Visualization News – November 2004
The Twenty-Six Healing Key (Part IX of IX)
I want to mention before we get started that I have a section on my website called Spirit Cards. These are pictures I have created that are paired up with ideas based on the information I have perceived about Spirit. Please feel free to check them out at http://www.geocities.com/visualizenews/spiritindex.html.
Hello and welcome back! Today I will finally stop procrastinating and give you part nine of the nine-part series on the theme of internal healing. I generated this material as part of my attempt to heal myself of a chronic health condition. Although these techniques have been very valuable to me, I can’t vouch that they will heal your physical conditions. Healing is an complex process, and I hope these techniques will prove as valuable to you as they have been for me.
There are twenty-six “healing keys” in all, but today we will only discuss the last three healing keys, which is plenty of material to work with in one bite. In fact, I would recommend breaking this material up over at least three sessions if possible. As this is the end of the Healing Keys series, please feel free to refer back to them as needed. Below is a list of the topics from the entire Healing Keys series. I hope you find it helpful.
1 – Mind healing neurosis
Before I discuss the twenty-fourth healing key, I want to explain the meditation that you will use with all the healing keys. This meditation is specific to this exercise, although it could be used in other contexts. We will call it the “healing lock” meditation. This meditation will specifically work with each “healing key” in the best possible way to release its maximum positive impact. Begin by getting relaxed and have a notebook and pen handy.
Visualize a gold or copper circle with a black (old fashioned) keyhole design in the middle (see above). As you breath in, say internally, “I am in healing lock meditation on…,” here you breath out slowly, saying internally, “…the healing key of ____healing____ .” You will fill those spaces in with the name of the healing key, which is always described in the form “x healing y.” Conceptualize this meditation as being the perfect lock for the key to operate in, the perfect means to achieve the healing. Simply plug in the name of the healing key after reading the description and memorizing its basic meaning. If you have insights during your meditation, you can jot them down at the end of the meditation period.
We will begin today by discussing the twenty-fourth healing key which is all-encompassing awareness healing attachment. As human beings, it seems as if we are cut off from any kind of all-encompassing awareness. Our defining state is aloneness and being cut off from that connection. So, we have to imagine a state where we are connected with all consciousness.
But, what we are not as aware of is that we are creations of desire. Our desire to be self-defined is what creates the world and makes it appear real. Our “identity” is just a self that our own mind generates out of a specific set of desires. These are desires that can only be fulfilled by having an experience that seems to show that we are separate. But, in fact, our mind and desires very much sculpt the kind of experience we have. Our separateness is purposeful and chosen.
So, to choose an interconnected consciousness is a step in the opposite direction. Why attempt such a leap? We have attachments that hold us down and hold us back. We lug around heavy baggage, laden with things we don’t need. It would be as if we didn’t correlate our exhaustion from dragging this weight around with the baggage itself. We blame the steepness of the street, the people passing by who won’t help us carry our luggage, the state of the world, etc. The real culprit, our unwillingness to let go of what is worthless and burdensome to us, is the real issue.
We easily confuse our personal imagining of Spiritual principals with their actuality. And the negative or limiting qualities that we arbitrarily place on how we imaging them tend to turn us off to them. But, these perceptions are not factual.
Like a person who has never tasted sushi and is turned off by the thought of eating raw fish, people continuously allow their lack of Spiritual experience to create a kind of ceiling on what they are willing to try. They hold fast to their fears about these experiences without knowing what it is that they are refusing to have. In the end it is happiness and peace of mind that they are turning down (not raw fish).
Exposure to religious nonsense and other kinds of negative experiences that contaminate our willingness to open to anything Spiritual are understandable blockages. Crap is crap, and dressing it up and taking it out for a walk is about as convincing as any person trying to sell what passes as modern religion as “spiritual.” It is filled with all sorts of propaganda. But to observe the criminality that flows so freely from the human mind and use that as a means to deny yourself what is fundamentally yours for the taking is even more absurd. Would you deny yourself a car because it might be stolen? Don’t punish yourself for the craziness of others.
Instead, look honestly at your unhappiness. This is the baggage that we were talking about earlier. The universality of human criminality seems to point to one kind of common denominator, but there is another that is far more universal and fundamentally true. All beings are formed of consciousness, and that consciousness, regardless of what shape it is cast in, is all the same. The essential underlying (or overriding) nature of consciousness is an experience of pure happiness and peace.
The reason we are cut off from this happiness is that in order for us to experience being what we think we are (a person in a body), means that we have to cut ourselves off from that happiness. But, now, midway through that same journey we are now learning that we can cast aside our ideas about who we are, if we are willing. And, changing our identity is just a matter of changing and fleshing out our desires.
All-encompassing awareness is just a matter of simple logic. Eliminate what you are not and what is left over is what you must be. And, if all your personal limitations are just the limitations of a discernable shape and form, like a glass that forms the water poured into it into the same shape, then it stands to reason that the water, or consciousness, must be what we are. And whatever that is, it can take any form but has no form of its own. We are this but also much more than this.
When I have struggled in the past with my Spiritual work, it has often been because I have tried to take “who I am” and form it into something else. Usually that something else is a higher form of consciousness. And, while it works for a little while, I always come down from that experience and back into my old identity. That is because it has been a long, difficult journey for me to reach the understanding that I am simply not Chris.
Chris is the shape that my consciousness takes. But, my consciousness is not made of Chris, and it doesn’t have any inherent Chris-ness. Chris is an identity that I took on to fulfill certain desires. Instead of trying to beat and shape my consciousness into something new, the real issue is when and how I can accept that I am not this form and to become not only willing but motivated to shed it for something better.
When you get close to actually taking higher consciousness and making it your new identity, you still waffle about what you really want. You might find yourself becoming very wishy-washy about more worldly desires. You see the trap and more and more often in the treasure, and wonder it is worth it to reach for it.
When you reach a point where you are shifting actively between two identities, a more Spiritual identity and a more worldly identity, you may wonder if you really want the more Spiritual one. You already mostly know that you don’t want the worldly one. But, there are fears about what you may lose if you dare to take that last step. What will be taken away from you? What pleasures will you be denied?
The answer is none. Spirituality is only about true equality in joy. Spirituality gives and does not take away anything that has any real value. We are already Spiritual beings, and it is not something that we “become” in the future. We just are, as we have always been. So the only remaining issue is addressing our fear. Only the reality of Spiritual experience can heal us of our fears, and even that takes time. But once you overcome your fear you realize that there is no technique or special “way” to achieve your end, just an issue of desire. And as you desire, so shall you be.
All-encompassing awareness drops “self” but not identity. You don’t disappear into a vast cauldron of consciousness. Rather, you expand and become free in such a way that even the shape and form of your identity from moment to moment is yours to choose. This is real freedom. And the universality of that state of consciousness is that at the end of the yellow brick road for every individual there is only one Emerald City.
So what does this have to do with freeing ourselves from attachment. The baggage that we spoke of at the beginning is in fact our own self, the form that we have come to identify with. That form is our baggage and it is not in healing this form but in shedding it that we find happiness. Happiness cannot enter where it is not welcome, and often it is our own false identity that guards the door.
Exercise: Flip the Script
In this exercise we will shed our identity, temporarily, for a superior one. In doing this we will unload much of the garbage that we have been attached to, temporarily. By positively comparing this state to our usual state of being we will see a goal to be reached for and a way to reach it.
We will begin by getting relaxed and comfortable. See yourself soaring up into the sky and into a place of bright light and love. You are going to temporarily shed your old identity and take on a new one here.
The only thing you need to do to accomplish this is to want it. Experience a sense of desire that fills your whole being. It doesn’t have to be extraordinarily intense, just a very complete feeling. As you find this feeling, your old “self” will slip off of you like a suit of clothes and you will expand into a new self’s form. Feel the expansion of your personal energy. You may find that you experience some anxiety, but you can let go of that. Allow yourself to be more than you usually do, if only for a while.
Now, look around at your new environment. How do you feel here? You may feel more abstract, as if you were in a world of mind. You may have a more abstract view on yourself and the world now. You may notice that you feel very emotionally even, as if the normal drama of your thoughts was being laid to rest. The calm and peace can take some getting used to. It can evoke fears about loss of pleasure and increased boredom. But this peace is not the peace of giving up, loneliness or boredom. It is a purely positive kind of peace.
Now, grab a pen and paper and ask yourself six questions. Treat your new “self” as a kind of guide. Ask yourself questions that you feel a lack of clarity about. You can ask this self for its perspective on your life or something that is going on now. You can ask it to shed light on an abstract or philosophical question. Or, you can ask it about a more down-to-earth kind of problem or choice. Whatever you want, ask it now.
Write down each answer as you see it from the perspective of this new self. Trust your answers and feel the confidence that comes with this kind of view on the world. The more you practice this, the more you will familiarize yourself with this new persona. One day it can actually be the person you identify with. It seems impossible but it isn’t. And, you can have a better life as this person than you would as your old self.
Next we are addressing the twenty-fifth healing key, which is true identity healing selflessness. What do we mean when we say selflessness? By that I mean that in approaching Spiritual progress, we imagine a self that is more and more self-sacrificing. This kind of martyrdom is the living embodiment of selflessness. However, this is a view that needs to be healed.
Consciousness as such is a process, not a thing. There are no consciousness particles. Rather, it is the base of existence out of which all other pseudo-realities are spun. Consciousness is the process of evolution. Consciousness evolves moment to moment, and although that evolution does not appear in the form of a simple uphill advancement, it is still an ongoing and never ending process.
Consciousness is our only true identity. But we have to ask what part of consciousness we are. Are we a projection of all consciousness, or are we part of a group consciousness, or is there some other arrangement that explains our current state? The truth is there are multiple answers, and each answer represents an idea that we have impressed on consciousness.
True identity has no self per se, but is still an identity. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. True identity is an identity that can explore any form of selfhood without limit. However, despite the choices it makes in terms of its own shape and form of selfhood, it doesn’t have a final or ultimate self. Rather, identity is a concept that accepts that we do no know what we are and that we don’t know what consciousness is. But we know that we are entirely made out of consciousness, that there is no matter, and there is no physical world. This identity knows how to shape and form its own experience, and knows that everything that “happens” to it comes from itself.
True identity therefore is a very broad and flexible state. It is more defined by what it can do than what it can’t. But it heals the ideas around self-sacrifice by showing that no matter what cause or purpose we artificially impose upon ourselves, that our only real purpose is to evolve moment to moment, and that is the only thing consciousness CAN do. So our purpose does not need to be generated artificially. It simply is, and we are a byproduct of it.
When we pursue our desires, we help all beings as well, regardless of the form of our activity. Because we cannot hurt others, but can only help them, then the source of our purpose is simply in doing what we want every day. And the fact of the matter is that from a Spiritual perspective we are only doing what we want every moment anyways, so to talk about self-sacrifice is foolish, as such a thing does not really exist.
Other people give us the opportunity to help by assuming the form of a self that needs help, and it is a form of help that we are in a good position to provide. But, Spiritually speaking, no one is in need, or a beggar or a charity case. Every event in our life comes from ourselves.
So in a nutshell, do what you want. Obviously, avoid the illusion of hurting others, or you will have to suffer the illusion of pain generated by your own guilt. But do what you want in a way that isn’t hurtful to others. The shape of that experience doesn’t matter. No matter what it is, many beings throughout eternity will learn from your experiences and they will be works of art to be shared in a gallery without walls or limits, forever.
The twenty-sixth (and final) healing key is the act of seeing through illusions healing sacrifice. Here we use the word sacrifice in a broader manner, to include all the ways in which we involve ourselves in pain and struggle to get what we want.
We previously discussed how self-sacrifice is not necessary when we simply do what we want. We fulfill our purpose regardless. But when it comes to sacrifice in general, it is a trickier issue. We have a culture of sacrifice. We are expected to give up what we value in order to have something else.
We also expect others to give up what they value in favor for what serves us. When they don’t, we become enraged, thinking back to all the sacrifices we made for them. Like a slave, we now mentally own them and they have to live in debt to us until they have returned the favor, or in our mind they will need to be punished for their failure to pay us back.
The desire to sacrifice for others and to in turn be rewarded by sacrifice is an expectation of turning people into things. We trick them into slavery by giving them things and we expect them to give those things back. We can humiliate, push, demean and even harm people who “owe us” and we feel justified. It is a way to justify anger and violence.
A church figure may rob a person of their humanity and decency by describing them as a sinner, a pervert or a deceiver, if they tend to bring negative attention to the church. An employer might take away an employee’s vacation time by creating a “can-do” team environment, where any kind of attempt to take care of one’s needs throws work and responsibility off on the other workers, creating a culture of pressure and resentment. In this kind of environment, the sacrifice of vacation time is expected, or you are not a “team player.”
So often people are robbed of their rights on an abstract level first. Then, this translates into being robbed of more concrete things. Time, freedom of movement, sexual freedom, money, the right to vote, free speech and so forth can all be taken away from us with some abstract justification. Then, the actual removal of these rights can begin and a culture of sacrifice is created. But we have to be robbed on an abstract level first, and be convinced to accept it.
Other people do not exist (on a Spiritual level) to oppress us. They are all here to help us as we are here to help them. The form of that help is on many different levels. Sometimes even violence and hurt translate into a kind of help. But to understand how one is helped, one often has to be able to see a bigger picture of one’s life that isn’t available yet. But, it does exist.
To get to the place where the reality of other people helping us comes to conscious awareness and we can see it blatantly, we have to first make a mental journey. You have to make a habit of shifting your awareness in such a way that you begin to re-perceive the world.
This begins with a single thought. When a thought of fear flashes across our mind, it is a thought that must be undone. We may think, “Angela is out to get me and I’m sure she is going to find a way to get me fired.” Angela’s only real purpose is to help us. We need to say that to ourselves to counter the thought. Then, we can remind ourselves that every person exists to help us. Think about it actively. We only receive the contents of our own desires. If we don’t see how an event could come from a desire, we need to understand that we might not be able to see the connection now, but we will some day.
When we think of obstacles and circumstances as being “overwhelming,” we need to say to ourselves that all perceived conditions exist only in our own consciousness, and are the product of our desires. In reminding ourselves of this we will actually see a change in our circumstances.
If we think, “God hates me,” because something painful has happened, we need to remind ourselves that all events come from our own desires. Who we are at the highest levels is pure love and nothing else. We only suffer because we misperceive our own circumstances.
When we feel frustrated and think that we can’t have what we want, we can remind ourselves that the only thing that happens in our life is getting what we want. If we have experienced the opposite, then we need to find our higher experience and reconnect with it in order to start owning our life again. We can start by saying that that the ONLY thing that can happen to us in life is getting what we want.
If we have concerns that revolve around ageing or time constraints, we can remind ourselves that time only exists to allow our desires to all be fulfilled. So, it is absurd to say that there is not enough time to have or do anything. There is always exactly the right amount of time to fulfill our desires. Anything we can’t have in the physical level of perception, we will have at anther level.
And, if we simply don’t have any energy or motivation, if we lack a purpose or don’t know what we want, we can remind ourselves that our own “self” is nothing but a continuous process of desire fulfillment. Our desires will never “run dry.” Our purpose is already being fulfilled every second and doesn’t need our help. And, we exist to have what we want. By reminding ourselves of these things, they become more and more apparent in our lives.
While others live in a solid world of things, they will think you are crazy to believe otherwise. But it is the process of science itself that demands that we go beyond surface appearances and analyze the nature of the world. And as this nature is not simple or obvious at the surface, it requires a deeper and more skeptical analysis. So use the axioms of science to argue the validity of your approach. Dare to believe what you can’t prove. You are experimenting in mind, using yourself as the guinea pig. And whatever you learn will be yours forever.
Thanks and take care!
2 – Mercy healing selfhood
3 – Subconscious Love healing the process of becoming
4 – Activity/circumstances healing themselves through Spirit
5 – Ecstasy healing dying
6 – Transparency/nakedness healing self/autonomy/wholeness
7 – Touch healing relationships
8 – Mirror Heart healing inner conflicts between desires
9 – Quality of Perception healing anything
10 – Satisfaction healing not knowing what you want
11 – Fusion healing brokenness
12 – Harmony with fate healing perspectives
13 – Healing the gut by aligning need and nourishment into one
14 – Positive common ground healing communication
15 – Freedom from guilt healing play
16 – Pure desire healing service to others
17 – Soul binding healing sexuality
18 - Freedom from slave mentality healing culture
19 - Debunking materialism healing freedom
20 - Removing ambition healing career
21 - Receptivity healing purpose
22 - Unity healing friendship
23 - Forgiveness healing interest in life
24 - All-encompassing awareness healing attachment
25 - True identity healing selflessness
26 - Seeing through illusions healing sacrifice
