By self examination and inward focus, one can discover that all states of consciousness are the result of the execution of an option. They are not unchangeable certainties determined by uncontrollable factors at all. This can be discovered by examining how the mind works.
We could typify human life as various fields and levels of human consciousness talking to each other and seeing people as impersonal spokespersons for these various levels.
For a brief moment, as the self disappears into the Self, there is a transitory amazement and awe of profound proportion and depth. The death of the self is experienced and then all is stillness and peace.
Self is context where self is content.
Acts of courage awaken the soul to its own innate power which it will need to reach the ultimate awareness.
The way out of conflict is not to try to eliminate the negative but instead to choose and adopt the positive. To view that one’s mission in life is to understand rather than to judge automatically resolves moral dilemmas.
It can be said that the ego is a compilation of positionalities held together by vanity and fear. It is undone by radical humility which undermines its propagation.
What the people in the world actually want is the recognition of who they really are on the highest level, to see that the same Self radiates forth within everyone, heals their feelings of separation, and brings about a feeling of peace. To bring peace and joy to others is the gift of the benevolence of the Presence.
We could liken the mind to a goldfish bowl. The water is consciousness itself. The fish are the thoughts and concepts. Beyond the content of the mind is the context or space through which the thoughts occur. The water always remains the same and is unaffected by the thoughts.
In Reality, nothing is ‘causing’ anything else. Everything is the expression of its own essence and is self-existent. Its appearance is dependent on everything else in the universe and the point of view from which it is observed. Everything is actually self-existence in its reality because everything is part of All That Is and has no individual parts, separateness, or independent existence.
The small self is dissolved by the Self. The healing attitude of the Self to the self is compassion; it is through forgiveness that one is forgiven. This willingness to surrender, arising out of the grace of God, permits the power of God expressed as the Holy Spirit to recontextualize understanding and, by this device, to undo the reign of perception and its attendant duality which is the source of all suffering. The dissolution of duality is the ultimate gift of God, for it dissolves the very source and capacity for suffering. In nonduality, suffering is not possible.
Like empty space that is unsullied by its content, or water that is unaffected by the fish that swim through it, the mind of God is beyond all form. Like space, it is equally present in the objects therein.
That which is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent is not vulnerable to threat or emotional upset; thus, God is not prone to revenge, jealousy, hatred, violence, vanity, egotism, or the need for adulation or compliments. The beneficiary of worshipping is the worshipper. God is totally and absolutely complete and has no needs or desires. God is not unhappy or upset if you have never heard of him or don’t believe in him.
Many of the old-world descriptions of God are actually reprehensible and figments of man’s guilty projection of fear. Primitives thought that every storm meant that God was angry and needed sacrifices to calm down. Volcanoes also indicated that God was angry. The ego demands explanations and looks for ‘causes’. God was therefore rationalized to be the ‘cause’ of earthly event that created fear, such as earthquakes, famine, floods, pestilence, storms, drought, barrenness or ill health. God was considered the great punitive enforcer as well as the great rewarder. Thus arose the numerous gods with many different descriptions in the traditions of the cultures within which these myths originated. (Natural disasters occurred before mankind was even on the planet.)
Power is analogous to a gravitational or magnetic field in that everything which occurs within it is impeccably and automatically the consequence of the nature of the field itself. The field does not ‘choose’ to attract anything nor does it have different rules for different objects. The field represents total equality. Likewise, in a spiritual field of power, everyone and everything is attracted and influenced by virtue of its own constitution or spiritual ‘weight’, vibration, or attractor field.
Q: But what about morality? Doesn’t letting go of right and wrong and judgment of others lead to immortality?
A: Denotations of right and wrong are practical guides to behavior for people who are not yet spiritually evolved. They are a temporary substitute for a greater awareness. Thus, we teach a child that it is ‘bad’ to cross the street alone because they lack the awareness of danger. By adulthood, such a contextualization as right or wrong about crossing the street is no longer meaningful or significant. We look both ways before crossing the street to avoid being run over, not because it is wrong or bad. With spiritual progress, ethical values replace moralistic dictums, just as awareness of spiritual truth replaces dogma and coercive belief systems. Behaviors that have to be outlawed to suppress their occurrence in the general population have lost any meaning to people who are far more advanced.
-David Hawkins
No comments:
Post a Comment