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Spiritual awareness

Spiritual awareness

The walk taken by the seeker to achieve spiritual awareness within our Order, is through the initiatic path.

 

We are talking about that journey, which brings man and his true nature, in the center of his life, freeing him from any overly intrusive influence from the outside world, which can undermine its inner harmony, interfering in the own touch with yourself.



The world in which we live, is our place whe can challenge and experience material realities; the place where we can enjoy the earthly things, living situations and make the experience; very often it happens that, overwhelmed by the frenzy, we come to deceptively identify ourselves with illusory things of material life that attract us or with some of our ambitions, in the mistaken belief that we can only achieve own realization through these.



This process, takes us away dramatically from coming into contact with our true nature, shifting our attention to other things, and creating a very treacherous illusory mechanism, which feeds itself with instant gratification in terms of obtaining earthly things, or getting opportunities in daily life or other material benefits.



The problem does not lie in the worldly life and the joys that can result from material goods, but in the size of which it can reach inside the individual interiority, evicting him from being the center of himself, putting at the first place of importance objects and materials from the outside world; this mechanism so common in the modern man, always has devastating and immediate effects over the person, that by living an unnatural interiority, where the center is no longer himself, but the things that come from the surrounding world, he suffers and loses orientation, not knowing how to find the real realization, but the illusion of being able to make it through things or situations that are external.



There is nothing wrong with enjoying the earthly things, even in abundance, whether in a healthy way, as long as these goods, which should be the graces received, becoming a source of obsession, insecurity, frustration, which does not allow us to afford living without.

 

Great inner weakness, fragility and instability, are reflected in who can be happy and in harmony only when provided with things that are only material, because cannot consider the most important the own self; those who adopt this view of things will always be scared, potentially blackmailed by everything and everyone, frustrated, because to feel good, will always need something that comes from outside, maybe even when that something you can only receive from others, falling succubus in their power.



The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri's famous masterpiece, is a work perennially current, especially under philosophical, symbolic and humanistic interpretation and fits very well, as an example of the way for the attainment of spiritual awareness.



The author takes us on a symbolic journey inside the more  intimate and profound interiority of the human spirit through sophisticated symbolism and allegorical representations of great depth.



In the work of Dante, are portrayed with ruthless efficiency, the consequences of a low inner awareness, the individual, or as in the Canto 5th of the lustful depicts the damned as "at the mercy of the winds that shakes them" or as in Canto 7 ° about the miserlies who, having devoted their lives to money, then in Hell are obliged, as a punishment, to the useless gesture to move perpetually rocks or other heavy objects; this allegory unequivocally represents the futility of their actions perpetrated in life; every concrete manifestation of weakness will be painted in its psychological and behavioral mechanics, through the extraordinarily effective symbolic representations.



Dante Alighieri held the title of Knight Kadosh at the F.S.K.I.P.F.T. the ancient "Fidei Sanctae Kadosh Imperialis Principatus Frater Templarius", an Order of the Templar filiation; as many initiates of his time, he expressed philosophical and cultural messages in a code, which was not possible to get disclosed by the authorities, which at that time, forbid the liberty of thought and expression.



"O you, who have clear minds, take note of the meaning that conceals itself under the veil of clouded verse!

(Hell IX 61-63)



A direct testimony of his deep bond with the Templar Cavalry, Dante, in Canto XXXIII of Paradise, will be led to the perfect vision of the bliss of God as the one who instituted the Rule of the Order: Saint Bernard de Clairvaux.



The Representation of the human condition, through the icons of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is a subtle metaphor, but at the same time inclusive of the whole human life in its existence.


The man, in life, begins in Hell forcibly. As experimenter of everything, in the novelty, he is overwhelmed and he risks of falling victim to himself, by greed or by the search of excess; this is the phase in which the man is "owned" by the things he desires, that they appear bigger than him and who acquire a disproportionate weight in the interiority of the individual, who can not hold the center of its size, independently of if he is getting or not these "material goals."


So is the Purgatory to represent the stage of inner evolution, where man, while continuing to suffer, under the thumb of the material realities placed in its path and his interior inadequacies, he realizes that for the first time begins an inner journey , in order to overcome all this.


Finally, it is with Paradise, which is to realize, in man, the inner dimension's harmony, which stems from a wisdom and a mature, conscious inner life, where man is no longer a slave to his fears, his ambitions, or of his vices or anything external to him, who can now "dominate"; he finally becomes the center of himself, and making satellite anything else; just after all this, he earns Paradise, which is its final inner state now free and sovereign.


It's just striking, that it's considered necessary, for the poet, to live this material dimension, facing from the beginning the so-called "Inferno", if we want then to consciously reach the "Paradise".


Man who has completed this inner journey, is not realizing abstention, even minimally, from the enjoyment of material pleasures, or of earthly life, on the contrary, he will achieve the same experience and the new joy, in addition, of finally being able to enjoy daily life and material things, even more fully, for the first time, because now living in freedom and independence from any mental and spiritual inner cage.

Spiritual awareness - Priory of Sion

Spiritual awareness (Video)