Monday, January 21, 2019

THIS INCARNATION 3

P. 91-92

A little review. 
These books often speak of being in alignment with your Divine Self or being in alignment with Truth. Expressing the same idea in different language, we also speak of seeing with the eyes of the Christ.

The question remains for many of us, “How do I do that?” It sounds good; it is what I desire. That's why I'm here in the first place, but it always seems a bit beyond my reach. Nice idea, wonderful sentiments, and yet here I am on the ground watching someone else's balloon reach the sky. I'm not even envious anymore; I'm just puzzled. “How do I do that?”

So far in these readings there are five essential elements that I have keyed in on. By the way, the intellect loves having a list of things to keep track of, so we need to be conscious then that we are involved with is not an intellectual procedure, it has much more to do with our spiritual evolution.

The five elements are: Awareness, Willingness, Intention, Surrender and Imagination. 
Taking each one in turn. 
Awareness. In order for anything to happen at all I have to be awake, I have to be out of sleepwalking mode. It is only within consciousness that I can make the kinds of choices that are necessary for my growth. Like going to a raffle and seeing sign that states, “You have to be present to win.”
There are all sorts of ways of practicing awareness. Meditation, by its very nature supports conscious awareness or what the Buddhists would call “mindfulness.” All of us here have reached certain levels of higher consciousness and we generally become more and more aware of when we are in lower vibration and can begin to change that. I recall Ram Dass talking about having a little set of prayer beads on his wrist or in his pocket and whenever he would think about it he would use those beads as what he called a “return” a way of getting out of the judgment and illusion that the mind was creating and bring himself back to a closer awareness of the truth of who he is. So, for example, standing on a grocery line waiting to check out, there are all sorts of distractions and judgments to be made and many times we will lose ourselves and our consciousness in the midst of all that mind chatter. Having something that grounds me again, draws me back in, stops me from identifying with the limitation of just being someone standing online, to realize that I am a Divine being, and these are all Divine beings around me as well. You remember my favorite commercial, “I could have had a V-8.” Of course, what's wonderful about that is that I have to be in awareness to know the truth of that. (that I have a choice)

Willingness. Perhaps another term for this would be “Openness.” Openness to seeing things differently, openness to responding differently to a particular situation, openness to being loved. Now willingness has degrees or levels. There are going to be times when I'm willing but I'm also not willing. This is not a judgment. This again flows from our awareness, our understanding, that, yes, I have a good amount of willingness within me and I also have some resistance. So you might say “I am willing to be willing” or I might even need to take a step back from that and realize that “I'm willing to be willing to be willing.” What matters here is that we accept where we are at a particular point instead of fighting it or trying to be somewhere where we are not. And when I embrace my willingness at whatever level I perceive it as being, I give myself permission to move to the next level.

Intention. There is power in declaring to ourself and to the world what it is that I truly desire. In the work we are doing here this is different than the former use of affirmations. When we first learned about affirmation it was a way of creating something that we desired, something that was not here yet. The information and the intention that we speak of here is claiming what already exists. We are already Divine children of God; we are not creating that, but it is so essential that we claim it. We claim it through our intention. Now we can do this in the morning when we pray or meditate, we also can reinforce it throughout the day. Of course, there will be times when we forget, that is why, so often throughout the book, we claim or proclaim the affirmation, “I know who I am; I know what I am; I know how I serve. I am here. I am here. I am here.” not once but many times.

With awareness and willingness and intention this is as far as my mortal self can bring me. It sort of brings me to the edge. I’ve pushed my intellect as far as it will go; I pushed my my little self, my limited self, my personality self, as far as it will go. It is then, through the act of surrender, —Letting Go of form; letting go of the way I think things should be. It is through this act of surrender that I make this leap into another or deeper realm of knowing.

The last element in this process so far is Imagination. Now imagination that we speak of here is not Fantasyland, but it is actually a very deep process of knowing and affirming. A knowing that goes beyond the intellect. We might not be aware of this but we use this tool quite often even in our daily work.

Here is an example. I am faced with a task, but I don't want to do. It could be as simple as doing the dishes or as complex as doing my taxes. Even though I don't want to do it I realize that it is important for me to accomplish in either in the material world or in the spiritual world. So what I do is I ask myself this question either consciously or not, “What would it be like to have the dishes done?” What would it be like to have my taxes completed?” “What would it be like…?”
 We ask that question and we create an image in our mind in our imagination of what that finished task would be like, how I would experience that completion. And what that does for us it almost creates a space and an energy that moves us to get the job done.

Now in a spiritual sense we use this process for instance of saying to ourselves “What would it be like to know myself as a Divine being?” “What would it be like to see with the eyes of the Christ?” By asking those questions we open ourselves up not only to the answer to those questions, but also we open ourselves up to the possibility of how that works within us. We are not asked to understand or even explain the process, but simply know that it is there.

Again this is something we do quite often without even thinking about it. Often times during a day we can be aligned to our Divine Nature and yet almost take it for granted. We did a little exercise this morning demonstrating for each one of us how we can often be in a deep state of divine consciousness through some very simple events in our lives. Watching a sunset, being in nature, opening our hearts in gratitude, being present with someone we deeply care about and who deeply cares about us. These events are happening all the time all around us and that brings us full circle back to the original element that we spoke of which is Awareness.

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As you grow as a spiritual being, your legacy is one of love. That is what you become, that is what you claim, that is what you gift to the world. Who you are is who you say you are. We will say this many times. “I am the one who is fearful” claims you in fear. “I am the one who knows who he is, who she is, who may live her life in accordance with her new worth as an aspect of the Creator in form” is the legacy you claim in this incarnation. And we will say that will be the title of this chapter, “This Incarnation.”

“You are what you claim to be.” In other words, you claim your experience and your level of perception. Not to oversimplify things, but if you don't like what you see change how you are seeing it. You notice that is not the way we normally do things. If I don't like what I see, including what I see in the mirror, then I try to change it— change my body change— the government— change the world— change the clothes I'm wearing. Or I could open myself to seeing differently whatever it is that is showing up in my life. :How an I see this differently?” Is a powerful question to ask.

Now we will ask you this: Who in your life has taught you the most difficult lessons? Was it your mother, or your father, or the philandering spouse or the ungrateful child? Who taught you the hard lessons? And you must ask them, the lessons themselves, what they were there to teach you. “What did I learn, what did I learn, what did I learn?”

There are two aspects to this teaching: one is that there are lessons to be learned from all of our human encounters,  and two when we allow ourselves to release the blame, shame, and guilt we might have, we open ourselves up to a deeper learning and that is what we were all about anyway.

I came across a wonderful example of both those elements in the dedication of a book I had read a while ago it went like this:

 “For my dead parents whom I often miss:
My mother whose strength and ferocity nurtured me, almost did me in, and taught me how to survive.

And my father who's gentleness and passivity showed me how to love, let me down often, and freed me to find my own way.”

Isn't that beautiful? No blame, no stuckness, but a deep realization of the lessons they taught him, perhaps even without realizing it. The author could have turned all of that into a negative but he did not.

What we are encouraged to do now is to take some time especially when we are face to face with a difficulty. We are challenged instead of moaning and groaning, “Why did this have to happen to me?” to ask instead “What is it here that I am supposed to learn?”
What we are doing that is actually asking the situation that has gotten my attention, “What am I to learn from you?” and really stick with that for a while, like Jacob with the angel: “I will not let you go until you bless me.” You can demand that the learning reveal itself as something positive rather than something negative. In other words, “Show yourself to me in a positive light that I may learn and continue to learn  from this experience.”

This example from the book demonstrates how we can get a “superficial” lesson or we can dig deeper beyond fear and negativity and get closer to the heart of the matter.

Now Paul is getting in the way. “Well, if she had a philandering husband, she knows she can’t trust men.” That may be what she claims, but that may not be the truth of the lesson. The truth of the lesson may be much greater. “I know I am worthy of love regardless of the behavior of another.” “I know I am worthy of being seen regardless of what I look like to another.” “I know that I am worthy of living my life regardless of what I am told by someone who doesn’t care anymore.” You claim your lessons as a possibility of new industry, new awareness, new life, new choices, new being. But you must say yes to the positive lessons that are brought to you through your interactions. In some ways they are your stepping-stones to new worth.


You might notice that we learn physical lessons very quickly. If I put my hand on a hot stove and it gets burnt I am not likely to do that again. Yet in the emotional realm sometimes I find myself experiencing the same lessons over and over and over again until I finally get it. Again this is not judgment, but notice how awareness plays a very dominant role in our learning process.

We also enter into the realm of the mystery. My soul creates situations and events that I have already contracted to learn from. I do not completely understand that; I cannot explain it, but it is not a matter of creating any more shame or guilt around a particular situation. Again instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” I am asking, “What is it here that I am supposed to learn?” and being open as that reveals itself to you.

Thank you again for your continuing wonder, willingness, and love. 


Peace.

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