The Cycles and Causes of Recurring Difficulties in Relation to Spiritual Development and Progress

0:00 It is a limitation of our normal mental mode of understanding that we do not tend to take into account the impact of time and the cyclical nature of development. We expect things to move in a straight line. We expect progress to be continuous and in a single direction. When we overcome a particular issue or obstacle, we believe it is in our past, over and done with. When it recurs at a later stage of the spiritual journey, we become concerned or confused about whether we have made any progress at all, since we are apparently confronted with the very same issue we already dealt with and put behind us. There are several intertwined issues involved in the recurrence of difficulties already faced and overcome. First, there's the law of the minimum. The human being is a complex amalgam of a number of different parts and powers of being which have been brought together and found a rough balance for working to create an individual lifetime and life experience.

1:13 Change does not happen in all parts of the being at once. Rather, a modest change in one part allows the progress to open up in other parts of the being. To some degree. What was locked in to a way of doing things now has the opportunity to make further adjustments. Thus, a change at the mental level can lead to progress on the vital or physical levels. Facing and overcoming a specific difficulty thus is not necessarily addressing it either for all parts of the being or for all time, as in some cases an absolute minimum of progress needed to be made in one part so others could begin to adjust. One then returns to the original issue with a new foundation and basis that has developed as a result of the consequential development brought about by the 1st minimum change. The second issue follows from the first. We may eliminate a particular issue from one part of the being, but not from the others.

2:25 Thus the difficulties maintain a foothold somewhere in the being. If removed from any mental sanction, they can still provide a vital impulse or a physical craving, or fall even deeper into the subconscious realms, there to remain encapsulated until some circumstance triggers their reappearance. This brings us to 1/3 issue, which is the cycles of development. We do not grow and progress in a straight line. We make some progress, we face a set back or get redirected to some degree. We open up to new forces and energies, and then we thereby gain new insight and new powers of action to address the recurrent difficulty from a new place higher in the cycle of our evolutionary development, but with the new abilities provided by the new insights and powers of action we have gained in the interim. We come then to the larger question of the unity of all existence of all humanity, such that as long as a particular force or activity remains alive and active anywhere, it has the potential to invade and impact any individual. Particularly if that individual is not expecting it, is off his guard, or is in a state of relative non observance, such as during a sleep state.

3:59 We have documented circumstances of individuals who are deeply committed to a humanist agenda who happened to pass by a Nazi rally in 1930s Germany. The individual thought he could simply observe what was happening, but found that he too, despite his abhorrence at the Nazi agenda, found himself shouting and participating in the hate filled environment. Which of us is truly so free of any human responsiveness that we can withstand powerful vital forces working and others around us and impacting our vital envelope or aura As a result, progress is necessarily something that occurs in stages and cycles, and we need to overcome the mental limitation that fails to recognize that there is no final resolution until the force itself has been either eliminated or transformed in its entirety from all of nature through evolutionary development and the influx of a new power of consciousness that can harmonize and overcome the limits of the former evolutionary stages. Trior Bindo notes quote, It is quite normal for difficulties to come back and it is not a proof that no progress has been made. The recurrence after one has

5:33 thought one has conquered is not unaccountable. I have explained in my writings what happens when a habitual movement long embedded in the nature is cast out. It takes refuge in some less enlightened part of the nature, and when cast out of the rest of the nature, it takes refuge in the subconscious, and from there surges up when you least expect it, or comes up in dreams or sudden inconscient movements. Or it goes out and remains in wait in the environmental being through which the universal nature works, and attacks from there as a force from outside, trying to recover its Kingdom by a suggestion or repetition of old movements.

6:23 One has to stand fast till the power of return fades away. These returns or attacks must be regarded not as parts of oneself, but as invasions and rejected without allowing any depression or discouragement. If the mind does not sanction them, if the vital refuses to welcome them, if the physical remains steady and refuses to obey the physical urge, then the recurrence of the thought, the vital impulse, the physical feeling will begin to lose its last holds. And finally, they will be too feeble to cause any trouble.

7:07 End Quote. Reference. Shrioro, Bindu and the Mother Looking from Within, Chapter 5. Attitudes on the Path, pages 156 to 157.