Home 2021 January 03 The Spiritual Work Takes Us Back to Simplicity and Inner Beauty

The Spiritual Work Takes Us Back to Simplicity and Inner Beauty

“What a restful life
that of the person
who flees from worldly noise
and follows the hidden path
taken by the few wise men
who have existed in this world!”
~ Samael Aun Weor

It is often said that simplicity is a virtue. It is one of the virtues of consciousness that shines through and becomes part of our life, as we eliminate the psychological defects that are the cause for complexities and problems. When we remove those things from our mind and heart, we inevitably become simpler.  The type of simplicity that I am referring to here is not the one of those who live an average and simple lives, because these people, although to the outward world they seem simple, are also trapped in the complexity of the egos and all the struggles that go with that. But rather, I am referring to simplicity of the essence, of the consciousness, which is a true and profound simplicity, characterized by having less (of the psychological weight), and by having less the person by default has more (of that which belongs to the spirit).

I think that everyone who initiated a proper form of spiritual work has after some time experienced a big change in their life, because they moved from a life of turbulence, emotional rollercoasters, intrigues, ambitions etc., to a life that is of a different type, that detaches from and stops many of the harmful and pointless activities of the external life in order to focus more on the internal; by so doing, the person starts to live life from the point of consciousness, whereas previously their life was lived mostly from desires, ambitions, impulses, and many other things that keep us in a mechanical state of living. We then start seeing a big contrast in our life because of this change; we start to feel that we have unloaded a very heavy weight that we were carrying for years, decades, and even lifetimes! We see how unnecessary this weight was, and we become grateful to our Being to have opened up this wonderful opportunity of the inner work in our life. Without this heavy weight, we see things more clearly, we see things that truly matter. We see those around us with new eyes, understanding more about the depth of life which we now behold and contemplate, nourishing ourselves with this conscious way of living, which is the way of the spirit. And even though this heavy load is the first layer of  heaviness that we shatter off on our path to the Being, it is one of the first steps that we have to make in order to start removing other layers of that load (which are the egos themselves), so that one day we may stand as a spirit that is free, purified, and filled with nectar of the divine Being.

Through the inner work we begin to see that simplicity is indeed a virtue. It provides us with seeing situations in our life (as well as the life itself) in a way that is simple and holistic, without complexities of the egos, without the need to ponder and rationalize things with the mind, with the intellect. This is a great thing about the Work – it liberates and activates the consciousness so that we can use that for a better and more complete comprehension of life. This consciousness is in its essence very simple, and at the same time it is very profound. The true simplicity reflects the nature of divinity; with it also emerge virtues such as intelligence, compassion, love, psychic perceptions, and inner beauty – all of these are part of spiritual development and add to the true simplicity that we one day reach. Many people think that these virtues of the consciousness can be a stand along thing, but this is not how spiritual progress takes place, because the nature of the essence is divine and within it are all the virtues, and so as the egos are gradually eliminated and consciousness liberated, we gain access to them, and they increase parallel to how the consciousness is growing in size.

Today many people think for those who decide to live in nature in a self-sustainable way that they are simple and wise folks, brave enough to do what the majority would not dare to do. Many who sympathize with their ideas think of them as more spiritually mature, and while it might indeed be a level of spiritual maturity that brought them to live in such an environment, it could also just be difficult circumstances of life that they wished to evade. Even though they now live a more simple life and closer to nature, if they haven’t done a spiritual work upon themselves, they will still carry in their psyche all the weight from before. This is not to say that there cannot emerge certain transformations from their choices to live closer to nature. It can certainly happen, but internally they will still have the elements (such as greed, lust, pride, jealousy, envy, anger etc.) which take the true simplicity away and replace it with common problems of life.

When we return to a true simplicity, we become more childlike. Not in an ignorant way as children are, but rather we have the spontaneity of consciousness, the one that is not bothered with thoughts of how others will see us, the thoughts that always want us to appear according to our “station”, even if that is not who we truly are, or who we feel that we should be. So returning to simplicity is returning to innocence, the innocence of consciousness that is endowed with wisdom and experience; we return to our true self. And from that self shines the inner beauty, divine beauty. This is something that shines in most humans, which we notice more and more as we eliminate the obstacles that prevented us from seeing that before, such as being judgemental and identified with negativity. By noticing the divine beauty in others means that we also notice the divine beauty in ourselves, because others are, in many ways, a reflection of ourselves.

HDP, January 2021.

Author: Dario

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