Spirit Pages (continued)
C) All experiences, including pain, have vast levels of meaning and value.
The physical plane is not really a plane of existence, but is an idea within Spirit Plane. This idea exists in order for beings to have certain types of experiences that would not be available anywhere else. For example, the emotions and thoughts you experience when faced with a physical plane problem are unique both to that problem and to the physical plane.
The unique limitations of the physical plane force you to make choices and exercise thought patterns that are unique. Your effort and suffering are also unique, and give rise to unique experiences of consciousness growth and development. The physical effectively focuses intent, narrowing possibility to specific courses of action. These narrowed possibilities are then lived completely from beginning to end, with no exclusion of experience.
Specific desires on the Spirit Plane can limit you to a physical form. But, more generally, any desire will effectively limit you to a particular form or series of forms. Desire has a limiting and focusing quality on your identity. In order to get what you want, you have to become a specific person who has it.
All desires themselves have their own particular �life cycle�. Desires are born, grow into �physical� manifestation, actively exist so that they are in some way fulfilled, die, and then are reborn in a new form. This cycle repeats itself over and over again in an ascending spiral of development. Desires evolve in this way, just as people do.
Every desire has uncountable permutations in different forms. That is to say, as desire expresses itself, it takes many different forms, too numerous to count. Each is subject to further permutation as well. And, each permutation of a desire is subject to the aforementioned cycle.
Combinations of desires produce all possible worlds. Every experience is created from the combination of different desires. Every desire is it�s own world, carrying with it all its challenges, desires, limitations, and places that it leads to. That is to say that each desire contains in an implicit form of the challenges that will arise in pursing it, the limitations it will impose on you as you work to fulfill it, the new desires it will produce in you as you follow it, and the types of experiences it will lead you into.
The meaning and value of Spirit experiences is in getting what you want. Whether it is through pleasure or suffering, in the physical or elsewhere is in a sense irrelevant, because it is all created and experienced in Spirit and desired by Spirit beings.
Anybody may learn strength, self-control, intelligence, peace of mind, self-knowledge, wisdom, balance, concentration, forgiveness, or any number of positive qualities from experiencing physical plane suffering and pleasure. The physical plane experience is a way of forcing growth on the self at an accelerated pace.
The meaning of the experience is always there, but may be hidden from conscious view until the physical person makes a conscious effort to access that information. With habit, they may experience all their suffering as being fully meaningful to them. It is their own hidden desires that binds them to the limited reality of physical life.
C1) The physical world is a narrowing of possibility, a focusing of intent as less information is lived fully.
The physical experience contains a vastly less information than Spirit experience. The rich diversity of Spirit experience tends to free the consciousness and allow vast choice. The narrowing of possibility that happens in an environment that contains less information allows for certain kinds of experience. As information is limited, the conscious mind is subjected to more and more constrictive forms and more limited movement. Self-control is increasingly limited, as is the ability to feel pleasure in experience. This all comes from decreased knowledge.
The experience of constant value and meaningfulness of experience that is so much a part of Spirit experience is often not available in physical experience. Although a wide range of information is available in the physical world, the ability to access new information tends to be a bit limited. Although Spirit may provide to a physical person a considerable flow of information, the ability to not just intellectually understand that information, but to hold onto that information or actually live it is limited severely.
It takes great effort to accomplish what would be automatic at Spirit level. So, the physical cages us and forces us to confront certain unpleasant things that we would rather run away from. In facing these things, we grow and evolve, which is what we desire to at our Spirit level.
We may find that the physical tends to pull us in certain directions and away from other directions. We might find that sexual opportunities elude us, or that we can�t live a �normal� life, or that we are poor for most of our lives, or that we tend to have abusive relationships. These patterns are part of the narrowing of intent that is the physical world. By consciously becoming aware of the meaning of events, we become empowered to take part in consciously learning what we have been unconsciously forced into learning in the past. We take the reigns in our own hands and remove the need to be forced by the physical world into being or doing specific undesirable things. As we self-educate, we work with more and more information about the world, and thus are more powerful in the world.
Exercise: Spirit Overview of Physical Life
In this exercise, we will be involved in an overview of our physical life from the Spirit level. As a Spirit being, we accessed our life for a specific set of reasons. No one, in Spirit terms, �created� our life, but any being could access the experience of creating it. This is what our Spirit self in this case did.
What did we want to get out of this life? Exercise B4 discussed the idea of exploring the meaning of a particular idea. Now, we must take it one step further and see the Spirit overview of our whole life, and try to get a feeling for why we chose to do this, from a Spirit level.
Begin by getting comfortable, and having a pen and paper handy. Relax and visualize yourself rising up into Spirit Plane. Once there, you will count from one to ten, and when you reach ten, you will be your Spirit self. This is your identity at Spirit level, who created your physical life and is experiencing it in an observational way.
Now, watching your life unfold. Keep a fraction of your own identity, to allow you to ask him or her why you are here, what they want from this life, and perhaps to get insight into the meaning of specific events that are unfolding. Take notes when appropriate. They will probably not give you insight into future events, although they might. In general, Spirit beings don�t like to reveal your future to you. Write down any responses that you get and when you are finished, re-read the content of your Q&A and think about how you might be able to apply these answers by pursuing meaning consciously yourself.
C2) Desire limits your identity and activity to one form.
When you have a desire and pursue it, it tends to draw you into a particular �identity� and into certain activities. You may not usually consciously think about this, but during the day you have many different identities. You may be professional at one time, casual another time. You might be emotional or detached, angry or forgiving, depending on the situation. Your desires draw you into these different identities.
For example, you might want a larger salary at work. It might draw you into working overtime to get positive attention, or it might draw you into bitterness about your place in the company. If you drop the desire, your identity will in turn shift, and you will no longer be exactly the same person. Also, your activity will subtly change to reflect your change in identity. This change can be dramatic, even drastic and can alter the course of your life, depending on the desire.
When we think about what we want, we have to consider what we are �actively wanting.� That is to say that we should look at those desires that we are actively pursuing. We may not even be consciously aware of what these desires are. We may even be surprised to discover we are not pursing desires we thought were important to us.
When we have identified what our active desires are, we can look at how those desires are shaping our lives. We can look at what activities coming from our desires are driving us to, and how our identity is being influenced by them. We can then examine if we would be better off changing our desires.
If a certain desire is having a negative impact on our life, we can drop it. But how can you just drop a desire? I think it is a matter of intent. You are essentially establishing a new and contrary desire to that desire. Rather than fighting the old desire, you establish a new one that drops the original desire. It doesn�t attempt to frustrate it, or deny it. Rather, the new desire is that you no longer have the old desire.
But how do you make the new desire strong enough to cause you to drop the old desire? First, you logically examine the advantages of keeping the old desire vs. letting it go. If you come to the conclusion that your life will be better by dropping the old desire, then you will naturally want the new desire. You anticipate seeing your life changing for the better.
Desire can�t really be fought and overcome. It has a way of waiting and biding its time. Desire simply becomes more powerful when frustrated. Desire is an aspect of identity. Fortunately, we are Spirit beings and we have the power to change our identities as we please. If we are willing to make the effort, we can very radically alter our identity. To do this involves radically changing our desires. The key to remember is that your new desire is, by definition, is that you no longer have the old desire at all.
Some desires are rooted in physiological addiction while others are rooted in psychological addiction. Even physical addictions can be overcome, although more effort and perseverance must be applied. I radically changed my diet and lost a great deal of weight. I dropped processed food from my diet for the most part, after eating an entirely processed diet beforehand. I was able to make radical changes in my behavior, even though I though that I would never be able to change.
I remember saying to myself, �I will never be able to give up cheese, because I love it so much�. Then, a week later I gave it up for the most part. So, it is more interesting to assume you can make almost any change, and then use trial-and-error to determine your real capabilities, rather than limiting yourself by saying that you can�t do something.
I saw a person in an interview who had climbed Mt. Everest. He was a smoker and not in great physical shape at the time of the climb. He said that his philosophy had always been that if he couldn�t do it, he had to do it. If you can truly embrace a new desire by seeing the potential benefits, it can negate a world of old desires that are holding you back.
Physicality is ruled by emotions, in that the physical world you see is a symbolic play created by your mind to generate experiences that give expression to certain emotions. In turn, these emotions are generated by ideas. So, in giving expression to emotions we are also giving expression to ideas, even very abstract ideas. Our desire to understand is what drives us to experience things at a purely mental level. We take the emotional content as part of the necessary expression of the idea we want to understand. Changing what we desire is inseparable from changing what we believe; they are one process being expressed in two different ways.
Remember to hold no sacred cows and to question every desire, regardless of how innocent it seems. The simplest desires can bring us to misery and ruin, so become conscious and exercise your free choice. The following exercise will use the ideas we have just discussed to help us identify and release old desires.
Exercise: Releasing Old Desires
In this exercise we will begin by getting relaxed and having paper and a pen handy. We will begin by identifying our active desires. Visualize a large white bowl. In this bowl are a variety of smooth, polished stones of various colors. Each stone represents an active desire. As we said earlier, an active desire is a desire that we are currently actively pursuing.
Larger stones represent more powerful desires that we are very actively pursuing, while smaller stones represent less actively sought desires. That does not mean that they are not strong desires per se, but that we are not strongly pursuing them.
Begin by identifying the largest stone and pulling it out. What color is it? Release the stone from its current form into a state of pure consciousness. This means that you will see the stone blink out of existence, and simultaneously you will become conscious of what that active desire is. Take a few moments to write down what comes to you about this desire. What is this desire and what are you doing to pursue it?
Now, more importantly, we identify what kind of impact this desire is having on our life. Ask to see only the activities that are a product of this desire. When you identify what activities are coming out of this desire, shift your frame of reference to see through the eyes of your �desire self� for this particular desire, which is the identity that this particular desire puts you in. Take note of how you feel emotionally in this identity. How do you treat other people in this identity? Do you like who you are here? If not, figure out why. Try to get an overall feeling of whether or not this desire and the activities it produces are helping or hurting you.
At this point, if you like the person you are and the activities that you are engaging in as part of pursuing this desire, then move on to the next stone after documenting your results. For this particular exercise, always write down your observations and a list of the desires you explore. If you do not like what you see, then we will move on to the next step.
In this step we take the old desire that we wish to let go of, and create a new desire that causes us to no longer hold the old desire. We have examined the impact that having the old desire has on our actions and identity. Now, we see how dropping the desire will positively impact our life.
See through the eyes of yourself in a new identity, one that doesn�t have the old desire. Who are you now? What kinds of activities are you engaging in? If you feel satisfied with this new identity, and you are sure you want to pursue it, then state strongly to yourself, �I intend to desire from this time forward to no longer have the desire for _______ that I have held up to now.�
With this intention in mind, write down your results and continue to the next old desire-stone. Continue this process until the bowl is empty. You may want to break up this exercise over a period of a few days.
Remember that if you don�t want to trash a whole desire, you can focus on a sub-desire element of that desire that you do feel comfortable getting rid of. For example, you want to remain career focused but not to the point of personal harm. Or, you want to hold onto a particular relationship but no longer compromise certain principals you hold. Be as specific as you need to be.
C3) All desires have a birth, manifestation, activity, �death�, and rebirth in a new form cycle of existence.
This process is endless and spirals up through the evolution of every desire. The study of Kundalini Yoga tracks the evolution of energy as it rises upwards through manifestation. First, there is the consciousness of survival. Then, there is the energy of pleasure, romantic love and sexuality. Then, there is the exploration of power and influence over others. This is the phase where the pleasure of ego is explored.
Then, there is the exploration of the heart, higher emotions, aesthetics, music, poetry, art, etc. as well as compassion and higher love. Then, there is the exploration of the refined intellect, higher faith and the subtle senses. Then, consciousness explores higher knowledge and vast knowing. Then, consciousness experiences divine love, oneness with all, and the realms beyond form and ego. Higher than even those higher states is the exploration of Spirit consciousness.
Consciousness constantly cycles upwards in a spiral, returning to the same themes but playing them out at a higher level. Each level has its own problems and conflicts. There are issues to be resolved on each go-around. But, when the consciousness change occurs through facing these issues, there is transformation of consciousness and evolution.
Each cycle is a complete whole. Every desire is born, comes into being, expresses itself through events and states of being, is fulfilled in a certain way and then passes out of existence. It is then born in a new iteration on a higher level. We previously looked at how desire limits us. Now, we can look at desire as the process of Spiritual transformation itself. We will examine how desire is pure process, and being that, it is also pure consciousness. And, as we have discussed, consciousness is a constant state of motion, change and evolution. So, desire is what we are. In the next exercise, we will examine this idea and apply it to our life.
Exercise: Body of Desire
In this exercise we will create a �body of desire� for ourselves, and will use it to feel our desires and explore them as being the sum total of who we are.
First, get relaxed and grab your journal and a pen. When you are comfortable, see yourself in a room with no furniture except a chair in the center of the room. The room has a single window looking out over the ocean. You see yourself sitting in the chair, but you look different than usual. You are made up of differently colored translucent substances, like Jell-O. Each substance is a different desire that makes up who you are. Ease into this identity until you are seeing through his/her eyes.
Look at your body and the different desires that make you up. Some are darker and some are lighter and they are all different colors. You can feel these desires as individual forces within you very clearly now, as you get settled. You can focus in on any particular desire and feel it fully. You can clearly identify all the desires within you at will, even if you can�t see them with your eyes.
If you focus fully on any desire, it will fill your whole body with its color, and you will feel it strongly. These desires are who you are. Take some time to feel some of your desires, and to be them.
You should even be able to trace each desire�s roots in your past, seeing why you hold that desire today. You can even look at your current problems as the manifestations of the desires within you. If you embody a desire associated with a particular problem, you will gain deep insight into that problem�s causes. You can then identify the desire within yourself that you could give up and in so doing shift the problem. Then, as in the exercise from C2, you can generate a desire to no longer hold the old desire, and in so doing, negate it.
This is all a bit complex and overwhelming, so let�s break this process down.
1. Create your body of desire and the room as described above. Get a feel for this body and the overall scene. Feel the desires within you.
2. Focus on one particular desire that you feel within yourself. Allow that desire to fill your whole being and body. Now you are feeling what that desire is, how it makes you feel and what kind of activity it generates if you are actively pursuing it.
3. Repeat step two above for two more desires.
4. Go back to the first desire you explored and trace its roots in your past by mentally focusing on it. See how this desire came into being for you.
5. Find one current problem that is particularly bothering you. Focus on that problem and feel the desire or desires that fill your being as you focus on that problem. Now, stop and individually identify each desire. It would be helpful to write them down.
6. Go back to exercise C2 and negate these desires, or find some element of this desire or these desires and negate it.
C4) Every desire has uncountable permutations in different forms.
This means that your desires manifest in many different ways and in different forms throughout your life. A simple metaphor is a single light bulb that is shining in a shattered mirror. Each piece of the mirror reflects the light bulb, but at a slightly different angle, producing a slightly different reflection of the light.
In the same way, a single desire manifests in a multitude of �offspring� desires that are part of that desire, and which each generate certain events and states of being and identity.
The overall effect of all these desires is to fulfill the original desire, so they are all part of that desire. Collecting and consolidating these desires in our consciousness will have the effect of getting us in touch with what we want.
In previous exercises, we examined our desires, but we need to look at how the multitude of desires within us are really a reflection of a few major desires that make up who we are.
The value of consolidating and examining our desires is that we can put together a simple picture of who we are and what we want that is easy to remember and work with. It will also give us a better idea of how we may want to change what we want. By changing certain elements of our desires, we can steer our consolidated desires in a more positive direction, even if we don�t want to completely change them.
Exercise: The Many Desires into One
In this exercise we will consolidate our desires into one, two or three major groups. Begin by relaxing and getting comfortable with your journal and a pen handy. See yourself sitting on a blacktop surface, with a circle drawn in bright yellow chalk in front of you. Inside the circle is a collection of colored marbles. The marbles are of all different shades, colors and sizes. There are too many marbles in front of you to count. These represent the various desires within you.
Look at them all and then think about how they can all be consolidated into no more than three total desires. Watch the marbles roll together and join into one, two or three large marbles. Now, look at each one individually, or the only one if you ended up with one, and hold it in your hand. Allow the marble to merge with you, and you can feel that desire very clearly, knowing what it is. Feel what it is and then write it down. Repeat this process for each mega-marble you end up with.
For example, here are my three final marbles:
I want to have or establish a place of comfort and safety for myself.
Were there any desires there you wish to alter? If so, refer to Exercise C2 and use that exercise to break down that major desire into sub-desires, and determine which aspect of that desire you would like to give up. Then, create the new desire to get rid of the old desire, as instructed. Or, you may wish to simply create a new desire for yourself to augment a particular desire, rather than negating some aspect of it.
To reverse the process and identify sub-desires, simply create a large marble to represent a desire you are examining and allow it to take the form of all its sub-desires. You will see the large marble break up into multiple smaller marble.
Then, you can put out your hand and ask that those sub-desires that are the most injurious to you should jump into your hand. When the one or multiple smaller marbles have landed in your hand, you can examine them individually and determine what desires you want to negate by using exercise C2. Remember that when you change a sub-desire you unavoidably alter the larger desire it is part of as well.
I want to feel like I can safely, comfortably and fully be myself without
censorship.
I want to have what I want without guilt.
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