Vague. Woolly headed. Uncertain. Tentative. Faltering. Maybe? Maybe Not!
Is your Spiritual Pracice as important to you as war was to Agamemnon?
Indecisiveness
Vague. Woolly headed. Uncertain. Tentative. Faltering. And Maybe?
Agamemnon, the King in Greek mythology, decided to kill his daughter, Iphigenia, as a sacrifice to Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon whom Agamemnon had offended. Artemis insists he kill his daughter. This type of payment is nothing new – sacrifice is the cost of spiritual practice.
Agamemnon tricks his daughter to come to him. He promises her that she will marry Achilles. But instead of a wedding, she is murdered. He sacrifices Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis who has stopped the wind which keeps Agamenon’s war fleet stuck in the doldrums.
This story is an ancient metaphor. It is representative of a spiritual dilemma in the guise of a military conflict. How many times do we find ourselves feeling stagnated, uncertain, lethargic, dull… and the list goes on. Nothing seems to move us forward.
We are in the doldrums. Our mind and our mental formations are stagnated. We get stuck. And then, we wander around in circles as though we are in a whirlpool. Our mind swirls in a vortex of indecisiveness.
The culprit that spins the mind is “ME, MY, MINE.” Nothing else. We classify ourselves as the contents of the MIND through the sense doors and fail to rely on the Light of consciousness. We call the Light of consciousness our soul, our spirit, our true nature.
Instead of turning away from the world, we turn and churn towards it. We think the external world will satisfy our ME. MY. MINE. We bounce up and down in the doldrums of boredom, lethargy and indecision waiting for something to happen that will lift us out of the whirlpool.
This pattern is a repetitive, compulsive activity of the mind. When we can see it as a deleterious toxic state of mind, we either remain caught or seek a Way to get out of these worldly winds.
Must we kill to get free of the doldrums as Agamemnon did?
Yes.
We must let go of the ego-self in such a way that there is nothing left of the ego-self.
Empty, empty, emptied.
It is challenging as we might imagine it was challenging for Agamemnon to kill his eldest daughter. He made a decision to go to war – and that decision required killing his daughter. Pretty steep.
We must make a decision – to get out of the doldrums, to pay the price required of the decision we make to get out of the gloomy, dull mental formations of pessimisms, dejections, and sadnesses.
Are you willing to practice letting go of the empty ego-consciousness - that quality that is selfish, self-centered, and claiming the spotlight of me, my, mine…are you?
Flyiing Up Right
NOTE: Artemis is also said to have brought Iphigenia back to life. Abraham was about to kill his son, but the voice of God intervened. The young rich man turned away in sadness. He could not make the commitment.
What does it take for you to let go of the attachments to the worldly, material realm? For the sake of liberation.