Self Realization or Self Quantification

"The poignancy of the human being is that you are the place where the invisible becomes visible, and expressive in some way.." - John Dunne, Irish poet Living life from a purely spiritual perspective can put enormous strain on one's need for certainty. In fact, true spiritual understanding demands the gradual, if not sudden, relinquishment of prediction and control. I find this demand for a surrendered state is most onerous in times of great uncertainty in  my life, when I want certainty more than anything else. Many of us are currently living through a human experience in which there are more questions than answers. Basic human concerns of housing, economic sustainability, career direction and how the winds of change will affect all of our necessities, remain very much up in the air for many of us today. Perhaps my own hunger for greater certainty lately explains my gravitating toward activities and pursuits that have structure, rules of order and predictability. Quite likely, this is my very human reaction to a seeming capricious and unknowable life path that is shrouded in mystery. So, I find comfort as I devote time and attention to the relatively mundane and spiritless world of finance and investing. Here I seek to find patterns and approaches to the market that might bring monetary value into our lives. Though this is new uncharted ground for me, it offers enough solid and understandable logic to counter the episodic sway I experience pondering the unknowables. Yet I find it a bit of a perilous engagement of consciousness when my focus on the material seems to rob me of my spiritual vision. It often feels like I step out of my existential sense of Self in order to deal with matters of self preservation. I feel a conflict in my sense of self as I seek to keep a foot in both worlds; the practical domain of form and the amorphous field of the formless. It is the perennial paradox of engaging our humanity while remaining aligned with our divinity; attending to finite matters while retaining awareness of the Infinite. Its holding fast to an Absolute reality even while addressing the relative vagaries and particularities of daily life. At times this is my greatest existential frustration, that looms as a seemingly impassable divide that separates me into multiple irreconcilable identities. Of course my experience of feeling separate and pulled between seeming opposite orientations of life is not unique. This is the conundrum of living in the world but not being of the world, that Jesus and host of seers have noted. Like all paradoxes the seeming contradictions are equally true, and we can't reconcile the conflict by choosing one over the other. Our wholeness is at stake in our identification process, so an omission or rejection of one aspect of our self will not serve to integrate the essential fragments that constitute our whole self. So the "me" that studies stock chart patterns is as much me as the "me" that beholds a universe in a grain of sand. The "you" that cleans the bathroom is as much you as the "you" that bathes in the light of the supernal. So how can we hold this sense of multiple selves, which at times can feel schizophrenic at worst, and confusing at best? The answer comes in realizing there is a common denominator in how we "see" ourselves that transcends, but includes, the differences. It is awareness. Some call it consciousness. It is our capacity to self reflect, and know ourselves through inner observation. This faculty in operation is what defines an awakened self. Whatever we may be in form or formless terms, it is our awareness of that self (or selves) that is fundamentally who and what we truly are.