Spirit Pages (continued)
G1) The nature of everything is to stretch forward into time and then to pass backward through time in many different ways, as identity transforms over time.
This seems a bit confusing, but you have to look at the statement through the eyes of a Spirit being, who lives in a world without any single �timeline.� In this state, time is generated by experience, and Spirit is about having the broadest possible number of experiences. Any person who has a lifetime of experiences will draw connections between events in the past and the present, and then reconnect those two points to other points in the past in new ways as they get older. For any point A (past experience #1) and point B (present experience) and point C (past experience #2) there will be a unique perception. So, as we live, we not only live forward in time in new ways, but our forward journey through time will lead us backwards through time, in terms of our memories, in new ways as well.
You are probably saying �so what!� at this point, because that is obvious. However, to put this perception into words and in a sense codify it allows us to do several things. First, it allows us to view the �past� not as a static, unchanging things that always has the same meaning, but as a dynamic, evolving web of memories that is constantly evolving and improving. We are not �stuck� or imprisoned in our negative past experiences, as each new experience casts the old event in a new light. Even the most negative events could be liberating if remembered in the context of some new event.
So, we can see that we are not just fleeing our past but changing it by going on living. And, we turn the trauma of the past into the understanding of the past as we gain new understanding in the present. Secondly, by putting this into words we can create techniques to specifically allow us to transform our past in specific ways by generating new present-day experiences.
Exercise: Past Desires
Begin by having your notebook and pen handy. Get comfortable and think for a few minutes about two most traumatic events in your past. Write each event on the top of a blank page. The event could have been something as long-term as a bad marriage, or as abrupt as a car accident. Sit and think about the event on the top of the first page. What exactly happened? How does this event sit in your memory? Write down a few words describing how this memory makes you feel, or what emotions you associate with the memory.
When you are finished, draw a line and beneath it write out how you would like to experience that memory in the future. Come up with a few words or phrases or a few sentences that describe how you want to feel about it in the future. Do you want this memory to bring you strength, or a feeling of courage or conviction? Do you want to feel a sense of closure or even compassionate love for yourself and the other persons involved in the event? Do you want the unpleasant memory to actually have an uplifting feeling to you? No goal here is unrealistic, no matter how you feel now.
Now, imagine that the negative memory is a turned over top hat, and you are reaching into it and pulling out an object that represents some perception that will bring you closer to your desired goal of how you want to feel about this memory. Hold the object and as you do you will have the needed perception. Give it time to fully form in your mind, and then jot it down on paper. Now, for the final step, you take the object/perception in your hand and transform it into a desire. When it is finished, it will look like a red ball of glass. Now, take a moment and feel what that desire is, and when you understand it, write it out on paper.
Repeat the above process one more time, drawing out a new perception and following the same steps as above. You can repeat the entire exercise at a later time for other negative memories. I hope this exercise is helpful for you. I think it is interesting that even the most banal observation can become a great source of strength and inspiration if you give it the credibility to fulfill its potential!
G2) Any two points in consciousness/time form the two ends of a line, and traveling in either direction on that line has a principal that acts as a magnet, drawing the person through that experience in that direction.
It is personal gravity in �Spiritual Reality.� The nature of that principal is the subject of our focus. For example, we might have two people engaged in conversation at a particular point in time. Those points in consciousness of their identities at that moment form a line. Traveling from person A to person B, we might have a forward magnetic pull from the intelligence and greater perception of person B. That quality is the principal that attracts person A. Then we move from person B to person A, and the principal of attraction is A�s kindness and interest in B.
The relationship between the person and the principal that has the power to draw them from one point of consciousness to another is based on desire; the principal must fulfill a desire for that person.
Now, to flip the idea on it�s head. What if we create desire in order to cause our consciousness to move from one point to another? We can generally temporarily manifest almost any desire for a short period of time. By artificially manifesting short-term desires, we can willfully navigate all consciousness. By doing this, we begin to understand the flexibility of consciousness and we think about our own consciousness as a space of freedom rather than confinement. Any two emotional states or ways of looking at something are considered two points of consciousness. To navigate them, we would simply need to identify what we want the state to offer us, and then artificially generate the short-term desire to move us from where we are to where we want to be. Whether or not the state actually delivers to us what we want is a whole other issue.
By developing an awareness of the principals that are drawing us from one point of consciousness to another, we begin to understand what we really want. By piecing together many principals that are currently drawing us from one state of consciousness to another, we can see what our real desires are. It is important to understand that the two points of consciousness can be separated by a great length of time, and that they can even encompass a whole lifetime.
I recently asked myself what the value of my life was, and I was stumped. Drawing on my Spirit source, I discovered that my life only has value to others to the degree that they are involved with me. From a Spirit perspective, they enter my life in one state of consciousness and leave it in another. The principal that draws them to be involved with me is a personal desire. So, to the degree a person is involved with me, I am helping them accomplish their desires. That is even true if they hate me or find my presence a strain, because they would not be involved with me unless they were working out some desire or another. They can only see me because I represent something to them that they are working out.
I, in turn, am made up of many desires. Each of these desires, as they manifest, help the other desires come into manifestation as well. They assist each other, and so my value to myself is the sum total of all the assistance each of my desires gives to the others, which is vast when you add it up. If you think about how antagonistic desires seem to prevent each other from being fulfilled, you have to remember that the antagonism observed is just a function of how a desire has to transform over time in order to evolve into its fulfilled form. So, the apparent antagonism is meaningless, as each desire is fulfilled not literally but through evolving. Part of that evolution is conflict which forces change and reevaluation of desires, which leads to their ultimate fulfillment. In short, there are no bad guy desires, only good guy desires helping each other come into ultimate fulfillment.
The logical question to follow up with would then be, �why can�t a desire just be fulfilled literally? Why does it have to be transformed into something else in order to reach fulfillment?� Well, if we use our current model of traveling from one point of consciousness to another, we can see that there are a series of points along that line that need to be crossed. We begin with a desire, a magnetic principal that will draw us all the way there to the other point of consciousness. When we are dealing with our passage through physical life, we are not completely self-conscious. So, the desire that draws us to that ultimate point remains subconscious and by degrees becomes conscious as we get closer to the desire�s fulfillment. We experience the trip from A to B as a series of different desires in sequence.
The broadest implication of all of this discussion is that desires are not �good� or �bad.� We may have desires that are selfish and those that are aimed at helping others, or even cruel and vindictive desires. But all of our desires are helping each other become fulfilled, and likewise they are helping other people throughout the world (and on other levels of existence) fulfill all of their desires. That doesn�t mean we can hurt others with no negative consequences, but that we should not be afraid of our desires. They serve a kind of ultimate personal good, to get us from the alpha point to the omega point of our existence. So, a model of life where we serve others as we help ourselves is not only ideal morally, but is closer to the truth.
From a Spirit perspective, we feel our real desires. In the physical experience we experience unreal desires. That means that we desire something as a means to getting to a certain feeling. �I desire to be with X because they would make me feel good.� We desire props that we think will get us to where we want to feel.
But every desire is filled with smaller micro-desires that each are fulfilled or frustrated. We might actually get with X and then find them to be a total bore or worse! We enjoy the sexual relationship but we have had our fill of it and we get clear that this person cannot fulfill our intimacy and relationship desires. These aspects must try to find fulfillment with a different person. When a new object of this type of desire is found, it is a slightly different desire, evolved by our previous failed experience with X.
And, because we are constantly changing and evolving, we cannot (usually) find a prop that makes us happy for life. At some point it might and probably will fail to make us happy, perhaps even permanently. What can we do? We move on.
The real problem is that the people and things we want are not just props, they are props in our minds. X represented to us something, some qualities that we found attractive. On closer inspection we were not as enamored with these features as we had thought. We probably are attracted to X only because we feel like X represents something we want. Therefore, lacking X, we probably don�t have a great understanding of X. Through our proximity to X we begin to see X up close and detail and get a better understanding of these X qualities we thought we wanted. Seeing their ugliness at close range, we move on to our next subject. We want what we feel we lack, we feel we lack what we don�t know and when we grow to know what we didn�t know before our relationship to that quality we desired changes.
Exercise: Generate a Magnetic Principal
(Part 1)
Begin by getting relaxed and having a pen and a journal handy. Write down a description of point of consciousness that you would like to reach.
Next, identify the specific desire (magnetic principal) that would draw you into that experience. It isn�t enough to say that you want to experience XYZ; you should think about what desire XYZ would fulfill for you right now. For example, if right now you are hungry you might want to involve a desire with eating involved, or if you are feeling romantic a romantic scene. Write whatever desire currently works for you in your journal below your desired state of consciousness.
Now, artificially generate that desire by saying, �I now count from one to forty, and by the time I reach forty I will have artificially generated the desire for ______ within myself that will magnetically draw my consciousness from my present state of consciousness to my desired state of consciousness, while artificially reducing all my other current desires that might distract me from it.�
When you reach ten, visualize a track running between two globes of light. The first globe is your starting state of consciousness. The end of the track connects with your desired state of consciousness. As you progress down the track, you will feel with increasing power the magnetic pull of the artificially generated desire.
Follow this visualization until you reach the end of the track. You should now be in the desired end-state of consciousness. Experience it, visualize it if appropriate, and take notes in your journal on your experience.
(Part 2)
In this exercise you will need a pen and your journal. Begin by getting relaxed and think of a situation that was important to your development as a person but is difficult for you to understand in terms of it being something that you created. You might ask yourself, �Why the heck would I create that awful event? What was the attraction?�
So, having written this event down, we will examine the magnetic principal of this experience and see what did attract us to it at the time. Begin by seeing the event as being encapsulated in a floating bubble in an empty white space.
Now, see a line of energy connecting you (before this event occurred) to you as you were actually in the event. In other words, this was your personal timeline. You will see a red glow around that line. This red glow represents the magnetic attractive energy of this event for you along the timeline that you lived through this event on. Collect that red energy mentally and place it its own bubble in the white space, as if it was jelly or something similar.
Having collected this energy and placed it in its own bubble now mentally enter the bubble and identify with that collected energy. What does this energy feel like? What is its attraction or pull? Feel it fully and then write down what you feel as accurately as you can. You will find that in some instances it is our feelings of repulsion from one aspect of our life, person or thing that attracts us to another.
You can try a variation of this technique on any event you see approaching that you don�t seem to have the power to prevent, such as the death of a loved one, a tax audit or anything else that seems to be heading inexorably towards you.
G3) Evolution requires two movements and many sub-movements in order to function, the first movement if forward and lifeward, but the second is �evil,� ignorant, dark and contrary to truth; this force, which runs contrary to time, is necessary to generate new consciousness and thus evolution.
Imagine a river that runs through every atom in physical reality. It is a black torrent of force that draws everything backward in consciousness. It is a force of violent and acidic hatred, borne by a desire to return to the past and to resist the new and change. It seeks to crush and repress, and to always find a new lowest common denominator. We might think of it as materialism or evil, but it is much more fundamental, because as physical beings it makes up the bulk of our consciousness.
Each moment of newness is stressful to consciousness. Consciousness anticipates the future through its ability to imagine. It simultaneously exists backwards through memory. Consciousness is innately resistant to change. The desire that consciousness constantly harbors for the safe and the [positive] familiar experience is a reaction to the stress of being constantly challenged by new experiences, some of which pull us out of our comfort zone. So, we appreciate the ability of newness to relieve our pain, but fear it for its ability to produce pain. Likewise, as we obey our desire to draw our consciousness backwards in time, we release and abandon our higher consciousness in favor of the familiar, our more fundamental states of being, sexual, power, survival.
The dark river is not a thing but a pattern of impulses that are part of consciousness as it reacts with stress to newness. The patterns of this reactionary consciousness are knee-jerk. Although we have already discarded �free-will,� we acknowledge the illusion of free will. This illusory free will is expanded or contracted based on how much information we contain. We may at some points advance very far and grasp very high concepts effortlessly. Then, reactionary consciousness draws us backward and we lose that understanding. However, it is not a total loss because the higher understanding becomes a subconscious knowledge in the form of a memory. And this memory will be strengthened with each new leap forward in understanding, until it becomes permanent and conscious.
So, we sometimes contain more information consciously than at other times. However, our conscious mind is only a fraction of our total consciousness. Our total consciousness is always having new experiences and contains all past experiences with no loss of memory. Memory is only a function of the conscious mind and the portion of the subconscious that abuts it. For the rest of consciousness, the past is always in a sense �now.� So, we constantly contain more and more information over time, but our illusory free will depends on the information in our conscious mind. Reactionary consciousness moves us backwards through time and into loss of consciousness at a conscious level.
This dark river of reaction is based on fear and expectation. The familiar is something that can be controlled, because we feel as if we have mastered it. To reduce information is to reduce complexity which makes things easier. Intelligent people are often challenged to live in society and perform the tasks which others take for granted, because they experience such a high degree of conflict and complexity in even the simplest things. Since that complexity can be excruciating, they certain have every reason to embrace dark reactions and to abandon their intelligence. However, people who are also aware of the contradiction of that notion, that loss of intelligence is a form of enslavement. They see how loss of information creates a fool�s paradise where the person becomes more powerless and unhappy, without perhaps even being aware of it. Like a person dropped in a pit to die, alone in the dark, they perceive the person who abandons their intelligence to be similarly trapped.
The truth is that there is no painless way to move forward through consciousness. Ego is fundamental to what we are, even when we are no longer human and �alive� on earth. Ego is our big limitation, and new experience demonstrates several painful lessons to ego over time that are difficult to forget. First, there is the understanding that we are not who we think we are. Our �selfhood� is an illusion and we are not that thing. This is frightening, and so we experience stress and fear at the thought of the death of the ego.
Secondly, newness asks up to face and solve problems that we can�t immediately overcome. So, there is the pain of work, effort and struggle necessary to reach the understanding necessary to overcome the problems before us. Third, we realize that because we are made of consciousness, we will always be challenged on many different fronts, and so we will always be in pain at some level, in some way. Fourth, we realize that the process of learning is inherently humiliating, as we will always encounter experience that challenge our sense of mastery and authority, leaving us feeling humiliated.
The good news in all of this is that as we progress, our ability to deal with pain improves substantially. Our free will increases and we experience a higher level of being. This doesn�t mean life is easy, but it definitely is an improved state. All activities can be done at higher or lower levels of reactionary consciousness. By suppressing reactionary consciousness, we can stay in higher states longer and be generally happier.
The key is understanding that reactionary consciousness is a mis-reaction to events. In any situation where we can find the perspective to look at our own reactionary consciousness, we can use logic to defuse its ability to draw us in. It is, after all, the warped logic of reactionary consciousness that attracts us to it in the first place, and compels us to engage in it. When we give in to it, we lose consciousness and become more limited. We will eventually have to re-learn what we subconsciously already know. The learning will come more easily the second and third time. The flaw in the dark consciousness is a gap in logic.
First, the fear of the death of the ego is not logical because ego only evolves, it never dies. Evolution is an upward spiral away from pain and powerlessness. The horizon of our perception looks like �death.� However, there is only continuity and that continuity is both logical and positive.
Secondly, the logic that we should fear the work and effort needed to learn what we need to know to face newness is absurd; work is part of the fulfillment of our desires. Everything we do is part of the fulfillment of our desires. If you were invited to a beautiful, elegant meal in your honor at no cost to you would you begrudge the effort of dressing up in a tuxedo or elegant dress? Obviously, that would pale in comparison to the anticipated pleasure of the event itself. In the same way, our efforts are all part of a larger desire fulfillment which goes well beyond the physical realm, and whatever effort we make, no matter how great, will ultimately pale in comparison to the reward we receive when we get where we are going. Alternately, if the pain of the effort was even a significant fraction of the desire, it would sully the desire and therefore nullify it.
Thirdly, the constant challenges and pain of life are part of what makes life interesting. A life with no effort or challenge would be dull and pointless. A life without pain would render pleasure less and less pleasurable through repetition. The thrill and challenge of overcoming problems and facing pain is what allows us to both own our experiences and rewrite our egos. Without this investment, there would be no way to own any experience and thus no self-change. It is through pain that we rid our identity of what doesn�t work.
Finally, the fear of being humiliated in learning is also without merit. The quality of humility can be learned and the experience of humiliation can be thus overcome. Humility defuses humiliation by demonstrating the ever-change nature of the self and the knowledge that there is always more to know. Humiliation only exists to reflect back our inability to become larger than life. By acknowledging that life is always larger than us we can put away the bulk of humiliation, and the rest comes with time.
Exercise: Meditation on Reactionary Consciousness
For this exercise, have your journal and pen handy and get comfortable. Take some time to meditate on your own reactionary consciousness. See it as a literal black river running through you. See yourself from a third person standpoint in a recent situation that you feel you didn�t handle very well. Identify the four fears of reactionary consciousness that we discussed earlier and see how they were part of your thinking at the time. In an angel-like manner, dispense the appropriate understanding that we discussed earlier to relieve each state of negative reaction to newness by addressing your (previous) self and causing the understanding to fill him or her. Now, notice how you experience and react to the same situation very differently with this new knowledge.
G4) The bridge between any two levels of existence bends reality in such a way as to repel the experiencer, for the effect of amplifying the �reality� of the two distinct states.
Each state has its own �pull� that is an expression of the sum total of all desires associated with that plane. The complementary opposite of this understanding is that the level of existence is also about hiding the true nature of existence to some degree, burying it in one particular illusion or another, and that is expressed as the hiding of the states between levels of consciousness.
That Which Is is the one and only reality and the only �thing� that exists, period. It expresses itself as experiencers having experiences. To hide the lie of separate identities and the laws and behaviors of each level of existence, TWI hides the untruth of these laws by bundling them together into an environment with beings that can be limited by those laws with the purpose of generating a convincing illusory experience. TWI seeks to pull the wool over its own eyes to generate experience.
In order to create experiences, it is necessary to create context, which in turn is generated by creating a limit on the horizons of a being�s experiences. The artificial limitations that are imposed on a person in a particular level of existence are what allow a whole reality to emerge for the person in it.
The person within a particular level of experience is not really a person in the sense they think of themselves as being. Rather, they are a fantasy, devoid of any free will, living out their desires through experience. When the person has evolved to such a degree that they are ready to shift from their current level of experience to a higher one, they will become aware of the information in the gap between the two levels.
This information is of a specialized nature. They will first of all grasp that the laws and rules of their current level of experience are an illusion and that a certain amount of their experience will therefore defy those laws.
Secondly, they will realize that they themselves have desires that fall outside the limits of their current level of experience, that fall into some higher levels of experience. They will see the lies and hypocrisy behind the thinking of beings in their own level. They will also feel burned out in terms of their desires on their current levels, as if it is all becoming old and stale.
Furthermore, they will question their own identity and their role in the community at that level. The social roles that they are cast in and the limitations that others impose on them will chafe on their psyche. They will simultaneously perceive deeper social truths and find abiding values that can replace their previous values.
The kernel of the experience between levels is in exposing everything fraudulent about the lower level of existence, but not everything in an absolute sense. The truth that is revealed between your current and higher level of experience is limited by what is in the higher level of experience. The gap doesn�t contain some sort of absolute disclosure of Reality. To get a more absolute disclosure, you have to look at every gap between your current level of experience and all higher levels of experience.
As the repulsion of this bridge between levels becomes an attraction, we simultaneously shift out of our old level of experience and into the new one. The shift has to happen mentally before it can happen physically. When the person mentally closes the door on their old life and their old way of doing things for good, they are finished with that experience and move entirely to the higher state of function. Here they experience joy and an unparalleled sense of freedom, compared with their previous level.
Exercise: Explore the Next Higher Level of Experience
In this exercise we will be experiencing the information in the gap between our current level of experience and our next higher level of experience. Begin by having your journal and a pen handy and get into a relaxed position. Write out three questions in your journal that you have on your mind. The questions should be of a general nature about life and meaning, or anything that has bothered you for a long time. After writing these out, move into a relaxed meditative state and breath deeply.
Focus on your current level of experience as a space that is defined by upper and lower horizontal lines running parallel to each other; the upper line is the boundary with the level of experience directly above your own. See that line and focus on going into it.
As the line becomes closer and thicker, you will simultaneously find that your state of consciousness will shift. While mentally seeing this line become a space that encompasses you, think of the three questions you wrote down and focus on hearing answers to them from this bridge level of experience. You will receive clear answers from yourself at this level of awareness. Write those answers down.
Now, move up to the next level of experience. So, in this case, what was the line you were just focusing on will now be the lower parallel line, and a new upper line will emerge. Focus on the space between these two lines. As you do, you will be in the higher level of consciousness.
Begin by asking a single question, �What is the nature of this level of experience.� Allow yourself to be led on a guided tour of this level of experience. See how beings feel and live and function here, what their primary agenda in life is and what the most advanced beings in this level of experience are doing. If you wish, makes a note of what you observe in your journal.
Now, repeat the previous process of asking questions and receiving answers. Write these answers down as you did before. Now, exit your meditation and compare the first three answers to the second. What differences can you see? These differences point to a higher direction of understanding.
