Reflections upon a Path to Union

Transforming Relationships with Spiritual Insight

• Penny Frampton

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Embark on an intimate exploration with me, Penny Frampton, as we navigate the confluence of spiritual practice and the daily grind in the Western world. Through the lens of my personal diary, we uncover the transformation from emotional dependence to the realization of divine love—a love that extends unconditional warmth to all, yet often challenges conventional relationship dynamics. This episode is a candid revelation of the dual life led by a yogi outside the seclusion of an ashram; a life where morning meditations give way to divine insights, and where the quest for soul consciousness reshapes every interaction in the material world.

Strap in for a profound examination of how deepening spiritual awareness influences our most intimate connections. Discover how a shift from physical desires to a heightened state of divine love can impact the potential for traditional partnerships, leaving some relationships unformed before they even begin. I share the raw, heartfelt challenges of seeking a partner who can understand or resonate with this unique and transformative journey toward a higher love. Join us as we dissect the complexities of maintaining a spiritual path amidst the practicalities of modern society, from the perspective of someone living it each day.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome. I'm Penny Frampton and I am the host of the podcast A Little Light on the Path, which is a series of talks about esoteric philosophy from a practical and experiential perspective. And as part of that podcast, I'm going to be sharing with you what the life of a yogi in a modern Western world is like, in the form of a diary I'm going to be sharing events and experiences and insights as they happen, in a very informal and real way. So a yogi is someone that, through focused spiritual practices over a number of years, has reached a stage in that spiritual evolution where their focus of consciousness is beyond that of the mind, of the personality, within what I call soul consciousness. Some call this the higher self or the I am, presence or even communion with the divine. It's also known as samadhi, meaning union with the soul.

Speaker 1:

Now, in the past, this was usually achieved whilst living in an ashram, under the training of a master or a guru, and rarely whilst living in an ordinary life within society. However, with the advent of the internet, training has become long distance and can be undertaken at home, hence living an ordinary life in an extraordinary way, if you like. But this brings its own challenges. For instance, I don't have the support of a physical ashram, so I still have to earn a living and I still have to manage all the financial risks of a normal life, and I'm not isolated in a specialised community of like-minded people. So I have to manage ordinary and everyday relationships. To manage ordinary and everyday relationships, what this means is that, as a yogi in a modern western world, you live a life of duality, if you like, a dual focus of consciousness. You live in two worlds at the same time. You are aware and focused on the level of soul consciousness, but at the same time as being aware as a personality, using the mind and the physical form to interact with the world. However, over time, the soul awareness grows greater and the time and energy focus within the personality declines. So, although I'm aware of my physical body, for instance, I take care of it, I have a good diet, I exercise, but purely as the means by which I communicate with the world. Similarly, my my focus becomes withdrawn from feelings and emotions, which are purely constructs of the personality. They still pop up from time to time as a residual subconscious pattern left over from experiences in the past, but over time, divine qualities of energy replace feelings and emotions and, similarly, the use of the mind changes and thoughts, become intuition and the illumination of divine knowing or understanding. So this leads me to sharing my day because it started in a meditation.

Speaker 1:

Now, each morning I meditate, usually for just over an hour. Morning, I meditate usually for just over an hour, and there are various stages or steps to the meditation, and one of which is called contemplation, and this is when you hold a thought about a subject that you want a clearer understanding about, and what happens as you become one with soul consciousness? Divine illumination brings light and understanding to the subject. Now, this morning, I was contemplating, as I often do, about the subject of relationships. You see, what happens is when you disengage focus from the emotions. This affects any potential relationships you might wish to engage in, and for some years now I have been realizing that it is becoming harder and harder for me as a personality to find a partner in the traditional sense of the word, because with my focus drawn away from physicality, to be blunt, I have absolutely no interest in a sexual relationship anymore, and this could be very challenging for a potential partner, and unless they are a similar level of spiritual evolution or just very understanding, this means a relationship or partnership finishes before it even begins. Some potential partners usually end up saying something like I totally understand, but what level of intimacy can we have, not understanding that physical intimacy is simply out of the question? Another offered I understand, with your experience of relationships in the past, you fear intimacy now, but I can help you with that.

Speaker 1:

So recently I came to realise that my focus has been withdrawn also from a level of emotional intimacy as felt within a connection between two personalities. It's not that I'm not an extraordinarily loving person. It's just that my love comes from a higher level of consciousness. It's a divine love and it works through me equally with anyone who comes into my life, anyone, that is, that wants to accept it, and there are many who will reject it. So I have come to terms and this fairly recently with the fact that I will never enter into a relationship in terms of a normal everyday partnership. It's no longer possible for me, and that is part of what being a yogi brings.

Speaker 1:

So I was reflecting in meditation upon this this morning and, as I always do, I was watching for feelings or emotions that come up around the possibility of never having a relationship in the future. But what surprised me was that I had no feelings come up at all, no regret, no sadness come up at all. No regret, no sadness. I was simply just accepting it. And the reason why is because when you are focused on a soul consciousness level, you are completely aware of being in union with everything. Therefore, where a personality might project outward into the world the desire to establish union or connection, I already have a connection and a union within me at an infinitely deeper and more powerful way than any I could find externally.

Speaker 1:

So, as I said before, when you contemplate something in meditation and allow union with soul consciousness, a new level of knowledge and illumination comes, and sometimes it comes in the form of very symbolic visions. And so it was. This morning I had an extraordinary vision that took the form of several vortices of energy stacked one above the other, and each vortice symbolized a level of consciousness the lowest and the smallest was the physical form, and stacked above were vortices representing the emotional level, the mental level, the soul and other levels beyond that again, and these vortices each had different qualities of light, colour and sound, etc. And as I watched, the vortices slowly drew apart, so they looked like spinning whirlwinds with a tail reaching downward into the centre of the one below, and I realised that the bottom two, representing the physical and the emotional bodies the bottom two, representing the physical and the emotional bodies were completely clear, and the vortice above them representing the mental body, it still had some colouring, but it was slightly higher and separated from the two below, with only a fine strand of its tail still connecting them, only a fine strand of its tail still connecting them. And this is the way the soul consciousness portrays an answer to a question that you contemplate in meditation, and it's the way that you interpret it and try and express it in words. That can be expressed in so many different ways, but for me, it showed clearly how my center of energetic focus was removed from the physical and the emotional and that they had become clear and no longer resonated in the way that another personality might. There you go. That was my morning, a typical morning for a yogi the understanding of relationships from the perspective of soul consciousness.

Speaker 1:

So what about the rest of my day? Well, I still have to work and what I do for a living is fundraising for charities. I work from home, which gives me a greater choice and flexibility with my hours. I'm on the phone most of the day speaking to people, but the particular campaign I was on today really highlighted for me the state of the economy, the level at which people are living in this present day and just how little they have to give. But what struck me was just how much they sincerely would love to do so and how much in many cases which actually hurt them emotionally, and it highlighted for me just how compassionate humanity can be despite the straits in which they find themselves. And also what appears on the surface when people aren't giving actually disguises a real compassion that cannot find expression. And also, being a trained counsellor, I recognise when a negative emotion such as anger is really disguising a frustration at being unable to help. And then you get the really genuine people I just love talking to who talk about their situation with such congruity. You know that how they feel is just how they express themselves, and so the personality aspect of me spent the day chatting to people and listening to what they had to say.

Speaker 1:

But then the yogi at the same time, on the level of soul expression, was just holding an incredible amount of love and compassion for people I was speaking to, and it didn't matter if they were abrupt or put the phone down on me or spent time complaining. I still held an amazing and I do this on a daily basis, and that is also what it means to be a yogi on a daily life, earning a living. This holding and being an expression of divine love can become extremely powerful and intense. You actually feel the change of energy at a physical level and because this energy centers in the chest and around the heart, the blood flow increases and I get incredibly hot. You know, I'm literally stripping off layers because the heat and the intensity, and sometimes I have to stop for a while and actually cool down. And sometimes I have to stop for a while and actually cool down, drink a lot of water, and this is another side effect to being a yogi in a modern Western world. So, ok, diary, what else has happened today?

Speaker 1:

Oh, yes, there was a particular incident today that highlighted another aspect of being a yogi. I was talking to someone who I could sense had a huge amount of fear and frustration. It was so strong I could feel it affecting my own energies, and that's okay, because that's what being empathetic is all about, but I've had to unlearn a lot of defensive techniques that were taught particularly around the new age community in the in the 80s, about creating protective barriers around yourself. But in the end this also becomes barriers to loving and useful energies as well, and it takes quite a lot of time to dismantle them. The best protection comes from clearing your own emotional energy so they've got nothing to resonate with no like to attract, like and to flood yourself with divine love, and that way your energies can't resonate and be affected. But even for me in this case it did, did take me some time afterward to clear the residual impact, if you like, of those energies of fear hour.

Speaker 1:

I was aware of my personality, clock watching, and I became aware of constantly thinking to myself got to push through this, got to push through this. But as soon as I became aware of it, I just had this incredible sensation of contentment flood through me and I just looked around my little cottage in my cozy little room with my wonderful cat curled up on the sofa beside me, and I'm a great lover of orchids and I have several in flower at the moment that just spilled over my mantelpiece. I'm also a keen photographer and I have these beautiful images of the natural world on my walls and I was filled completely with a sense of pure contentment and peace which continued to lift my heart even until this moment. So in that moment I'm going to say goodnight to my diary. Take care out there and much love to you all. And if you want to catch me, live, you can find me on the Wisdom app on a Saturday and Sunday at 7 p 7pm GMT every week, or you can find me on Facebook or Instagram and other forms of social media.