The word “transcendent” is thrown around a lot. And people are always talking about how do we reach transcendence, what is transcendence? How do we get to the point where we transcend? Well, transcend what? What is it that we’re trying to do by transcending? What is the state of transcendence? All of these questions come into play, come into being, and have to be addressed.
How does one change the state of being engulfed in the world to being above the world, to be transcendent above the ordinary things of our daily existence? We deal with our emotional selves on a regular basis, and when we are overcome by emotion, we are in what could be called an emotional torpor. We can be either angry, or happy, or sad, or depressed, or lustful, or livid, but all of these things are torporous. They’ve taken us over, and we are under control of a very powerful illusory force that controls our being.
Now, in our life, we go through these forces all the time. We have needs that often control our emotional self. When our needs are not satisfied we go into a kind of turmoil because our expectations haven’t been met, or we’re having difficulty meeting our expectations. And people go into depressions, they go into rages, they do all kinds of things because their expectations haven’t been met. And this comes in conjunction with a lot of modern psychology which tells you to feel your angst. Feel your difficulty! Express your difficulty! Don’t repress anything.
Well, if you want to transcend, not only do you have to learn to repress, you have to learn to get rid of the things that make you into a torporous being. So, we have a set of priorities in our existence; we consider certain things important and certain things not important and, depending on that list of priorities, we are either ascending or descending in our attempt to transcend.
What happens is, depending on where we set our goals, and set our intentions, we either go deeper into the world or we go away from the world. And the question that we have to ask ourselves constantly is; in which direction are we going? Are we going more into illusion or are we removing ourselves from illusion?
When you begin to understand the nature of our emotional self, the nature of our connection to illusion, you begin to understand the nature of transcendence, and the nature of falling from grace, falling from a higher station.
So if we want to bring ourselves to a higher plane, we have to understand what goes on at that plane even though we may not yet have arrived there. So what are transcendent qualities? What’s our connection to transcendent qualities, and are we comfortable in transcendent qualities?
You know, some people can’t handle being at peace. Some people can’t handle being calm. They need a certain amount of excitement all the time or else they feel they’re not going anywhere. For these people meditation is kind of out of the question because they can’t do it, because they can’t bring themselves to the point that they don’t need to satisfy their emotional need for excitement, for action…
