My life is my message.
Gandhi
My life, I hope, will prove to be the message I leave behind for the world. I want to make every moment about evolving and connecting with what is really important. Iwant to honor all of it, the ups and the downs, as being an important part of the process.
Any life form only grows through challenge. This is what the process of evolution is...challenge brings in a flux of energy...needed to overcome limitations. The body will not grow stronger unless you make life difficult for it [through exercise]. [Challenge creates] a demand for more energy.
Eckhart Tolle
So this process of awakening is all about going up a level of energy at a time. This energy , of course, in yoga is called Shakti. In other traditions it is called Chi, the way, the Holy Spirit etc. In science it may be called "the field" or simply energy. Often this going up occurs because of challenge. Something shakes us out of our stuck positions.
Ram Dass tells us that we all get to a point where we begin to use all of Life for the process of awakening...the ups and the lows. I hope I am there.
He also says , in order to evolve, we need to stand back away from the thinking mind. The mind is only one system for knowing the universe. It is the subject observing the object. We need to stand back from the universe in order to know the universe. Knowing about the spirit is different than knowing the spirit.
Yet, is that enough?
He goes on to say that the sum of all anaytical thinking is not enough. You are not your thinking mind. Another way of being...is not just knowing the universe as object but being a part of the universe as subject...
We need to basically stop thinking about me and therefore stop strengthening those parts of the brain and those pathways that keep us preoccupied with me. (Siegel)
We are not that self concept we created and are so identified with. "I am and I think"...is more true than Descartes, "I think therefore I am."
Why are we so stuck there in that identification?
We basically create the universe we are living in with our thoughts. We go about our worldly days.selecting all sensory input/ perceptions that fit our personal desires or needs with thinking mind. We create a sense of self in this world that we created. It becomes 'real' to us.
We forget that all this drama and personality we created is just the foreground of our expereince here. We are so glued to this foreground because it is so busy and demanding of our attention that we fail to see the background. Behind the thinking mind and all it creates is an infinite field of awareness or consciousness. That background is the true reality.
Transcendence can happen when something challenges our usual way of approaching the universe with the thinking mind. We begin to see that which we are staring at as nothing more than moving clouds. We see what is beyond those moving clouds as the true reality..
This is a tier by tier process for most of us as we progress through one layer of cloud to another. We progress through the cloud of "It is all physical"...to it is all "mental, emotional beyond the physical"...to that which exists a bit behind the mind...what is called the astral body in yoga...and then we go farther and begin to see the soul in others and ourselves. We have not transcended completely at this point though. It is not until we lose the observer/observed and become one that we have completely transcended. It is there where there will be nothing yet everything. We are no longer the observer or the observed.
The energy that Tolle is addressing, that increases with this evolutionary process is shakti, chi, energy, the Holy Spirit...whatever you want to call it. The higher we go, which is actually the "deeper" we go, the higher this energy gets.
The process of awakening is the process of extracting yourself from every plane of reality.
When we have transcended, there is no more need for mind, for words or for concepts. We will be in the position Dante was in when he said:
I saw more than I can say.
All is well in my world.
Ram Dass/ Be Here Now Network. (June 2024) Ram Dass- The Up Level- Here and Now Podcast. Episode 254 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0DdPR6-F2k
Daniel Siegal ( 2020) Aware. Tarcher-Pedigee
Eckhart Tolle (June, 2024) On the True Purpose of Life: Beyond the Pursuit of Happiness-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBNt2nFzwFo
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