Think Like A Snowflake

This is an invitation into the world of spiritual evolution. It's not what so many want to believe it is. There's no telling a moth how to become a butterfly. It's a physiological process that happens over time.
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This is an invitation into the world of spiritual evolution. It's not what so many want to believe it is. There's no telling a moth how to become a butterfly. It's a physiological process that happens over time. The student's awareness has to be in just the right place for the words of a true spiritual teacher to have an effect. Such spiritual teachers are extremely rare. They have the ability to say what needs to be heard for a particular individual or group at a particular point in time. There is no cookbook. The nature of the transition from linear to non-linear thinking cannot be explained in linear terms. Very few want to hear that, even fewer can believe that, and fewer still are willing to embark upon the path of that transformation.

The greatest spiritual teachers I've known make themselves quite inaccessible. It's not because they don't want to share what they know. Rather, it's because very few people are willing to go through the transformations required before they can even begin to understand what the teacher would like to share.

One of my teachers, a great spiritual Master in India, never spoke to anyone other than the disciples in his ashram... except for once. I was fortunate to be in his presence during that time. At first it was confusing. He would speak of one thing and then another, seemingly unrelated. I remember him talking about Jupiter and then the number five... different things... seemingly randomly. Then somehow, he would weave them all together in my mind with crystalline interconnected precision. It was as if an "Aha!" lightbulb would go off in my head. I realized that to fully understand what this teacher was saying, new thoughts would not be enough. He was transforming my mind into a whole new way of thinking. A way of thinking that was in harmony with how nature actually works.

Our language works in a linear sequential straight line, from point A to point B to point C, etc. We even train our minds to work in that linear manner. Everything follows a line of sequentiality.

In contrast, nature does not work that way. Every thought, every notion, is like the central point of a multidimensional snowflake with unlimited offshoots in every direction. All the offshoots are seamlessly interconnected, each adding a greater depth of insight and understanding into the other.

Human awareness has the capacity to function in that same natural manner as a cosmic computer of unbounded awareness. The ancient Sages (Rishis) refer to that normal mode of human function as "Ritam," a fully interconnected, infinitely dynamic, expanded Consciousness.

In fact, the ancient Sages said that every point in creation is pregnant with knowledge of the Totality. All points are interconnected, like a labyrinth of interconnected snowflakes, permeating all of existence as if one giant Maha-snowflake.

That spiritual teacher's lessons were like a labyrinth of thought. After following one line of thought for a period of time, a seemingly tangential line of thought emerged. That went on as a series until one line of thought weaved back to another, eventually interconnecting them all into a seamlessly unified wholeness. Each line of thought enhanced the understanding and depth of insight into every other line of thought.

As the spiritual Master spoke, my brain function shifted, almost like when a twisted up rubber band twangs into another position. He was freeing me from my linear indoctrinated way of thinking. I was starting to think like a snowflake: multiple lines of reasoning were all simultaneously interconnected in the very way he was leading my brain, my consciousness, to work. It was then that I began to more deeply understand what the phrase "knowledge is structured in consciousness" actually meant.

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