Pole-stars
I’m a little worried about coming down and being unable to obtain lasting benefit from what starts to look like a momentary acquisition.
That is a form of doubting us and doubting yourself. If higher consciousness depended upon a given state of mind not fluctuating, there could be no hope, for consciousness is fluctuation; it is alternation and lack of continuity. (What is sleep, after all, but an interruption of conscious processes and moods, etc.?) Nor can anything permanent depend upon uninterrupted maintenance of a given emotional state. Emotions succeed each other, in the nature of things. But intent can be cultivated, and sustained, and renewed. It can become your pole-star. And if it does not, your pole-star is likely to be unconscious intent. Not that this is necessarily good or bad, but it is so.
Live toward our ideals.
That’s what ideals are, pole-stars.
I think I’ll cite the two Brunton quotes I copied last night from notebook eight, “Reflections on My Life and Writing.” He’s talking about himself, but he’s talking about my life.
“It is the business of my books to act as awakeners rather than as teachers, to make people aware of their higher possibilities, and of the obstacles or limitations within themselves which hinder their realization.” [#86, p. 34]
“I do not wish to clothe men in a new faith but rather to get them to stand as giants and shake off the ropes which keep them imprisoned. I want to get them to depend on a fourth dimensional life now that the old existence has utterly failed them.” [#114, p. 38]