Understanding Polarities

2003-3-30 05:19:00

John C Writes:
I am going to start off by quoting something from DK [Djwhal Khul] which totally rings true to me. I think it summarizes a lot of the current discussion, and also I want to show you that I am not disagreeing with you, but I would like a few points clarified.

(Discipleship in the New Age I - Talks to Disciples - Part V, by Alice A. Bailey)

"Increasingly must your inner life be lived upon the mental plane. Steadily and without descent must the attitude of meditation be held - not for a few minutes each morning or at specific moments throughout the day, but constantly, all day long. It infers a constant orientation to life and the handling of life from the angle of the soul. This does not refer to what is so often referred to as "turning one's back upon the world." The disciple faces the world but he faces it from the level of the soul, looking clear-eyed upon the world of human affairs. "In the world, yet not of the world" is the right attitude - expressed for us by the Christ. Increasingly must the normal and powerful life of the emotional, astral, desire and glamorous nature be controlled and rendered quiescent by the life of the soul, functioning through the mind. The emotions which are normally self-centered and personal must be transmuted into the realizations of universality and impersonality; the astral body must become the organ through which the love of the soul can pour; desire must give place to aspiration and that, in its turn, must be merged in the group life and the group good; glamour must give place to reality, and the pure light of the mind must pour into all the dark places of the lower nature.

"These are the results of mental polarization and are brought about by definite meditation and the cultivation of the meditative attitude."

I was with him right up till he used the word "polarization". For some reason, that word bothers me a lot. Magnets and sunglasses are polarized. But I feel to apply that word to people is to treat them as objects. An object is something people use. People put an object in a place and the object stays put until a person moves it. As a person, I resent the implication that I am supposed to "stay in my place until told to move".

JJ:
Looks like you are polarized by the use of certain words.

Polarization applies to the activity of the life within the form rather than the form itself. Even if we go to subatomic particles, we find that protons are polarized in the positive charge and electrons in the negative. Then each atom as a whole is polarized in either positive or negative. The same applies to molecules in relation to each other. The polarization of the various particles causes attraction or repulsion which creates all form.

All this polarization, which is the foundation of creation, is caused through the attention of some consciousness, great or small. A human has great consciousness in comparison to an atom, but consciousness of some degree causes the multiplicity of polarization nonetheless.

To say that since polarization is used in reference to an object makes it insulting to use it in reference to a human does not seem reasonable to me.

For one thing, all polarization is the result of some type of consciousness at play and not the result of lifeless form.

Secondly, we use many words interchangeably between humans and various form creations.

For instance, we may call a classy car "beautiful" in one breath and a human in another.

After we get the bugs out of our computer we may declare it in a good state of health, just as a doctor may state concerning his patient.

We may declare a magnet "powerful" as well as a human who is strong.

Because "beautiful," healthy" and "strong" are applied to material objects, should we take offense that they are applied to humans?

I wouldn't think so as long as the words were not negative. However, if I called my car a "useless piece of junk," and then transposed that phrase toward a human, the person would indeed have cause to take offense.

Polarization is not a negative or positive word. It is merely a word to describe what is happening, as in turning left or right, something that can apply to an object in motion or a human.

John C:
As a person, I resent the implication that I am supposed to "stay in my place" until told to move.

JJ:
It is difficult to ascertain where this thought is coming from. No one, no thing and no principle is making you stay in your place. No one tells you to stay in one polarization or move from one polarization to another. This is entirely up to your free will.

John quoting JJ:
Actually, there is an instant in which the switch is made, however it would not happen at the point of waking up, but likely to be in the midst of a point of tension in the middle of the day. This point of switching comes after many lifetimes of effort.

John:
I didn't mean "waking up" literally. That was an expression. (I hope you understood that.) OK, supposing there is a threshold (i.e. a single point) at which one switches from one polarity to the other, but could we not also say that one approaches that point gradually?

JJ:
Yes, that is what I was pointing out by saying the switch would follow lifetimes of effort. Many lifetimes of working up to something is pretty gradual.

Glenys asked me to comment more fully on this statement. Actually John's next statement does a good job.

John C:
For example, if you had a pot of water on the stove, you could say with definiteness that the water is either boiling or it is not boiling, but at the same time, you could gradually INCREASE the temperature of the water until it approached boiling, then when the exact boiling point is reached, the water is now boiling.

JJ:
John's statement is a good correspondence. When a person is in the emotional polarity, he accumulates many pressures that push him toward the mental polarity. He resists many of them, but more pressures and incentives keep showing up until resistance is futile. Then comes a moment of time that he lets go of the emotional hold and switches to the mental domination.

The general polarity is achieved at the second initiation, but even during this time the emotional polarity can take back temporary domination during periods of stress. It is at the third initiation that he learns to "hold the mind steady in the light" and is able to hold his polarization in the mind/soul, come hell or high water.

John C:
Does this make any sense? I still think there are ranges on the emotional plane and ranges on the mental plane, and as we evolve spiritually we advance from one small degree to another, however we are "polarized" at one particular point whether it's in the emotional band or in the mental band. We may vary up or down a little, but that point is "home base" until we evolve a little more.

JJ:
It is true that we evolve in degrees and there are many degrees to hurdle as we pass through the physical, emotional, mental, Buddhic and other planes. The degrees within the planes are not strongly differentiated and thus we do not have the appearance of strongly different poles as we do between the emotional and mental planes (when looking at them from a wholeness point of view). Because of the powerful contrasts between the emotional and mental planes, the word "polarity" is often used in reference to our relationship with them.

John C:
If that's not the way to look at it, here's another way. I've never cut stones, so I don't know if this story is true or not, but I heard the story about a stonecutter who was trying to crack a rock and he hit it with a hammer 99 times. The stone did not crack. Then he hit the stone one more time and it cracked. His apprentice said that it was the 100th try that did it, but the master stone-cutter said: "No it was all 100 times that did it, but the result was not seen until the 100th time."

So, which would be the correct way to view spiritual progress, according to your philosophy? I tend to believe it's a little of both: we make steady progress, though perhaps the results are not always visible every day, but taken over 10-20 years, at Glenys said, we should be noticing some changes. JJ said it would take several lifetimes, but shouldn't we also be expecting some signs of change sooner than that?


JJ:
Both are good analogies to describe the gradual movement toward the shift. As one moves from one small degree to another in the emotional plane there are visible effects that transpire around him. But like the diamond, there seems to be no break in the emotional hold. In fact, the emotional hold is strongest just before the shift and weakest when he first begins his polarization in the emotional world. Do not forget that there was physical polarization before there was an emotional one. The astral world is an illusion and did not even exist when conscious man first appeared on the earth.