MOBY DICK

Both Ahab and Ishmael are fascinated by the whale, but whereas Ahab perceives him exclusively as evil, Ishmael keeps an open mind. Ahab has a static world view, blind to new information, but Ishmael’s world view is constantly in flux as new insights and realizations occur. “And flux in turn … is the chief characteristic of Ishmael himself.” 

In the chapter “The Doubloon,” Ishmael reports how each spectator sees his own personality reflected in the coin, but does not look at it himself. Fourteen chapters later, in “The Guilder,” he participates in “what is clearly a recapitulation” of the earlier chapter. The difference is that the surface of the golden sea in “The Guilder” is alive, whereas the surface of the doubloon is unalterably fixed, “only one of several contrasts between Ishmael and Ahab.”

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Pay attention to the Doubloon as being a mirror of self-reflection

And the Golden sea, being alive and not fixed – shape-shifter.

The Doubloon is a fixed mirror of the personality!!!!

Now bring your attention to the teachings I have taught you so far. I said that when you shatter the mirror of fixed identity, you look upon the fields of infinity. You lose your fixed personality and become a shape-shifter, capable of being anything that is needed. A Master Teacher reflects to others exactly what is in their mirrors by their shape-shifting ability. They always see themselves as they are. They either love their reflections or they hate them.

* Awakening marks the very beginning of spiritual life. It is the first response of the Soul or Christ Energy to the invocative appeal of the personality. The hold of the physical body and its appetites is severed and the first impulse toward the construction of the ‘within’ – is registered. This initiation signals the first attempt of the Soul to control a still unintegrated personality. At first this is not registered in the brain consciousness but rather is a sensing or feeling in the beginning.