The Middle

Some of you may be familiar with the song "The Middle," by Jimmy Eat World. If you aren't familiar with that song, this post probably won't make much sense to you unless you at least read the lyrics first. If you want to listen to it, there are some covers of it on YouTube that I really like, including this one by First to Eleven and this one by Megan Nicole. In his essay "On Transcendence," which can be read here, William Mistele talks about the importance of finding sacred things that you can dive into whenever you need to go on an inward journey to find the spiritual strength required to deal with the problems you face in your outer life. There certainly are songs that are sacred to me. As of now, I won't go so far as to consider "The Middle" fully sacred to me, but I think it could perhaps be considered semi-sacred to me. It certainly does randomly pop into my life at times when I would really benefit from hearing it, such as when I'm not doing too well dealing with the various karmic challenges that Saturn sends my way.

Regarding these karmic challenges, as those of you who read my writings have undoubtedly noticed, there's a passage from William Mistele's essay "Problems in the Study of Magic, Part II" on this subject that I like to quote often. It is the following passage.

What happens is that serious magical practice accelerates your karma. Maybe in your life cycle over a thirty or forty year period you will have to come to grips with conflicts involving well-being versus insecurity, vulnerability versus self-confidence, love versus hate, trust versus suspicion, compassion versus selfishness, clarity of mind (even enlightenment) versus disorientation and domination, wisdom versus obsession and folly, inspiration versus depression, commitment and dedication versus stagnation and lethargy, etc.

What the magic does is that you find yourself confronting these issues not over the next thirty or forty years but in the next two or three years. It can be a heck of a ride. Do you take to drugs or alcohol? Do you get depressed, anxious, distracted, or hyperactive? There are all sorts of programs for working with various addictions and/or obsessions. Perhaps you moved a little too fast in your training but now you decide to slow down and catch up on your homework--round out your personality, gain more balance, and shore up the weak areas in your emotional life.

But some of these karmic problems you have evoked into your life through magical study have no solutions within this age of the world. This means no psychologist to turn to, no minister or priest, no mage or sage, no psychic healer or shaman is going to have the faintest clue as to how to help you. Oh, they will suggest all sorts of things and offer you remedies that give you temporary relief. But the study of serious magic (the kind that puts you in touch with creative and divine power) is not like Alice Bailey imagines in one of her images—you discover on your path that there are many other fellow students beside you and with you as you cross over a spiritual lake as the fog lifts in the morning. No, magic is not quaint, warm, and reassuring.

As William explains in this passage, one part of magical training involves dealing with a series of intense karmic challenges, and the experience of dealing with these karmic challenges can be "a heck of a ride." When you're in the middle of the ride, if you don't think you're handling the karmic challenges well, you may want to write yourself off. You may think that you don't really belong among those called to the magical path, and you may even think that your Guardian Archangel and the forty-nine judges of Saturn consider you a failure. But, don't write yourself off yet. It's only in your head you feel left out, or looked down on. Your Guardian Archangel certainly doesn't look down on you, nor do the forty-nine judges of Saturn, since all these beings serve the purposes of love and not condescension. God doesn't look down on you either, even if you think you are a failure when it comes to dealing with the karmic challenges that are a part of your path. "The Middle" is a song addressed to a "little girl" because we are all children of God. God is a perfect father, and a perfect father never ceases to love his children. 

Just try your best. And, I don't necessarily mean try your best to succeed, because you won't always succeed. What I mean is try your best to learn from everything that you experience when dealing with the aforementioned karmic challenges, including both the successes and the failures. As Bardon wrote in the epilogue of KTQ, "Life is a school, not an amusement fair." Oh, and also try your best to share what you learn with other Bardonists, perhaps by starting a blog. I've discussed the value of sharing what you've learned with others in this previous post. Try your best, and try everything you can to learn and share what you've learned with others walking the magical path. 

Live right now. Will you successfully complete your magical training and go on to engage in the work of PME and KTQ? Will you become an adept at some point in the future? No one can say for sure, but don't worry about it. The idea of living right now pertains to the present, not the future. So, live your life as it is right now, regardless of whether your life as it is right now entails seemingly succeeding or seemingly failing at dealing with the karmic challenges embedded into your own unique path. 

Everything will be just fine. In the piece I wrote about Therese of Lisieux seeing her first initial written in heaven, I pointed out that someday every human soul will attain perfection. As difficult as it may be to believe, even the souls of people like Joseph Stalin, Osama bin Laden, Ratko Mladic, and Leopold II will someday attain perfection. When you attain perfection, then everything will be just fine. Everything will be alright. Someday every prodigal son and every prodigal daughter of God will return to the house of our Heavenly Father, where things are always fine and alright. 

Right now, things may not seem like they're just fine or alright. But, returning to the house of our Heavenly Father just takes some time. In the epilogue of IIH, Bardon calls his system "a path to, and union with, God." If the path Bardon lays out in his books is the path you are following back to the house of our Heavenly Father, then know that walking this path to the end just takes some time. So, until then, try your best to learn, try everything you can to learn, and recognize that you're just in the middle of the ride.