OK, so who came here thinking they would come across a blog about spiritual purpose? My sincere apologies (I would have expected the same, based on the title!), but it isn't. What I am interested in here is what skills and learning from the physical world have a use when we are living in Higher realms, such as the astral (for a quick explanation of the concept of the various planes of existence, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planes_of_existence and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_plane* - this is particularly worth doing for an explanation of some of the different meanings applied to these terms).
To illustrate this, consider food. The accounts I've read (including those of the controversial and flawed author http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobsang_Rampa**) suggest that eating food is something we do not need to do on the astral. Now, before you get all glib and say "Of course we don't, food is just a physical thing", keep in mind that it is possible to create a thought form of food and consume that astrally. That is, however, a waste of effort, as on the astral world one can absorb energy directly, and obtain the sustenance one needs that way.
When I discussed this with someone I knew in the 1980s, she responded along the lines "Well, what is the point of learning about things like nutrition?"
The points are, in my view:
(1) any lesson about respecting, caring for and looking after an entity (whether human or other) or object (including places as well as things) is a lesson which is never wasted, as the ATTITUDE is useful in other circumstances
(2) in this particular case, learning about taking in the "right stuff" is a principle which also applies to energy.
In actual fact, we can apply the lessons around taking in "beneficial" energy and keeping out "harmful" energy now, here, in this level of existence.
What energies are beneficial to your psychic health? Where do you find those energies? Are other energies complementary to their absorption? For instance, in much the same way that some Caltrate is sold with Vitamin D on the basis that it is beneficial, do you find, say, contact with the energy of the sea on a windy day helps you to meditate on calmness elsewhere?
My opinion is that most things we learn in this world have a direct usefulness elsewhere. Many of the lessons are of obvious use - lessons about ourselves, about the way we interact with other people, the attitudes we have towards places, animals and ideas, and so forth.
However, there may well be a more subtle level of lesson. In some cases, that subtle lesson may allow us to turn something around from being either an apparent waste of time and effort or even harmful to something which could possibly be a benefit.
As an example of that (I'll probably rewrite this as soon as I come up with something that is better!), consider the habit many people have of judging others on the basis of appearance. This is not just a case of judging people on the basis of their physical attractiveness (a fleeting matter), but also pre-judging people on the basis of characteristics such as whether they appear neat. Now, none of these approaches provides any reliable indication as to a person's character: after a few dates, most young people would probably be well aware that
(a) beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and
(b) attractive physical appearance does not necessarily mean attractive character (they can occur together, however: I've found some groups can be biased against those with an attractive appearance).
If I take the example of someone who looks dishevelled or unkempt (incidentally, if you ever want to check the meaning of any words, there is a free on-line dictionary at http://www.wiktionary.org/), what about the possibility that they were up late with a sick child (including situations where the unkempt one is male), or possibly they have a mental health problem (such as agoraphobia) and have achieved a major accomplishment in being out and about at all, and their appearance is the result of that struggle? What about the possibility that they consider people judge others by superficial matters such as appearance and they wish to have no part of such rubbish? :)
Appearance is something which I am judged by in my day job, as a professional engineer; I don't particularly like it, and I don't consider it is an accurate way for a client to decide whether ior not they're going to get professional service, but if I want clients to hire the company I work for so that I can get paid so I can pay the rent and bills and buy food and clothing, it's what I have to put up with - for now. At least I can do so with some awareness of the wrongness of it.
So ... most lessons and learning have other applications we aren't always aware of. Learning as children to keep ourselves physically clean has parallels with cleansing our aura; cleaning our house to keep it healthy (I'm excluding, in this case, cleaning for the purposes of "showing off") has parallels with keeping our psychic environment clean; learning about nutrition has lessons about energy as well. (Those who have a desire to have a children so they can create a heritage are sewing the seeds for wanting to create a spiritual heritage as they evolve further.)
In the case of this article, some of the subtle lessons and unexpected bonuses were actually the links I came across in the course of incidental research - links which led to writing this article to taking MUCH longer than it should, given it's length, links which I will now, dear reader, leave you so I can go and explore them further :)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
* When I was referring to the Wikipedia "disambiguation" page for "astral", I was surprised to see "astral plane" given a notation that it was a controversial explanation of "out of the body experiences" [i.e., astral travel]; I thought it was the most logical and sensible explanation, personally :) , although other explanations are valid in some circumstances - meaning some dreams don't necessarily have significance or meaning)
** The controversy around Lobsang Rampa is strongest in relation to his claim that the body, which was born Cyril Hoskin, was "taken over" by the spirit of a Tibetan Lama. This process is also referred to as transmigration (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmigration) or becoming a "walk in": for more on this topic, see the book "Strangers Among Us" by Ruth Montgomery [my copy is one of the books which has disappeared over the years, so I can't provide publishing details and an ISBN, but I did find copies of it [today] on the Amazon books website), and the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk-in (which, when I accessed it [on Sunday 16th September, 2007] had a note that it's neutrality was disputed). While I was doing the web search on this topic, it became there are quite a few other pages on the topic, such as http://www.greatdreams.com/walkin.htm (which I haven't looked at in any great detail, so don't consider the link an endorsement). There was a period in my early 20s when what I experienced may have been a case of someone partially "walking in", or partially taking over my body, to help me get through a time of extreme emotional distress. This could also perhaps be "overshadowing": one of my guides being in my aura and influencing me strongly, to keep me going and prevent me committing suicide until I could come to terms with some issues.
Going back to Rampa, the flaws are - in my opinion - Rampa's blatant sexism, which leads to some comments which are - again, in my opinion - not correct. The Wikipedia article contains links which detail the criticisms around Rampa, some of which relate to Tibetan culture.
Nevertheless, Rampa's books remain quite a good introduction to metaphysics and psychic matters.
This post's photo was taken in eastern Victoria, near Mallacoota.
Tags: purpose, planes of existence, astral, dreams, life lessons, mirrorology, Lobsang Rampa
First published: Sunday 16th September, 2007
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