Progress is an interesting word. What does it mean to go forward? What does it mean to progress? What does it mean to change states? What does it mean to go from one place to another? What happens? How does it happen? What’s the purpose of it happening? Do you have to have intention in order to have real progress? Can progress be accidental? How does it occur?
There are a lot of answers and there are a lot of different scenarios, but it is evident that on the spiritual path a lot of what is called progress is to go through what you have been through and erase it. To go backwards and do away with it. To dive into your karma and somehow dissipate it. To leave behind what you have brought with you and what you have picked up. To somehow make a break with the past and begin a different future. To somehow leave behind the baggage that we carry. To take our backpack off and realize that we don’t need one on this path. To do away with all of that whch we picked up, up to the point that we got here.
This means a lot of things. One of the things that it means is that we intentionally make a break with our worldly existence and we put it into perspective. That perspective is that in the spiritual path, many of the things we have encountered in our existence are not helpful in moving forward. Not only aren’t they helpful, they are a hinderance. Since they are a hinderance, we have to somehow go back through them and drop them. This can be done in different ways. Some are quicker than others. Alexander and the Gordian Knot is a very quick way of unknotting knotty situations. You just strike them and the knot is gone. You don’t bother unknott ing them, you just throw them out.
Are we capable of that? Are we capable of making clean cuts, or is it necessary for us before we make a cut in order to make that cut, we have to go through and understand how it was formed and go through all the machinations of the questioning.
