flown the flag
for rationalism and empiricism now talk freely, if none too insightfully,
about spirituality and personal development. Well-being can be bought from
alternative therapists of all hues Is
this a positive development or not? It certainly denotes, as D.K.
predicted, wide scale acceptance of what, even twenty years ago, were
ideas held by a tiny minority; it certainly indicates that large numbers
of people are prepared to part with money in order to experience the
putative benefits of a more spiritual lifestyle. But
are lives really being changed by this greater awareness or are these
spiritual ideas floating on the top of our lives like corks, or a
fashionable froth, unable to penetrate the surface of our everyday
reality? Are they simply a place of retreat from an ordinary reality that
defeats us, an excuse for talking about our problems and finding ourselves
a social life and sympathetic lovers? The
problem that we Westerners have to confront is that we think like
consumers and are obsessed with gratification. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, we
are trying to turn spirituality into a matter of getting what we want on
our terms, which of course do not include effort and sacrifice. We have
made spirituality a hostage of the very habits that it needs to be
persuading us to learn to control. There
may be a million paths to transformation, some are austere some are not,
but the process of spiritual transformation is the same in every man and
woman: it involves the opening of chakras. There are four major chakras to
be opened in total and the opening of these chakras is achieved by
dedicated hard work and sacrifice. Spirituality has an objective reality.
Attainment can be measured because it shows in the physical body. We can
buy effects but not results. The
new Age has encouraged this consumerised spirituality by increasing
accessibility. Knowledge can be got now, effortlessly, in books with
glossy covers and from teachers with glossy images, remote enough to
appear always kind, loving and cheerful. But accessibility is not the
point: this knowledge has to be applied. To do that takes discipline and
self-responsibility, otherwise, to quote Castaneda's Don Juan, it
will not make a damn bit of difference. To talk about attaining
Enlightenment and not being able to find the discipline to post a letter,
keep a house clean or to resist the sexual lure of a destructive
relationship, is to be living out a fantasy. And why should Heaven, of all
places, a community of souls, want people who are a drain on their
societies because do not understand contribution and are self-important
enough to think that personal acquisition at the public expense is
acceptable? And what happens when we the crisis that blows the pretence
out of the water and brings it home to us that we are not approaching
Enlightenment, we have not even a basic mastery of ourselves and are, in
fact, no better off than the unpretentious people with no spiritual
aspirations who simply get on with their lives the best they know how.
Where do we go then, if we truly think that what we have been talking
about is spirituality? This
is a book about bringing spirituality in everyday life, about getting real
about ourselves, developing personal power and letting drop the pretence. This
book is dedicated to my clients of the past ten years who have bitten the
bullet, stopped hoping that two and two will make five and made themselves
responsible for the unfolding of their own lives. Suzanne
Rough The
D.K. Foundation Brighton 2000 |
The DK
Foundation
