Spirit Pages (continued)
B3) Reality creates identities to meet its needs, not visa versa.
Spirit plane consciousness generates identities at will. I have explained this in detail in the previous section. Spirit needs to constantly generate new experience, and feeds on meaning. New combinations of consciousness, which can be generated by new and unique experiences, are the main source of that meaning. Pre-existing experiences can be used up to a point, but creation is eventually necessary to generate new consciousness.
For us, our imagination constantly creates new consciousness. Our dream level of consciousness also generates new identities for us. We may not consciously acknowledge it, but in dreams we have a very different identity. The emotional consciousness and the sense of self seem to draw on how we are feeling in the waking world, but it can take us also in wildly different directions. As our waking identity fades, our dream consciousness takes over and spins off new identities. These new identities are a vital part of our consciousness.
In Spiritual practices, it is common for the individual to practice seeing and feeling themselves as being the deity they are worshiping. As this sense of identification builds, so does their knowledge about the true nature of their deity. After all, only the deity itself can truly comprehend its own true meaning, up to a point. This new identity becomes more habitual, until it can be accessed at will, and will exercise its own will and forces itself on other aspects of the identity in certain situations, with increasing frequency.
In the previous section, we talked about how identities can reduce our wholeness of being. New identities also act in a way that causes us to grow. People who experience extreme conditions can shatter their consciousness, producing multiple personalities. Each identity generated has a specific purpose, handling a different kind of unmanageably stressful situation. Where the whole self can�t handle the stress, the specifically designed consciousness can.
The loss of wholeness is painful because it is a kind of loss of humanity. To be human is to have access to one�s personal history, and multiples are often missing critical elements of memory. When conditions change, the identities can be enfolded back into the original wholeness.
New identities can be exerted into any imaginary landscape, which allows you to access, at least partially, the experience of being in a higher state of being. It is ironic that when you lose that new identity, some of the information you had access to in that identity will no longer be available. So, although you can run with the gods and experience exalted states of awareness, you will eventually �come down� and experience your habitual state of consciousness. Because your habitual state of consciousness does not �include� that information you just had access to, it will not feel as good.
To intellectually know certain things or believe in them does not directly translate into an inner experience. The process of living and becoming identified with certain ideas is monumentally gradual. But, with concerted effort over the course of years or decades, you can actually permanently shift your state of consciousness. The shift is slow and subtle, but the small gains eventually add up to equal a large one. These gains are not actually small at all, but our consciousness is so vast that they seem to be small in comparison to our whole being.
In our next exercise, we will experience a Spiritual environment, as a being that is native to that environment. We will gradually work our way into that state of identification by steps.
Exercise: Being a Spiritual Being
We will be leaving our normal state of identity behind and becoming someone completely different. We will gradually life the veil of our �own� thoughts and feelings and put on a new identity. It is very important to realize as you do this that your identity is simply a habit of thought and feeling developed over the course of your lifetime. It is not �you� and will some day give way to a different identity that will still be you, but a you that you had previously forgotten about. It will include your old you but be greater than it.
To begin with, imagine you are lying in a beautiful green field, with a clear blue sky overhead. You are not in the physical world, but a heavenly Spiritual environment. As this exercise develops, your perception of your environment may shift. Allow it to if it does and simply go with what you see.
A spiritual being walks up and sits down near you. They are native to this plane of existence. In this world you can mentally merge with anything that you meditate on. So, you are going to meditate on this being and merge with them, experiencing what they feel.
Relax and focus on their form. Feel a desire to merge with them. Focus only on that being and the rest of your attention should be entirely on your breathing. Relax and allow yourself to float out of your body and into this being.
As you merge with them, give the experience a few minutes to unfold. The longer you give it, the more intense the insights you will have. As you see through their eyes you will get a sense that they are very different from you. Do they even think of themselves as having a body at all? What are they occupied with in their mind? Are they communicating with other spiritual beings?
While still identified with this being, ask them a question that in some way relates to spiritual issues. Hear their mental answer to this question and then ask any additional questions you might have. Take notes as needed. Be sure to thank them and give them your love before you leave them and return to your body.
B4) Meaning is the only newness in existence.
There is only consciousness in existence, and consciousness is personal. That means that all experiences are internal and personal rather than being �matter� or external. Everything is internal, and different consciousnesses can share an internal environment partially in the form of an external environment. The homes, trees and land are all shared experiences, but they are still internal to the consciousnesses experiencing them. Although these consciousnesses may experience environments people as external, this is only due to their being in a state of consciousness where part of their internal experience is externalized, they have a �body� and their body is subject to other bodies and �external� experiences.
Although this sounds complex, it is really a simple idea. In consciousness, there is no �outside�, only �inside�. That is to say, consciousness can only perceive. So, all its experiences are wholly internal. Seeing an apple is internal; hearing music is internal to your consciousness. If something were to fall outside of your consciousness, you would not perceive it. In a world where there is only consciousness, all experiences are entirely internal to consciousness. There is no external world, because nothing is external to consciousness. Only the illusion of things being external can be generated by consciousness.
To give you a more down-to-earth example, think about a dream. In a dream, environments and events exist to convey certain emotions. If you dreaming mind has some emotional content to work out, it can generate an environment, self and events that cause you to enter a certain emotional state as if it were an external reality and be subject to it. In essence, your mind possesses an emotion and then forces you to experience it in such a way that you can�t escape it. Because you are denied a secondary frame of reference outside the dream, you cannot escape the dream, even if it is unpleasant. If you are partially lucid dreaming, then you may have enough external frame of reference to escape.
�Meaning� is an idea that encompasses a sort of core value of consciousness existence. It is a large, overreaching idea that encompasses many other ideas. There has not been a comprehensive discussion of meaning that I have ever read, although it may be out there. So, this may be new territory to explore.
Meaning is by definition the idea of what is a dynamic catalyst to consciousness, what causes consciousness to change. That is to say, it causes consciousness to change form, to react. Because consciousness is constant change, rather than a thing in motion, it is essential for it to constantly generate meaning, which is done through having experiences. Meaning is, in a sense, the �body� of consciousness.
In order to generate experience, consciousness must create an identity with an environment and a time and space continuum to operate in. Not just any environment and identity will do! Each consciousness has different needs. What is meaningful to one consciousness is useless to another. So, meaning is entirely personal to each consciousness and changes from moment to moment.
Also, consciousness is constantly involved in the highest degree of meaning possible (for that person at that time). Although many different experiences could potentially be meaningful to any consciousness, only the one experience with the highest level of meaning is experienced at any particular time. And, by time, I mean a microscopic moment of time, a tiny fragment of a second.
So, meaning is like food to consciousness, and consciousness is constantly feeding on it as well as constantly generating it. The experiences of human beings are an open book to non-physical beings, who constantly feed on the meaning they get from sharing in those experiences. By sharing, I mean that they might see through your eyes and feel what you felt, for a short or long period of time, or might simply cull intellectual knowledge from you experience, or might just observe your experience from a third-person standpoint. Or, they might use your experience as a jumping-off point to explore different possibilities that you yourself did not explore. The variations are too many to list.
In all cases, though, meaning is being drawn from experience. Consciousness can take just its own experiences and by artfully combining certain elements it can create new, meaningful experience. In the end, meaning is the only newness in existence, because various forms and identities that appear are just expressions of meaning. Yes, ultimately, meaning exists first, the proverbial chicken before the egg, and it expresses itself as identities having experiences. These experiences seem to produce meaning, when in fact meaning produces the experiences. In this way all meaning is ultimately given expression through experiences, which allows it to take on new forms of meaning.
That means that even on your most boring, humdrum day, you are still at the absolute peak of your consciousness creativity, experiencing that one state of being and those events that have the strongest impact on your consciousness to change it. You are achieving your peak possible meaning.
Also, it is good to remember that being open to change who you are, which is the same thing as changing your consciousness, gives you more conscious involvement in the process of meaningfulness and more of a sense of choice and joy in living. Refusing to change or face yourself can put you in painful situations, because you then have to have experiences that feel like they have been forced down your throat, in order for your consciousness to gather further meaning. So, to put it simply, be the artist of your own life or be the clay that is beaten.
Exercise: Perceive Meaning
In this exercise, we will look at a particular event in your life that seems meaningless, and find the meaning in it. It could be a painful loss of a relationship, a boring and uneventful period in your life, or a time of personal failure or tragedy when you felt down. It could even be an event that made the rest of your life feel meaningless or less meaningful. The higher the stakes, the more there is to gain with this particular exercise.
Begin by grabbing your journal and pen and getting comfortable. Relax and bring an event to mind that meets the previous criteria. See a large circle filled with blue sky. Inside that circle, see two smaller circles overlapping partially. One circle represents the event that you have chosen. The other circle represents Meaning.
You are going to look at both circles carefully, then zoom up or down into the range where the two circles overlap. In this space, land on your feet, and see that you are in a world comprised of the meaning that you received from this experience. Remember that this does not even include the future meaning you may get from this experience or that others may have received or will receive from this experience. Explore this space and allow images and events to unfold. Perhaps look at details of the experience and feel the meaning that they had for you.
You might find it helpful to meet a character that embodies the meaning of this experience. Observe them and ask them questions. Let them tell you what was meaningful about this experience.
For example, they might appear to have their chest torn open, and might tell you that this represents the �heart� being exposed, and deep emotions being revealed. As you are exposed to painful, difficult and deep emotions through this experience, you gain the ability to know yourself, heal yourself and heal others emotionally. You might have other conditions that represent learning how to have more courage, flexibility or strength of character, which in turn give you more freedom of movement and broaden your creative canvass.
These are just examples. Whatever you experience, write it down in your journal. Continue until you feel that you have tapped into the major sources of meaning in this experience. For each trauma that you explore in this way, you will realize that as a creative figure in your life, you have always had much to gain from even the most painful experiences. This will help you understand as well the need to sit in the driver�s seat and constantly be involved in consciously changing yourself. Meaning is the most pleasant when ingested consciously and is best appreciated in that form as well.
B5) All ideas in existence are essentially parts of one idea that encompasses all of them.
This one idea has no way of being expressed verbally, but you can mentally point to it. It is the idea that surpasses all other ideas. If we go back to the Great Mystery Circle idea, of which this is one aspect, we talked about the unfolding of unmanifest reality into the manifest. The One Idea encompasses all ideas, manifest or otherwise.
The one idea exists for all possible times and all possible worlds. So, it is totally all-encompassing. So why bother pointing this out? As we have said before, it should be noted that in a world of consciousness, ideas are real. So, the ultimate reality is the ultimate idea.
It is helpful to understand that there is only one idea in reality, encompassing all things, because we need to understand that although we experience forward movement in time and the unfolding of possibility into manifestation, the process is in one sense already complete. Even though the process of manifestation is so vast as to seem infinite and endless, the time it would take to explore that manifestation is finite, and all that manifestation has already occurred within the one idea.
Infinite creativity demands limitations be manifest so we can overcome them. But the One Idea includes all possible manifestation, and as such possesses no creativity even though it embodies all creativity. Creativity has to be generated by creating identities and environments to explore. The One Idea also contains no events, as it is inert in time. That is to say, it includes all time, but has no time frame to exist in, and contains all consciousness. It exists in Perfection, whatever that looks like and is not subjected to any sense of time passage or �events.�
I think the best way to look at it is to explore the idea of multiple dimensions. As you move from a third to a four-dimensional world, you make third-dimensional time a spatial factor, and fourth-dimensional time is added as another dimension. This process continues with each dimension upward. Each upward dimension contains more information (more dimensions to operate in) and thus is more complex and rich as an environment, and is also a higher environment. The One Idea can be seen as a jump upwards, not just in dimension but also in meta-dimension, which encompasses all possible dimensions. So, it goes beyond anything we can really conceptualize.
So, what is the use of knowing all of this? The One Idea, because it does not have an environment, events or timeline also does not have any substance. That is to say, there is nothing for it to be made of. Therefore, the stuff of our existence, the forms and shapes and realities we experience, are also by default made of nothing. There is no materiality to existence. Or, perhaps a more useful way to look at it is to say that there is only one dreamer, and only one dream.
But how does this help you? Besides being mind-boggling, it also seems mind-bogglingly useless. But, it isn�t. We have already discussed the idea that when you combine ideas, you get a quantum leap in the information they contain, their complexity and in their power to transform. So, how much more high, powerful and transformative would the combination of all ideas in existence? The one idea is the highest possible reality. To the degree that we can tap into it, we can expect and incredible degree of power, insight and self-transformation to arise from our contact with it.
If we ever feel reverence, it should be for the one idea. To even get the tiniest glimpse of it would entirely reshape our thinking and liberate us. So, it is a goal worth pursuing. The fact that it is so abstract should not stop us, because in a world made of consciousness, we have the potential for unlimited contact with all ideas. We can understand that with practice and effort we can gradually draw closer and closer to that idea, fulfilling our ultimate potential in the process.
To seek the best and highest in reality ultimately means excluding no one and nothing. Every person�s experience is valuable. Whether it is pain or pleasure, a criminal or a teacher�s life, everyone�s experience is made of information that is unique, and that unique information can be creatively combined with other information to produce higher levels of knowing.
Information, when combined with other information, can only enter a more exalted state, when there is no loss of information in the combining of the two. Every life experience you have ever had is not only valuable, but also ultimately a crucial building-block in the creation of the One Idea.
As such, try to see the value in everything. God could not exist without each one of us. Spirit couldn�t exist without all of us. Understanding how combining information in such a way that no information is lost in the combination produces a new idea with more information and a higher level of operation is key to understanding how reality works, and also to understanding why we must pursue life with an open-minded attitude.
Exercise: Explore the One Idea
In this exercise, we will explore the One Idea and try to get as close as we can to it. It will be helpful first to give it a form. For myself, I see it as a silvery-light-blue sphere with a smooth surface, but you can conceive of it in whatever form works best for you.
See yourself in a white void-like space, with the image of the one idea floating before you. As you move gradually closer and closer to it, it will at first seem featureless, with no details on its surface to fix your attention on. But as it grows much closer, you will begin to make out abstract symbols, like some sort of ancient writing, on its surface, and will feel strong emotional responses to seeing them. It is like awakening an ancient memory.
As you grow even closer, fix your attention on one symbol and plan to actually land on it. As you do, it will be beneath your feet, and its size with be enormous, covering hundreds of acres of space around you. You will first notice how strong an emotional feeling this symbol elicits from you.
Touch the symbol on the ground and feel the energy it radiates. This is an idea that makes up part of the whole of the one idea. It is most likely a very broad and far-ranging and abstract idea. As you touch the symbol under your feel, you will begin to understand more and more about it. You will first feel it emotionally and vibrationally. Then, you will begin to get intellectual glimpses into its meaning.
Feel free to stop occasionally and write down what you perceive, and then go back to the visualization. As you persist, you should begin to enter into a dialogue with the idea, and you will understand more and more about it. This will give you a feel for how you can tap into larger ideas within the one idea.
Now we will actually touch the One Idea itself, rather than this one symbol on it. Again, we will at first feel it as a vibration and a feeling. Then, we will start to get small bits of insight into it. Then, we will begin to speak to it and ask it questions. In the long run, it would be helpful to develop a relationship with the One Idea, and to journal your conversations when the feel especially significant. If it seems contradictory that you can relate to the One Idea after we have described it as timeless, remember that it is only motionless in a higher context. In our context it is the highest form of consciousness in existence and therefore capable of anything. Bringing this one idea alive will help to raise your potential as a person to its highest level of complexity and fulfillment.
B6) All knowledge has its limits and all possible knowledge does not exist at any one time; each time has different limits.
All knowledge has its limits because knowledge is information and all information is by its very nature limited. It is the limited nature of the knowledge of things that allows it to be known, compiled, gathered, studied and so forth. So, to study knowledge is to study something limited.
All possible knowledge would be the same as all possible permutations of combined pieces of knowledge. It is mysterious and unfathomable, because it contains The Great Mystery of all unexplored experience. At any one period in time, the available knowledge in the world changes. At a Spirit level, all knowledge is available always, and the amount of knowledge that is available is all the knowledge in the physical world plus an incalculably larger portion of knowledge that does not involve the physical.
Before we can address the last idea concerning each time having different limits, we need to discuss in more detail how time works in Spirit. Time is consciousness referential in Spirit. That means that the passage of time, forward to backward, is an exercise in moving through a person�s experience. You have experiences and they always refer to previous experiences as being in the past. It is the nature of consciousness to always move forward in time. Even in Spirit a person cannot see into their own future; that knowledge is not available, except perhaps in some small and fragmentary ways.
If consciousness experiences a backward movement in time, it is still �forward� in the personal sense that it is part of the �future becoming the present� for that particular person. So, there is only future movement. However, any timeline might be explored in a way that was different from any other timeline. In Spirit, you could drop out of one timeline of experience and move to another timeline, be there for a while, then come back to that timeline and move forward in it again as if no time had passed there. You could do this on as many timelines as you like.
So, it is possible that if a Spirit being were to explore being human, they could finish that experience and then come back to a certain timeline and continue it as if nothing had happened. Higher plane experiences tend to move much more slowly than our timeline, so that great lengths of time are reported by near death experiencers who were only dead for a few seconds.
At any moment of time, there is a world that exists at that moment that can be explored (for any particular person in that timeline). However, there are worlds at Spirit level that can be explored that would not have a clear time relationship with your own timeline. That is to say that if you picked a certain new timeline out, at any particular moment in time, you wouldn�t be able to say that it was this or that time in the other timeline. In that timeline, you could pick where you wanted to insert yourself, but you would not be able to make a definite one-to-one time correlation. There might be a random time-to-time correlation between the two worlds, a distorted relationship or no time-to-time relationship between them whatsoever. So, time is personal, especially in Spirit.
In lower planes, all time tends to operate on the same �clock�, even though the passage of time might be slower or faster here or there. The closer a plane is to the physical, the more of a one-to-one time relationship it will have with the physical.
At each moment of personal time, there is a certain, set, measurable amount of knowledge in that mode of existence. That amount is constantly growing as a person moves forward into the future. This continuous process marks the growth of all knowledge as it achieves new permutations and fills The Great Mystery. Although we say that knowledge is measurable at any moment of personal time, that doesn�t mean that it is measurable in a practical sense, only that it is non-infinite, from an absolute viewpoint.
It should be noted that Spirit isn�t the highest plane of existence. Inside God there is experience without perception, involving direct contact between the minds of beings without language. Love is the medium of expression here. That sounds a bit made-up, but it is actually literally true, because beyond all emotional states there is only love between beings, but this love is a language that is far more complex than any language we could conceive of. Again, I mean this entirely literally. At this level time is not a limit nor is it measured.
Exercise: Timelines
In this exercise, we will pull apart our usual thinking about time and reexamine our desires in this different light.
First, we need to acknowledge the many ways in which our physical timeline holds us down. It is like gravity to us. We have to plan everything and we have limited opportunities. Our sexual and emotional opportunities change drastically as we age, and on top of that, we have the day-to-day pressures that keep us tied to schedules and routines. So, time is really a large limiting factor in our lives.
From a Spirit perspective, we have unlimited time to explore different ideas, experiences, etc. There is no one over our shoulder telling us what experiences are forbidden and what we are allowed to experience. We create as much time as we need to explore any experience we desire.
So, for the purposes of this exercise we will take our life as it is and set it aside, instead imagining that we are suddenly a Spirit being in Spirit. We will come up with various ideas and experiences that we would like to explore. These could be sexual or emotional fantasies, achievement related fantasies, explorations of higher states of consciousness, or even abstract states.
With the context of having unlimited time and control over what we will experience, we can paint with a broad canvas. Begin by getting relaxed and have a pen and your journal handy. Imagine yourself in a Spirit environment, which is an environment made out of consciousness, so it has a heavenly look to it.
Think about all the experiences you might like to have as a native Spirit being. Write down the first twelve that come to mind. You might want to write down more, if you have the time and patience. Remember that experiences can be �physical plane� in quality, or have the qualities of idealized physicality, or even be far outside physical experience. Don�t place any limits on yourself; be bold.
For each experience you want, make an educated guess as to how much time you would need to spend in this experience in order to be totally satisfied in this desire. Write down each desire and the amount of time you want to spend in exploring it.
The next step in this exercise is to pull out a few ideas that come out of these desires you have written down. In thinking about time in this new way, what kinds of experiences are you finding that you are focusing on? Do they give you any clue as to how you not satisfied with your current life? Are there any fantasy elements that could be used to enhance your own physical life? Nothing helps you examine your priorities like not feeling rushed. It is only through looking at your life through a lens that is not distorted by time constraints that you can see what is really valuable to you, and what you truly want.
Now, we get to another layer of this idea, which is a discussion of meaning. Meaning in a world made entirely of consciousness is more than just an abstract. This is because a consciousness environment is an abstract environment by nature, and therefore an abstraction is treated as a reality in a consciousness environment. In other words, in a world where everything is �imagined,� everything you see is ultimately based on one abstract idea or another being given some sort form, unless you go beyond perception entirely.
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