Thou shalt become like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven
If it’s all about how we feel, as I believe it is for us humans, then what am I doing, in a take-charge manner, to see that I feel my best (as defined by me)?
No, I don’t mean anything external. I’d like to keep our attention on the internal. It doesn’t cost anything and promises the best results.
In my opinion, feeling loving, blissful, and ecstatic, which is our end goal, is an inside job.
Despite what we’ve been sold … I mean, told … feeling these ways happens on the inside of “us,” and it happens because of events that happen on the inside of “us,” whatever “we” are.
Let me put first things first: There is an “I” that’s always around. It doesn’t sleep when the body sleeps. As a matter of fact, even the lower bodies – lower than the “I” – don’t sleep; only the physical body does.
That “I” witnesses and experiences what the other bodies experience. The purpose of those bodies is to give the “I” experience on the level the body is appropriate to – astral, mental, causal, buddhic, etc. (1)
We seek enjoyment from experience, but we also seek wisdom. All that is taken with us, when we leave the body for good, is the memory of the experience.
Experience, enjoyment, memory – all of these happen inside. With me so far?
Really, as far as I can see, we live in a bubble or field of awareness. We go through life experiencing, enjoying, and remembering. It’s no stretch to then observe that my field of awareness is my responsibility to work with such that I maximize the love, bliss, and ecstasy that I feel. No one else can do it for me; no one else would want to do it for me, not even my guides.
Here am “I” in my field of awareness. My body comes and goes, but I carry this field of awareness with “me.”
How do I work with it? Well, first of all, I need to take my thoughts seriously. I need to listen to myself, above all else, so that I can effectively do Step Two.
You’ll recognize this as the basic agreement of the awareness path: To maintain awareness of ourselves.
Second, when I find a bad idea, I need to raise it to awareness as much as need be and then drop it. Just drop it. No need to fill it in with anything else.
We’re heading, among other things, for stillpoint so no need to manufacture a new thought. Let all thoughts go if you can. (That doesn’t mean to lose situational awareness. Be safe.)
Raising the idea to awareness in the first place, however, has three benefits.
(A) It means we’ll recognize the ill-advised idea more easily next time it comes. We can then dodge it like a matador.
(B) Raising something to awareness and allowing it to be hastens its departure. Awareness is not neutral; it’s dissolving. The flip side is that what we resist persists, Werner Erhard observed.
(C) Becoming aware of something ill-advised makes it more difficult to do a second time. We’re now consciously watching ourselves do it whereas before we were unconscious of doing it.
Fourth and finally, I recommend we draw love, bliss, and ecstasy up from our hearts and experience it. Be with it. Meditate upon it. Our hearts are our portals to a higher dimension.
Let me stop here so as not to overtax your willing patience.
The start of every spiritual path is purification, cleansing of the vasanas or core issues. The cleansing of our field of awareness is that first step on the spiritual path.
That cleansing process begins with awareness.
Footnotes
(1) The purpose of experience is to help us to develop discrimination. What we ultimately need to discriminate between to fulfill the purpose of life is between the Real and the unreal. Realizing the Real is the purpose of life.
(2) “How to Handle Unwanted Feelings: The Upset Clearing Process,” December 29, 2018, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/12/29/how-to-handle-unwanted-feelings-the-upset-clearing-process-2/.