Spirit Pages (continued)
F4) Every feeling creates an event, objects, experiencer and context, rather than visa versa.
To understand this, let us begin by imagining that there is a plane of existence where emotional reality is primary. In this world, form entirely serves the play and manifestation of emotions. In this world built around feelings, they find their expression by manifesting events, people and objects that play out that generate the emotional states they wish to express. Each emotion is like a package, burning with unexpressed energy. That energy finds its expression only through this process of creation and self-expression.
By manifesting the scene that creates the emotion, the emotion undergoes a cathartic release and only then able to change forms, in other words, evolve. It is like orgasm and then death, followed by a rebirth. This break in form allows the emotion to evolve. Although the path of an emotion may wind from positive to negative states of being and then back again, it is always involved with evolution, just as we are.
So, how does this imagined world centered on the fulfillment of emotional expression relate to our physical world? The answer is that in a system that is as diverse and endlessly creative as Spirit, the physical world is just an aspect, a neighborhood, of a much vaster space. To physical beings, physicality seems to be at the center of existence. Actually, much like outer space, any point in Spirit reality can be selected and declared to be at the center.
Likewise, if we make emotion the center of things, then even the physical world is just a stage for the self-expression of emotion. This seems ridiculous as it takes a sentient being to generate an emotion, so obviously the emotion is just something that is generated by the being. However, it is not that cut and dry.
First of all, the process of generating emotion in humans is more often generated in automatic reaction to events rather than consciously by design. So, our creation of emotion can be described as something we are as much as something we do. We are vehicles of emotional self-expression, and often not even willing vehicles.
Secondly, even when we are generating a feeling artificially as we desire, we have to understand that certain emotions can only be expressed through a conscious self-directing vehicle. So, who is the horse and who the rider is still at issue, although we hold onto the ego�s conceit that we are in �control.�
Finally, the key remaining issue is sentience. All of existence is sentient from a Spirit viewpoint, but in the fishbowl of physical existence, we view sentience as being entirely generated by a living being with a brain. Anything else is considered insentient. This is true at one level but also false at another.
In the physical world, you find all forms of consciousness that express themselves in a physical manner that is mired in physicality and materiality. Humans appear to be at the top of this food chain. But we may not be at the top of a larger food chain. A being that is made of emotions that are made of consciousness but not materiality would have the ability to self-express in the physical because the physical is a �lower-vibrating� level of existence. In fact, our world would actually be created only as a byproduct of the emotion-being�s self expression.
So, as beings that appear to be at the top of the physical world heap, we are still paupers on the playing field of power; our very existence only a byproduct of a larger landscape.
Would these emotion/beings have identities and lives? What would their purpose be? I am not putting this out as the only model of reality. In Spirit, there is never really any one model of reality, but a collection of models that add to each other. The point to take away from this is that even if we have trouble grasping a level of reality where emotions create us, we can at least begin to see how our emotions generate our own physical lives. Also, we can see how each individual life-experience we have is in affect a stage to allow the expression of certain emotions. There are a few important insights that we can take away from this model of reality.
First, we can see that each emotion is a brand new creation. It is completely new and different than any other previously existing emotion. Although one anger and another anger may appear to us to be very much the same, as emotion is entirely made of consciousness, they must conform to the laws that rule all consciousness, which dictate that each individuated consciousness is a completely new, unique state of being that is different from all previous forms of consciousness that have ever existed. A second rule is that consciousness is in a constant non-stop state of evolution, and so therefore emotion is also in a constant state of evolution.
I recently had a discussion of this idea with my father. He pointed out that many people run through emotional loops their whole lives and never change. They say and do the same types of things their entire adult lives and never evolve into a higher state of self-expression.
I pointed out that I remained depressed my entire adult life until I made a breakthrough that changed that situation entirely. But, up to the point of the breakthrough I remained depressed, even as I felt I was making Spiritual progress. My depression remained just as severe on days 5,000 and 1,000 as it was in the very beginning. All the therapies, approaches, meditation and so forth accomplished nothing. It was only when I discovered the model for my depression that allowed me to climb out of it by seeing it clearly for the first time that I experienced lasting relief. (See http://www.geocities.com/visualizenews/november2002.html for my depression treatment material.)
If anyone had looked at me up to that point in time they would have judged me a failure. They would have seen only the endless loop of my depression and not the intense underlying work I had to do to achieve my breakthrough in understanding. They would not have seen how I pieced together over the course of twenty-four years my own material with material I read on subjects as diverse as physics, psychology, mathematics, logic and Buddhism, just to name a few, to create my final product. Success is a quantum leap, but the path to it is gradual and winding. It is easy to get discouraged. But, unless we have the eyes to see the progress we make, we can�t judge and say there is no progress.
Ultimately, an emotional loop is just a stage where a drama must be played out to the very end. Evolutionary progress appears to be fast or slow but is ultimately a product of the evolutionary capability of the consciousness being transformed. Minute processes of logical analysis occur below the surface, and below our range of conscious perception. Each logical leap is a gesture, but until the moment when all the gestures are put together into a single, logical dance is there a quantum leap of understanding and a breakthrough into a new level of being. To use our model, the emotion has to completely express itself before it can die and experience a new form.
An additional lesson we can learn from this model of reality is that our quality of life cannot exceed our feelings. We can�t expect to generate positive circumstances and negative feelings simultaneously without creating a great deal of friction. That is to say that the feeling-quality of our lives are as much where and what we are as anything we have. Possessions can generate pain. Simplicity can generate pleasure.
If we see our lives as a place for feelings to manifest themselves, then we may find that we don�t like some of the feelings that are manifesting through us. If this is the case, then we can look at how we�re designed. You can ask yourself specifically what it is about yourself that is allowing you to be the perfect mechanism for the expression of this negative feeling. If you want to become a conduit for the self-expression of positive feeling, then what is it within you that must change? You can explore this in Spirit Plane internally to find the answers for yourself.
We can also turn this insight on others. Look at the emotional patterns of a particular person. If you had to define that person as being the vehicle for certain emotions, what would they be? If we observe that a person tends to be angry or self-pitying, that is one level of observation. But if we say that this person is primarily a vehicle for anger or self-pity, then it casts the person in a new light. The choices they make, the path they take and the outcomes they generate are all colored by their involvement.
We can also look at how people who are difficult for us to be around are not in fact the cause or �to blame� for our negative emotional states, but are simply co-expressing negative emotions with us. We must look at how we have become vehicles for these negative emotions rather than removing the person that �causes� these emotions. The only resolution is logic and understanding that causes emotions to undergo resolution.
Another thing we can take away from this model of reality is in our approach to creating change in our life. You have to ask yourself what success or happiness would look like to you. From an emotion creating reality standpoint, each emotion would generate a very specific scenario. The uniqueness of the emotion would generate a unique scenario. So, if we think about material things we want, we could use this emotional model and create the scene in our imagination, then determining what our having that particular thing would feel like.
In other words, determining what emotion would find its self-expression through our having of that particular thing. If we still feel that we want to have that particular emotion, we can then set into motion the manifestation of that emotion. To do this, we should state our intention to have this particular emotion. Then, by clearly feeling this intention, we have planted the seed that will ultimately result in the emotion itself. In turn, the emotion will seek fulfillment through generating a particular set of circumstances in your life in order to express itself. In this way you get what you want.
Exercise: Turn the Tables on Emotion
In this exercise, we will do some role-playing that will hopefully stimulate some insight into our emotional processes. We will begin with the conceit that our lives and the physical world are simply creations of �emotion entities� that seek self-expression and in doing so generate the physical world, people and events. We will pick various emotions that have played important roles in our life and then play them out as characters.
We will choose specific important events from our life and play the emotion who is expressing itself through the event. We will see the event play out in our mind while simultaneously narrating the event as the primary emotion we were experiencing during that event. To symbolize your new identity, you will imagine and then wear a mask. While you wear this mask you will for all intents and purposes be that emotion. Take notes on what you narrated.
As an example, there was a scene from my life where I felt a culmination of many years of alienation, culminating in an intense moment of extremely heightened alienation. As alienation, I narrate the event to myself, wearing a twisted mask; I am Alienation. I was walking home from a friend�s home late at night. I imagined a huge eagle in the sky above me, its giant eye glaring down with a look of hatred and cold judgment. I felt a sensation of fear and cold emptiness.
This was the culmination of years spent at a university where I felt like a hated outsider who was unwelcome. Alienation then made the editorial comment that at that moment I realized that I would never be welcome anywhere on the face of the earth. I knew that I would always be watched, judged and held in contempt while simultaneously being passively threatened if I dared to express myself. Despite this intense lifelong scrutiny, I knew that no one would never be loved or cared for and would be ignored. It was as if I had looked at the face of humanity as a single being and had been forced to realize that I could never dream or hope for a better life again.
If this kind of self-awareness is the left foot, then the right foot is at the completion of this emotional expression. When this emotional pattern in our life is defeated, or will be defeated, it will be the end of an era of self-expression for this emotion. The emotion will achieve catharsis, death and rebirth in a higher form. Take a moment and put on the mask of this higher form, even if you have not yet achieved this break with the emotion. Don�t worry about what this emotion is, just create the mask and wear it and you will have insight into what it is. While wearing the mask, go back to the original scene you examined and create a new commentary on it from the perspective of the higher octave of the emotion-being. Take notes on its observations.
F5) Identity is made up of not only multiple levels of identity, but also the difference (space) between them.
When we have more than one identity, such a when we are developing a Spirit identity but still tend to move back to a physical identity, then the difference between those two identities is part of our identity as well.
The difference is an unanswered question, while the answer is in the process of moving from the lower level (physical identity) to the higher level (Spirit identity). Our experience is the answer, a long series of small questions and answers that make up the final understanding of the leap itself.
Identity reaches a kind of critical mass when enough questions are answered and it suddenly will reach completion. So, the process of moving from one form of identity to another is not smooth and consistent. The sudden jump is a question of reaching a place where your understanding is sufficient that the only logical conclusion is to entirely embrace the higher identity.
It is easy in our struggle to understand to waste a lot of time trying to understand physical issues, when they are better ignored. However, our mind struggles to understand everything and that is a waste of time. All the answers are abstract. The physical understanding is non-abstract. Therefore, trying to understand the non-abstract is like trying to explain existentialism using grunts and gestures. We define the impossibility of it in terms of denying ourselves the means to use the language we need (abstract thought) to explain the answers to ourselves.
Where does Spirit identity come from, anyways, except from our own mind? Obviously we are the source of all wisdom including God�s wisdom, because God is within us. And yet is our use of a spatial metaphor, �within us,� that we deny the abstract nature of understanding. How did God get into us in the first place and how can we get in to Him and reach His wisdom?
These all seem like valid questions from a physical identity standpoint, but think about what you are really asking. God is within you, but you take it in a physical sense, as a spatial metaphor. Therefore, all the questions about reaching God represent a complete misunderstanding of the original statement. The failure to understand is that language can only use words to describe and that leaves it open to interpretation. Then, the physical mind reads the statement too literally and a host of false questions are born. Then the answers have to come in a language form that once again is open to interpretation.
What I am saying is this, that the seeming difference between yourself and your Spirit identity is arbitrary and unreal. When you are your Spirit identity, you will know everything there is to know and you will understand it completely. You can never stand back from the position of your physical identity and understand what your Spirit identity understands. To really get to the answers, a gradual shift in your willingness to be your Spirit identity must occur. This is the only real source of answers.
The whole shift in identity is really only occurring in order to free you from an identity that has no answers, nor the ability to really understand anything at all. It is not that you are a �bad� person who needs to be redeemed, it is just that you have come to the false conclusion that there is some real difference between your Spirit identity and yourself. This gap has to be overcome.
To be more succinct, it was never really about learning at all. Everything you experience is to prepare you to ultimately be willing, able and desirous of shedding your physical identity and taking on your Spirit identity. But when you have become falsely convinced of your physical identity being your real identity, then to admit that it doesn�t work is the ultimate statement of your failure as a human being. So, the human spirit must really be broken very hard in order for it to understand that the physical identity will never work and to be open and receptive to an alternative. For even though Spirit is obviously beautiful and desirable, one identity cannot be appealing to us until our own identity has become entirely unappealing.
The seeming gap between the two identities is for the physical identity a river to be forded, an obstacle to be overcome. But the real issue is just an acknowledgement that our identity is made up and that when we are sick of one identity we will take on a new one, as easily as shifting gears in a car. But physical identity believes that our attachment to a particular identity represents something �real� that can�t be let go of. This is materialistic attachment to identity.
Our Spirit identity is who we really are beyond all anger, hatred, guilt, shame and fear, and all other negative feelings. It is not someone else. Because we have bathed in negativity our whole lives, the idea of an identity that is not capable of those emotional states seems like it is not who we are. But the more we familiarize ourselves with it, the more obvious it becomes that it is exactly who we have always been, behind the mask of conflict.
Try giving a speech when a fly is buzzing in your face. No matter how well prepared you are or how great the speech is, it will go poorly with a big fly buzzing in your face. Some distractions cannot be ignored. Physicality demands that we succeed while forcing us to fail. Or, it takes our success and hurts us with it. When the fly is gone, we can give the speech we dreamed of giving. When physical identity is gone, we can be the person we always hoped to be one day but thought it was impossible to be.
You will find a world full of people with many defense mechanisms, trying to protect their attachment to a physical world that they don�t like, don�t really want and don�t need. They will fight to the bitter end to kill �spirituality� in all its forms, because they fear the removal of the garbage heap that they seek to claim as their own. When a person is ready to admit defeat, they can finally begin to see and acknowledge spirituality, which is really just a fancy term for the Abstract level of thought.
The seeming gap between who you are now and your being your own Spirit identity may seem too deep and far to cross. I certainly thought it was until my way of thinking changed. The human identity is marvelously plastic when it wants to be. Wanting is the key. When you truly want something, your capability for reaching it increases enormously, especially when it is a change in identity. So, don�t give up or think that there is any real river to cross. The crossing is nothing but the shedding of a misunderstanding, the shaking off of dirty old clothes.
Exercise: Spirit Identity of the Future
In this exercise you will identify with your Spirit identity, but not as it is now. Instead, you will imagine the day when you are only your Spirit identity. Your physical identity is no longer being created by your Spirit identity. You live in Spirit and enjoy your life there.
Write a one-page minimum description of your life as a Spirit being. Talk about what you do, how you feel and any perspective you have on your past physical identity experiences. This exercise can be used to remind yourself that someday the ideal life will be your life. Below is what I came up with, as an example, but please write your own as well.
Spirit Identity in the Future
I am only myself, a Spirit identity. I no longer imagine a physical identity for myself. This identity has been woven from physical experiences that have been redeemed by being pulled into Spirit. Now I am happy, safe and well.
When I think about what I went through, I realize that I was always defined by struggle, but that struggle itself was my worst enemy. To struggle is to give reality to what you are struggling against. I needed to know that there was no need to struggle and nothing to struggle against. God�s Will gradually filled that gap.
Now, God�s Will is my will, because God is just a function of who I am at the very core of myself as a Spirit being. I don�t think of God as being separate from myself. God is not �out there� anymore, but very much who I am.
I do what I want and live a dynamic, constantly interesting life. I am never tired, sad, depressed, angry or bored. I have the perfect life because I have my whole mind to create my whole experience, whereas before in the physical I had only rudimentary tools to attempt to do what was out of my reach using those very tools.
I am not sad anymore. I know that nothing has been lost. I feel with certainty that everything is perfect as it is. Before, I was sad because I saw a sad world. I tried to make the broken world work to fix the very problems it was busy creating. It was an irresolvable paradox.
I never know what it meant to love or be loved in that world. Now I am free to live in love all the time. I do not distinguish between people in terms of who I will and will not love, the whole idea becomes absurd. Instead, I look upon people in Spirit who are exactly like me in terms of their basic nature. I recognize myself in them better than the closest and most personal friend I could have ever had in the physical world.
Here, communication never fails. Love is complete and is conveyed in our merely being together and even when we are apart. We solely are interested in what we have to give to each other. That means that we are not in relationships to take from one another. The reason is that we don�t lack anything, so we are only left with the desire to share what we have with others. We live the perfection of generosity.
Guilt and shame seem ridiculous to us now as concepts. Everyone in our physical society was busy tossing the hot potato of blame around. No one wanted it. But everybody was being burned by it all the time. No one could admit that the physical simply was irrevocably broken and unfixable. It was our failure to admit that the physical could never work that held us in the grips of guilt, because guilt protected the physical world from our recrimination.
But mere recrimination of the physical world was not enough. We had to see something beyond the physical where our abstract reality dwelled so that we could mentally reach out to it and be pulled into it. We had to give up not so much on a world as the ideas behind that world, the ideas of separation from God, from our individual wholeness and internal existence within our own mind.
The physical could never be fixed, only escaped from, but that escape had to be made at an abstract level over time, in the form of a shift from one identity to another.
F6) There is an absolute level of reality and no level of existence even comes close to it. All levels of existence are more or less equally real/valid/etc. in one sense while some are more based in truth than others. But, in comparison to absolute existence they are all illusory. There are always infinite levels of understanding between the highest levels of understanding you can imagine and absolute reality. Absolute reality is infinitely complex and infinitely integrated.
It is difficult for us to approach such a vast concept. When we approach this idea it spreads out more the closer we get to it until we feel tiny and lost in comparison to it. However, we can in a way define what it is even though we may not think we have a direct experience of it. When we explore higher and higher levels of conscious and encounter more and more advanced beings we are in awe of what they can teach us and what we can experience. However, we tend to also sort of �top out� and feel like this new level is the highest and that we won�t or shouldn�t try to go any higher.
However, evolution forces us to go higher and higher and we never end up resting at any one level of understanding. All these higher levels of consciousness are dependent on a sense of identity that may be very refined and connected but it is still an identity nonetheless. The evolution of identity is like the spiral of a conch shell around a central point. However, that spiral is endless. On the other hand there is absolute reality which is beyond identity and cannot be achieved or fathomed.
While the evolving identity gets closer to the truth as it explores higher and higher levels of identity, it never comes close to the levels of absolute realty because this represents an entirely different way of thinking about things beyond any permutation of identity. It is not a state of consciousness that can be reached, because in essence it is beyond even the idea of consciousness itself.
Is Absolute Reality a conscious entity itself capable of taking action? I would say that the idea of taking action is really in the realm of identity. In that light I would have to conclude that it does not. However, it does not have desire, want or motion of any sort. It is not non-conscious in the sense of being inert like a lump of clay. Like the boundary between a flat two-dimensional world and our three-dimensional world it is a place where the rules and limitations just don�t make any sense to us anymore. If we are two-dimensional beings staring into a three dimensional world, we may feel overwhelmed in our attempt to understand it. In fact we are ill-equipped to fathom that kind of experience; it would be impossible for us.
Ironically, Absolute Reality is at the basis of our own experience. We are experiencing it and always will experience it because it is the root of our own process of existing. While the sum total of higher consciousness remains rooted in truth it our freedom to explore untruth, which takes the form of time, space and physical experience. Our identities will go on evolving for eternity, but we can ourselves actually surpass our own identity, leaving it behind in favor of Absolute Reality. It could be described as stepping out of your individual skin and into God.
The nature of mind is to generate false ideas that in turn create suffering for the individual. Coming into truth bit by bit causes enough of the truth to flood in that desires are met, needs are met and everything is accomplished that needs to be. This is not so much a conscious act as a natural state of being. When we place our identity within the boundaries of Absolute Reality we go back to our fundamental state of well-being. In this state we are in the eternal now and we have everything we need. Our desires are fulfilled instantly and there is no conflict between ourselves and others.
As we act, we serve to fulfill the desires of others. As they act on us they in turn only fulfill our desires. This perfectly coordinated system is possible because all identities are parts of one single greater identity. Conflicts between people, �evil,� suffering and the physical world are all only possible as ideas that we imagine from this higher state of being. When we finish imagining such impossible states of being we return to the place we always were, free from illusions. We need no �work� or specific purpose because the pursuit of our desires moment to moment is exactly the same as our perfect purpose to benefit others.
In this state we live in the light of the absolute and we evolve. As we evolve we find higher and higher levels of fulfillment and work through our lowest desires as well. This process is endless. However we could leave our identity behind and ultimately return Absolute Reality as our only �identity.� The important thing to remember is that the truth is always the most desirable state to be in. Therefore Absolute Reality is the highest state of happiness and fulfillment possible. When you ultimately remove yourself from the limits of identity you allow yourself the opportunity to embrace Absolute Reality.
Exercise: Absolute Reality Mirror
In this exercise we will hold up to the mirror of Absolute Reality various ideas and feeling in order to observe how they are reflected back to us. Begin by getting comfortable with a journal and a pen. Relax and imagine yourself sitting in the middle of a vast, completely flat desert. Directly in front of you is a large oval mirror standing without support directly in front of you. This mirror is actually a symbol of Absolute Reality.
Begin by thinking about some area of your life or your identity that troubles you. After identifying this issue, problem, relationship or what have you, give it a symbolic form. For example, you could create a small sculpture of your head to represent your problem with low self-esteem or a heart to represent a love relationship.
When you have created this symbol, hold it up to be reflected in the mirror. Remind yourself that the mirror represents Absolute Reality. As you do so the image may change radically, showing you events or any number of things. The feelings and thoughts that you have during this exercise are important and you should record them in your journal.
G) There are infinite levels to any activity and any mode of being.
That is to say that each level of being or understanding contains its own reflection of any activity or state of being. In this way, a particular idea can actually thread together several states of being that are operating at different levels of understanding.
Any activity can become a journey through many levels of understanding and feeling. As our existence is inherently an �activity,� it automatically means that we can journey to different levels of understanding through a single activity. The level of understanding that you are exploring the activity at will naturally evolve how you perceive the activity and desire to be involved in it. It may also alter the nature of the activity itself.
So, the activity becomes the means of bridging many different levels of understanding, but then the understanding shifts alter the activity. Because it is naturally the nature of consciousness to explore, then the nature of the activity that is used to hinge the exploration on is a reflection of the state of consciousness of the explorer. By exploring the same level of understanding through different activities, you get a slightly different understanding of the level of understanding that you are exploring.
The transition from activity to activity is itself an activity. Physical states of being are actually emotional and mental states of being. The physicality is an aspect of the level of the understanding being explored, and is not a �reality.� That is to say, the physical nature of the experience and how that limits you is really just an expression of the experience as an emotional and mental understanding. The physicality is necessary to evoke the emotions and understanding. So, even the exploration of a physical world is actually just the exploration of a level of understanding.
The exploration up and down the spiral staircase of a single activity traveling through different levels of understanding is a step by step process. Each step is limited by the evolution of understanding of the participant in the activity. Each step is a necessary leap in understanding.
Even if the activity leads to a lower level of understanding, it is still an evolutionary step up because evolution is like the filling in a of a jigsaw puzzle, and the necessary piece of information may only be found in a lower level of understanding experience. You might wonder why this is so, when higher experience contains all knowledge. The answer is that experiences are in fact pieces of information.
Lower experiences are also pieces of information. As a lower and higher experience are different, therefore they must also be different kinds of information. So, the necessary piece of information that a person needs to take their next step UP on the evolutionary spiral staircase may in fact be a step downward on the experiential staircase, because that experience is a specific piece of information that does not exist anywhere else. Although higher experience would contain that same information, the form and shape of that information may only be accessible to that person at that point in time in that particular form. Too much information containing the needed information would not be usable, as the needed information would be blocked from being processed due to the fact that the person could not consume and digest the unneeded portion of the information. It would be like burying the moral to a story under seven-hundred pages of complex plot developments. The simple moral of the story might be lost due to the complexity of the story itself. So, too much information is not necessarily a good thing.
