Swimming Upstream
Swimming Upstream
Life is full of stay-in-your-lane messages like, “Go with the flow,” “Don't make waves,” or “Stick to your comfort zone.” These messages tell us that coasting is better than working hard. If you ride a bike or walk a lot, you know where all the hills are. But when driving a car or electric scooter, it's hard to feel the elevation and know when you’re climbing. The car effortlessly glides uphill.
According to the Fourth Way, humankind is in a tricky, if not in a uniquely bad spot. Humankind is way down the Ray of Creation, that is, we are downhill, far from the source. It spans from World 1, the Absolute, to World 96, false personality, where most of us dwell. That means a seeker needs to learn to walk uphill or to swim upstream, and it is not an easy-going venture. To wake up, I must be more than a machine. I must observe myself, unlock my habits, be out of patterns, and learn to value interruptions to a comfortable life. I must find the essence of who I am and then even transcend that to reach the quintessential, World 12, the level of self-remembering or the third state.
You may already know this viscerally. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you know that the task is holding to the difficult.
No gains without pains. ─ Benjamin Franklin
What is the practical implication of being out of patterns or disrupting one's habits? Like everyone else, I suffer from delusions and various mechanicalities, and I fail to keep aims, among other things. In this case, I'm referring to aims that concern my psychological development, and those that reorient my focus on changing my state of consciousness.
To use another simple example, let's think about our experience of becoming educated. How many times did we neglect to do the required reading? How many times did we start the assignment a day before the due date? Even when we mastered good study habits and were prepared, how often did we rely on previous knowledge and avoid a deeper dive into a subject? I teach college part-time, and every semester I witness the same patterns in students who fail to see their weaknesses. They do not even realize the coasting or downhill choices they are making.
If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. ─ Rainer Maria Rilke
Many species of fish are born in freshwater and then migrate and mature, spending a large portion of their life in marine waters. When it comes time to breed again, these species must swim from oceanic saltwater to freshwater and, in some cases, up streams that are exceedingly difficult, nearly impossible, to traverse. They nevertheless succeed, at least some of them, in perpetuating the species and rear new offspring. It’s as if the fish were programmed to swim upstream; they were wired to hold to the difficult.
We’re not so different. I have on numerous occasions verified how illuminating it can be to hold to the difficult and swim upstream. Such efforts, when applied to psychological development and consciousness, can yield “offspring” unlike anything else we find in life. It isn’t easy, but it is liberating and immeasurably satisfying to our highest parts. What challenges are before you? Do you find that you are swimming upstream or going with the current?
Seeing difficulties handled with ease gives us a sight of the impossible. ─ Johann von Goethe
Salmon Fish Swimming Upstream, Robert Hines
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