Enlightenment Misconceptions
Chasing the Dream
What is your personal definition of “happiness?” What makes you tick, how do you work? What cuts right to the core of you, drawing a deep response, be it positive or negative? What rings your chimes? What gets your goat?
We all go through life avoiding our fears while chasing our desires. So often we find that, on attaining those goals, they don’t bring the expected boost. Our new car is a satisfying delight for perhaps a month, then the satisfaction begins to fade. We continue to enjoy it, but now it’s being replaced by other goals, other desires, yes?
What’s missing from this picture is a good, solid relationship with ourself.
This keeps us feeling restless & discontent. Not recognizing the inner source of that, we’re quick to blame it on circumstances, our recent break-up or divorce, our desired job that someone else got. We can’t realize our inner wholeness until we shift our external focus inward. Until then, our wholeness remains but a myth.
Many place enlightenment high on the to-do list, our desires that we’re sure will relieve our discontent. Many believe that once they’re somehow enlightened, awakened, there will be no more pain, going forward. The darkness will somehow bounce off of our bright, shiny new auric field, finding no place to roost. We’ll be Light Workers, for sure, making a bigger difference in the world.
Let’s look at that — will it withstand the scrutiny of Heart?
We’ve got almost everything quite backwards in our perspective(s) on life. We enter a realm in which many things are simply Known as we settle down into Heart space. Unlike mental mastery of a subject, we know not whence this Knowing arises — it just is. It’s all so very strange. 😔
Trained as we are to ever abide in the external world, viewing our mind as critical to any success we might achieve, the Heart realm delivers many a shock. To the extent we identify with body & mind, this is more than disconcerting. It quite unseats us, upsetting the apple cart of our “reality” on a regular basis.
We’re right on track if, at such points, we choose to identify more with our soul, our Inner Being, than with the realm of thought. It’s amazing how very differently we begin to experience these shocks. What once devastated us we now view more objectively. We’re no longer threatened by what we discover, but made curious by it, instead.
We enter a new state of awe & of wonder.
What’s with that? We didn’t suddenly change our values, our way of life or anything in our external world — so what’s going on? We contact Who we really are as we draw closer to our core. Who we actually are doesn’t view life as we once did. It’s a shock that takes some adjustment, mostly within our attitudes & beliefs, our mental environs.
MAJOR PERSPECTIVE SHIFT
Again & again, folks, we have these perspective-shifting opportunities. Nothing forces us to change, so we’re free to respond however we like. Sometimes, even often, we’ll slip back into our cozy systems of belief, back into viewing life via the mind. Nor is anything is lost by this, as on deeper levels we’re still integrating our experience(s), albeit unawares (while in the mind).
Many of us feel that we’re stuck in a rut, not sure what got us there, thus unsure how to exit. We’re heavily discontent. Rather than seek out distraction or fun of some sort — thus running away from what we feel — what if we choose to stand our ground? Instead of viewing our discontent as something negative, what if we make room for a new perspective on such things?
What if uncomfortable things come bearing gifts — Heart treasures unseen, thus never before contemplated?
EMPTINESS
Anything is possible. Let’s begin there. The deeper we venture, within, the more we encounter the strangest darned thing — an emptiness. Where we thought to discover this great Inner Being that was ours, instead we find naught but a void. It’s as if we don’t even exist. OMG! WTF?!
That surely gives us pause, temporarily knocking any sense of complacency right out of us, any belief we’ve got things all figured out. When the most fundamental thing in our world — our very self — is called into question, we’re deeply disturbed. Rather than run away from the shock, what if we choose to just stand our ground — to face the new perceptions & not turn away?
This is where we’re brought into new perspectives on old beliefs. The beliefs are screaming out to be heard, calling us back to sanity, as it were. To the extent we’re both reliant on & identified with our beliefs, we’re not willing to take this trek. We’re given many opportunities to awaken into brand new perspectives.
We’re way too comfortable where we are — or so we think.
What we begin to see is that such contentment is not really true peace at all, but rather complacency. For a time we walk the road of being, schizophrenic, as it were, having more “personalities” than just the one we thought we had. Here’s yet another uncomfortable shock — once again only on the level of thought, not of Heart, where this makes perfect sense.
Those who school themselves into MOM, into Mind-Observer Mode, begin regaining their feet, finding a certain steadiness in the midst of seeming chaos. Slowly, we’re shown how the one we’ve identified as self throughout life isn’t the real one at all. We see how it’s an actor, playing a certain role.
We find ourselves in charge of the screen play, of the narrative, when it didn’t seem that way, before.
We go from feeling subject to life, to circumstances, to other people’s choices, to societal requirements — to being the author of our own part in the unfolding drama. The more we choose to identify with Who we truly are, at the expense of who we thought we were, the swifter we progress into our inner realm.
We don’t have to be told about the Power of our Inner Being — we directly sense it — something no words can convey. We just Know. We’re steadily shown how we built a house of cards on a foundation of quicksand — our old identity. We don’t know what will replace our foundering beliefs, we just know they have to go.
Though we will go through times of feeling real devastation, we’re better equipped for that, now. How? Only now are we shown how it’s the character’s devastation, not ours. Almost all of it occurs within layers of the mind, not this deeper “place” in which we now find ourselves.
As the observer of it all, no longer identify so much with that role.
BELIEFS GENERATE EXPECTATIONS
Now we come to the meat of things — people’s expectations around awakening, what that will deliver, what it will feel like. Almost every school of thought has serious flaws in their systems of belief. Nor is there some lovely how-to instruction manual to guide our steps, friends. We’re all unique, unable to be served by one doctrine, one way, one set of rules & beliefs.
That doesn’t mean we won’t find any useful guidance out there in the world. We will. Our Inner Self speaking-up, pointing it out to us, will be the new way. Nothing is steady or stable, anymore — nothing but our Inner Being, that is — nothing but Source in all of life.
We’re all equally one in Source. As we interact with seeming others, seeming external things, we begin to perceive them, too, as the Dance, the voice of Source.
It’s befuddling, dumb-founding to anyone’s mind. We weren’t taught anything about these very strange shocks we’re now having on a fairly regular basis. No one prepared us for any of this. I say, so what?! As we go ever deeper we have all the support & guidance anyone could possibly require to challenge the mind, to continually reconsider our beliefs.
We now have the light of direct experience on which to call, on which to fall back. What we sense in our inner regions is far stronger than anything external could ever dream of being. We slowly realize that things are not going to hell in a hand-basket, as the old saying suggests. Rather, they were right & ultimately perfect all along — it was our perspectives on them that were truly f***ed up.
Are you enjoying yourself? It’s a choice, you know. Welcome to Heart. 😆
~♥~
10:59 am, Friday 2017/11/17, 2nd, Mayan day 2 Road / Eb
