Tag Archive for: awakening

The Treatment of Others as a Reflection of Spiritual Evolution

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I would like to share an article that a client of mine found very helpful in regards to conflicts arising in her relationship. The article was written by Adyashanti, a liberated spiritual teacher who talks about awakening and enlightenment as another dimension of ourselves that we unconsciously overlook in this human experience. “Enlightened” teachers are popping up more often in this age of higher consciousness with the common message that whatever you think enlightenment is, that’s precisely what it’s not…it’s really just a radical shift in identity. Another teacher named Scott Kiloby sums it up as, “Enlightenment is not a goal to achieve or an idea to grasp. It’s the timeless presence that you already are.” You are ultimately the life that’s giving animation to your body right now, and try as you might, you cannot separate yourself from this life and the consciousness/awareness that goes with it. However, you can overlook it and identify primarily with the form that will decompose one day. This is the human experience.

I think you’ll find this article valuable.

How You Treat Others

Spiritual people often want unconditional support and understanding from their friends, family, and mates, but all too often seem blind to their own shortcomings when it comes to the amount of unconditional support and understanding that they give to others. I have seen many spiritual people become obsessed with how unspiritual others are and assume an arrogant and superior attitude while completely missing the fact that they themselves are not nearly as spiritually enlightened as they would like to think they are.

Enlightenment can be measured by how compassionately and wisely you interact with others—with all others, not just those who support you in the way that you want. How you interact with those who do not support you shows how enlightened you really are.

As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back, you have not taken full responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation means that you stand free of making demands on others and life to make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy.

It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you has a liberating effect on others. The biggest challenge for most spiritual seekers is to surrender their self importance, and see the emptiness of their own personal story. It is your personal story that you need to awaken from in order to be free.

To give up being either ignorant or enlightened is the mark of liberation and allows you to treat others as your Self. What I am describing is the birth of true Love.

For more information about Adyashanti, visit www.adyashanti.org.

The Purpose of Relationships

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We wrongly assume that relationships are to “live happily ever after.” They actually serve a purpose for us: to raise our biggest issue, weakness, or area of improvement to the surface. Life is sort of designed that way…that which is our biggest hurdle or limitation will continually be raised to the surface for the purpose of being acknowledged, released and healed. When this happens, we can either dodge it and ignore it, and it might go away, but only for awhile. The same repeating issue will come up again in a fiercer way until you look at it and deal with the roots. That means to become awake to the subconscious limiting beliefs that hold you back and cause you stress. When you become conscious of these old mind programs that govern your life, they lose their power and you become freer. Relationships then thrive.

The soul is mostly interested in growth. Growing = living from love instead of fear. It also means becoming more awake to who and what you really are…to what is really living this life. To the degree we awaken to our truer self is to the degree that we live without fears holding us back. Life becomes our canvas to create the painting of our life. Life was meant to be lived with joy, not dread. But if dread arises, that’s because it’s part of the design…go inside the dread, or the anger, or stuck feeling. Within it holds the keys to when it began, and what false beliefs hold it in place, and then what it needs from you to let it go and become free of it.

What We Are

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I often ask my clients toward the end of a session: “Is there anything in the universe that can harm you? The answer is always an immediate, definite and emphatic response, “no!” That’s a strange answer to anyone. The world is full of things that can harm us. But in that moment, they are responding from a timeless aspect of themselves that lacks nothing and has no fears, a soul dimension.

We are multi-dimensional beings. Of course we are separate individuals, who can deny that? But that’s only one relative level of truth. Another part of us is the energy, light and consciousness that animates the body. You could call that a “more real” aspect of ourselves because it’s eternal and doesn’t rot like the body. You can’t harm a soul with a knife because it’s pure energy. Probably the best evidence that we are soul beings using a body is in the fast growing cases of children remembering accurate past life information, or subjects who have done a past life regression and later verify the details obtained from it. Certain cases are solid.

But even the fact that we are different souls using a body is a relative level of truth. A ‘higher’ truth is that all souls come from the same one creator energy source, so there is oneness under the surface. We are like unique, individual waves that forgot we are also the ocean. But this forgetfulness is part of the design, and seeing through it is to awaken from any suffering that is inherent to the dream. Thich Nhat Hanh says,“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.”

This highest dimension of ourselves can be glimpsed at any moment. In fact, it’s only available here and now. When you are fully present with a flower, a latte, a person, the wind, a cat or the smell of dead leaves, in that moment you are not in the world of the mind which subtly pulls you into the future or past. Instead, you become pure presence and awareness…effortless and changeless…limitless and indefinable.

Though life experiences come and go, there is something that is unchanging – that which can be aware of any passing thoughts, moods or experiences. It’s that same sense of “me” that exists at age 5, 25, or 85. This awareness even transcends the body according to cases of near death experiences.

So who are we? It depends on which dimension of ourselves we choose to identify with. Identifying with our higher dimensions brings a natural by-product of more compassion, empathy and love. Judgment falls away because we don’t identify others with their opinions, moods or actions, but see these as a product of their ongoing programming and conditioning. At a higher level, they are what we are — changeless awareness that transcends the stories of who we are.

Little girl running on pathway in Sun moon lake, Taiwan.

One Way to Wake Up

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There’s a part of you that needs and seeks security, love and contentment, and a part of you that already is all of those characteristics. How do we access this aspect of ourselves that lacks nothing and views the world from a viewpoint of love and wisdom? Hint: it’s the timeless soul part of you that is animating your body as you read this…the part of you that you can never shake yourself loose from because you are it. For most of us, this may only be an intellectual concept that we may or may not believe, but how do we actually experience and deeply feel this aspect of ourselves? To tune into the pure energy part of us that survives beyond this space/time dimension, we have to apply our moment-to-moment focus and attention inwards. When we do this, we leave this realm of time, space and form behind (not our body, but our awareness) and start to gradually tune into the soul aspect of ourselves. The outcomes of this are a deep sense of peace, and also information comes to us in more of a “telepathic” way that feels like a combined download of snapshot images and intuitive “inner knowings”. As we continue to focus inward, the deep contentment and stillness expands, we experience a “knowing” that this is our truest nature, and thus we begin to identify with it far more than the incessant, often negative mind chatter that is part of our human experience. From this vantage point, we can become aware of any subconscious belief that limits us in our life, and we can experience what it would feel like to let it go.

What I’ve described is probably the biggest value of doing a past life regression, yet it isn’t what most people think of when they hear “past life regression”. The real value of it is that you get an experiential glimpse of a “truer” part of you that actually feels more awake, aware and wise than the conscious part of you. When you begin to live life from this aspect of yourself, you are “in the world, but not of the world,” and it is a freer way to live. Once you’ve experienced how to go within, it is possible to focus your mind and connect to this higher aspect of yourself on your own, with practice. And over time, the need to use self-hypnosis to “re-plug” into your soul aspect of self is no longer necessary and can be done anytime. It becomes a matter of which dimension of yourself you chose to identify with and interact in the world from.