Do you know why you’re here? Granted, ‘why’ questions can be notoriously difficult to answer, so let’s start even more basic: Do you know how you got here?
Even that question assumes some understanding of what ‘you’ – or more properly “I” (Ego) – and ‘here’ refer to.
For goodness sake, is there any point in going further?
Actually, the perennial wisdom tradition of human spirituality known as Sophia Perennis insists that getting to the bottom of this apparent riddle is the very way to salvation.
Salvation here does not refer to an escape or deliverance from this life, but rather to the fulfillment of your human nature in a life that is wise, loving, fearless and free.
So, the question of why you are here is asking something very profound indeed.
Let’s begin with where you probably think you are, which is in the world. The diagram above depicts your world as egg-shaped and labels it your “quality world.” William Glasser coined the term to name not what we sometimes call the real world or Reality, but rather the personalized intangible environment of values, memories, ideas, beliefs, dreams, meanings and semantic associations that forms around your identity in the process of becoming somebody special.
Your quality world is egg-shaped to help you understand it as a kind of enclosure that contains and separates your self-conscious identity, or Ego, from Reality.
The consciousness generated from the vitality of your body is wide open to Reality. But to become aware of itself, or self-conscious, consciousness must be looped back upon itself, reflected in the hall of mirrors called your quality world.
There are other persons in your quality world, but they have their own quality worlds, so it’s more accurate to picture you by yourself inside your egg. Early on, these others, particularly the taller powers of your parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults, assisted in the construction of your personal identity by blocking, coaxing, training, and rewarding the gradual domestication of your body’s vital intelligence and animal instincts.
Your taller powers provided and assigned Roles for you to play on the social performance stage. The Roles (think of the costumes and masks worn by theater actors) that you most fully identified with became your identity – who you are on stage and in the company of other actors. A Role is designed to satisfy two essential needs of Ego identity, for recognition and belonging.
Others identify who you are and what part you play (recognition); you are included in the role-play and its quality world (belonging).
A Role is really nothing more than a convention, a put-on, a social construct of identity. Back in the early days of Greek and Roman theater it was called a persona, referring to the character mask through which (per) an actor spoke (sona) his or her part in the play.
This is likely what informed your quick answer at the beginning, to the question of why you’re here. You immediately reported to your quality world and the Roles that define who you are and where you belong. Of course, you didn’t realize how much of it is not even real – not Reality.
The self-conscious actor of your Ego and the personas it inhabits on the social performance stage inside your quality world – it’s all an illusion. And to the degree you believe the illusion is real, it quickly becomes a delusion.
If you have heard this notion before, that the world is an illusion, it’s important to understand that “the world” is your quality world and not Reality or the so-called real world. This semantic confusion between world and Reality has too often prevented the deeper insight from breaking the egg, as it were, for genuine enlightenment.
Reality is real, your world is not. This is why these terms are further distinguished in the diagram as ultimate reality (or Reality, the really real) and your quality world.
Following upon this moment of critical disillusionment, of seeing through the illusion of personal identity, Sophia Perennis goes on to address dimensions of Being that had been concealed behind the (illusory) walls of your quality world.
In the above illustration, the self-conscious actor of your Ego is transected by a vertical axis of arrows, with one arrow breaking upward to ultimate reality through the boundary of your quality world. Another arrow breaks downward through the body and into the grounding mystery (or Ground) of Being.
Ultimate reality (or Reality) is the really real beyond your labels, concepts, beliefs, stories, and theories. It’s not quite accurate to say that Reality is beyond your mind, since it includes your mind and all that you are. Truth is the degree of transparency in those various forms of meaning (labels, concepts, beliefs, etc.), focusing your mind through meaning on the Reality beyond.
A loan word from Sophia Perennis and used in the physical sciences is “universe”: the unified totality of existence. The universe is not, for it cannot be, an object of study since there is no objective distance between your mind and Reality that might lock it down and put it in perspective. It is an intuition of your spiritual intelligence, which, at the upper end of the vertical axis, is named Spirit.
In myth and poetry, Spirit is frequently depicted in metaphors of freedom, flight (e.g., birds and butterflies), fire, light, and wind (also breath). Its distinguishing feature is transcendence: always reaching out, moving through, and going beyond the limits of your world.
In every culture we can find the fascinating mythic motif of apocalypse, where the world (exactly in the sense of a quality world) breaks down and is burned away to reveal the Eternal Reality beyond – named God (with the uppercase ‘G’) and role-played in the myths by the various gods of religion.
Breaking below your separate center of self-conscious personal identity, a second arrow traces the descending path of consciousness deeper into your Body’s lifeforce and the grounding mystery of Being.
If the upward path of Spirit transcends and includes, this inner path of Soul releases and dissolves away the distinctions in the differences that separate things and thoughts, until all that remains is a quiet, boundless, present awareness. Soul is not “inside” or separate from the Body, but rather rests at the inner wellspring of consciousness itself.
In the etymological sense of the word, the ground of Being and the Soul are mysteries, which means “to close the mouth” in awed silence before something that cannot be named or known. They are ineffable, and yet, the universe itself and all that you see is a manifestation of this mystery.
The human spirit knows the way through. Maybe you can relax a little. Set aside your mistaken identity and just be what you are.
Tracts of Revolution 