Seeking the Jewel

[Steppingfeet]

What's the "dearly bought" business about? What's the "great price?" Have you ever read J. Campbell's The Hero's Journey? It's a lonely road, venturing out repeatedly into the land of imagination, out beyond your places of familiar reference. It can hurt to cast away dearly held constructs and values when you're still plugged in to life as a 3D humanoidal earth creature.

Peregrine, that is eloquently well phrased and congruent with my understanding of the meaning of "dearly bought". Your statement reflects my own conception of there being a giving up of something, as you suggest, a releasing of "dearly held constructs and values".

I have read most of The Hero’s Journey and have explored Campbell’s work elsewhere. (The series of interviews he did with Bill Moyers is well worth the time.) I love his philosophy of “follow your bliss” no matter what society or “the world” tells you that you should be doing.

I see how you define the experience of the jewel in terms of "that which is experienced with uncommonly rarefied aesthetic apprehension", and how your particular experience with music is an apt manifestation of a bejeweled experience. Your definition is helpful.

Though, as you clearly point out, there are multiple avenues for the discovery and appreciation of the jewels within, I wonder what it is and how it is obtained in the context of intimate relationship.

I don't seem to be getting much feedback on the chosen focus, so I'll make it more specific in the hopes of eliciting more responses.

What about the sacrifice of marriage, especially for one who feels naturally averse to it? I contemplate how resistance to marriage to an intensely loved partner who greatly desires the union plays into Ra's statements.

Is choosing to marry - despite ones strong misgivings and extreme inner reluctance - a sacrifice of identity which removes the veils obscuring the "dearly bought" jewel? Is that a "price" constituting a release of illusory, superficial notions about who the self is? Or is it a misguided denial of ones own nature which ought to be honored?

And anyone else who may tune into this thread, I request any thoughts you may have on the questions posed at the beginning of this thread in this post.

Love/Light,
GLB