Sunday, February 1, 2015

Transcending Ascension Consciousness


Sometimes as a spiritual traveler you have to step out of the ethereal world and deal with the concrete, the things that are real-seeming in this reality we co-create and exist within.  I won’t debate whether that reality is truly real or not as that just isn’t the purpose of this piece.  The purpose and point of this piece is a string of thoughts or musings, if you will on the topic of duality and the spiritual path in general.  First and foremost, we are conscious beings, even when we are asleep our consciousness is quite busy – just at a different level of awareness.  We are even when awake, existing at various levels of consciousness and I’ve written about those from the technical perspective and there is a non-technical less tangible side to awareness as well.  What does this have to do with duality you might ask?  Well, everything.

In many circles, we have this strong dogmatic urging to detach from the world, embrace the oneness, go into the void and experience the nothingness.  This is how you become enlightened, this is how you ascend and this is how you grow. This sounds really cool doesn’t it?  I mean, who wouldn’t want to elevate themselves above the rest of the populace through spiritual practice and evolving to higher levels than your neighbors, right?  Not so fast.  I want to give you some very practical food for thought in sharing with you a blasphemous thought in the context of New Age thoughts (at least from some perspectives).  There are those who can tell you none of this – Earthly experience – is real.  Nothing you can perceive exists outside of the very way in which you can perceive it – go within and understand the truth.  Would they be wrong?  Not really.  Should it be your life purpose to spend all of this physically limited conscious existence pursuing our return to that space from which we came?  Why?  Why would we do that and why would we hold that as a goal from deep within us as our core mission?  What opportunities in our lives might we miss if that were our only goal? I think sometimes it sounds like a cool alternative compared to the every-day commonly experienced mundane existence.  But there is another piece that is very important here:  Why we came.

If our soul or sole intent and purpose here was to go back to where we came from, why on Earth would we be here at all?  We did not come here to spend all of our time in meditation (although meditation has some very beneficial effects I wholly support), most of us actually came here to experience life in 3-D.  We can also experience some of the aspects of other dimensions but you are here in a physical body for a reason.  You naturally transcend it when your physical time clock gives away its last tick and you move on from this realm.  So, what is it with the rush and the hurry to do it all right now?  What if I told you that you were already enlightened?  What if I told you that a part of your consciousness is already ascended and so, there is no place for you here now to ascend to?  I know, blasphemous thoughts right?  Well, think about it and think about it carefully.

I’ll say this again and a little differently.  You are Spirit, spirit is consciousness and your physical existence here is your consciousness specifically projected in this dimension to experience life here in this very physical dimension of vast dichotomy.  So, why rush to get out?  You will miss that very thing you came here to do.  What I suggest is that you live your life here through thoroughly embracing your life just as it is—crazy, maddening, wonderful and exciting.  Embrace you – crazy, creative, wonderful and so very precious.  Your mind thinks thoughts, you send your body then into action creating this scene or that scene with other wonderful souls from which you learn about love, about life in 3-D and just how terrible and beautiful our home in the Milky way Galaxy can be.  So, consider carefully my above questions again.  Is there duality?  From our perspectives, Yes.  Is there a Oneness in Consciousness of which we are all part?  Yes.  Is there a Cosmic Consciousness from which we gain much of our love, courage and drive to do the things we do in this life?  Yes again.  When you begin to understand the machinations of your own Earthly life, you begin to see there are all of these little things you were meant to learn and transcend.  These little things may be learning how to get along with other human beings, how to forgive so you don’t stay in a space of illness producing toxic anger or how to give of yourself in pure kindness just for the absolute joy of the experience.

Humanity is amazing if a little unaware of just how amazing and wonderful they truly are.  We need not fight for a piece of any illusive pie and we need not chase any imaginary dragons of enlightenment that we already have deeply ingrained in the core of our consciousness.  Learn to understand your environment, yourself and then others a bit more and you know what you might find?  Compassion.  This is one of life’s most beautiful treasures and only through our connected consciousness can we fully comprehend the wonder and beauty, power and strength this one thing holds for us.

So, my thoughts for this day along the lines of consciousness – you intentionally projected your consciousness in a physical body with an ego alive to protect it and keep you on this side of the veil.  Through meditation and prayer even, you can pierce the veil to assist with your understanding and better support your growth in life if you want to.  Just remember the term moderation.  Avoid extremes and the fanatical embracing of any new concept, idea or goal unless, of course, it involves love of the completely unconditional kind.  I’ve been to the other side consciously and I have to say that as amazing and wonderful as it was and is, my job and my focus is to live my life.  A great conversation with another wonderful human being I met randomly yesterday reminded me.  This message has come to me 3 times in just the last couple of weeks and while I may be a little slow at getting some messages, it all begins to make much more sense.

Find what inspires you in life, embrace your amazing and indescribable consciousness and enjoy your creations here on this Earth for they are many and wonderful and support not only your learning but the learning and experiences of every soul whose path you cross.  Consider that science, spirituality and New Age thought based on ancient philosophies have given us so very much to consider.  So many often wade into the shallow end of the pool and proclaim they’ve completed a swim of the entirety of the ocean.  It’s okay.  They learn from their proclamations and wading and learn that what they thought was swimming the ocean hasn’t even scratched the surface of possibilities.  Consider even further your existence here.  Would you be here if there were no one here to perceive you?  How do you know?  Maybe it is not everyone and everything else that is the illusion but you are the illusion?  It’s easy to take certain concepts and throw them about carelessly as truths but you have to dive into the deep end of the pool and learn the difference between knowledge, belief, perception and assumption. These things are the biggest challenges we grapple with whether we realize it or not.  Our consciousness has vast potential as long as we refuse to close our minds around belief alone.  Let others be as they are and explore as they will through any path they deem most worthy.  You have that same right of exploration or not as you deem right to choose.  Just choose and explore and while you are in the process, appreciate your ability to be here right now and experience all the wildly imaginative, creative, seemingly concrete aspects of reality that is life on Earth.   Let your mind and heart expand not with belief but knowledge.  Nothing limits a mind more than belief.  Your consciousness is not limited by belief unless you believe it to be.

The illusions that we consider truth run like a common thread through all of our lives and the really amazing and wonderful thing about us is we get to live and through our experiences learn to discern truth from fiction, fact from fantasy and knowledge from mere belief.  Expand your consciousness and embrace the fact that you are here for a reason. There is no place to run to and no place to hide.  Your perception is focused on this movie in this theater and it’s an amazing one.  I leave you with these musings now as I need to go experience my own life a little bit.  Until our paths cross again, I challenge you to look for the beauty in the ugliness, search for meaning in the seemingly insane and seek understanding at the deeper levels of your consciousness and you’ll find some surprising things about the true meaning of life.  Bless.

 
© 2015 J.L. Harter (photo/words)


Rev. J.L. Harter, PhD, M.Msc., B.Msc., Author, Blogger, Teacher,  Spiritual Counselor and Founder/Editor of the JMCC.  See Bio section for more information.