Expanding Awareness in a Gradual Ascension part 1, 2 and 3

 Expanding Awareness in a Gradual Ascension – Part 1/3

November 25, 2018 By Steve Beckow

Erving Goffman

As a grad student in cultural history and sociology, I was always watching behavior.

In sociology, the more minutely you looked at behavior, the more of a reputation you acquired.

Erving Goffman is a good example.  Look at The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life for instance. Goffman treated life as a theater in which people were performing. He described their performances with huge attention to detail – compared to everyone else in his day.

I had no trouble with the attention to detail. However, I did have trouble with something else. All sociologists and anthropologists of that time shared one thing in common: They were always looking at someone else’s behavior.

Everything in academic studies when I was there was “objective,” “out there.” To look at one’s self was “subjective” and not allowed. Except for a novelist or poet; in other words, for someone who’d “dropped out.”

But for me looking at one’s own behavior became a pressing need the deeper I went into the Human Growth Movement.

It brought personal growth and unfoldment. The farther into it I went, the farther away from academia I journeyed.

But I knew I had to travel this route.

Let me draw us back to the original purpose of life for you and me.

How do I know what it is? Because I was given a vision in 1987, of which most everyone around here may be tired of hearing about!  (1)

It showed me the journey of an individual soul from God to God. That soul is known to others as the spark of God, the Self, Christ, Atman, Buddha nature. Jesus is talking about it in his parables as the pearl of great price, treasure buried in a field, and mustard seed that grew into a great tree.

The vision left me with just one sentence: “The purpose of life is enlightenment.”

That’s its purpose for you and me. For God, it’s purpose is apparently that God can enjoy meeting Itself in a moment of our enlightenment. At that moment, God meets God. And for that meeting was all of this created.

Another name for “God meeting God” is “Self-Realization” or “Self-Knowledge.” Self-Realization because, if God is everything, then you and I must also be God. If it were any other way, God would not be everything. So when we realize our Self fully, we must realize God.

(Continued tomorrow in Part 2.)

Footnotes

(1) I refer you to “The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment – Ch. 13 – Epilogue,” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/08/13/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment-ch-13-epilogue/

Expanding Awareness in a Gradual Ascension – Part 2/3

November 26, 2018
By Steve Beckow



(Continued from Part 1, yesterday.)

One place we go off the rails is that we argue about such things as: Are we talking about “the self” or “the Self”? “The self is selfish and hence bad and the Self is selfless and hence good. We want to leave the one behind and embrace the other.” The argument is needless.

The self is a Third-Dimensional construct in consciousness devised to guide the being through that layer of density. It was useful in its place.

It yields to the Self of higher dimensions, which again is useful in its place. Both yield when the Father is made One again and our very Self is shown to be merely another construction in the Consciousness that the Father is.

One thing is left out of both constructions in consciousness is something that is not a construction, perhaps the only thing that isn’t.

It’s the “I” of the observer/participant, the one I’ve agreed to remain aware of.

The “I” is always around. It observes the self and the Self and survives the No-Self merger with God. But it survives as God – or at least as an individual by choice that knows that it is God.

Both the self and Self must be known and then gone beyond.

When we see through all versions of the Self and beyond, we see ever more refined versions of our created being.

I once saw a version of me that appeared in the form of a knight in shining armor, seated on a horse with a silver lance. It was said to be my “Higher Self.”

There are numerous other “me’s” or “selves” – and “Selves” – in this and, I’m sure, in other universes, But there is and always will be only one “I.”

This “I” of Self-Knowledge is the frontier I’m exploring. I’m led to believe that we’ll know this “I” in Sahaja to a degree that completes our Ascension process. (Still, there will always be more to go.)

***

My working hypothesis is that we come upon the Self after a process of cleansing ourselves through becoming aware of the ways of the self.

I call it “clearing vasanas (major upsets).” Linda speaks of removing “core issues.” Kathleen calls it “forgiving everyone and everything.” We’re all of us discussing a side of the overall operation of purification.

Classical enlightenment studies call this phases we’re in a purification phase, leading up to Ascension.

Christians might see this as purgation. Hindus as fulfilling one’s duties and leading a moral life. Buddhists as fulfilling one’s dharma and observing shila or morality.

It’s an early phase of the journey which will culminate in Sahaja Samadhi and Ascension. The next waystop is what Hindus call spiritual awakening, Buddhists stream-entering, and I will call fourth-chakra enlightenment. It can take the form of a heart opening or the sight of a Light or the Vision of one’s ideal form of God.

Usually – and this is key – one proceeds by going farther and farther into the experience and realization of whatever one experienced – the Self, a Light, the Heart of hearts, Love, the Beloved, whatever it was.

As soon as the planet has a heart opening and the love flows freely, life will pick up amazingly. And that will only be the equivalent of a fourth-chakra awakening. At some point we’ll experience Brahmajnana, which is a seventh-chakra awakening and life will be fantastic. And even that is not Ascension.

(Continued tomorrow in Part 3.)

Source: Golden Age of Gaia
Expanding Awareness in a Gradual Ascension – Part 3/3

November 27, 2018
By Steve Beckow



(Continued from Part 2, yesterday.)

With Brahmajnana, we leave the Third-Dimensional, seven-chakra system behind.

Here’s Da Free John describing his amazement at leaving watching his chakras fall away:

“For several nights I was awakened again and again with sharp lateral pains in my head. They felt like deep incisions in my skull and brain, as if I were undergoing an operation. During the day following the last of these experiences I realized a marvellous relief. I saw that what appeared as the sahasrar, the terminal chakra and primary lotus in the head, had been severed.

“The sahasrar had fallen off like a blossom. The Shakti [kundalini, Mother’s energy], which previously had appeared as a polarized energy that moved up and down through the various chakras or centers producing various effects, now was released through the chakra form.

“There was no more polarized force. Indeed, there was no form whatsoever, no up or down, no chakras. The chakra system had been revealed as unnecessary, an arbitrary rule or setting for the play of energy. The form beneath all of the bodies, gross or subtle, had revealed itself to be as unnecessary and conditional as the bodies themselves.

“Previously, all the universes seemed built and dependent upon that prior structure of ascending and descending energy, so that values were determined by the level of chakra on which consciousness functioned, and planetary bodies as well as space itself were fixed in a spherical or curved form. But now I saw that reality or real consciousnes was not in the least determined by any kind of form apart from itself.

“Consciousness had shown its radical freedom [form] and priority [over] the chakra form. It had shown itself to be senior to that whole structure, dissociated from every kind of separate energy or Shakti. There was simply consciousness itself, prior to all forms, all dilemmas, every kind of seeking and necessity.” (1)

All forms were seen to be simple constructions in consciousness (or light or love). But it’s the impermanence of the chakra system that I want to draw attention to.

On An Hour with an Angel, the Divine Mother confirmed that (1) Sahaja Samadhi is the culmination of our gradual-and-sudden Ascension and (2) it lies beyond the seven-chakra system.

Steve Beckow: I’m trying to understand what level of enlightenment Ascension corresponds to. And I think it’s beyond the normal seventh-chakra enlightenment. I think it is what is called — and I’ll make this clear to readers — Sahaja Samadhi. Am I correct?

Divine Mother: Yes, it is beyond what you think of [as] your seven chakras. … We have emerged from the Third-Dimensional realm, which is [the] reference point for the chakra system, into the new. So yes, you are correct, in this question and in this statement. (2)

We enter the Fifth Dimension, I believe, upon seventh-chakra enlightenment. And we complete the Ascension process a few subplanes into 5D with Sahaja Samadhi.

However life will improve dramatically when even a planetary heart opening occurs. I know from personal experience that we don’t have to wait for full Ascension before the cheering can begin.

I regard these as factual matters. I’m not saying that Ascension is years away. Sahaja may be years away. But our lives will improve immeasurably at just the next bend in the road. And it’ll be accompanied by abundance, world peace, Disclosure, etc.

All we have to worry about is allowing the process we’re already fully involved in to help us go deeper, unfold, and expand.
***

The versions of the self or Self that we pass through are simply constructions in consciousness, each of which yields when seen and known.

We’re going deeper and deeper into who we are, passing through one layer after another – the self at many levels, the Self at many levels. We finally reach the No-Self, when the Self surrenders everything God gave it – last of all its own individuality – and merges with God to become One again.

That’s the end of the journey for the individual soul as I saw it in my vision. It left the domain of the Mother (mater, matter); its light returned to it again; and it streaked back to the great golden Sun and merged with it.

End of story.

Well, not, apparently. After merging with the Father we come ot again at the call of the Mother and launch ourselves on another round of service.

***

If you follow my path of becoming increasingly aware of the ways of the self, then you cause one layer after another to disappear simply by becoming aware of it. Later we find that there are also levels that the Self lives on – dimensions and depths of experience.

The self/Self/No Self is like a Babushka doll. Another self within another self within another self.

Again, the Self can be compared to a crab that moults its skin every year as it feels the need to expand.

We’re constantly growing and expanding into a new version of self … until an experience of the Self causes us to leap up a level and live from a new understanding of ourselves.

And from here we repeat the process again and again, expanding our awareness, until at some point we liberate the inner tsunami of love, and open to the next lesson and the next.

The “self” of self-awareness keeps disappearing from our attention once we become aware of it. We therefore drill down through layer after layer of self with our awareness until we reach the Self – through nothing else but remaining conscious of ourselves, minute by minute, day after day.

Self-Realization fulfills the purpose of life. There’s no escaping reaching that destination, no matter what path you follow. It’s written into your life’s plan that you will eventually reach that Goal. Some will be fed in the morning, Sri Ramakrishna said; some in the afternoon; some in the evening, but all will be fed.

To call fulfilling life’s design “narcissism” by “the Me Generation” is utterly to miss the point. Diving deeply into the self and keeping going forward, as Sri Ramakrishna urged, is fulfilling life’s purpose.

It’s right on target and yields glimpses of the higher planes and experiences that totally satisfy.

That’s my view of the gradual approach to Ascension for one who follows the path of awareness.

Footnotes

(1) Da Free John, The Knee of Listening. Original Edition. Clearlake, CA; Dawn Horse Press, 1984; c1973. , Original Edition, 116-9.

(2) “The Divine Mother: Come to Me as I Come to You – Part 1/2,” Oct. 17, 2012, athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/10/the-divine-mother-come-to-me-as-i-come-to-you-part-12/.

Source: Golden Age of Gaia