I used to keep two diaries, one about my normal everyday life (college, friends, relationships, career) and one about the spiritual and mystical life (higher influences, awakening and understandings about it). Last month, while writing in my everyday diary I ended up writing about a spiritual understanding. And then I understood that I cannot keep them separate. Because the lower and higher are separate, but we are one. Both worlds exist within us. No matter how much our soul evolves, the lower will be the lower. And no matter how much we polish the lower, it’s not the soul. 

What of this duality of life?

“The soul is One and the soul is simple-its actuality consists in its indestructible existence.” – Plotinus

The lower is like copper. One can make several things out of copper, such as plates, art pieces, and fancy decor, but copper’s characteristic is to turn black. No matter what the copper object is, it will become black. No matter how conscious a person is, he has his features or weaknesses. He can observe these and then let go of the imagination about it. 

Why even try to control the lower? To train it in a way to make it easier and more frequent for the higher to appear and stay. Working on the lower helps to remind the higher self to appear. Little exercises about everyday things can remind us that we are not present and can become reminders to be present. For example, I make an exercise to remember myself every time I open the door (a task of the machine). I notice how much I am in sleep and do not remember myself. This way, small reminders for the machine can help to remember the Self.

“Man was composed of two natures, the animal or lower self, and the spiritual or higher self. And this because the former is necessary to the development of the latter.” – Zohar

All we have to do is keep choosing the higher, every time, in every situation. And let go of the lower, over and over again.

Another contradiction is that some of the highest states happen in the worst moments. Painful, unpleasant life experiences where we are left numb. A friend who was in extreme pain in her last few days of life, said, “Higher states are uninterrupted and pure. There is no pain, no judgment, nothing but pure awareness. Absolutely nothing is lacking. The naked truth is beautiful.” 

“Strive to be who you are, your higher Self, and avoid being who you are not, the lower self.” – Robert Burton

Dhruvi Chavda practices the Fourth Way in India. For other articles of hers, see: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/dhruvi-chavda/, including her recent article on transformation of suffering.

For additional quotations by Plotinus, see: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14704.Plotinus