Spirit Pages (continued)
J) You can create worlds with words; all meanings have vast associations.
This idea is fairly open and obvious. We can create worlds through ideas, which are expressed through words. Ideas can be expressed in many non-verbal forms, but we are the most used to using words to communicate ideas. So, as we use words, we communicate ideas, and ideas can in turn be used to create worlds.
Every idea is in a sense a �world� of it�s own. It can certainly be explored as a world. A world is just the expression of an idea in metaphoric form so that it takes on the form and shape of a vast environment that represents all the possible expressions of that particular idea.
The physical world is an idea created by many people cooperatively. It is the expression of the idea of experiencing things literally rather than mentally, so that there is a hard and fast environment and body that is �real� and we are trapped by and confined to that reality.
The idea of a reality that is somehow external to our own mind is key to the idea of the physical. But there are many non-physical worlds that have both environments and bodies, so it is more specific. It is the idea that there is a world that is made from something that is not mind at all, but matter. The key to the idea of matter is that it is dead, lifeless and does not contain mind. At least that is the idea behind it.
So, in essence, the physical world is an idea in which we can explore the idea of a dead reality, mindless and partially lifeless, external to us and that oppresses us. It also allows us to be hurt or even killed by others, to have things happen entirely against our will and to render us powerless. These ideas are all part of the idea of the physical world.
But in reality, the world we see is not a place at all, but simply an idea that we are all engaging in together. We have all put on our projection-glasses and we are seeing the same world, but there is no actual world there. It is simply, for each of us, the metaphoric representation of how we feel about the world we see when we see a �world� outside of our own self.
At the deepest level of reality, we are all entirely living within our own minds. We can do anything we want, explore any idea and create any identity to explore. We are unlimited. But we are consciously aware that we are made of consciousness only. The physical world is an idea that offers many possible experiences of a world that is made of matter rather than mind. Although there is no matter in this world at all, or even bodies for us to live in, our minds create them as metaphoric representations of how we feel.
When we �die,� we see ourselves leaving the physical. This gives us an out from the physical to explore higher, less literal realms, but also leaves the door open for us to return to the physical as if it was a real place. But in actuality it is the unbroken continuity of our perceptions that keep us locked into the idea that we are in a �real� world or that we can leave a �real� world. The seeming reality of after-life states only confines us in new ways, just as our physical state did. And the thinking we find prevalent there will likewise probably confine us as well, although perhaps to a lesser degree.
We must acknowledge that we are made of consciousness only. It is not the kind of consciousness that comes from a brain, but the kind that is fundamentally what is. It is not created, although its form and shape may be. Consciousness is simply a description of what is.
And as such, all the worlds that we �create� with words have always existed. Every idea has always existed. It is only in our own unfolding experience that it seems to have a birth. But no idea can meaningfully be said to be created, because there is no timeline in Spirit. So it is more accurate to say that we discover ideas. But they preexist our discovery.
The associations we find between many different ideas are themselves also ideas. They, too, pre-exist our discovery or experience of invention. Rather, the vast network of ideas is like a single body of ideas that has a structure, is tied together and has many different details and substructures. But, ultimately, it is one single idea. And that idea is what is.
J1) The mechanism by which ego and circumstances and other aspects of being are coordinated to create the illusion of reality involves a diversion of consciousness from its normal activity of pure desire fulfillment.
This means that a Spirit being naturally is engaged at all times in desire fulfillment. No other being in existence needs you to fulfill any other role or function other than fulfilling your desires, from the reality of Spirit at least. You may subjected to the responsibilities and demands of this world, but from a Spirit perspective your only responsibility is to have what you want.
There are several different levels of desire fulfillment to consider. Your more obvious and immediate desires contain higher, more abstract desires that are fulfilled by undergoing evolution of the self, which only happens as one fulfills one�s desires, releasing them to take on a more advanced form. So, desire fulfillment is really the same as evolution. Other Spirit beings use your experiences as new material to explore, in order for them to grow as needed, and all experiences have value to some beings somewhere in Spirit.
As a Spirit being, the only real activity is the pursuit of your own desires. Your environments and experiences come out of that, including your interactions with others. As a �physical� being, your ego stands in the way of this kind of desire-fulfillment process by interposing a wall between who you are and what you want. That wall is created by the �physical� world around you, assuming the form of pain, frustrations, barriers and obstacles in the way of having your desires fulfilled. The ego grows out of the identity that is built out of that struggle.
The physical identity comes to value self-sacrifice rather than desire fulfillment. It places value on suffering, bearing up under discomfort, eating misery for breakfast, lunch and dinner and suffering the psychic consequences of those sacrifices. This is seen as character, responsibility and heroism. The pursuit of one�s own desires is seen as being selfish and less important to the greater good.
However, because the ego, the physical identity, learns to sacrifice, it also learns how to judge and condemn itself when it doesn�t do what it thinks it is supposed to. The force of this incessant self-condemnation is a kind of bitterness, self-hatred and feeling of being robbed of life. On top of this, the person who learns to judge themselves also learns to judge and hate others, condemning them freely when they do not buckle under social pressure to be �responsible.�
The assumption is that the sacrifices that one makes are worth the loss of pleasure, satisfaction and happiness that occur when one is responsible and self-sacrifices. But the truth is that hatred and bitterness fill the heart, as well as an endless amount of guilt if one goes down this route. As one�s hatred of others grows and one feels increasingly used and underappreciated, the cost becomes much too high.
Furthermore, as one makes sacrifices, one becomes filled with a sense of entitlement. This is the reason why organizations like the military and various fraternities emphasize hazing. The pain and humiliation experienced by new recruits builds into a great sense of self-sacrifice. This in turn becomes a sense of entitlement. Having been robbed of something, although it is really one�s self who is doing the robbing, the person feels they are owed something. The more they sacrifice, the more entitled they feel. Organized religions sometimes run heavily on this principal.
Entitlement combined with hatred of others is a powerful sort of poison for the mind. It leads to great abuses of others, a growing rage and restlessness and a dominating, bullying aspect to the psyche.
It is the vagueness of entitlement that makes it so powerful. As I said before, there was no actual robbery if the person willingly made sacrifices at first, but the fact that hazing and other initiatory activities involve being abused by others leads one to remember the experience as having been robbed. This loss aches to be filled, and the emotion that seeks to fill it is entitlement. Then, the person goes out into the world and treats others as inferiors, based on that feeling. The mind doesn�t discriminate as to the real nature of the debt. The fact that you of your own free will decided to make a sacrifice doesn�t involve people in general in the world, it is a personal decision. But the entitlement one feels is vastly sweeping, impersonal and all-encompassing.
For example, if a person endures the most intense and elite training that the military offers, they make tremendous sacrifices to do so. After that, they could feel intensely entitled. If other people out in the general population make comments that are in conflict with that person�s personal views, they could feel threatened and angry. If they endure actual combat, that feeling could be multiplied many times. The rage of not being appreciated, that others can�t see one�s personal superiority, that one has special power to kill, maim and destroy things without legal repercussions due being in combat, these factors all can lead to tremendous pain, guilt, anger and violence.
Entitlement of this nature is painful because one is never appreciated enough. Other people are lazy, soft and undeserving in comparison. They deserve to be treated with contempt. This treatment of others generates more guilt. The fear constantly lurks in the psyche that the sacrifices made were not worth it. One becomes more likely to buy propaganda or half-truths to protect oneself from questioning the methods and motives one has used. In losing one�s equality with others, one becomes alienated, lonely and increasingly isolated, taking refuge in a smaller and smaller bandwidth of humanity. So, entitlement comes with a heavy price.
The pursuit of self-sacrifice in any form leads to a host of misunderstandings, feelings of entitlement, guilt and so forth as I mentioned above. It doesn�t have to happen in the context of hazing. Our culture is so rife with it that we are all completely saturated with it. As Spirit beings, we would know that we are all equal and that our only purpose is to fulfill our desires. As we are inculcated into this line of thinking, we are removed more and more from our native Spirit way of thinking.
When a person is born into a �physical� life and they grow up, they do not lose their Spirit abilities. They have the same potential for Spirit fulfillment that they did before. In fact, they are not in a different world, but the same world given a different form. And, it is not the new form of the Spirit world that inhibits the use of Spirit abilities, but the limitations in knowledge imposed on the physical identity.
The physical identity has to change fundamentally in order to see Spirit and use it. First, the identity must regain its understanding of Spirit. This begins with the desire to have this understanding. Then, the physical identity seeks to involve Spirit in its life to a certain degree. However, an innate conflict develops when the person becomes aware that Spirit desires Spirit experiences, and not physical ones. This means that the purpose of Spirit is to disengage the identity from physicality and return it to Spirit. Although some Spirit desires can involve the physical, most do not.
Now the individual is at a crossroads. They thought they could use Spirit to cause their physical life to improve, but that is not the end goal of Spirit. They find that they must, in essence, disentangle themselves from every last bit of materialism in their being without exception, until all that is left is Spirit perception. As long as the individual has unfulfilled physical desires they are fairly stalled in their movement towards Spirit.
The ladder from physical life to Spirit is in The Collective. The Collective is all beings as one single unified matrix of consciousness. This matrix works together towards the fulfillment of all goals. Being involved in The Collective means that all beings on all levels of existence will contribute towards and move you to the fulfillment of your goals. You, in turn, implicitly are agreeing to be part of The Collective if you ask things of The Collective, which means that your actions will help others as well.
One is not expected to �give� anything specifically, or make any sacrifices to be part of The Collective, nor is there any payment. The only payment is in being part of The Collective, which only involves asking The Collective for things, help, goal achievement and so forth. The Collective answers all requests equally as long as they do not involve harming others. The always find the best possible form to answer a request and they will give you the second best form if the best is simply not possible for whatever reasons.
The Collective includes all of Spirit just as Spirit includes all of The Collective. However, The Collective includes beings that are physical or on other non-Spirit levels. While we have said before that these non-Spirit levels are actually in Spirit, The Collective is more explicitly inclusive of them.
So, The Collective is the means by which we can have what we want by giving up our separate, individual efforts and by working in cooperation with all other beings. With others unknowingly bringing us to our desire fulfillment, we are in turn doing the same for other beings. Furthermore, no one is hurt by the process and everyone is aided by it. This is why The Collective is such an effective tool for desire fulfillment and a great model for operating in the world.
As one scores various successes in asking The Collective for things and receiving them, one becomes more and more convinced of the reality of The Collective and more involved in it. One gives simply by being as one increasingly fulfills oneself. This brings Spirit into the physical.
The final processes before complete return are a series of steps that remove layer after layer of materialism. This process is completely open to anyone who has reached the point where they can access Spirit teaching within themselves. The Collective is the active arm of these teachings, bringing them into physical manifestation and proving the reality of The Collective through desire fulfillment. This moves the identity more and more in the direction of pure Spirit being and the exhaustion through fulfillment of all physical attachments.
Exercise: Accessing The Collective
As we said before, The Collective is a vast network of beings working in harmony towards fulfillment. Each person becomes perfectly fulfilled in both giving and receiving, to the degree that they are involved in TC.
To become involved in TC, you must simply tell TC what you want. Get comfortable and have a journal and a pen handy. Write out a list of desires that you have in all areas of life. Be as complete as possible and mention even seemingly small and minor things you want. Include non-item desires such as travel, changes in one�s habits, overcoming psychological problems and having a better fantasy life. Jot down everything that comes to mind.
When you are finished, read each item carefully as a request to The Collective. Say, �Collective, I want to have _____.� You don�t have to beg and plead, pray or make sacrifices for this to work. Understand that as you make these requests you are agreeing to be part of TC and know that your actions will unconsciously work towards the fulfillment of others.
At any time from this time forward that you feel tempted to take action through sheer will power, stop and instead use The Collective. The more you do, the more you will become fulfilled in your life.
J2) Perception and the act of perceiving can be linked into one process along any kind of surface to create a continuum of perception.
Perception is almost the opposite of what it appears to be to the casual observer. We will discuss how this misunderstanding leads to an inverted worldview. The nature of perception is in a way ridiculous. Create an idea of a body that is organic in an inert and organic environment and give that body the ability to perceive through sensory organs. The input is processed by the brain and given the color, depth, distance, etc that the object is perceived as having.
In actuality, nothing in existence is �inorganic� or inert. Rather, everything can perceive everything else directly without the need for any sensory organs. This is a kind of internal perception, rather than a perception of something in an �external� environment.
Nothing has a body other than what it imagines. The physical body is not real. Essentially, all beings in reality are only made of conscious and they generate their experiences for themselves out of their own consciousness. What they see and experience happens entirely within their own mind.
Other beings� experiences dovetail perfectly into their experiences so as to create shared experiences and sometimes shared environments. The physical world is a shared environment. The reason for this perfect dovetailing is that all beings are in actuality one being, so they are coordinated perfectly with one will. So, many beings internally create one single continuous environment to interact in.
Every person is, in essence, their own universe. They entirely create their own experiences within their own mind. Nothing happens to a person outside of their own internal process. That is to say that no being can come in and force an experience on another against its will. If a being �acts on another� it is really a case of that being that appears to be acted on is in reality symbolically representing how they are feeling through this interaction with another being. And so, they appear to be acted upon. In actuality, both beings are only having internal experiences.
This being said, the mind must first have an environment to deal with before it can perceive. Any environment is entirely a fiction created by a person who may be alone or part of a group of people. The things that are seen in any environment are symbols that represent the feelings of the person perceiving the experience.
Just as in a dream where you have a situation that presents itself that specifically elicits stress, fear, happiness or any other emotion, the physical situation is exactly the same thing, giving the person�s internal feelings a symbolic external form that appear to be real. The �real� situation presented to the person then acts out experiences that allow these feelings to be fully experienced. The situations only exist to create �events� that elicit and give form and actuality to the emotions that need to be expressed. The individual�s identity is also rigged to pull this off perfectly as well.
All desires are emotional before they take on a symbolic physical representation. Every object has a symbolic meaning and only exists to bring forth feelings so that they can be fully experienced. So whereas we might think that we are in a situation that involves body and perception, in fact, we are entirely within our own mind experiencing symbols of how we feel that act as catalysts for these feelings.
The perceiver and the perceived are unwittingly one. Even if we see another person, the form they take to us represents something going on internally within ourselves. We only interact with others as part of this dance of self-expression.
At higher levels of perception beyond mere sensory awareness, seeing might include actually knowing the contents of a person�s mind. It ultimately means understanding exactly how they feel and why they feel the way they do. The ultimate form of perception of something is to be that person or thing perceived. Identity is fluid in reality and we are not restricted to any one identity any more than we are confined to a body. We can be anyone in any situation in Spirit.
Exercise: Reverse Perception
In this exercise we will reverse the normal process of perception in order to better understand that dynamics that run it. Begin by getting relaxed with a pen and your journal handy.
We are going to begin by thinking of an emotion that we want to express. It can be positive or negative in tone. We will begin by feeling this emotion very clearly. Relax and sink into the feeling you have chosen. As the feeling comes through, be aware that every emotion although it might be categorized in this or that manner is in fact a very specific and unique thing. Secondly, be aware that the emotion that you picked is on that is within you and that needs to be expressed. So, let�s give it expression.
We are going to consciously do what is normally done for us by our own consciousness. We are going to generate an identity, environment, situation and activities that elicit this emotion so that we feel it as fully as possible in the situation that we have created.
We don�t need to consciously know how to do this because our mind does it constantly, in fact incessantly, so it is second nature to our own mind even if we are not consciously aware of the fact that we are doing it.
Begin by imagining a box floating in a white space; this represents the experience we are creating. When we enter the box we will have the identity and experience that elicits this emotion within us. We approach the box. When we knock on its surface three times, we will be sucked into it and the experience will begin. Before you knock, write down as precisely as possible the feeling you are working with. Also, draw a line under this description that allows you to write much more about this feeling in the later part of this exercise. Reserve this space for only the description of the feeling itself, put any other material below this line.
Relax, knock on the box three times and allow it to suck you in. The experience will begin immediately. You will have a few moments to adjust from your previous identity to the new one. Allow the experience to play out. When the experience feels complete, write out the entire experience as carefully as you can.
Now, read back to yourself the entire description of the experience. Write down in your journal the major elements and themes that run through the experience. For example, in my experience the themes were anger, release, escape, deformity and mental handicap. Try to think about how this scene symbolically relates to your current life situation and how you are feeling in it. Write your observations down.
You will probably not have any difficulty relating what you saw to your current situation. But, you might be very surprised by the scene that appeared to elicit the feeling. Write down any nuances of the feeling that came through in the experience but weren�t clear when you began with the feeling. Use those observations to flesh out your initial description of the feeling.
Now we are going to do a final twist on our last exercise to pull out even more information. We are going to go back in the box but this time we will remove all sensory elements, even the sense of time passing. All that will be left will be darkness and the emotional elements of the experience, which will be felt by us all at once.
Go back and knock four times on the cube to bring you into this second version of your experience. You will be sucked into the cube again, but this time the inside of the cube will be completely dark and silent but you will clearly feel the emotions that bind you to the experience. Try to think about each aspect of the feeling that you wrote down and get more clarification on each. Write down any additional clarification on the feeling that you receive here with your initial description of the feeling.
J3) Time is essentially a space that is meant to be filled by circumstances and perception.
This is a strange statement that needs some explanation. Time is the sense of time passing, the subjective passage of time that is particular to you as a person. In the physical experience there is also an objective time, the time of day. Time is created to allow for experiences that are created by the mind, to put them in an order and run through them, giving them the illusion of a reality like a three-dimensional movie. However, even one�s identity in that storyline is part of the movie, part of the illusion being generated.
When we read about higher reality being �timeless,� that is not entirely accurate. In higher reality there is no objective time, which means that there is no one single timeline that is running along. Time is subjective to each person in that plane. They have unlimited time available to do what needs to be done.
For example, person A and person B sit down and talk in higher reality. Person A goes off and has sixteen hours of subjective experience. This just means that if they had to estimate, they would say that they had experiences that felt like they took sixteen hours. Person B leaves their meeting and has one thousand hours of experience, subjectively. Then, both A and B sit down and talk again with different amounts of previous experience under their belts.
Time can run at different speeds from one plane to another. Time at a higher level tends to be more flexible and more extended while time at a lower level is more rushed and limited. So, an hour on the physical might be ten hours on a higher astral level or forty hours on a mental level. These are just numbers to give you an idea, I don�t know the accurate ratio.
In cases like this, there might still be a single timeline that everyone is tied to, even if the higher timeline is more extended. Then, a plane like Spirit is high enough that there is no single timeline over everyone. Each person has only their own individual timeline based on their subjective passage of time through experiences.
At the highest level, That Which Is, the one mind generates identities for itself by imagining them. These identities are then given a life of some sort or another. Eventually that identity evolves back to Spirit level, where it can exist and evolve forever. So, all identities ultimately are given eternal life in Spirit.
There are states of consciousness, usually very high ones that are timeless in the sense that environmental events and experiences are simplified to a single state of conscious, a kind of frozen high state. The consciousness here is in motion, but it is imperceptibly slow. They are timeless in the sense that the person�s subjective sense of time is reduced to no sense of passing time. Although there is passage of time in that one moment is followed by another, these moments are so much alike that there appears to be no time. And so, timelessness is born out of a �sense� of timelessness on the part of the individual rather than an actual absence of time.
However, in a plane like Spirit where there is no single timeline, you could generate a timeless experience like that out of one�s desire for it. Desire on the individual�s part would silently determine the length of the experience. Even timeless experiences have a certain beginning and end and a volume. They are not truly timeless.
The more we see reality as it is, the more we see God, the less we see time. Time becomes less and less of an issue for us as we move towards God. And when time is completely gone from our sight, then we have eternity to explore God.
I think that timelessness is achieved when we stop thinking about time. In a sense it is psychological. When we expand our sense of time by raising our level of consciousness we create a new way of thinking about time as something we have created to actualize our own creativity.
Exercise: A Timeless Moment
In this exercise we will move into an experience of a �Timeless Moment.� This moment will actually be a period of time in which we will go beyond time by shifting our consciousness to such a highly refined sense of time that it actually ascends above time altogether.
To begin, have a pen and your journal handy and get into a relaxed position and begin to meditate. Once you have established yourself in a relaxed, easy mode of breathing and your mind is relaxed and calm, take your attention off of your physical environment. Now, remove your mind from every event and problem that you are currently facing.
Now, think about time as a thermometer before you. Time is a function of your state of mind, which can be more or less caught up in literal, materialistic thinking. The thermometer reads �0� indicating that you are at the materialistic end of the spectrum. The highest marking on the thermometer is �100.�
Now, meditate on the idea of raising the �temperature� on the thermometer by making your experience of time less and less literal. When the temperature reaches twenty, stop and take a note on how you perceive time. Be specific about how your sense and understanding of time has shifted from when you started the exercise.
After taking your notes, continue meditating until you have reached forty on the thermometer. Stop and take notes again. Do this at sixty, eighty and one hundred.
What evolution of understanding of time did you pass through at each of these different states? Look at your notes. You can see that your understanding of what time is and how it really functions, what its purpose is and what timelessness is improved with each set of notes.
I find that when I am in a situation where time seems to be dragging it can help to do this kind of exercise. Or, if you don�t feel like doing that, you can simply repeat to yourself silently, �I love you time.� Say this about forty times mentally. It really helps time become less draggy and more fluid.
