7. The Spiritual Path

There are  two routes to life’s journey which can be described using the symbolic chart shown below:

The chart shows a 24 hour clock, but it also shows the Cardinal directions and the seasons.

• Night midnight and the darkness of night is represented as 24 hours.  But it is also said to be ‘North’ and ‘Winter’. 
• The East is around about 6 o’clock in the morning with dawn.  But it is also said to be ‘Spring’. 
• The South is midday, Noon.  It is also said to be ‘Summer’
• West is sunset, about 18.00 hours.  It  is also said to be ‘’Autumn’. 

The divisions are totally logical  - the sun sets in the West and rises in the east all over the world so the symbolism is pretty well universal.

The two routes

There are two paths that can be taken symbolically round this chart;

• The ‘normal’ path – the way of the South
• The spiritual path – the way of the North

Taking the normal route, symbolically Dawn/Spring is birth, Noon/Summer is mid-life and Sunset/Autumn is old age and physical Death, the end of life.  You then go through the ‘winter’ in disembodied form as your Higher spirit - and reincarnate [you are born] with a new destiny and a new personality in ‘Spring’.  The wheel of life.

BUT if you are a mystic or a spiritual traveller you divide your life up slightly differently.  You are born [Spring/dawn], you go through a normal mid life [summer/noon], and get to an ‘Autumn’ stage.  But then the mystic traveller adds an extra stage to his life.  He undergoes in bodied form what he would have had to go through in Death.  He or she goes through ‘Winter’ as a living person. It can be quite traumatic as one has to go through ‘the Dark Night of the Soul’ , but if you succeed you appear at dawn free of any need to be reincarnated.  You have achieved your destiny once and for all.

If you travel the spiritual path [and succeed] then you unite at the end with your Higher spirit whilst you are still alive – you actually become your Higher spirit during life and thus become a ‘god’ in life.

Not many people do this.

If you look at the section on Types of Spiritual experience , it is described under the heading of Annihilation.  Annihilation involves the destruction of the personality  in life.  Not for the faint hearted – or the egotistical.

See also the symbolism used for the Four seasons and the hours.