March - Ceremonies 18-23

I was led through the book The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and I came across a couple of sutras about Ignorance and Impermanence.

Ignorance comes when you regard the impermanent as the Permanent; the impure as the Pure; the not-Self as the Self. Ego stems from this ignorance and is specifically identifying with your body, thoughts and feelings.

The ceremonies following this reading dealt with this lesson.
What is Permanent and what is Pure? The Self...the Eternal, Pure Consciousness. The Witness of your body, the Witness of your thoughts, the Witness of your movements and feelings, etc.
The body, our thoughts and feelings are all impermanent and in a constant state of flux and change. Identifying with them, we regard the impermanent as Permanent. This is also regarding the not-Self as the Self, for you are not your body or your thoughts or your feelings.

During the day I would be constantly trying to discern between the permanent and impermanent.

In ceremony, my consciousness would be overtaken by these imaginary dramas--I would suddenly be in some social situation with people talking about some senseless subject. Then I would suddenly awaken from this and go back to focusing on my intention for the ceremony.
A couple days later, I realized this represented what was happening in my life. I would walk around, solely intent on discerning between the impermanent and permanent, then my consciousness would be overtaken by a drama--talking to different people about various things, the Temple and the workers, or how my day was going, etc. Then when it was over, I would go back to my intention and realize I had just been virtually unconscious for the conversation, just habitually reacting to my environment.

Ceremony 22
I don't really remember any of what happened.
But, during the day I read the chapter "The Nature of the Ground" in Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy which describes the divine Reality and what exactly it is.
The following is Huxley's explanation of the Ground and its three aspects:
"The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute [defined as pure consciousness on page 8], ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology.
...The Absolute Ground of all existence has a personal aspect. ...For Christian mystics, the ineffable, attributeless Godhead is manifested in a Trinity of Persons, of whom it is possible to predicate such human attributes as goodness, wisdom, mercy and love, but in a supereminent degree.
...Finally there is an incarnation of God in a human being, who possesses the same qualities of character as the personal God, but who exhibits them under the limitations necessarily imposed by confinement within a material body born into the world at a given moment in time."

I was convinced on the first aspect--the spiritual Absolute, the singular consciousness that underlies and is the basis of Reality. I understood the last aspect to a degree, I was convinced that one could apprehend this ultimate Reality. The Personal God was the aspect I had trouble with.

When I awoke after the ceremony, I finally understood the Personal God and understood how the three aspects relate to one another.
Attempted Explanation:
Aspect 1: Everything, at its very essence, at its ground, is unmanifested, attributeless, pure consciousness.
Aspect 2: The Personal God is the perfect manifestation of the Godhead, hence the supereminent attributes of love and wisdom. It is also perfect in form, here we find Sacred Geometry--which is the geometry of nature (on Earth and celestially).
"Our Father who art in heaven.
God is ours--ours in the same intimate sense that our consciousness and life are ours. But as well as immanently ours, God is also transcendently the personal Father, who loves his creatures and to whom love and allegiance are owed by them in return. "Our Father who art": when we come to consider this verb in isolation, we perceive that the immanent-transcendent personal God is also the immanent-transcendent One, the essence and principle of all existence. And finally, God's being is "in heaven"; the divine nature is other than, and incommensurable with, the nature of the creatures in whom God is immanent."
Aspect 3: Incarnation in a human being. There is a Tao or Way that, if followed, allows God to be made manifest in yourself. 
"He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul." - William Law
"A man has many skins in himself, covering the depths of his soul." Eckhart
The picture that begins to form here is that God exists just after the Godhead, as the unmanifest becomes manifest. Though perfect and inherent in every person, the many hides we have covering the depths of our soul keep this perfection from manifesting. These skins are the personal self with its personality and habitual reactions. We are able to shed these skins and come to a point where we allow God to shine out from the depths of our soul.