AVANT SOUL

What is embracing the octopus? For most of us, there is one obvious truth, one core issue which we spend our entire life avoiding, or coming to terms with. The octopus is one of increase: the increasing speed, volume and "multiple taskings" that modern life has become. We reinvent faster ways to access information, and for some of us, the online world is becoming a separate universe. Almost, but not quite. Because the human soul contains the lifeforce that governs the grand intelligence which maps both outer space and cyber space. You might indeed interface with your interactive broker, but there's one interaction with your soul which supersedes every technical distraction. And when at last you are away from the computer screen, when you return to timeless pursuits of food, sex, and human relationships, in one sense nothing has changed.

There is and ever will remain a search for meaning, integration, and understanding. The octopus determines how well or how poorly you distract yourself from your life's core issues. For most of us it truly does come down to one or two things. While most of the world's peoples are concerned with survival, and the world's media seems concerned with either marketing or advertising, mixed with entertainment, the polarities of relationships do not change. There is your relationship of your self to others. There is your relationship of your day-to-day self with your self within. Most interesting, there is the relationship of your inner self to the grandeur of the lifeforce, that ineffable mystery which some people see as Divine Spirit, the Creator of your soul, AKA God.

In the midst of all the new-fangled "next big things," in the midst of the latest fiber optics, and the finest super-conducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) products, there are aspects of the lifeforce which remain consistent. Your body is aging. You have so many breaths to integrate your experience to understanding. If, in some future world, we are connected to indestructible parts that promise trouble-free existence in a world where bodies are repairable and we achieve a transient immortality, the spiritual component will always take precedent. That's because, manufacturer's promises to the contrary, collagen can only go so far. Death is inevitable. Consciousness is indestructible.

There are one or two core issues which will dog you throughout your days. Your life is less a concern for telecommunications bandwidth than it is with being forced, like it or not, to deal with these core issues, to learn how to embrace an octopus.

It seems negative, yet truly it isn't. The mapping of the soul involves a search for meaning, and meaning has never been dependent upon technology. Advancing technologies and data streams will be changing; techniques and tools we use to communicate with one another must evolve. Yet the basic dilemma of intimacy with the personal self and with others remains unbowed. The emperor has new clothes....but the kingdom of consciousness contains every technological breakthrough, and within it remain ancient problems concerning how we treat one another....and especially, how we respond and answer to the individuality of all life. Cosmic responsibility, right at home.

In a sense, there will always be a dilemma of how to navigate the map of the soul so that we grow and evolve in the spiritual kingdom, a dimension which gets overlooked with the faster lanes and multiplying channels on the Internet Superhighway. The dimension of the inner worlds, where we dream, where we love one another, where we receive and give affection, where we create or destroy life and come to know our personal relationship with God, is one dimension that is timeless. Embracing the octopus, remembering that core issues have not changed, are challenges that will haunt you again and again. The reason that one core issue in your life tends to remain unchangeable is that it proves itself to be the one or two aspects which bring you the greatest growth (painful or not), and the furthest deepening of your understanding as a spiritual being.

For some it is an issue of intimacy. For others it is an issue of self-esteem. For some it is a dilemma concerning lack, or misplaced, abundance. For others it is an issue of addiction or power; for others an issue of health. There are at least one or two aspects that seem to have been present since you have been a teenager, going back even to childhood.

It boils down to the ways in which we allow our joy for self-expression to be heard or seen in the world. Joy is a spiritual component. Joy is not solved by tackling the data issues occurring as 1's and 0's traveling over fiber as pulses of light. Joy isn't that issue of fiber optics, bandwidth, instant messaging, or wavelengths. The joy that arises in your life can only be found in the relationships you have with the immortal lifeforce. There is no real substitute for tenderness and for the contact of skin to skin, heart to mind, mind to soul. Although your computer may be a substitute for the parent or child you never had, it is, quite frankly, a lousy dance partner at the cantina and a dubious walking partner through Henry David Thoreau's woods.

Your computer is not immortal. Your computer is not the Blessed Mother of the Clear Light. Your computer is not Christ Jesus or God the Father. And, though many will try to argue with me, and will persist in giving their full attention to their computer, your computer is not your immortal soul.

I believe that we arrive in this world only as we define our terms in our search for meaning. That ultimate meaning can only be as lasting as your ability to see through your own distractions. The things you need to work on are really very simple. Embracing the octopus is a metaphor for understanding, that just because you have gotten more skilled at multi-tasking, doesn't mean that you can delay resolving the relationships of intimacy which, in the final analysis, determine whether you are peaceful and fulfilled. Only in awareness and in consciousness will you either experience loneliness, joy, and/or completion. Where is the final URL to the self?

You can dissect the onion into finer layers; you can always split hairs or look deeper into the wavicles of the atom. But this will not resolve core issues of how you relate to others and find meaning in the Universe. Technology is beautiful but only modem-deep. Some of you are in love with your computers, more than God, more than the Creator of All Things, more than the Great Spirit. Yet when the computer is turned off, or crashes (and eventually it will, with attempts to squeeze more data over what's already there), you will be left alone. You will be not that different from the first Adam or Eve that realized he or she had individuality and existed in a garden of awareness.

The octopus is growing additional arms and tentacles and websites for distraction. Even if you have unraveled the sequence of genes, mapping the human soul has not changed. Even if you have manufactured serums based upon the genetic code, you cannot conquer aging and disease. Even as you delay Death's visa to your physical body's domain, you have not necessarily dissolved the engrams keeping intimacy from your door. You may buy time, but spirituality exists outside of time. Consciousness is less concerned with cellular atrophy than it is with satori, with awakening. Look to increased intimacy for fulfillment, not to your greater access to bandwidth.

As long as you live, scientists and engineers will uncover and unravel additional proteins and will modify genes and may even clone your mother-in-law and name HER "Dolly." But that will not change the relationship you have with the lifeforce, with learning to ask directions to the inner map of your being, or soul. The question is, can your computer create the Universe and come even a hair's breadth to the brilliance of a single binary star?

Can your computer weave rings around Saturn, can it create the fish of the sea, can it separate light from the darkness? Can your PC travel at the speed of light of a single comet bringing the mind-boggling distance between God's hangnail and His big toe? Until your computer can do these things, you will still have to answer to the God within, that gadget-free Spirit of yourself that began with your first cry as a baby and will seem to end with your final breath.

You will answer to the fact that the love you make becomes equal to the love that you take. And for all the bells, whistles, and titillations of my computer, I will personally answer to the pair of arms that hold me tight, to hearing another being's breath as I gaze in my beloved's eyes.

I am learning to embrace the octopus and will share with you one secret. It's all very simple. The things that matter most and become most telling are the things which we do every day. And there are one or two things which I can no longer avoid for myself.