“You may be beguiled by flash or prestige, but without substance there can be no grounding sustainability. Modern culture offers yearly examples of transitory fame. It’s simply a matter of time before prestige withers and attention fades. Doing life without concern for developing deep roots of consciousness isn’t really living, it’s sleepwalking.” — The Science of Mind
How often have most of us ever used the word, beguiled for anything? By definition, beguile means to deceive, deprive, cheat, and/or to while away, charm and delight. So using these words as a directive measure in this specific instance, that which appears immensely alluring, instantaneously gratifying, or boundlessly enthralling, lacking fundamental substance . . . just doesn’t last and it never will. Looking at our culture in this moment, exhibits no sustainability for any amount of time, let alone for a year. It seems completely unbelievable, but that’s exactly where we are. This has been a constant in our society for decades, however, it would appear in the present moment, this phenomenon is accelerating at a much more rapid pace with little chance of slowing down. With the continuum of acceptance on most levels, the withering of prestige and attention fading in the short term doesn’t seem to matter or make any difference over any amount of time. Why you might ask? It appears at this point, individuals are being exposed to what to think, not how to think. The indoctrination of information, fads, electronic gadgets, superficial layers of quick roads to success, acceptance, prestige, or quick deals regarding monetary gain, revenue streams etc., has taken the place of substance and sustainability . . . without an exit strategy. Anais Nin stated it far more succinctly, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
When was the last time there was a stirring concern for developing deep roots of consciousness for any reason? It takes a conscious awakening, and courage to execute what follows. Can you remember anything in the recent past of your experience to date, that even referred to developing deep roots of consciousness? I think not. We could always think in terms of living in a worm hole which lacks conscious grounding, or we as a civilization are caught in a time warp of limitless proportions embracing a lack of substance and fundamental sustainability. Either way, it’s a frightening thought and Pema Chodron attempts this resolution . . . “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” From this . . . what do we need to learn or know at the deepest levels of our existence?
Following the above quote from The Science of Mind, if we are “doing life without concern for developing deep roots of consciousness isn’t really living, ” are we then sleepwalking and just marking time? To what end? Following the thought of Pema Chodron, what is this constancy of seeming beguilement teaching us, and approximately at what point will we know it? For each of us, this spark is ignited through the spontaneity of its host’s consciousness of being, and Plato put it most appropriately when he said, “This kind of knowledge is a thing that comes in the moment like a light kindled from a leaping spark, which, once it has reached the soul, finds its own fuel.” JLR