The House of Illusion

There is a common misunderstanding about the function of the Solar Plexus amongst the bunny slope "spiritual" students. In fact, it is the largest and most connected and powerful of all the chakras, and while it is in the "South Half," it's function is to protect and defend your body, your house, your vehicle through which the Divine Spark operates to gain experience. This Master House or Center is called SOLAR for a reason, it is the Center and Light of the Temple or Church. This is the Abbot in his Cathedral.

So within the Natural Order it is like a good guard dog, protecting your space and integrity, and right to live as granted Beingness by the One Light, and owing to no man or Club or phoney violating "school" who gives lip service to "freedom" but can't pass the Test when called on to live by that Prime Directive. **

Yet, such a good protector in its territorial functioning, can become reactive and irrational,  due to accumulated trauma, insecurity, or limited understanding. For the Divine Spark is that of Nous, "knowing that you know." But when immature and in the South Half, it lives in assumed Identities, smug in belief in its "Team" Group consciousness.

The Solar Plexus is the seat of the kama rupa, the desire body, it is the seat of lower manas, the mind faculty identified with this body as self and thus the false "I" or "ego." But it is nonetheless a function of homeostasis, of preserving continuity and self-preservation. This is a decent function unless it gets out of hand.

Still, it is an essential function of "ego" in that it juggles the facts to make one look "right." It defends the status quo in your own self-image. It is the fantasy practice of the ego that if it keeps Affirming that it is "beautiful & full of Grace" that this will bring such about. It tries to make you look good, despite all the mounting evidence that your life is fantasy series of fabricated "wins" and that you are"on top of your game." Successful.  A winner. When in fact, IT IS ALL coming apart.

Thus it is also called, as my teacher (under Vitvan) explained: The House of Illusion. That is, it juggles images to paint a pretty picture of how things are going. This is that aspect of the astral world of which it is said, "Under Every Flower Hides a Serpent."

You know that astral version of spirituality. You can see it in all those New Age illustrations like Celestial Seasonings calendars, where lush landscapes sit under a floridly colored sky, a Maxfield Parish illustration. It is all Good Times. And the Beautiful One is YOU!   A "teacher," a "leader," with the Big House on the Hill!

 

Vitvan called this the "Flower Newhouse" version of the Teachings. It is full of Hopium, and Vanity, and the presentation to the world that you are "in the know," a "navigator" in the Wisdom.

If you see such a presentation of the "Teaching" all full of jewel like imagery, and faint confession of the struggle to rise out of your own Darkness of the South Half fantasy world, then you know this is Reflected and Sanitized "wisdom" within the HOUSE OF ILLUSION.

You may know of such a person, who in private will cry out that they are alone in their marriage, not understood and struggling in misery; yet, they keep  putting up a front of images of smiley-faced propaganda of connubial bliss, and a constant flow of Hallmark Card pretty people imagery.

Somehow they have not yet come to the honesty, and relief, of publicly confessing just how Hard It Is, and how they are Lost. They still cling to "looking good" to gather the admiration of "friends." They have no sense of humor about the ridiculousness of their situation, and will get indignant about being made fun of or if their pretentiousness is pointed out! Because they take their "identity" so-o-o-o seriously!

 "I laugh at those who cannot laugh at themselves." ---Vitvan

Sharing the Path of Hard Knocks on the Wilderness trail of the First Crossing is not a Junior High school popularity contest. If anything, you are now an outcast.

Whereas one who is truly awakening, must take a hard look and say, "I'm tired of this shit. Of what value is the approbation of other sleepers? Aren't I better off just being true to where I am, even if this means alone until I find my compass? Do I have integrity or not? Must I keep pretending "all is well" and I am "on top of it all," when in fact, I am very ambivalent about going forward with this Purificatory Process as it will Unwind the False Idols of my Persona I have clung to."

For the Unwinding is a letting go of images, the Freedom to be Nothing. The relief to confess "I am truly Unhappy but in the NOW of that. This too shall pass, and I will trust the Process to Work through me, even as I suffer."

And so friend and fellow wayfarer,  should you travel the Pilgrim Path, take your rest from time to time in those brightly lit Jolly Waystations full of colorful lights and the charade of happy faces, but don't linger. Keep movin' on. 

For Gnosis is not a Temple YOU build, market and promote. It is an Oasis you stumble into when exhausted and lost in the Night, and comes not of your Doing, but of your UN-doing...and surrender to being the Cosmic Fool. 

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** (after Matthew 23)

Then the Master said to the crowds and to his disciples,  “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' (Vitvan’s) seat,  so practise and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practise.

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land [e.g. to Africa] to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.  So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”