Esoteric vs. Exoteric

The search for truth happens on many levels. When we think we’ve arrived, we soon find that there’s another level yet to the mystery. It is layers upon layers upon layers. It is common to use the word ‘esoteric’ to describe layers of knowledge not generally accessed, i.e. known only to a few. Besides missing the point, this is a trivial and useless definition as we go forward, because in this time, those boundaries keep getting pushed as more truth percolates into previously endarkened sections of the minds of the human populace of Earth.

We still tend to speak of those that are awakening versus those who remain asleep. Apocalypse is not about letting us sleep. It’s a summing up. It’s a test. Which truths can we assimilate and act upon, how well, how fast, and how consistently? This is one level of what apocalypse means. There is not one soul on this planet that is not going to be awakened to the degree that awakening is possible. It will happen. Our deepest traumas and fears will be triggered. Our weaknesses will be exposed. Our blind spots will be shined upon and we will see everything we’ve denied. This process is unstoppable. The best course of action is to go along with it! Not hard to get when it’s laid out like that, but when it’s you and your life, for real, it’s a challenge. The going along, the letting go. We are all being challenged to our utmost ability.

Realizations have a way of sinking in. They actually do that in a literal way: first you get the surface awareness, then a deeper understanding, and then a little deeper, and deeper still, and so on, until, finally, a visceral, felt sense of it goes right to your core and leaves no room for uncertainty or ambiguity or forgetting. Every time it goes deeper, it gets fuller. Layers. In the case of certain items on our own personal agendas of self-realization, these layers seem to go on forever – whether due to the extreme depths, or, most likely, to the fact that we have some attachment that gets in the way of the lesson sinking in and so we just keep on getting hammered.

There’s no question that one’s quality of life is greatly improved the more truth one is able to accept. I’m talking about the inner quality of life, and inner truth. Outwardly, shit happens and will continue to happen until such time as there is nothing left in us that calls for any more shit. Inwardly, it’s all about attitude. What is your stance regarding the shit? Do you see it as mere shit for the sake of shit, fucking shit, or do you understand that there’s a purpose behind it? That’s inner truth. The more you get it, the more you align yourself with the force and intelligence behind all that seeming shit, and you realize, over time, that everything did indeed happen for very good reasons, and went much better than you would have made it go had you been in charge.

You are incompetent to direct your own life. You do not know, the way the ineffable knows. Unless and until you do (which you never, ever will as a manifest being), the best thing to do is to surrender to that higher, unknown wisdom that really does know what’s best. This is extremely hard to get! We are so wrapped up in our inflated sense of self-importance and insisting on being right and knowing what we think we know, when in fact we do not know. We are as little children. (Often badly behaved ones at that – screaming to have our way, rebelling against our parents, who are much wiser than us and love us unconditionally, but also have the task of raising us into something much more than we are now: our true selves.) It would behoove us to start to acknowledge that.

Have trust. Be that little child. Ask for help. You will get it. The ineffable’s job in regards to you is to shape you into that which you were meant to be, that ecstatically full, free and perfect expression of divinity that is uniquely you. In fact, you already are that, outside of the illusion of time.

One could say that this viewpoint doesn’t appeal. For whatever reason. One might rather think in terms of a perfect anarchy that somehow works out in the end, just to wipe out the annoying God factor and keep the happy ending. Well, that’s really just peek-a-boo. Not being willing to see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Besides, anarchy just means “no rulers,” which is appropriate for mature, sovereign beings. “No rules,” on the other hand, is a child’s fantasy, license to do as thou wilt with no regard for anything outside the self. To use the word anarchy in this context is just an obfuscation, sexing up the concept of mindless, directionless chaos housing only mini-Gods and their personal aims – hardly compatible with any hope for a happy ending.

The real esoteric truth is the inner knowing (and faith in lieu of knowledge to come, for us still on the way there) of the fundamentals of being, the laws of the universe, and the purpose of creation. These are mysteries that cannot be put into words. Yes, there is a need for words. Words help us conceptualize, they point the way, they structure our thinking, they define that which would otherwise be nebulous and hazy. But they are only words. Symbols. Reality is what is real, what our senses tell us, the manifest creation that is the outer end of the divine polarity, spirit and matter.

We must engage both ends. Esoteric and exoteric. They serve each other. This is why, in my opinion, we must seek both the inner and the outer aspects of truth. The inner is the key, the Holy Grail. But we cannot avoid the outer, inasmuch as it relates to our path. We cannot navigate with our eyes closed. That goes for both spiritual and temporal things. And both of these are inextricably, exquisitely, connected.