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enlightenment Archives - Self-Help, Spirituality & Self-Esteem

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What Is Consciousness, Mastery of Consciousness

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What
Is Consciousness?

What is consciousness? At each level of consciousness you know yourself and the world differently. As you move up the levels you become less identified with the content of your life.

Dr David Hawkins has written extensively on the levels of consciousness and the different experiences one has as a human being at each stage.

Soon after my initial and profound spiritual awakening in 2005 I read his book Power v Force. He talks about a calibrated scale of 1 to 1000. The numbers on their own don’t have any significance, what is significant is the scale.

Dr Hawkins calibrated through kinesiology the scale at which different ways of knowing yourself and the universe become apparent.

I found this to be interesting but never picked up the book again until over three years later.

We often think that the way we encounter ourselves and the universe is the way that ‘it’ really is.

This is naive and convenient.

Two people will never agree on the same incident or interpretation so how can your way be the way that it really is?

Most people never challenge the mind to explain this. It is convenient to go back to knowing what you know, even though it is an illusion or simply an idea held firmly by your self identity.

There is only one consciousness but each human being’s experience is determined by the amount of ideas and concepts firmly held by the mind that keep consciousness hidden from itself.

In 2008, three years after first reading about these levels of consciousness I went and picked up another copy.

I had recently felt a shift in my consciousness and had started knowing myself differently.

It is interesting to read and compare the way you see yourself compared to Dr Hawkins’ description at each level. You then get an idea of where you are at and what a more peaceful life awaits you as you continue.

I had recently felt a significant increase in peace. I recall knowing and really seeing that everything I experienced really was coming from me.

This calibrates to 600 on the levels of consciousness.

It is an experience of peace. Peace inside as the mind really lets go of trying to be in charge and continue the illusion.

You can imagine the ego being found out and realizing it has lost its willingness and power to pretend anymore.

More and more subtle shifts in becoming aware of how I create my experience would correspond with an increase upwards on the scale of consciousness. This all happened rapidly in 2008.

It was fascinating the number of times I began noticing a certain experience, way of seeing the world, knowing the world and myself, and then a week or so later reading in books by various authors the same words.  It was as if I had written it.

It happened time and time again, including when picking up Dr Hawkins’ books.

This all gave me confidence that I wasn’t just fooling myself and ‘escaping into Buddahood’ as some say. This was real and this was transformation of my experience.

Also, the other thing that gave me confidence is the more I grew the more willing I was to feel uncomfortable.  I don’t mean I went looking for it but I knew extra growth and freedom could come through feeling some pain and I had an attitude of complete surrender to come what may.

There have been several times I burst into uncontrollable crying in a split second out of nowhere. I say uncontrollable but it is more so the fact that I simply surrendered and did not try and control it.

This always happened in private and the crying went without a trace in just a few seconds. One time it was replaced by uncontrollable laughter.  There was no wondering what that was about or why it happened.

This is a good lesson for anyone learning to heal. A child will feel tears and hurt fully and in a split second heal and return to life activities.

Somewhere we learn to try and not feel, as if it is wrong or unnatural. We resist, which makes the feeling worse and it gets stuffed down only to come back with vengeance, more pain and destruction at another time.

To wish feelings away or try and not feel them by distraction is to create problems for your life. Not only your health but also your relationships and experience of life.

Fortunately the curiosity and questioning doesn’t stop. The more you see the more obvious the next question becomes or the next paradox presents itself to your awareness.

Even though there is a change in identification I still feel like the same person I always have been. This is because I AM.

One should not be scared of this change. It is a change to know yourself as you really are.  It is a way to answer for yourself the question, ‘what is consciousness’?  You keep your sense of who you have always been minus any suffering or unhappiness.

Difficult to explain, impossible to make someone else know, worth you being curious about.

The Enlightenment Process

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The Enlightenment Process

That You Are On Now

Wake up to the enlightenment process, which is available to everyone who wants it. 

Many people don’t have any knowing of who they are, they are living inauthentic lives and pretending. 

Is finding instantaneous enlightenment something you desire?  Do you wish you could somehow take who you are; your history and story and particular circumstances and change it?

Then you would be happy and peaceful right?

If you took some time to think and examine this it might strike you as absurd.

Firstly, it is the way it is and secondly why do you have to judge the way it is as wrong or a mistake?

Part of the enlightenment process is being OK with the perfection of this moment.

That isn’t to say it is your first choice preference.  How could this moment always be everyone’s first choice preference?  It can’t.

This enlightenment, or knowing of your essence, may be what you are truly looking for instead of that powerful work position, status, wealth or achievement that you think is the bearer of the contentment and enjoyment of life you seek.

In any given moment you are as you are.  You have strengths and weaknesses, times to shine, times to sit and let others shine.

Simply observe and acknowledge and say yes to what you experience whether you like it or not.

When you look at the judging that goes on you will see comparisons with others.  You will see expectations you place on yourself to live up to someone else’s beauty, charm, wit, intelligence, profession and the list goes on.

So in that moment you have created your own suffering.  You have created your own suffering by not accepting things as they are.

If you are not a fast runner, accept it.  If you are not a beauty, accept that too.  Although in the game of comparisons you will be more beautiful or faster than some.

Say ‘yes I am this’ and ‘yes I am not that’.  So what!

Part of seeing the oneness and the seeing the enlightenment process is to see that everything is as it is and to accept it as ‘not for me to determine this is wrong’.

Resistance alienates you from an awareness of your authentic self and with this you feel alone, separate, anxious and inferior in a big world.

It is easier for you to look outwards and pick people or a situation as the cause of your feelings.  You will point to the fact that you are single and say ah! it is because I don’t have a partner that I feel lonely.

Or you will say in your mind, ‘my husband doesn’t love me enough, which is why I feel lost and alone’.  Or you will pick on your children or your profession or something, anything to blame for your feeling.

This is easier and more normal for the mind to do than look inwards and ask ‘what are my feelings about and how am I creating them or making them worse?’

Really looking inwards and becoming more aware of how you are doing your life experience is the opening to creating some space between you and your world.  This is the meaning of, and the process of enlightenment.

That space is comforting and fulfilling.  The space between the non-judgmental observation of the world and the world is where the enlightenment process is remembered.

You are OK in that space; you have always had that space, you are that space.

You create space by dropping expectations.

You create space by dropping comparisons.

You create space by observing expectations and comparisons and letting it be OK that your mind has created some.

You are not your mind, you are not your thoughts and you are not your self-image.  You have these but you are not them.

You can let them play like children.  You accept you can’t get rid of them and you cease trying.  You watch them play their games while you abide in that space where there is peace and contentment.

You see there is something bigger than ‘you’.  You surrender and give up trying to make yourself happy.

You simply be happy and enlightened now.  This is the enlightenment process and the meaning of instantaneous enlightenment.

The Separate Illusion

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The Illusion Of Being Separate

One massive assumption we make while living this separate life is to assume we are over here and all that is over there.

Being separate, or at least living like you are, is lonely and difficult. The alternative is to notice some assumptions and ways of seeing the world which perhaps are a bit more real.

What do I mean? Well, for starters have a look around and try and find something in the world that you perceive which is not in your awareness.

Pretty silly statement but if you look and notice that your world and the objects in it including other people are experienced within your perception, then it might change the way you think of yourself and your world.

We assume we are separate and exclusive and the world is happening completely outside of us.

The habit of pretending that there really is a tree over there and it is very green and tall will be automatic and beyond your conscious control in each moment.

A baby wouldn’t look at the tree and call it a tree and green and tall. A baby might not think anything. A baby probably just notices and doesn’t make the distinction of me here and tree over there separate.

However, learning these labels and sounds doesn’t change what is actually there. The labels don’t make it a tall, green tree. It just is as it is.

What use is this? What use is it to challenge the notion that you are
separate?

Well for starters it is the truth. The truth doesn’t need to be of any use, it doesn’t care, it just is.  Sort of like saying what use is it to be aware of gravity.

Secondly, seeing the world in this way brings a unity where you and the tree are together. 

Sure when you stand and look it still appears as if that tree is over there and it certainly seems to hold a location that is different to you, but you can let it be what it is before it is labeled tree.

Likewise, other human beings are just as they are in each moment.

Whenever you label someone, judge them or mentally hold them in some way other than as another conscious being, aren’t you the one adding all that extra stuff to them?

What if you looked at the body and the life that moves the body and saw fundamentally that is all that is there? You might find a together-ness that you have never felt before. You might find you feel part of something bigger and more awesome than you originally thought.

Sit alone and watch any life form. In the past I would wish seagulls would go away, now I sit and watch and just let them be seagulls. Flies are just being flies, cockroaches are just being cockroaches.
Although, that doesn’t mean you won’t protect your survival needs around them by defending your food, water, shelter or body but apart from that you can work to drop the extra stuff you place on top of just noticing them.

More importantly for us is to learn to do this with others. This is more difficult as the pull to be a me and you be a you is strong when we are interacting.

Practice seeing the Being and be curious about their experience as you listen. See if you can see how much you are assuming when you look out your eyes at the world.

With people you know well you will drop into an assumption about them based on how they have been for you in the past. With people you don’t know you will drop into an assumption about them based on your prejudices and projections.

Let go, surrender, notice that they exist within your experience and let them be them.

We have a strong tendency to hold ourselves as separate and exclusive. Seeing the world play out within and watching from the space you create will make you and others feel connected and part of the whole event of life.