The Spiritual Marriage

[Desi]

The Mystical Wedding
Higher consciousness is real — it is not a fantasy. If you come out of
a supposed deep meditation without improved character, deeper wisdom,
and greater love for all mankind, you can be certain you did not
experience higher consciousness while you were in your meditative
state. Higher consciousness changes you for the better whenever you
come into contact with it. It not only enriches you personally but in
making you a finer human being, it enriches humanity. Only, perhaps,
in taverns and in gambling casinos will you find as many pretenders as
you will likely find along the path to higher consciousness. So many
would-be aspirants would rather talk, dream, and indulge their
opinions than get on with the marvelous prospect of really becoming
enlightened.

As you proceed toward higher consciousness, be careful not to be taken
in by dreamers who show no signs of character, courage, kindness, or
clear-mindedness. At the same time, avoid as you would an epidemic the
temptation to pretend you are experiencing higher consciousness when
you have no clear signs of self-improvement to indicate you have
ventured anywhere at all in your quest.
Specific events must occur in your life if you truly discover your
higher consciousness. By now you have studied and hopefully practiced
character development, faith, love, and the levels of transcendental
consciousness. You have developed the habit of patient practice and
the Good Will Witness state.
As you develop day by day, you will proceed through the various planes
of consciousness. At the same time you also move through the stages of
the heart. Accepting yourself as you are and going forward
steadfastly, you will experience most all the exalted states of
consciousness mentioned here. Great adventures await you.
Different aspirants have different experiences and it's wonderful to
observe that each person's path is individual and distinct to him or
her. Each enlightened person contributes something unique to the
overall experience of humanity. Nevertheless, nearly all aspirants on
most of the paths to higher consciousness participate in a sublime
experience called the mystical marriage. This great wedding is an
activity of your higher consciousness which occurs when — and only
when — you are appropriately prepared physically (in the conduct of
your daily life), mentally, emotionally, and egoically.
Mystical Wedding
Dedicated to Your Higher Self
As you strive to live an honorable life and be a good person, you find
you need to make many sacrifices. Many opportunities to get ahead in
your personal life or career often require some sort of compromise or
dishonesty on your part but you discover you're unable to make
personal advancements which require a compromise of your ideals and
growing sense of what is right. At times you very likely will have to
fight, take risks, and stand up for your ideals. These crises or
turning points often become times of loss or sorrow in that you will
lose friends, opportunities, or be thought ill of by those who have a
casual attitude about morality, ethics, or the value of the lives of
others. You, however, feel you have no choice but to be true to
yourself and that you must necessarily take the consequences of your
heartfelt commitments.
Proceeding in this way, you grow a great deal in your character and
become a fitting person to experience higher consciousness. You become
a person who will not try to dominate others or take advantage of
people when you have greater power and insight through your
enlightenment.

You may also, during this formative time, feel periods of loneliness.
You feel out of touch with former friends who have fewer values and
sensitivities than you do. You also feel deeply lonely because you
have not yet experienced your higher consciousness. You are caught
between two worlds; yet you have the courage and conviction to go on
into the unknown, whatever the consequences. You have faith in the
reality and the supreme value of what you are endeavoring to do.
After many trials and deeply important learning experiences, you begin
to form a humble but gratifying self-esteem. You feel at home in your
quest and realize you are more committed to it now than you were even
at the excited, enthusiastic beginning. Indeed, your determination and
delight in the path are consolidated and strong. Perhaps at this time
you've experienced some higher moods or tasted of samadhi. Perhaps
not.

Mystical Wedding
The Mystic Marriage
Suddenly — by a timing you cannot perceive or understand — you find
yourself thoroughly committed and dedicated to your higher self, even
though you have not experienced it in many — or any — direct ways.
Somehow your life has been coordinated by subtle means so that your
most special day of "the wedding" may come. Generally, this wedding
experience does not occur deliberately and no preparation other than
your good conduct of life is involved. Because you are living
dedicated to and committed to your higher consciousness and your
Creator, a change must necessarily occur in you. It's only a matter of
time, and somehow today is the day.
Determined to be true to your path, no matter what, you suddenly feel
yourself called to sit down, to pause in your activities, and enter a
meditation or reverie. Perhaps you feel like praising the Lord or are
unable to speak the deep gratitude and love you feel in your heart.
Suddenly this major event in your life, which once you never dreamed
could happen to you, begins to thrill you. Deeply calm but sweetly
surrendered, you feel an inner upheaval. A delightful, ecstatic
movement of energy begins to rumble or shoot up your body. From your
lower back and legs, powerful, ecstatically thrilling energy warmly
(on rare occasions it may feel cool) pushes with great strength all
the way up your body past your heart and throat, face, and into your
head. This rush of ecstasy pushes on beyond your head and out into
infinite space! All you are aware of is infinite, super-vivid light,
love, and power.

You might later reflect that you felt, in this state, like a bird
finally let out of its tiny cage to experience universal freedom. You
might also reflect that you were not aware of your inert body sitting
there motionless. However, while in this state you are only aware of
the infinite nature. While in the experience, you do not reflect on
your body, mind, or concoct some inappropriate metaphors. Rather, you
experience your lofty and grand higher consciousness. You now know
your essence, your source, and that it is ever so real and profoundly
worth any sacrifice. However, even these mental thoughts and this
verbiage are too slow for the state you're in. These reflections occur
only afterward.
This ineffable rush of consciousness is called the wedding, or the
mystical marriage. In this indescribable event your finite, limited
consciousness, your distinct individuality, has embraced your infinite
self, your spiritual or divine self, and it's love at first sight.
This rush of your finite being into your infinite being is an embrace
you will never forget and never want to leave. Your feeling nature has
become one with your knowing nature. Your small will has met and
abides for a time in the greater will.
Mystical Wedding
Returning Blissfully
However, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your view, your
body can only stand so much ecstasy and bliss. Also, the higher
consciousness does not want to crisp you into a cinder, to wipe out
your individual life. So, you return blissfully and ever so sweetly to
regular consciousness, usually twenty minutes to half an hour after
the experience begins. You come out feeling not only that you have
been in heaven but everything you behold around you in your room, or
in the park, seems to have that hue, that tincture, of blessedness.
You feel astonished and amazed that such an experience happened to
you, that it was so much grander, vaster, and more powerful than you
could have ever conceived it to be.
With profound memory of the experience and a yearning it happen again
soon, you resume your normal activities and find yourself keenly
motivated to meditate again whenever the opportunity presents itself.
No longer is meditation a chore or a difficulty. You now know what
meditation can provide and what a life lived for higher values can
mean to you.
Other people may mention that they see light around you. Dogs, cats,
butterflies may love to be close to you, to enjoy the free flow of
higher consciousness as its momentum continues to a beautiful extent,
resonating in your individual life. Little girls and boys might think
of you as their dear friend and feel perfectly at home with you on
first meeting. Financial and other opportunities may also gravitate
toward you as if moved by an invisible hand.

You see the world in a new perspective. You are now feeling your
completeness. The finite wave of the infinite ocean has sensed its
true source and how great that source really is. In this mystical
marriage your finite and infinite nature have embraced in love. From
now on they will work together, the finite and the infinite, each
serving and helping one another as mates, as partners in love.
Likely you do not understand after this first experience what the
wedding really means to you and your life. You may have many questions
but this new sweetness in your life tends to give you faith and
patient confidence that you will know everything that you need to
know. After all, that great consciousness has embraced you as its own.
From this point on, you conduct your life like a wave on an ocean of
joy. You see people and things as part of this oceanic consciousness.
You recognize how few people sense or are in any way aware of their
true nature and birthright, so you strive to be helpful and inspiring,
but never dominating or proselytizing. Each individual must proceed at
his own rate — which is based on the development of character and a
willingness to surrender egocentricity for a state of humble self-
surrender.
Your greatly stretched and transparent ego now seeks to re-experience
the celestial wedding, to experience the divine lover. The ego seeks
to arrange time and appropriate circumstances so that the finite
individual consciousness may rush into the arms of the infinite
consciousness often and without interruption.
You begin to realize that these ecstatic meditations and towering
exaltations are not an end in themselves but something more is about
to happen.

Mystical Wedding
You Are Being Changed
As your finite and infinite nature play together and ecstatic rapture
fills your being, you begin to discover that from the very first
embrace, the very first wondrous experience of the rapture and
unification of your being, something new has been planted within you,
much like a seed. During the colossal periods of unification with the
higher consciousness your mind and ego are completely absorbed in the
universal awareness. However, you then find yourself coming down out
of that state to function in your daily life, conducting regular
activities against the background of immense joy and a sense of
fulfillment.
Still, you begin to realize that the goal is not yet reached. The
wedding, no matter how beautiful, has not had its true fruition.
Somehow you yourself are being changed. While the wedding was very
transforming in the new perspective and in the new powerful comfort
that you realized, you now understand that there is a good part of
your daily life and consciousness which remains separate from the
higher self, separate from the higher consciousness, except when in
deep embrace in meditation. You begin to recognize that you are now as
if "with child." Somehow a new being is stirring within you. This new
being, this seedling, is of the quality of the higher consciousness;
yet it is growing within you in your regular daily consciousness. This
inner life continues to develop as the days and often months go by.

And now, on another great and special day — perhaps even a few days in
a row which have been suddenly made available to you, a vacation or
special time off from work — you find yourself extremely quiet and
ever so full of the ecstasy of higher consciousness. You become very
still and, like a woman in labor, totally concentrated on the birth
that is about to occur. This birth begins to have the feeling of
inevitability. This birth challenges your mind with this mystery — a
birth which, in its coming forth, pushes your mind and emotions back
into a reliance and trust on a great life process which is in the
hands of a master midwife.

Mystical Wedding
The Birth
Gradually, birth occurs. Then, you suddenly realize the cry of your
new being! You know in your totality that you are reborn. Your birth
is a transformation of your finite consciousness. You now understand.
You have become, truly, a new creature. You are a new person, free of
old tendencies, habits, and attitudes which have bothered you
throughout your life and caused harm and misery to yourself and
others. You are new. You are filled with the infinite consciousness
and yet you are able to maintain that realization of the infinite
consciousness here in your sweet finitude. You, the individual, are a
conscious part of the infinite ocean of awareness; yet you are human,
finite, and distinct also.
You wonder at the birth. You wonder at your Creator. You realize that
you now are the finite beloved of the infinite. It is no longer a
matter of "something within" your consciousness being married to the
infinite consciousness. That was during the period of the wedding.
Now, your entire being — inside and out — is reborn. You are aware of
the infinite consciousness moving in every cell and tissue of your
being, from your toes to your hair. You recognize yourself completely
renewed, and the beloved of your Creator! Your life takes on immortal
and eternal dimensions. Your wonder and your joy, along with your
gratitude, are never-ending.
Most all true aspirants for higher consciousness experience this
wedding and great rebirth. May you in your quest one day know yourself
and the higher consciousness in this new incomparable way.