Descent of Worlds 24 to 48

The descent of creation is from the unconditioned into the conditioned, from the immaterial into materiality, from nothingness to density. The descent has an outer form and an inner reality. From World 12, centered on our Sun and effectively free in front of space and time, we come down to the greater density and constraints of World 24, centered on the planets in our solar system. The inner descent is similar: from World 12 Individuality beyond our ordinary self and based in the conscious energy, we come down to the greater density and constraints of World 24, the natural world for us, the world we are born into, the world of contact with ourselves, with other people, and with nature. This is the world based in sensitive energy and to maintain ourselves in it requires three-centered sensitivity: contact with our body, heart, and mind. In this world, we hear what hear, we see what we see, and we do what we do.

To live in World 24 is our near aim, toward which much of our inner work is focused. We begin with body presence, with being in contact with our body through sensation, the sensitive energy in the body. We work to train ourselves not to get caught in our reactive emotions, to let them be and dissipate on their own, so that we can live with responsive emotions and feel our life instead of our life emoting us. Without the fog of emotional reactions obscuring our view, distracting us from the warm-hearted reality around us, we live in contact with life. We work to learn not to get caught in our associative thought trains, to let them be and dissipate on their own, so that we can live with a quiet and alert mind, without allowing a cloud of automatic thoughts to obscure our view and distract us from the wondrous reality around us. We can think our thoughts instead of our thoughts thinking us. Our preferences do not rule us; we have some freedom to choose. Life is fresh. In World 24 we are in contact with ourselves and with others, though we remain separate, like islands in a beautiful sea.

Sometimes you can be walking along, fully in touch with your body and your surroundings, and then something you see or hear kicks off a beguiling train of thoughts. Suddenly you are no longer seeing what you see nor hearing what you hear. And you are no longer in touch with your body. Instead, your attention has been captured by that thought train. Maybe you wake up and come back to yourself and your surroundings, come back to walking instead of your body walking without you. But that may take a while, maybe a long while. Welcome to World 48, the world of autopilot living, the world of sleepwalking. In this world we are dependent and incomplete; however much we have, it is never enough. We are forever comparing ourselves to other people. We are seeking status or trying to hide. This is the world of automatic energy. It is a material life in a material world, and yes, associative thoughts are part of that materiality, as are reactive emotions, desires, and all our senses. Alas, this is our day-to-day life.

One aspect of moving from World 48 toward World 24 is to live responsibly. To be responsible requires us to be in contact, to notice things, to act rightly despite our likes or dislikes to the contrary, to respond to the promptings of our conscience. Acting responsibly is an act of will. This is why the Fourth Way values being a good householder. There is a natural progression from being responsible in a material sense to being responsible in an interpersonal sense and from there to being responsible in a spiritual sense, with each stage subsuming the prior. That entails the inner work to put our spiritual house in order, just as our external responsibility moves us to put our material house in order.

Another aspect of moving from World 48 toward World 24 is to sense our body, not only during our formal inner exercises but also as we go about our day. This effort shows us our limits, shows us that we do indeed spend the bulk of our time living solely on autopilot. And seeing that truth directly, about ourselves, strengthens our resolve to change, to change how we live, to awaken from our autopilot dream. That truth confronts us with the fact of our one precious life and what we are doing with it. Do I wish to sleepwalk through this life, half living it? And in a deeper sense, do I wish this life to be all and only about me, about failing to satisfy my insatiable self-centeredness?

Thus, we find ourselves wishing not to be so dependent on externals in World 48, and we start making efforts to be more real, to live in contact in World 24, to gather, organize, and live in the matter of World 24, in our inner body, our body of organic sensation, feeling, and mind energy. We allow the automatic energy to do its necessary work, so that we don’t need to direct every little movement of our body, for example. Yet behind those automatic processes, we are in touch, we are in the sensitive energy. We let our body walk, for it knows how and engages automatic energy for that, and at the same time we are there in contact with our body through sensation.

For this week, see if you can get a sense of what world you are in at any given moment.

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