“Just as if a man were bound hand and foot with chains, and someone came and loosened his Bonds, and let him walk free without interference, so the Lord looses from its bonds the soul that is bound with the chains of death, and lets it go, and sets the mind free to walk at ease and unhindered into God’s air.
“Suppose a man were in the middle of a river in full flood, and overwhelmed by the water lay lifeless, drowned, with dreadful monsters all around him. If another man, who is not used to swimming, should wish to save the one who fell in, he too is lost. … Clearly, there is need of a skilled swimmer, an expert, to go out into the water, … and bring up the drowned man. … The soul is the same way.” ~St. Macarius the Egyptian
Bonds and Chains
We don’t have to search far to find someone bound in ropes and chains. To some degree, all of us are. We are bound by our own beliefs. Chains of government and social correctness also bound us. But most of all, we are chained by the great illusion of matter.
Matter binds us in two ways. The most obvious one is in convincing us that it is what it appears to be, and that it is all that exists. The more subtle way that few are aware of is in the way we come into the world of matter. Our physical body and brain-mind are awakened as soon as we are born. The spirit and soul are not, though many believe that they are. The spirit and soul are in a kind of coma and must be awakened. That is the rebirth that Jesus spoke of.
Breaking Free
St. Macarius says the Lord will free us from the bonds of matter, but he doesn’t say how. If simply believing in Jesus was enough, we would have millions of highly evolved Spiritual people in the world. We have very few, so that approach simply doesn’t work. In fact, accepting the idea that someone else is going to do it all for you guarantees failure.
We break free of the bonds of matter by awakening our spiritual faculties. We do that by exposing them to God’s Divine Light. That light comes to us through the spiritual sun.
Drowning Man
St. Macarius uses a great allegory here. It is up to us to understand its real meaning and follow through. First, the man who is Drowning represents one seeking spiritual enlightenment without the help of a spiritual school or teacher. He doesn’t believe he can learn anything by attending a school that he can’t learn from books. In short, he doesn’t need “swimming lessons”. He will just jump into the water and it will happen because God loves him. He is soon drowning. In other words, he has become lost on the path of spiritual awakening and development.
The first guy who jumps in to save the drowning man is of similar beliefs. He knows nothing about spiritual development, but thinks it will come automatically if he simply tries to help his friend. A case of the blind leading the blind. Now two are drowning as the demons who tempted them laugh.
The Teacher
But then a third man comes along. This man is, in the allegorical tale, an “expert swimmer”. In the spiritual sense, he is a spiritual master or teacher. He knows what he is doing and is able to save the drowning man without harming himself in any way.
The Moral
Some would say the moral of this story is that we shouldn’t jump into the water at all as we might drown. That isn’t it. The moral is that we should take swimming lessons first.
On the spiritual level, this means that we should join a reputable spiritual school to learn spiritual growth and development techniques. Not a fortune-telling school. Not a yoga or meditation school that only teaches a small part of what is needed. A full-blown spiritual development school. Then you can safely enter those allegorical waters of the spiritual realms without fear of drowning. And one you begin to awaken your spiritual self, those bonds and chains from the material world will disappear.
The post Bonds of Matter Broken by Spirit and Truth appeared first on Solar Wind.
