"We are luminous beings. We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason, forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime."
(Tales of Power)
The world that we have become familiar with is essentially a mirage interpreted by our brain as something 'solid'.
The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the world we think we see is only a view, a description of the world.
Accepting that seems to be one of the hardest things one can do; we are complacently caught in our particular view of the world, which compels us to feel and act as if we know everything about the world.
The secret of all this is one's attention. All of this exists only because of our attention.
The world that we have become familiar with only exists because we have been conditioned to give our attention to it in the form of the world as we have come to know it.
This limited framework with its very strict laws makes our passage through life recognizable but becomes a trap for our attention turning what is merely a useful description into a prison.
Had we been properly educated we would have learned by now that this description of the world is much more fluid and flexible than what we have been led to believe; that this world is meant to be a 'stepping off place'into another kind of reality altogether where whatever we Intend comes into being instantaneously.
The Spiritual Life has two main ingredients. The first can be described as an expansion of consciousness.
Each one of us is an entirely unique individual. This is how it ought to be. At the same time, there is a larger consciousness than our own individual sense of self that exists.
This larger consciousness sees all, pervades all, knows all, intimately from within.
We are meant to have a symbiotic and synergistic relationship with this larger consciousness, to be able to share freely in everything it knows, everything it has, everything it is, while at the same time retaining distinctly our own entirely unique, individual sense of self.
Sharing in this larger consciousness does not overwhelm or obliterate our individuality, but rather fulfills and completes it in the most natural and satisfying manner, conferring upon us simultaneously powers and abilities far beyond our present comprehension.
This brings us to the second ingredient of the Spiritual Life which can be described as Mind over Matter.
The material world which we have become familiar with is not ‘solid'. It has no solidity or permanence as we have come to understand the words but instead, is continually coming into being, over and over again, from microsecond to microsecond - creation ex nihlo.
It is said that, in the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth out of nothing. The thing is, God didn't do this just once at the beginning and from thence forth the Heavens and the earth simply continued to exist and change into what it is now. Instead, God continually re-creates the world out of nothing at every moment.
The only thing that gives the material world the impression of ‘solidity’ that we are familiar with is the fact that it keeps coming into being according to a similar pattern over and over again.
Except for this similarity in the pattern, matter is much more malleable than we have been led to believe.
Once we realize that it is Mind that sets the pattern and begin to understand how it is our thoughts that determine our lives, Matter becomes much more flexible, subject to change and improvisation.
Instead of the prison that Matter has become for us, (precisely because our mind has become imprisoned and so severely limited…), Matter becomes a medium of limitless creative freedom for us.
Once we are able to share freely in this larger consciousness and recognize the true nature of Mind over Matter we begin to realize that this extremely limited framework of Time/Space and the Laws of Physics that we are bound by, is not meant to be the ‘Be-All and End-All' of life, but merely a ‘stepping off place’ into another kind of reality altogether where whatever we Intend comes into being instantaneously.
At that point, Time/Space and the Laws of Physics, rather than being the bars of our prison, become the loosest of frameworks if at all applicable, to be used as we see fit in an ongoing work of art.
This world is not our final resting place, but only a temporary framework, a convenient fiction within which we are meant to learn certain lessons about ourselves and about the nature of reality and then to grow beyond.
The obstacles we are faced with here, the galling limitations, the beings and forces that seem bound and determined to keep us estranged from the ground of our being and ignorant of our own natural abilities are actually of a pedagogical nature if only we were to understand them properly and how to respond appropriately to them.
This is in fact, the essence of the Spiritual Life and why we need to be actively engaged in one at all times if we wish to discover our freedom, attain to the Fullness of Being and to receive the Great Good Things that God has prepared for us.
https://stevenberger.substack.com/p/an-interactive-work-of-art?utm_medium=reader2
https://substack.com/profile/100124894-steven-berger/note/c-54081659