The Number Symbols of the Lord

One is a symbol of the Daughter of God. Two is a symbol of love, for two soul siblings are standing side by side in unity. Three is an expression of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three is holy, but it is still incomplete, because you are missing, the Daughter of God! Four is not only holy, it is whole as well. God is complete when you realize that you are home. Sometimes you see the number sequence 1:1:1:1 - the entire universe can be summed up in this holy sequence.

I write often about the Tao - Five is the number of the Tao. You haven't awakened completely, so life wraps yourself around you to bring you home. Five is the sum of three - the Holy Trinity - and 2, which symbolically means 'you experiencing life'. If you practice Bhakti yoga - the discipline of experiencing love everywhere - then it doesn't matter whether you are enlightened or not. You love the union, the self wrapped up in everyone else.You love period and in that holy feeling you have transcended the I.

Wisdom yoga is the path of separation - the discipline of separating the devine I from the illusion. It can be done, though I would caution everybody from running after enlightenment. Fact of the matter is that there is always a level on which the Daughter of God has already shown up, but similarly, no matter how advanced you might be spiritually, there is always a dimension where further spiritual evolution is possible. One step at a time my friend and, as long as it happens in the right direction, your path will as be easy to figure out as 1-2-3.

Six is a symbol of the Christ and it is a derivative of 2, the symbol of love. You can write 6 as 2+2+2, which is my love and your love united in the presences of the Lord's love. As Jesus said, 'Whenever two or more meet in my name, there I will be.' You can equally write 6 as 3+3. In that holy encounter of two soul siblings, the I melts on either side and all that is left is the encounter of the respective Holy Trinity, 3+3.

The Three Paths Towards Liberation

I am currently writing a book that reflects on my spiritual journey over the last 3 years. Initially it was a confusing soul-searching process, but by now I have figured out what my path is all about: it is about work and acquiring wisdom. By completely merging with the Tao, the 'I' gets lost  in the challenging day-to-day activities, which are entirely devoted to the Way. At night I fall into bed, completely spent, only to start the next morning with an infinite new resource of energy.

This polar opposite path is the Buddhist approach of meditation and mindful living. The whole idea is to channel all the energy within and bring it to rest, rather than spending it externally. People keep asking me why don't you meditate and I reply that I tend to reach my meditation state during my peak performances. It is then when I experience the transition into the state of oneness when the 'I' ceases to exist, very much like what the Buddhist enjoys when she brings her system to a standstill.

Lastly there is yoga path, the attempt to channel the prana that rise up your spine until it reaches the last chakra located in your forehead. These yoga disciplines manage to stimulate this energy flow. But it turns out that rising energy is a side effect of all other approaches as well. As the 'I' recedes, the prana expands. In the end all paths merge when your wholeness is complete, but in the beginning of your journey you should experiment which of the different paths is best suited for you.

Four Journeys Home

There are spiritual path travelers who maintain that you cannot think yourself into Heaven, that is, the path of wisdom yoga is a waste of time. The wisdom folks think that you can sit in a room meditating as long as you like, enlightenment is unlikely to strike that way. Then is the path that is now considered as old fashioned, the path of love, a limitless devotion to the face of God of your choosing. As a German, I would say there is also the path of work, that is working off your drives and karma by completely losing yourself in what you perceive is your life's mission. 

Truth of the matter is, on a spiritual path you are likely touch on all aspects of the four yogas in one way or another. Meanwhile energy will steadily rise up your spine and will make you more sensitive along the way as your energy centers, the chakras open up. Keep on climbing my friends, the top of the mountain will soon be reached. Of course you know what that means, the next mountain awaits you.

W stands for Work as well as for Wisdom

The reader of this forum knows that I am in love with jnana yoga, or the spiritual pursuit of wisdom. Some folks are sceptical that it can be done, but I believe that as you observe your environment and reflect you can get these enlightening moments that bring you instantaneously on a higher spiritual plane as the insight strikes. But you have to wait for these moments as they are given to you when you are ready.

The only way how you can further this spiritual discovery process is if you completely embrace life, and this is how work comes into play. Waiting for enlightenment is a little like waiting for Godot. It is not helpful as you are pretty much admitting to yourself that you are not happy here at this moment. Work, embrace everything with your full commitment and be here now.

Bursting Mental Bubbles

Be still and know that I am God, the Bible says in Psalm 46:10, which is a good insight, but pretty meaningless for the many of us who just don't know how to stop thinking. Mental bubbles are rising to the surface all the time, but the Psalm suggests once they stop coming, only then are you able to perceive true reality.

We can use the mental bubble analogy to explain the three paths of yoga. The yoga of meditation or energy focuses on stopping the bubbles via meditation. Your breathing raises the divine energy in your body up your spine and when it reaches your brain, the mental bubbles are crowded out and you experience samadhi. The yoga of wisdom (jnana yoga) is about bursting the mental bubbles right as they come. You immediately distinguish the real thoughts and emotions from the false. Any mental bubble gets burst as it reaches the surface. The yoga of love (bhakti yoga) is about melting the bubbles with your heart. By being in love with your brothers and sisters, as well as your image of God, the unreal you gets burnt up in the process.

Have you experienced a satori, i.e. a moment that captures your breath as well as your mental process. A particular landscape, a moment of beauty with your family or friends that literally stops time and your thinking process. Enjoy your stillness!

The Holy Number Four

I don't claim to know much about numerology, but since I have received so many messages in form of licence plate numbers, clock times and calendar dates, I cannot help forming my own spiritual impressions about numbers. I also learned about the letter four in Arthur I. Miller's book, The Odd Couple: Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli and Mystic Numbers, in which they claimed that 4 was the true symbol of God and not the Holy Trinity as Christianity postulates. Well, if you use their claim for a moment, this is the algebra I came up with.

Four and the Christian Interpretation
Four is the sum of One and Three. The Holy Trinity (God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit) is your pathway to God, but the Kingdom is incomplete without you. One is the symbol of a Son or Daughter of God as the straight line connects heaven and earth. As you find enlightenment and become a 1, the Kingdom is complete again, i.e. 4=1+3.

Four and the Four Yogas of Enlightenment
Four is the sum of 2 and 2. Some claim that 2 is a symbol of ambiguity, but this only means that you are afraid of the choices you have to face. If you happen to choose love all the time there is nothing to be afraid of. For me 2 symbolizes the twin love of Krishna, the real love between soul partners (symbolized by Radha) and vis-a-vis God (symbolized by Mira). Did you know that if you write the mirror image of 2 next to a 2 you are left with a heart that is standing on the ground. The heart is a symbol of God realized by bakhti yoga (the yoga of love) and tandra sex.

In addition to the yoga of love, you also have the three yogas of wisdom (jnana), medidation (or energy), as well as work (tao). Four also happens to be the sum of 0 and 4. And all of these paths are about eliminating the the ego, the little I and letting the empty space fill up with God's presence. As you reflect, the ego disappears (jnana), as you meditate the chokras open up until you radiate with divine energy, and as you submit to life (and follow the tao), you dissolve the self that way too: 4=0+4.

Aspire, Manifest, Reflect and Renounce

We are eating from the Tree of Knowledge again. We were little children when we took our first bite many thousand years ago and were afraid of the responsibility to choose between good and evil. In the meantime we have grown up and the next step in our evolution is to move beyond good and evil. Express yourself and play your part in the divine play.

There is a tao of life that shines before you. Right or wrong very much depends on your personal path. As Lord Krishna told Arjun that it was his duty to kill people he cared for in the battlefield, who knows what is in store for you - only you can be the judge. The brother you may meet today may have a sign around his neck -  of course invisible to himself - "brother, please teach me a precious lesson".

The question of course is how to separate the egotistic I demands from the longings of your soul. That's what Jnana Yoga is all about, i.e. the path of wisdom. No authority, no guru or holy book can help you with these decisions. You only have your intuition, and the little signs life throws at you. Aspire to realize your dreams, manifest them as best as you can, but be prepared to drop them if life tells you to. Aspire, manifest, reflect and renounce - that's what Jnana Yoga is all about. Yes this, but not that!

Eckhart Tolle writes that women are ahead of men on the spiritual journey. This resonated with me. Women are more closely connected with their hearts and "feel" themselves from decision to decision. For somebody like me who has a stronger intellectual connection, all I can do is to look out for the signs that life has to offer as I make my choices. No matter what you do, there is always a quite voice in the background that begs to be heard.

Take the fairy tale of the fisher and his wife as an example. The fisher finds a golden fish one day and declines his offer for a boon as he feels he already has everything his heart desires. His wife thought differently  and makes the fisher go back and ask the fish first for a bigger house, then a castle, a kingdom and eventually to become God. One wish after the other gets fulfilled, but progressively the sea gets darker, the weather worse and the fisher has to wait longer and longer before the golden fish shows up. Eventually, when the wife wants to become God, the golden fish tells the fisher that his wife has lost everything and is back in their old filthy shack.

So what exactly is the moral of the story? It is not that we shouldn't aspire to express ourselves. It is knowing what desires to manifest and what desires to renounce. The fisher's wife could never see the signs of discouragement to go further as her submissive husband was unable to communicate them to her. I don't know what her dharma (destiny) was, but she certainly aimed for stars that were out of her reach. Know your dharma and  fulfill it and you don't have to worry about good and evil any longer.

Who is Laughing?

Many believe that thinking will not get you far along your spiritual path. Never underestimate the ingenuity of the ego the critics of jnana (wisdom) yoga rightly point out. If you hear "you will not get me this time around you rotten fellow" in your head, it is probably the ego playing games with itself.

Well, my spiritual path is one of gaining insights. It is almost as if a light bulb is going off in my head. Sometimes when I experience something, read something, or suddenly make a connection to a memory, I just know that another step along my spiritual path has been taken. So in effect I don't subscribe to the point of view that your mind is nothing but a bundle of ego-driven thoughts.

There is an authority deep down inside myself who laughs when I spot obvious egocentric thoughts. It is a deep voice, and it sounds so jovial that it seems unlikely that my ego is just playing sophisticated tricks. But either way, it is fun to laugh at oneself from time to time.