The Vessel

We are each sacred vessels moving across time and our lives with a sacred cargo called our “Spirit” which is our true Self which is that which is most uniquely, intimately, and truly who we are. Some call it essence, our soul, our divine spark and so on—what it is cannot be easily described only experienced. There is nothing more powerful and deep and has been witnessed by countless millions human beings since the beginning of time. This essence is that which is also where we connect with others, the world and the cosmos.

Strictly speaking the vessel which we carry our Spirit which we will call “the Vessel” is one continuum but in our world it isn’t at this time. Our Ego or personality is the captain of the Vessel which we could call our personality is flexible and strong like a net rather than solid structure. It’s job is to carry out the intentions of the Spirit and to navigate the temporal life we all live. It is a tool of the Spirit or where the Spirit meets the material world. Without the Spirit the Vessel and the Ego is but crumpled suit of clothes lying on the floor.

Unfortunately for those of us who live in our current civilization our Egos become seduced by the allure of popular culture that tells us that there is no Spirit other than, perhaps, an abstracted and idealized Ego or, if we are “religious” then the soul the Spirit becomes a kind of immortal Ego that, if it acts in accordance with certain rules, will live forever or bang around in the afterlife to be called up by psychic mediums. Experiencing Spirit often happens without a direct effort of will usually when the Ego is calm, at rest, or thrown up its hands and has given up. I’ve experienced this in the “flow state” that is now well known to psychologists and popularized by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. I’ve experienced this state both playing music, painting, programming, and in sports. These are usually brief sessions that seem random and completely natural. Sometimes this happens in a tragedy or a peak experience or as a result of meditation or other spiritual techniques but these techniques have only one purpose—to remove the Ego for a moment so the sun can shine in or, to put it another way, so the sun within can shine through. The Ego or personality is quiet at this time other than lending a helpful hand and being directed by Spirit.

I have always been amazed at how good life feels during these times; everything seems connected, easy, natural not in some abstract of philosophical sense but through direct experience. Why does this feeling stop and why does it seem so hard for it to return? In part because the conceptual frameworks our society gives us don’t have a place for such a state and most people don’t know that it has and is being studied by research psychologists.

If the Ego trains itself to align with the soul and practices what is called “self-remembering” or “soul-remembering” then it can take on its proper task to steer the course laid out by the soul. The soul, usually, is quiet and focused on multiple dimensions at once and cannot manage on its own when dealing with normal life. When it is infused with the spirit the personality becomes light, humorous and happy without a strong need to maintain control of the situation—all that is required, really, is an awareness of the direction it must take and a sense of alertness. The problems come when socialization discourages this close alliance between Ego and soul and fear and uncertainty creep in which makes perfect sense. We cannot blame individuals from cherishing the Ego over the soul because all of us need to belong to our culture, our families, our tribes. When we lack those connections we have difficulty nurturing even the Ego, let alone the soul. However, the benefit of this alienation from family, tribe and society is that the Ego, feeling isolated, can turn inward through depression, or grief and find something unexpected as is well-documented in many stories and the saying “it’s always darkest before the light”

I had run my Ego-based life into the ground and started feeling serious depression for some months. My marriage had failed, I lost my job, my mother, still young got cancer, my life was in ruins, I was broke and I had no one to blame but myself. At one point I gradually became unable to move. Walking across the floor to the other side of my room or going to the bathroom became a heroic struggle until, one day, I decided I had to finish living—don’t know how or why I got the idea it wasn’t rational at all because I had no room for rational thought at all. I lay down on something—perhaps a table or a couch and as I positioned my knife above my heart and was about to stab myself suddenly everything became still and quiet and a glow in side my heart began to expand in my chest and then I felt the warmth and all thoughts of dying just as quickly disappeared and my depression disappeared and I could move freely again. My life was still a mess, I was still a bit confused but while depression has come and gone it has never been actually physically debilitating or lasted as long. Since then I understand completely why people do commit suicide over depression though, in my case, I have a hunch it may well have not been successful but it would have been very messy and I would probably have tried again.

My point here is that, for me, I was saved from a miracle and immediately I understood all those pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that is part of the Catholic iconography. Since then I have read other accounts of being “rescued” from despair, depression and so on through dramatic revelations of one kind or another. Depression, as I will write in another section, is not a brain disease, it is not a chemical problem, or is it genes though some may be more liable to be depressed if it runs in the family but that could be family culture as well as genes. Depression, as the latest research shows is, at minimum, a social problem and, in my view, it is also a spiritual problem. My depression was not eased by suddenly achieving social status. Whatever happened belonged to a deeper power, at the very minimum, something deep within the unconscious—after all, I was not conscious of anything but pain at the time nor had I been living a particularly healthy lifestyle.

There is, deep within all of us this thing we call the Spirit or Soul or even just tat (that) or the Dao or what is sometimes called :the Presence” of that I have no doubt and it is always there and it is not limited, it seems, to just my persons, just my body but extends perhaps forever.