Spirit Pages (continued)
D3) Ideas evolve not only through time, but through alternate realities and possible realities as well.
Every idea has its own lifecycle, but additionally an idea that is slightly altered through the course of its evolution causes it to then have a completely different lifecycle than it did before. Any slight change to a basic idea, even the slightest change, will alter the course of that idea�s evolution.
Exploring an idea in one way leads to one future, but changing the idea slightly, perhaps playing with it, can lead you down a very different path. So, the path of evolution for an idea is singular in one sense, and incredibly varied if you pursue slight variations on an idea.
The change could be as slight as seeing the idea from a slightly different state of consciousness, or seeing the idea through someone else�s eyes. Each change of perception in some way alters the basic idea itself, thus leading to a different future for the evolutionary fulfillment of that idea.
I often find that when I write this work on Spirit, I am being silently challenged to make the work relevant to physical life, and to give it some practical use. This sometimes feels like seeing the country through the eye of a needle. I am trying to fit a vast, all-encompassing vision into a form that people will take interest in and digest.
The full exploration of ideas resides within you. Do you take interest in ideas, or do the majority of ideas bore you? If you are living out of boredom consciousness, nothing will hold any interest for you. You have to have the desire within yourself to explore reality. If you want to be interested, but are not, then it might be worthwhile to use some of the techniques I have laid out so far to see what desires are making up that boredom. Or, you can leave boredom consciousness as an exercise and then see what you see with these new eyes.
You might then want to examine how you could add new desires to yourself in order to take more pleasure and joy out of life. People who return from near-death experiences often say that they have a renewed interest in learning. They sometimes read voraciously, and are able to embrace new ideas.
If you want to be the fertile soil of life, rather than the barren desert, you have to go through a process of self-discovery, and then determine what you want to want. For people who have had school, ideas and different aspects of life forced on them as children and who silently rebelled against this kind of oppression, there may be a sense that learning is work, or that it is suffering, or that knowledge is a burden. These are unfair associations.
As an adult, it is up to you to decide what you will be in the future. You have taken back control of your mind, piece by piece. It is enjoyable to learn, and to broaden your interests. People with varied interests live richer lives. So much of what is on television nowadays is filled with violent and vulgar content. We have to make the effort to nourish our intellect and that starts with desire.
See the advantages of being an intelligent person, and don�t worry about your performance in school or the relative who told you that you were stupid. In the end, only your self-assessment really matters, because only you have access to the deeper truth within you. Widen your landscape and enjoy the fruits of your labors. As you own your desires, you will enjoy the knowledge that someday your desires will all be completely fulfilled.
In the next exercise, we will explore a single idea and several permutations, and see how that idea manifests differently in different forms throughout time.
Exercise: Variations on an Idea
In this exercise, we will actually write a short play, and then see how slightly different versions lead to different endings. This will be a very short scene involving a few characters.
Begin by getting comfortable and grabbing your pen and journal. Write down an idea for a short sketch that involves a few characters and conversation between them. Write out the first names of the characters to begin with. Then, decide on the setting and context. Is it a parking lot conversation between three people who know each other from work? Could they be people who used to date each other? Figure out the basic idea that brings them together. Don�t worry about plot development at this point. It might be helpful to introduce some initial tension or problem into the scene, to generate something to give the story interest.
Now we move on to the second part. We will visualize the scene, and knowing the characters names, proceed by watching the scene unfold. Notice feelings, conversation and actions that are significant. When the scene has finished playing out, write down any notes that you need to about the scene.
Now we will alter the basic idea of the initial scene by seeing it from a different state of consciousness. Relax and visualize yourself as being a godlike being that is floating over the earth. You see the earth spread out below you, and then you focus in on the place where your story takes place. Now, from this different perspective, you will watch the initial situation unfold, but in a different way. The difference will be a result of your different perspective. See the scene unfold and then jot down the differences.
We tend to get stuck on single tracks with things. Allow yourself the freedom to multi-track you ideas and explore solutions and creative projects on as many levels as you have time to conceive of. With thoughts, explore different permutations until you get the idea that gives you the information you need to create that ideal alchemical reaction, producing gold.
D4) There is a dimension of ideas behind ideas.
Behind every idea is a particular dimension of ideas that support the existence of that particular idea. For example, a chair is physical, so one of the ideas in the dimension of ideas behind a chair is the idea of a physical world, the idea of wood, etc.
For every idea that you give reality to, there must be a dimension of ideas that support that reality. However, the word �behind� also implies cause, so the ideas that are behind another idea are part of the evolutionary steps that lead to the current form of an idea.
Now, to dispel a common error, evolution is not linear but loop-like. That is to say that we must leave the truth in order to get to an illusory world and so there must be a seeming evolutionary spiral downwards into increasing error. However, that process is necessary for the pursuit of that particular desire. Consciousness only ascends higher than it did before after it has returned to truth after its trip through falsehood.
You might wonder how evolution can lead downwards when it is a progressive learning curve. The answer is that even error is a kind of knowledge that we must acquire. And, it is only in falsehood, a false or illusory state, that we �fall away� from the Truth. In the context of the Truth itself, we never go into falsehood at all, but only imagine it, so it is only in our imagination that evolution can seem to lead downwards.
If we want to unravel a knot, we could look at how the knot was tied and then reverse the order of actions that tied it, untying it in the reverse order of those actions. If we want to understand where an erroneous idea comes from, we can trace its origin from the idea behind that idea, the idea behind that idea, and so forth until we reach the original source of the error.
The strength or weakness, positivity or negativity associated with a particular idea is entirely determined by the world of ideas behind an idea.
Exercise: Source of Stress
Begin by getting comfortable with your pen and journal handy. Relax and focus on seeing a clear blue sky. This is a purely mental plane where you can explore ideas.
Identify the idea of your own stress and enter into it. You are going to explore the top three ideas behind that idea, and then go one deeper beyond the most significant of those three ideas.
Ask to be in the most significant idea behind the idea of your stress. It will be like leaving one bubble and entering another. Once there, examine this idea and write down some basic observations about it in your journal.
To give you an example, this is what I came up with for myself. �I feel scared, sick, small, weak and oppressed by others. I am continually oppressed by others and society. Every aspect of my being is constantly being crushed by others. This feel of sickness moves through me constantly, giving my life a nightmarish quality. My life is repugnant to me because of this. It sickens and disgusts me. All I see is ugliness in everyone and everything.�
This is a rather broad idea, but it encompasses a basic perception and mood about the world. You may notice that this idea is rather extreme and does not really express your conscious feelings about the world. Seeing the illogic of this belief is important, as these ideas are, as we mentioned before, subconscious in nature and therefore they will tend to be illogical.
In habitually addressing the ways in which these �behind the scenes� ideas are untrue, we can hopefully address our own depression, anxiety, and other mental distortions. I would like to recommend the book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, M.D. This has been a great resource for me in addressing my own cognitive distortions, as he lays out an approach to changing your own thinking by examining and questioning your own thought processes.
After having written out the contents of the ideas behind your stress, write out a second paragraph in which you identify all the ways in which this belief is untrue or at least unrealistically distorted.
Now, enter the second largest idea behind the idea of your stress. Examine this idea as you did the first, write down your observations, and then write out how this idea is unrealistic. Now, repeat this process for the third largest idea behind the idea of your stress.
Finally, go back to the largest idea behind the idea of your stress, and go into the largest idea behind it. Now, repeat the process of examination again. So, here we have gone one layer deeper. This gives you an idea of how to examine the ideas behind specific problems in order to become more conscious in how you deal with them. Seeing your life as a collection of ideas in motion is helpful in drawing you back to a fully conscious mode of operation in life.
Notice how the idea behind the idea behind your stress is in some way more fundamental, causative and perhaps points to an ultimate cause for your distorted feelings. You can repeat this process of going behind and behind again until you get at the most basic root causes of your stress.
D5) You can change your identity by passing through different states, while simultaneously maintaining your identity�s continuity and structure.
In Spirit, as in physical life, we move along a daily journey through various states of consciousness. Throughout this process, we maintain a single set identity, even though our sense of who we are and what we believe and how we feel about life may alter from moment to moment.
In the physical, we have moments where we feel like life sucks, and there are times where we feel fine and have a positive outlook on life. In Spirit, we can actually visit various �planes of existence,� which are places with a unique feel and structure, and the beings there have a particular outlook on existence and a particular physical and mental state of being.
There are an infinite number of possible planes of existence, and Spirit beings navigate this vast expanse of experience by becoming involved with these planes in various ways. For example, there can be a plane of existence where beings live an extended lifetime compared to humans, have an idealized physical form and no illness or injury, have unusual physical and mental abilities above and beyond what humans enjoy, are sustained by a diet of light they can taste and enjoy rather than food, that have refined senses, are telepathic and empathic with each other, enjoy greater sensual and sexual enjoyment and higher degrees of intimacy and experience bliss in meditation on higher ideas. This is just an example of a possible being from a possible plane of existence.
And, their plane of existence itself could be idealized, less �physical� and more beautiful, and very different in form and qualities from earth. In the broadest sense, you can break down many planes of existence that are listed in mythological works and religious texts into some broad categories.
First, you have �hellish� planes of existence where beings are tortured mentally and physically. These planes are usually inhabited by the unfortunate souls and demons that carry out the various tortures. The experiences of fear, rage, hatred and addiction are commonly felt by beings in these states.
These beings are involved in the deep, agonizing pain of their environment and the despair of not being able to escape. Or, the pain can be an expression of deep guilt and remorse, with a sickening feeling of having hurt others and a deep feeling of regret and inner pain. The environments tend to be dark, ugly and threatening. In these states of being, the person tends to be locked into a certain set of negative feelings that repeat unendingly, and there is an absence of compassion for oneself and others.
Above these planes are the �physical� astral planes. These states are marked by a feeling of being parallel to the physical world in some way. There can be ruined cities, or fully functioning communities. Beings find the conditions to be neither hellish nor positive, but rather neutral. They might be able to travel to any planet and through space, or be bound to the physical world. They may find other people to interact with, or they might be alone. They may not have a set body, but may stretch their being to single or multiple points in space. Or, the may have a body with some limitations.
The mental states here usually relate to being dead and �in between lifetimes.� For some people, they may be attached to a certain location, such as a house they loved, or the place where they were murdered. The psychological trauma might bind a person to the physical world through their repeating memory of the trauma and a lack of psychological willingness to face what happened.
Next, you have the higher astral planes, which relate to pleasure and enjoyment. Beings enjoy pleasurable activities and their environments are more idealized than you would find in the physical world. Beings are happier and less neurotic here as well. Some beings might engage in violence, but at higher levels such behavior would be unknown.
Beings can, at the highest astral levels, manifest their desires immediately simply by wishing for things. Their environments are beautiful and they enjoy wealth and luxury beyond what we can imagine. Beings here live for exceptionally long periods of time and have generally enjoyable lives. They may have access to certain supernatural powers and have the ability to enter into altered states of consciousness at will. Beings here may also be able to travel to other planes of existence through concentration. Beings in the astral generally �die� at some point, as do beings in the physical astral and hellish states. They will at that point pass on to some other state of consciousness and being.
Above the astral levels are the mental planes of experience. These planes tend to appear to be made of light, as are the bodies of the beings. Or, they may have only a face and no body, or perhaps no body whatsoever. Beings here are beyond human emotion, and their enjoyment comes from learning. Their lifespan tends to be extremely long. They don�t have physical needs to meet, but can manifest anything in their environment by thought, including whole landscapes.
Because of their interest in ideas, learning or meditation, they tend to engage in mental activities very energetically and meditate often. These beings have the capacity to intake vast amounts of information, and may return to physical life with the goal of learning certain things through experiencing them firsthand, and so may actively engage generating their next lifetime in some cases. These beings tend to have a vast yet ultimately limited lifespan.
Next are the causual levels of existence. These planes may be seen as abstract environments, such as a huge matrix of light beams, or a sea of light. Here, identity is washed away and beings engage in a collective consciousness with each other. With no boundaries and no identity, there is only one vast consciousness, and the being entering this state would become part of that consciousness. This consciousness may not even have any conception of an outside reality, but might encompass all consciousness in existence, or perhaps only human consciousness.
The individual consciousness would be lost while here, but not unconscious. Rather, the pieces of their consciousness would be disassembled and attached to the whole of that one being. As such, this state would be difficult to describe, but might involve some form of consciousness activity. Or, it could be a single state of consciousness without an �external� frame of reference, such as a trance-like state. This would be some sort of meditative state of thoughtless bliss, or perhaps something beyond even bliss. The individual consciousness would eventually pass out of this state, perhaps after a vast period of time. These planes may include consciousness at levels of refinement beyond what we can conceptualize.
Above the causual planes are the Spiritual planes of existence. These planes look very much like the high astral, mental or causual planes in terms of the environment. However, the beings there are engaged in self-improvement and helping others as their main reason for being. These planes are devoted to beings helping other beings through engaging in self-improvement. This would include many of the schools of thought in today�s world.
Beings could also come into direct contact with Spiritual beings and deities, and communicate with them directly in some cases. Higher teachings would be easily available, and practices such as prayer, study and meditation would be common. Beings might be partially or completely identified with a Spiritual being or Spiritual state of consciousness. Beings here might have an infinite lifespan, or a long but limited lifespan.
If their lifespan is infinite, they might engage in a process of evolution whereby they move upwards from one Spiritual plane to a higher one continuously over time. It would be difficult to categorize the range of experiences and environments that could exist at this level.
Please remember that when I say that one type of plane is �higher� than another, it does not mean that they are necessarily higher in an absolute way. I only use this term to describe how each level tends to have access to a higher range of consciousness. However, you could have a causual being that encompasses many Spiritual planes of consciousness, but is not by definition Spiritual in nature because it does not want to self-improve or to assist others. The complexity of possibilities really defies description, ultimately.
Finally, there are planes of existence that I refer to as �above Spiritual� that are unique in several ways. First of all, these planes are not strictly Spiritual because beings of this plane do not strictly engage in helping others or in self-improvement. However, it is understood by these beings that everything that they do automatically helps everyone else in that plane of existence, because it becomes raw material for their exploration, like adding books to a vast library for others to read and enjoy.
The defining characteristic of this type of plane is that these beings do not have set identities. That is to say that they can change their identity, and can merge with other identities at will. Here, self-improvement is understood to simply be accomplished in the act of pursuing one�s personal desires.
Identities can be duplicated any number of times, by any being, and they can engage in any experience they can imagine in a real, first-hand way. Beings having this liquid reality to play with see their environment as a world of consciousness, rather than a physical world to be negotiated. In the Spiritual planes and mental planes, the environment may be seen as being created collectively by all beings there. In the higher than Spiritual planes, there can be collective environments or individual environments. Spirit would fall into this category of planes.
As you can see, this is a long and exhaustive topic of discussion. Spirit beings can explore these various worlds as they learn of them or conceptualize of them themselves. As they explore these worlds, they might wish to do so on a first-hand basis. By engaging partially in the state of consciousness of the inhabitants, they can get a better feeling for the plane of existence. They can have the inhabitants� body type, environment and engage in typical activities. They can socialize and interact. But, they simultaneously retain their identities as Spirit beings.
This state of consciousness is something I call being a �visiting native,� meaning that one becomes partially native to the plane, but only as a visitor. Spirit beings can also have the full experience of being any being on any state of existence for a certain period of time, but due to the fact that this experience could strongly effect the Spirit being�s identity and tastes, there might be certain self-imposed limitations to doing that. So, being a visiting native to various planes allows exploration with excessive contamination of consciousness.
Exercise: Become a Visiting Native
In this exercise, we will actually engage in two very different activities. First, we will explore a world as a visiting native. Then, we will explore using this concept to correct our daily state of consciousness.
To begin with, get your pen and journal ready and get into a relaxed state. Imagine that you are looking at a scene where Mental Plane beings are floating through a vast library of information, which is coded as light. (Please see the description of the Mental Plane above.) These light storage shelves stretch up far beyond the range of sight, and far below it as well.
The Mental Plane beings are made of light, and can recognize one another through telepathic contact. Become a visiting native being of this plane, and add yourself to this scene. Look at your own body of light. How does it feel? What is your state of mind?
Reach out with your mind and telepathically touch another being without disturbing them. What are they doing? Engage them in a friendly conversation.
Now, track down a particular subject matter in order to read something about it. Move through space to the point where you sense that material is located, and pull the material. Open the material and read something. What is the experience of �reading� material like?
Now, put the material back and seek out another person who is reading this exercise. Don�t worry about the time factor; think of everyone who is doing this exercise as being here simultaneously. Locate myself or another reader and meet them here. Reach out telepathically and engage them in a conversation.
Next, come back to earth and take some notes on your experience. Now, imagine yourself as being in some situation where you are very depressed, frustrated or angry, to the point where you can�t function normally. You can think of this as a case where the negative feeling is like being someone in a negative plane of existence, like the Frustration Plane. You are stuck in and identified with this state as a full-fledged native being of this plane. Look around, get a feeling for what it is like here and try to do something. See how any activity seems to cause an increase in the negative emotion.
Now, in your mind, shift your involvement with this negative feeling plane from being a �full native� to a �visiting native.� That means that you are experiencing this negative feeling but are not fully identified with it. This allows you to also feeling being your normal self, to a certain degree. See how this shift affects your feelings and how you function in this plane now. Take any notes as needed.
D6) There is a dimension of experience that is defined by the absence of certain ideas.
This would not be an absolute absence, usually, but a relative absence. There are times in our lives when we are deluged by various states of being. We might be overwhelmed with misfortune, or stress, or overwhelmed by an intense feeling of love or happiness.
All planes of existence and states of consciousness are as defined by what they lack as by what they are. And, all ideas are defined by the absence of certain other ideas. The absence of ideas is equivalent to the absence of consciousness. And, it is the absence of consciousness that is the source of suffering. It is also the absence of consciousness that pulls consciousness into lower-than-Spirit states of being.
In any situation, knowing what information is lacking is the first step to retrieving that consciousness and improving your state of being. Any consciousness that is added to the self improves the state of consciousness and relieves to some extent the suffering of that consciousness. However, consciousness is not exactly the same thing as information. Information can be correct or incorrect. Incorrect information can actually lead a person to believe something that is not true, which in essence reduces their consciousness. Therefore, the process of learning how to intake consciousness directly and trust what it shows you is an important part of learning how to improve your life.
Another caveat is that the addition of consciousness must be a totally augmentative process. That means that new consciousness that is added must be integrated into the whole of the person in such a way that no consciousness that was there to begin with and no consciousness that is added will be lost. In this way, consciousness can only rise and suffering will definitely decrease.
Although you can increase your consciousness in this way at any time, it takes some practice to really get the full benefits from it. Thinking of yourself as a being made of consciousness is a start. Also, developing your visualization capacity is important. Eventually, as you actually believe yourself to be a being made of consciousness and think of your life that way, you will experience life differently. It will become easier and easier to intake consciousness in this way. Because this merging of consciousness is totally an adding process with no loss of consciousness, you can even add a less evolved or relatively �negative� consciousness, and your consciousness will still be augmented.
Identifying yourself as being made of pure consciousness, including your physical body, is also a great way to do psychic readings. I found that I could do this and read other people very clearly, telling them where they had physical problems from old or recent injuries. Practicing this on your own will increase your own confidence in it and thus your belief that you actually are only made of consciousness.
Physical existence is defined by what is missing. Our consciousness of what we really are is very limited. In every problem in life that we encounter, our own consciousness and desires are part of what is going on. So, as we change what we know in terms of our consciousness, we change our circumstances.
If we want to guarantee a positive change, we have to in some way add consciousness to our own consciousness, without any loss of consciousness happening in the merging. We tend to think of our lives in terms of what they are, rather than what they are not. Also, when we listen to what people say, we tend to listen to the content and not listen for what is not being said.
Evil and persuasive people who wish to harm others use partial truth for their own ends. In fact, small pieces of the truth are the most dangerous weapons in the wrong hands. The ability to memorize trivia right up to the ability to make pithy observations are all powerful ways to laud oneself over others and abuse one�s personal power. The careful expression of certain truths while carefully excluding other truths can actually denigrate reality, lowering the state of consciousness of those who hear and believe the message.
Although this is the addition of new information, which is new consciousness, there is also the implicit delivery of an overall false information. For example, a generous, modest person who tends to be evasive and lazy can be presented to another person as being simply evasive and lazy. The characterization of this person as being evasive and lazy implies that they are always evasive and lazy. Also, there is no mention of their modesty or generosity. This kind of characterization could lead to hatred of this person, or self-hatred on their part.
Also, without understanding why this person tends to be lazy and evasive, we can�t really get a clear picture of this person. The laziness and evasiveness may be symptomatic of core issues that have not been identified. Perhaps this person had a parent who was a slave driver, constantly running them into the ground. As an adult, they feel a constant need to rest in response to their internalized feelings of exhaustion and resentment. Perhaps they are evasive because they were forced to be that way with their parents in order to protect what little privacy and dignity they could hold onto. Looking at a person in the light of carefully chosen �facts� can cast them in a negative light by covering up real consciousness-information about them.
Every day we make untrue statements about others and ourselves. Our thoughts are a litany of half-truths and distortions. These truths that act as lies can rob us of our consciousness and lead us into great suffering. The simultaneous path out of suffering is to identify where we need more consciousness and then to add that consciousness to ourselves in a totally augmentative way.
Exercise: Adding and Subtracting Consciousness
In this exercise we will become an imaginary person and change our state of consciousness by adding and subtracting certain consciousness-information.
To begin with, we will get comfortable with a pen and our journal handy. Relax and see an imaginary person who is married and has a family. You will see through their eyes and feel what they are feeling, while making certain changes to what they know.
Begin by going in and seeing through their eyes. You will focus on their husband or wife. How do they feel about them? We will begin by subtracting consciousness from this person that we are seeing through, regarding their mate.
Imagine a thought that you can see, hovering over this person. This thought contains accurate but selective information that will cast their mate in a negative light. This in turn will cause them to lose some consciousness in terms of their partner, and they will undergo a loss of consciousness and a negative shift in feeling about their partner.
Cause this thought-bubble to enter the person you are seeing through and then write down what the thought was and how it made them shift in how they feel about their partner. You can see how the person�s feeling become negative about their partner very quickly.
Now, create a second idea that will add back the lost consciousness-information without removing the information in the first through-bubble. See this new bubble and have them merge with it. You can now feel a sense of relief as the negative feelings about their partner are lifted, even though the original information has not been removed.
Now, we will create a final ball of consciousness that will significantly augment this person�s consciousness about their partner, taking them to an even higher state of feeling about them. Notice that this information has the effect of making them feel even better about their partner. If the relationship is abusive, then the additional information will shed a compassionate light on the other person, while showing the need to separate from them.
This technique can be used by yourself to adjust your own state of consciousness when you are feeling badly about something or somebody. Make yourself the imagined figure and raise your consciousness about whatever is depressing or angering you by adding a ball of consciousness. Do this with yourself as an imaginary figure in an imaginary setting that is the same as your current situation. The mental distance of dealing with it as an imaginary exercise will allow you to feel more in control over the exercise.
E) The physical world isn�t physical; everything is made of Spirit.
Spirit is, in shorthand, reality. It is where everything is happening. Within God there is the Reality behind the imagined reality of Spirit. God�s function is to fulfill all desires and Spirit is part of that function, but it is a less real reality that the experience within God. In that realm, there is no perception and all communication is direct and without any symbols.
Spirit is the place where beings within God go to experience sensation and perception. It is an infinite realm full of all possible knowledge. It is a place where all beings can fulfill themselves immediately, without censorship or limitations. It is here that the physical experienced is being imagined by those beings that are involved in it.
Spirit is as much a process as it is a state of being. Spirit moves through all experiences without discriminating between one and another. All experiences are considered valuable.
The material world exists as a concept within Spirit Plane. This means that it is an idea that is explored by Spirit beings. It can�t have an independent existence, because it is not based on reality. Its fabric is held together by consciousness bound into certain patterns. Ignorance is a large part of what keeps the physical going. So, therefore suffering is also a large part of physical existence. If pleasure and fulfillment are the earmarks of reality, then physical reality must by its very nature stand for the opposite, for in a sense it actually stands in opposition to reality, an illusion that attempts to contradict reality entirely.
Because the fundamental nature of things is lost in the physical, everything is related to as if it was in some way real. The �reality� is perpetuated by experiences of physical pain and suffering. The inescapable nature of physical reality replaces the inner knowledge of the truth of existence that is held by Spirit beings, that reality is entirely made out of consciousness. The �reality� of the illusion is forced down your throat, and yet despite its seeming reality it is entirely fiction, like a bad dream.
The power of physical objects over the self, the ability to be subjected to harm, gives the world a physicality that denies the preeminence of consciousness. So, individual beings become objects and their consciousness becomes simply the means by which they move their body-object. However, the fact that objects can cause harm is simply a case of how lower-level consciousness relates to its environment. When consciousness is lost, control is lost. If a Spirit being engages in physical-level consciousness, they are in essence binding themselves to a physical world and its laws.
Consciousness that reaches toward Spirit can have glimpses of the freedom of being a Spirit being, but can usually only exercise it in the imagination. It might be possible to achieve full Spirit consciousness in a physical form, but I don�t know if that is true or if it would only happen at very high levels of evolution.
Nowhere in the physical is there anything that denies Spirit�s truth, or that is not made of Spirit consciousness. Rather, consciousness assumes a form that is needed by Spirit beings that wish to explore the idea of the physical world. The form of events creates a certain illusion, but consciousness remains the only show in town.
For each person, the level of consciousness that they are operating on is focused on looking at things in a certain way. There is variation in consciousness depending upon what level of meaning is being examined. As consciousness and reality both exist to generate meaning, then meaning is constantly the focus of all consciousness is existence at all levels. This focus is not necessarily a conscious one, and in the physical it rarely is. In the physical, we give personal meanings to things, but the true meaning of our existence eludes us for the most part.
We have already looked at how we can discover the meaning of our own experiences. Every action is a state of being that corresponds with its understanding. That is to say that the knowledge and understanding behind the any action is fundamental to that idea, but isn�t usually directly expressed in the form of the action. So actions are fundamentally information in consciousness form, and the form the action takes comes out of that understanding.
As all physical phenomena are constantly in a state of activity (at the most fundamental levels) the fundamental understanding behind each of these activities is collected together to embody the true nature and meaning of physical life, not the form that we are aware of most of the time.
For example, you are riding a bike to the store and someone throws a beer bottle at you out of their car window and screams a curse word at you. As they drive away you feel upset and angry. You assume the meaning of this event was to humiliate or hurt you, but if you stopped and examined the event as an idea and explored the meaning, it would be quite different. Thus we live a life of collected personal meanings that we have placed on the events of our life that coagulate to form a kind of global picture of what life, or at least our life, means. However, this meaning is wrong. It would require a massive examination of your life to build the actual meaning of your life through inner work. So if life feels petty, humiliating, meaningless, or worse, it is simply a misunderstanding on your part.
The feeling and qualities of any overriding idea permeate every aspect of its manifestation. As meaning is the overriding idea of all existence, there is a level where the quality of feeling of that meaning is experienced. This is just another step down toward physical form. At this level, the meaning is expressed as emotional experience. In simpler language, some ideas express their meaning as feelings, and some feelings express their meanings as physical events, as symbolic representations in our mind of the feelings themselves.
The overriding idea of a thing supercedes the sub-ideas of that overriding idea of a thing. That is to say that there is a pecking order to reality, from lower to higher consciousness. Meaning is the highest order of reality.
In the physical world, experiences are generated out of a desire expressed by a Spirit being or groups of Spirit beings to have certain experiences. This desire is really a search for a particular type of meaning that is tied to having certain physical experiences. Because this search for meaning is the highest level of the idea of what you are doing in the physical, it supercedes lower level ideas such as feeling states or intellectual levels of the experience. This boils down to being forced to have physical experiences that don�t make sense to you emotionally or intellectually until you discover the meaning of the experience directly by exploring it. Without the meaning the emotions and thoughts we have are just a meaningless jumble until we do inner work and pull out the meaning ourselves.
We are sometimes forced out of positive state of feeling and into confusion as we are compelled by the meaning we are uncovering to have certain experiences. The meaning has rulership over the other levels of experience. Although consciously exploring the meaning of events in your life appears to be a sort of artificial activity, it only feels this way due to the fact that you are not habitually used to looking at it. With habit and time, it could become a constant and intuitive activity that is carried on rather effortlessly in all situations.
Every desire unfolds as a series of events, states of being, feelings, objects, environments, etc., hierarchically laid out through time. This unfolding process always begins at the level of meaning, as all events ultimately serve meaning.
The meaning behind every event belongs to you, in the sense that it is your desire. Although you may not be conscious of that desire, it is rooted deep in your self. The only way to meaningfully effect reality is to address what you are doing at the level of meaning. Otherwise, you will continue to address the symptoms, rather than the cause of things.
Like a person who uses magic, you will attempt to impose your will on things without addressing the level at which you are the only creator of your life. You will seek to decrease your suffering without having to look at why you are suffering, which is really impossible. How pointless would it be to hate driving but never be able to get out of your car because you refuse to acknowledge that you are in one?
The only way you can meaningfully alter the meaning that is running your life is to add new desires that will modify how that meaning functions. In other words, you have to change the meaning you are seeking by pursuing even more meaning consciously, which alters the whole structure of your life.
Small changes at the level of meaning, or in the way a person feels or thinks can create huge changes in terms of their whole inner state and thus drastically alter the landscape of their identity and life. There is more than one way to skin a cat! Try everything until the ideas all come together for you.
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