We often seem to be caught in “holding patterns,” practicing skills and coming to realizations about things that may seem meaningless or futile in the moment. However, these set the stage for abilities we’ll have to demonstrate in future life experiences and chapters. Overcoming limitations (and impatience!) as we slowly and surely master what we have to master ensures our better Self opportunities to show itself in the future.
All of these relate directly to our Dharma, or Higher Truth of Self. These come forth as we master the Divine Laws related directly to what is called The Ring Pass Not. While I’ve written about this many times, today we review this immutable binding force teaching us that some limits are more boon than burden.
Saturn symbolizes the Universal binding force, the limits of our fear, our responsibility, and our Dharmaseva, “the Great Work.” In the Wisdom Tradition, Saturn also rules what is known as the “Ring-Pass-Not.” It is where we meet the fear that separates us from our own divinity, dominion, and perfection. As we grow, our Ring-Pass-Not also grows.
The “Ring-Pass-Not” defines what is and is not “permitted,” from the angle of your own Soul’s growth, both in terms of skills as well as comprehension. That’s why we’re learning about different “Rings-Pass-Not,” both personally and collectively.
As we easily see through contemplating the teachings of Sages and true Spiritual Teachers, there are many limitations of ego and matter to master. Doing this effectively requires both imagination, acceptance that in fact we do have limits we need to examine, and willingness to try to grow beyond our inabilities.
We define the field of our “dis-illusionment” by the nature of our predisposing patterns of attachments to perceptions and interpretations about life. Everything that is subject to our perceptions and minds becomes a temporary form we can learn from, both by its appearance and its eventual disappearance. How much fear, enslavement, and disempowerment we experience around the comings and goings of phenomena in our lives shows us our Ring-Pass-Not.
Glamor often plays a big part in how we limit our possibilities unnecessarily, since glamor is fundamentally unreal and we’re told it is a world problem. However, it is a useful tool so that we may come out of our delusions around the nature of self, Self and our relationship to Truth and Community, however these are defined in their ever-changing nature, as well as changeless nature.
Through the inevitable contrasts in the ever-necessary polarizations between the worlds of Soul and matter, we master moving through duality, and learn how to antidote the various doubts, illusions, and superstitions which we have created as a result of ego suppositions based on the perceptions of the 5 senses and the mind.
This is where timing is everything. We cannot solve tomorrow’s problems today, nor can we move beyond the inherent limits of the immediate moment. The beauty in this is that Higher Awareness is absolute, yet relative. There are limits to what we are able to understand and utilize skillfully at any given moment in our personal and impersonal evolution. This is where in mastering how to lift the chains of mental slavery off our shoulders we come to both understanding and wisdom about form and process. Those are the keys to mastering our Higher Destiny.
The Ring-Pass-Not is comprised of what we are and what we are not, the limit set by our own response to the edge of our fear, as well as the Threshold of Revelation. Another important aspect of our Ring-Pass-Not are our self-created blind spots and limited ego-mind hindering or needlessly limiting what we are willing to accept and become as Spirits in the material world.
We are limited by our ability to act or not act skillfully in situations. This also applies to our emotions and mind set. As we become more skillful in surmounting limitations, or find new ways to do something needed by us or our world, we will become the teacher we seek, since there is no true separation between the Teacher, the Teaching, and we who are Taught.
In reality there is no limit to the growth of the Soul, but there are limitations of form, different ones required at different seasons of the life. This teaches us a well-rounded Wisdom, and offers textures to our understanding through knowing when to stop, when to go, when to work, and when to play, whether in the physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual realms of experience.
We all have limitations. We all have the power to grow beyond them. As we learn not to take certain lessons personally, we can examine how we all have been limited by various aspects of our understanding that set up certain lessons, both individual and interactive, unique as well as recurring.
As we extend the scope of how our lessons relate to our personality growth as well as what we are to do in the world, those patterns of our lives show us clues toward a larger perspective about things, resources, the players and their roles, and our own relationship to expectations. It is leading each of us, you and me and humanity, beyond old limitations and roles. Since each of us is a seed within the greater Life of humanity as a whole, each lesson we master aids the progress of all.
Welcome to the school all of us are subjected to, by nature of our life in a three dimensional form in an impermanent world. Begin to frame everything that presents itself to you with an eye to opening your heart to an ever-greater group recognition, effective service, and self-forgetfulness, coupled to an ever-greater expression of Goodwill. That way your expressions of Love will become more consistent, you’ll know your connectedness with other beings, and you’ll drop your fears very quickly.
By generating goodwill and positivity, you’re using spiritual magnetic material in a loving and wise way, and all limitations of form can be seen in the light of a greater spiritual understanding, with all things redeemed in good fashion. Then the Ring-Pass-Not becomes the defining limit of your own spirituality in your world, according to the level of your effectiveness and the specific function you are occupying within the larger One Life in which we live and breathe and have our being.
Though much of this sounds difficult to achieve, it’s really an inevitability once you get in the groove and stay on track through time and experience. Keep synthesizing your awareness as you move from realization to application to further realizations and applications. The fantastic goal of perfecting our consciousness through practices of self-realization is within reach for us all, if we simply come to the right point of view and show up, ready to play!
© Copyright 2006, 2011 Robert Wilkinson