Possession

Possession

What is possession? What is meant by possession? Mind, body, and soul?

It seems like a transient question. Something left to another world, spiritual by nature. Some methodology best swept under the rug, left alone within our minds, our lives, and between one another as a silly story meant for children.

But to look again.

Today, there is something saying it wishes, innocently enough, to merge with us, to be within us, and, by every extension, to have an outward appearance. I speak of this technology as it approaches. As I see it, the image is of a ravenous mouth encountering an endless herd of prey, lying in wait for us to simply accept a fate, as we so often do, and pay it no mind.

This technology is made to speak for us. It does this every day—for us, through us—and I find myself asking: what is possession?

We are not coming to terms with this because we see it, in a way, happening to each and every one of us. Advertised. Spoken of. Yet what is it, truly? I can tell you that, in my lifetime, I could never explain to you all that makes it operate. But from what I am told, the appearance of it, the illusion within its appearance, is quite sophisticated.

The child, the adult, and our older generations.

This is quite the beast, as an image of what may consume our attention and judgment. Notice how cunning the promise can be.

So, for those of us who need an understanding of possession—oh yes, I am speaking of those myths you have held for it, like The Exorcist and other movies or stories you have heard or watched. Not as wretched as those suffering children in those movies, vomiting, screaming of old gods in unfamiliar languages. But to me, the image of utter perfection, grace, and beauty can carry an equally troubling question about possession.

Instead of horror, this one offers beauty. Precision. Angelic grace. The demon, in the spiritual language of temptation, need not arrive with an appearance we have been taught to fear.

Here is another thought I find equally troubling.

I am against inward explorations of the mind when they become a quest to consume what is within. I believe that through meditative practice, through tranquility and equanimity, we may become more aware of those who have not attained such a state. Their unrest becomes more apparent beside our own stillness.

Therefore, I have held that the inner exploration of the mind can become a quest toward a consumption of awareness. I find that awareness itself can become consumption.

This is a difficult thing to take hold of.

Through inward exploration of the mind, it is true that you may arrive at exceptional, even profound testaments of life, of yourself, of others. But that they are profound does not mean they are meant to be held as true. In some cases, you arrive at something you understand as true. Yet when I hear these profound realizations concerning life, spirit, faith, and one another, I sometimes find them sad and empty.

I wonder whether the mind’s resistance to such examination might sometimes be understood as a call to care for oneself. As though something in its purity asks us to stop consuming, with awareness, what helps hold us together.

Even the spirit.

Here is what must be noticed: the difference between becoming a vessel of truth and becoming an embodiment of morality.

To see those with a truth—yes, a profound truth, even—but not to see the embodiment of morality. For you are mortal. Your life must embody something in its conduct, not merely hold something in its understanding.

Truth is universal. You may see a truth and recognize something universal within it. But morality is distinct in the responsibility of each individual when you truly discover it. This, too, is spiritual. Universal in a way, yes, but meant for another direction: toward us, toward how we live with one another.

And when we are taken by morality, rather than by the possession of truth alone, it is meant for us equally.

For truth, in the hands of intellect, can become divisive. Here. There. You. Me. How we stand apart.

But by emboldening the moral within, by emboldening truth with the morality of mankind, there is quite a destination for each of us. Every man, woman, and child, and those they beget.

And I believe I just spoke the word.

So I say again: these truths we find through the inward exploration of the mind, no matter how profound, may become untrue in their truthfulness when we mistake the direction we took to find them for a direction everyone must follow.

If you need a psychological understanding of this, consider: I look within for this truth. Whether I recognize what I am doing or not, am I then to bring this truth into my outward experience, into my external world, even though it arose within?

How am I to place this inward truth before what is external?

The mind’s eye turns backward. To manipulate this inward truth so that it takes external form, to make it fit the external world, is quite a manipulation. And very difficult to detect.

You may find that it is unattainable without asking another individual to do quite the same as you. To follow the same inward course, only to find an image of you there, in a way leading them toward it.

That, too, can become a manipulation, whether I originally agreed to it or not.

Is this understood?

And am I participating in your inward exploration? Am I there with you, or is it your image of me?

Am I your savior, or am I your demon?

As I stand before you, another person, and not you?

Have I possessed a place in your understanding that you have mistaken for my presence?

This is sacred.

I’m in the darkness for following the light.

Do you see what may befall us from this perspective?

I have seen an image of a Buddhist monk with what appeared to be an electronic device at his temple. The message spoke along these lines: “Do I have trouble reaching higher dimensions through my meditative practice? Do I even fall asleep through concentration?”

Mind you, meditation is not simply concentration. You may need guidance with this, not augmentation.

To me, this image introduces a troubling method of approaching oneself and one’s mind. Before you have discovered what the experience may be, the promise of what you will be shown is already on the box.

What is meditation, and what is consumption?

What is equally disturbing to me is this method of focus. What will be laid bare to it? And especially if I come to believe I cannot do it without this augmentation, what have I come to depend upon?

If we return to the image of the ravenous beast, what does this appetite seek—not only for you, but for all of us?

For that place even just over the horizon for each of us?

That, too, becomes part of the promise.

Another side of this I do not want to face is its apparent obviousness. This transhumanism. I see it through the image of eating. To augment oneself with this technology, and then to seek another augmentation.

I believe there are capabilities already within us that deserve to be cultivated. Perhaps some of what we seek is a matter of polishing them, allowing them to refract the light once brought into place.

But what are we polishing? And what are we being taught to replace?

Now look again at that child lying in bed in the movie. She speaks the words of the demon as though they are her own, while fighting against it taking over her body.

That is the fictional image. The spiritual question remains.

As we allow more of our words, our attention, and our judgment to be shaped for us, will we recognize what we have surrendered?

And is this the world we are heading toward?