Embracing the Lotus: A Long Journey to a Reluctant Enlightenment

Gregory

Mar 2018 · Balboa Press

About this ebook

This is a first-person poetic narrative by a successful middle-aged man, concerning a long spiritual journey. It began when he was twenty-seven, just getting traction with his engineering career, and was awakened from his ego-unconsciousness by mystical experiences that inspired him to scribble out reams of poetryand meet his Muse. Subsequent career demands induced him to deny the mystical experiences, quit writing poetry, and fall back asleep. For two decades he was comfortable in that sleep, but during the third, the emptiness of his successful, ego-life and bouts of depression induced him to wake up enough for him to realize there was something fundamentally wrong with it. After many hours of depression and deep thinking about his life, he realized that he had to regain the sense of meaningful wholeness he had felt when in those mystical states and writing poetry. This allegorical poem is his attempt to describe that struggle to wake up out of his long ego-sleep, regain his mystical wholeness, and through the act of writing this poem, make peace with his betrayed Muse and explicate what he learned during the process.

About the author

The author, firstly, is a shaman, and only secondarily, a poet. Embracing the Lotus is the culmination of a four decades shamanic journey deep into the Mystery, a journey that Joseph Campbell elucidated in his masterwork, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The act of writing it represents the stage of the journey Campbell labeled, the Return. Like all shamans, the author lives in two worlds: the mundane world of our material, ego-reality, and the world of the Mystery. The details of his journey in the ego-world are too mundane to record, while its counterparts in the Mystery are too extraordinary for belief. What he learned on his journeythe ideas, insights, revelations, and understandingsare contained in this poetic work and represent what Campbell labeled the Boon, the raison dtre for the whole, life-consuming process. Importantly, the authorin the words of Carlos Castanedas shaman/teacher, Don Juanhas lost his shields, has lost his normal human defenses against psychic and telepathic noise, and like many shamans, chooses to remain anonymous.