What Is The Ring Pass Not and Why Is It So Important In Our Spiritual Evolution?

By Robert Wilkinson

In our lives there is a binding force that requires we learn all we must learn before we can move on to new experiences. There are certain lessons we must master if we would grow beyond our limitations, fears, and "vain imaginings." This binding force is known in Esoteric Psychology as "The Ring-Pass-Not."

We all have a Ring Pass Not, and it shifts with each lesson we learn to apply with wisdom, intelligence, and skill. Even though it is human to be hassled by our responsibilities and limitations, these are directly related to what we are learning in expressing our Higher Self in effective ways, now and for the future.

We often seem to be caught in "holding patterns," practicing skills and coming to realizations about things that may seem meaningless or futile in the moment. However, these set the stage for abilities we'll have to demonstrate in future life experiences and chapters. Overcoming limitations (and impatience!) as we slowly and surely master what we have to master ensures our better Self opportunities to show itself in the future.

All of these relate directly to our Dharma, or Higher Truth of Self. These come forth as we master the Divine Laws related directly to what is called The Ring Pass Not. While I've written about this many times, today we review this immutable binding force teaching us that some limits are more boon than burden.

Saturn symbolizes the Universal binding force, the limits of our fear, our responsibility, and our Dharmaseva, "the Great Work." In the Wisdom Tradition, Saturn also rules what is known as the "Ring-Pass-Not." It is where we meet the fear that separates us from our own divinity, dominion, and perfection. As we grow, our Ring-Pass-Not also grows.

The "Ring-Pass-Not" defines what is and is not "permitted," from the angle of your own Soul's growth, both in terms of skills as well as comprehension. That's why we're learning about different "Rings-Pass-Not," both personally and collectively.

As we easily see through contemplating the teachings of Sages and true Spiritual Teachers, there are many limitations of ego and matter to master. Doing this effectively requires both imagination, acceptance that in fact we do have limits we need to examine, and willingness to try to grow beyond our inabilities.

We define the field of our "dis-illusionment" by the nature of our predisposing patterns of attachments to perceptions and interpretations about life. Everything that is subject to our perceptions and minds becomes a temporary form we can learn from, both by its appearance and its eventual disappearance. How much fear, enslavement, and disempowerment we experience around the comings and goings of phenomena in our lives shows us our Ring-Pass-Not.

Glamor often plays a big part in how we limit our possibilities unnecessarily, since glamor is fundamentally unreal and we're told it is a world problem. However, it is a useful tool so that we may come out of our delusions around the nature of self, Self and our relationship to Truth and Community, however these are defined in their ever-changing nature, as well as changeless nature.

Through the inevitable contrasts in the ever-necessary polarizations between the worlds of Soul and matter, we master moving through duality, and learn how to antidote the various doubts, illusions, and superstitions which we have created as a result of ego suppositions based on the perceptions of the 5 senses and the mind.

This is where timing is everything. We cannot solve tomorrow's problems today, nor can we move beyond the inherent limits of the immediate moment. The beauty in this is that Higher Awareness is absolute, yet relative. There are limits to what we are able to understand and utilize skillfully at any given moment in our personal and impersonal evolution. This is where in mastering how to lift the chains of mental slavery off our shoulders we come to both understanding and wisdom about form and process. Those are the keys to mastering our Higher Destiny.

The Ring-Pass-Not is comprised of what we are and what we are not, the limit set by our own response to the edge of our fear, as well as the Threshold of Revelation. Another important aspect of our Ring-Pass-Not are our self-created blind spots and limited ego-mind hindering or needlessly limiting what we are willing to accept and become as Spirits in the material world.

We are limited by our ability to act or not act skillfully in situations. This also applies to our emotions and mind set. As we become more skillful in surmounting limitations, or find new ways to do something needed by us or our world, we will become the teacher we seek, since there is no true separation between the Teacher, the Teaching, and we who are Taught.

In reality there is no limit to the growth of the Soul, but there are limitations of form, different ones required at different seasons of the life. This teaches us a well-rounded Wisdom, and offers textures to our understanding through knowing when to stop, when to go, when to work, and when to play, whether in the physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual realms of experience.

We all have limitations. We all have the power to grow beyond them. As we learn not to take certain lessons personally, we can examine how we all have been limited by various aspects of our understanding that set up certain lessons, both individual and interactive, unique as well as recurring.

As we extend the scope of how our lessons relate to our personality growth as well as what we are to do in the world, those patterns of our lives show us clues toward a larger perspective about things, resources, the players and their roles, and our own relationship to expectations. It is leading each of us, you and me and humanity, beyond old limitations and roles. Since each of us is a seed within the greater Life of humanity as a whole, each lesson we master aids the progress of all.

Welcome to the school all of us are subjected to, by nature of our life in a three dimensional form in an impermanent world. Begin to frame everything that presents itself to you with an eye to opening your heart to an ever-greater group recognition, effective service, and self-forgetfulness, coupled to an ever-greater expression of Goodwill. That way your expressions of Love will become more consistent, you'll know your connectedness with other beings, and you'll drop your fears very quickly.

By generating goodwill and positivity, you're using spiritual magnetic material in a loving and wise way, and all limitations of form can be seen in the light of a greater spiritual understanding, with all things redeemed in good fashion. Then the Ring-Pass-Not becomes the defining limit of your own spirituality in your world, according to the level of your effectiveness and the specific function you are occupying within the larger One Life in which we live and breathe and have our being.

Though much of this sounds difficult to achieve, it's really an inevitability once you get in the groove and stay on track through time and experience. Keep synthesizing your awareness as you move from realization to application to further realizations and applications. The fantastic goal of perfecting our consciousness through practices of self-realization is within reach for us all, if we simply come to the right point of view and show up, ready to play!

© Copyright 2006, 2011 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Dafna]

Thank you Robert once more for your profound exquisite way of delivering Truth and clear ways we can choose to live, with purpose and intent to evolve our souls and contribute to our species conscious evolution.

[Nancy]

Where it is at!So very true, thanks again Mister!

[Christine B]

Although I have been coming to this site on a fairly regular basis for a few years, I have never posted a comment so far.
Whilst my grasp of it is limited, this particular article is touching something in me very deeply... perhaps (at least in part) because I am going through my second Saturn return, and currently facing into many (at times overwhelming)challenges, fears, limitations. There is a deep awareness that what I am experiencing is vitally necessary, and is part of some intense learning, initiation... and, as you write, that I cannot move on until the lessons (e.g., responsibility, integrity, groundedness, both accepting and overcoming limitations)are integrated.
As it happens, today was an overwhelming day, and so, reading your article helped me to put it all into a larger perspective again... to re-member.. also that this is something we all share.
I am very grateful for your profound insights... thank you, Robert.

[Sherry]

I never heard the term,"ring pass not".

thank you for this very full explanation.

I had been coming to my own, fuzzier understanding of similar to what you describe here.
that we are each best off by following what is allowed to us and not fight our essence and required pathways of each moment.

so then is free will the ability to go off our own best path?

[Shehzaad Maroof Khan]

hi Robert i created your page on facebook sometime ago ... plz have a look need to update it :)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-Wilkinson/133846025775

[Ann]

"Ring Pass Not" is from Machaelle Small Wright's book Dancing in the Shadows of the Moon.

[Dragon Keeper]

Brilliant!!!
Very well explained. Much to ponder.

[Robert]

Hi Dafna - You're most welcome. We are mastering the "Rings Pass Not" through eternity, so I figure from time to time it's a good thing to examine.

Hi Nancy - You're welcome, of course.

Hi Christine - Welcome to posting! This subject is most important for all of us, as it concerns the deepest and highest strata of our Being. Saturn is definitely associated with these lessons, and I'll soon post another related article. Once you're done with the Saturn return, you'll have overcome many things that used to plague you. Much of it deals with which chains we no longer wish to wear.

Hi Sherry - It's an ancient term that sooner or later we all encounter in our path to higher awareness. While we should always challenge our limits in healthy ways, you're right in that we are better off figuring out what we're learning in the here and now and then with spiritual expectancy allow new challenges to arise spontaneously of our true nature. Free will allows us to go "off the rails" from time to time as well as know when to do course corrections that get us back on track.

Hi Shehzaad Maroof Khan - Thanks, my Brother. I don't go to Facebook much, and will certainly take a look at what you created and try to offer what I can. "Places to go, promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep..." Thanks for hanging in there, Ace! And Cocker does have a magnificent voice, doesn't he?

Hi Ann - Not exactly. It's an ancient term first brought to the western world by HP Blavatsky in "The Secret Doctrine" in 1888, and then much elaborated on in the 1920s and 30s throughout the Alice Bailey material courtesy of her Tibetan Master DK. I studied those works extensively in the 70s, and have been learning how to apply the concept ever since via my own original work. As helpful as it may be, the book you mention is not source material in any way concerning "The Ring-Pass-Not," though of course anything that elaborates on this subject in a practical way is useful for our evolution.

Hi Dragon Keeper - Thanks. I try to keep up with my readers!;-)

[caliban]

It is rare that I find myself speechless. This would be one of those times.

[J. Sue Gagliardi]

I'm with Caliban; you usually leave me speechless, Robert, but I haven't told you lately that I love you, so I do.

...May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung...

Sue

[Elah]

"Ring Pass Not" was a phrase I learned from a therapist in the '80's...She described the method of energetic self-protection using a visualization of intersecting spinning golden rings surrounding the aura....I have used this technique and found it powerful and effective. Your article further defines and explains this ancient rite of passage as the boundaries of the soul expanding with the evolution of the human heart...
Mahalo Robert.
Elah