The Path of Self-Awareness

The Path of Self-Awareness

By Steve Beckow

Posted on August 11, 2024

 

There’s so much we … OK, OK, I … don’t understand.

For instance, take awareness. Awareness transforms. It does so, first of all, in ways I don’t understand or even suspect. Put those aside for the moment with a simple acknowledgment.

Second of all, it transforms by allowing the unpleasant sensation or emotion to play out, unmolested, after which, it, having no independent energy source, disappears.

We look at that and call it “transformation.” It is in when one is distinguishing between “change” and “transformation.”

“Change” just moves the pieces around the board. It takes place at a superficial level of consciousness – unconscious awareness. Nothing in the end may really change. It just gets postponed.

“Transformation” sees the condition disappear – either at once as when the truth sets us free or over time. Anger, fear, jealousy – experience it through to completion and we’ve lessened its chances of reappearing.

We’re definitely now on the road to upset disappearance rather than upset creation. If we’re into loving kindness instead of orneriness, this is a basic and welcome shift.

And awareness of what? Of the only thing in creation we are responsible for and the very thing we’re charged with knowing: Our self, in its many guises and at whatever level it appears.

I so like what Jesus said about us and wanting others to change. It’s material to what we’re charged with being aware of:

“It is characteristic of lightworkers that they let themselves be carried away by this [spiritual] anger and that they go beyond their limits in this regard. They lose themselves in their desire to change and improve the world. This can be a passion to change things on the political or social level or it may emerge as a desire to help people on a personal level, as a profession or in your private life.

“The desire to help and change things often contains a form of spiritual anger although this may not be noticeable. After all you seem to simply ‘want the best’ for someone else or for society. But surely there is anger inside you when you feel inclined to force somebody – no matter how subtly – to change their behavior or their emotions. Often you do not notice that the time is not yet ripe for it.

“Each time when you feel an intense indignation or an enormous passion to change things or when you have feelings of powerlessness and anger towards things as they are, you are in the pitfall of spiritual anger. You want too much at once. You are heedless of reality as it is for you and are seized by an emotion, the emotion of anger. I ask you to be aware of this and to let it go, for this kind of inspiration that is charged with anger takes you away from your center. It will not offer you the true inspiration, the peace and quiet in your emotional body that help you embody your light on Earth.

“You achieve the state of truly embodying your light on Earth by being entirely centered in your own being, in a pure and calm state of mind. In this state you can feel that you are in the world but not of it. Being of the world means that you attach value to everything you observe with your senses: violence, war, illness, destruction. If you regard these with your physical senses only you can easily get angry. Therefore we ask you to take a step backwards and to feel inwardly what spiritual dynamics are taking place in the things that upset you.” (1)

Darnation! I wish I’d written that.

Beautifully and completely put. How clearly he sees the human condition.

As for the awareness path itself, which I’ve looked at elsewhere, (2) I’d say that self-awareness is the alternative to “changing” people.

Its only requirement is to remain aware of oneself. In my view, its principles are to love, which draws us towards God; to use our awareness of the self, in any guise and on any level, as our vehicle; and to look to the truth to progressively reveal our Destination to us and set us free.

Easy? Not necessarily, in a world of distractions. Absorbing and beneficial? Truly.

Footnotes

(1) Pamela Kribbe, “Jeshua: The Gatekeepers,” Aug. 9, 2024, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2024/08/09/jeshua-the-gatekeepers/.

(2) See:

• Let’s Go! Let’s Grow! Vol. 1 Awareness at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Lets-Go-Lets-Grow-V1-Awareness-R13.pdf
• On Transformative Awareness at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Transformative-Awareness-R11.pdf

Steve Beckow

• goldenageofgaia.com/

Karma and Free Will are Not Contradictory – 1

Karma and Free Will are Not Contradictory – Part 1 /2

By Steve Beckow

Posted on August 10, 2024

The wheel of karma

I often hear folks debating free will vs determinism, as if, if the one exists, the other cannot.

Do we have free will? Or are the events of our lives pre-determined by “karma”?

Both.

Any seeming contradiction disappears when we make a distinction between action and reaction. Let me back up a moment, to explain. Let me start with free will first.

Among life forms on Earth, only humans have free will and conscience, as Matthew Ward tells us:

“Only humankind … is endowed with conscience and Creator’s gift of free will. Although each living being and each inanimate thing serves a purpose in the evolutionary process of all, it is the human population that sets the pace.” (1)

Only people can choose to act in a godly manner or not, he explains:

“Whereas all other life forms on Earth operate within their respective innate guidelines that work in harmony with Nature, people can choose to act in godly ways or not, to heed conscience or not; and their collective choices determine the civilization’s evolvement status.

“As humankind evolves via the light in spiritual and conscious awareness, so do all the other forms on the planet, and the collective vibratory emissions advance the entire world.

“And, as a world advances, life becomes increasingly simpler and joyous! It is only in third density’s lower vibrations that a civilization creates all the complexities born of negativity.” (2)

But if everything about our lives is determined, then what does it matter that we have this thing called “free will”?

The answer lies in knowing the purpose of life and how “free will” and “karma” fit into it.

***

I now have to back up quite a few “moments.” All the way to the purpose God had in creating life. I base my interpretation of it on a vision I had on Feb. 13, 1987. (3)

Reuniting with Mother/Father One through Self-Realization was shown to me to be the purpose of life. As John Ruusbroec reminds us:

“[For] the rational creature to attain the sublime beauty of God and to possess it in [a] supernatural way … is [the] reason that God created heaven and earth and all that is in them. (4)

That “supernatural way” would be what we’re calling ultimate enlightenment, re-absorption, mergence, union, etc.

Sri Ramakrishna agrees that “the vision of God is the only goal of human life.” (5) Rumi spun a story to illustrate our situation:

“There is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but did not forget that, then there would be no cause for worry; whereas if you performed and remembered and did not forget every single thing, but forgot that one thing, then you would have done nothing whatsoever.

“It is just as if a king had sent you to the country to carry out a specified task. You go and perform a hundred other tasks; but if you have not performed that particular task on account of which you had gone to the country, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into this world for a particular task, and that is his purpose; if he does not perform it, then he will have done nothing.” (6)

Archangel Michael reminds us what specifically we’re to aim for:

AAM: Your ultimate enlightenment is the reabsorption into the Mother.  (7)

Mother God and Father God are One. They are not two; they are not “different.”  Reabsorption into the Mother is the gateway to reunion with Mother/Father One, mergence in the Heart of One, etc. The Mother tells us:

Divine Mother: Knowledge of me is more precious than anything because I am your connection [to the Father].  (8)

She is the face of God; he has no face. (9) She is the only “God” we’ll ever talk to, perhaps while we’re incarnated, perhaps forever – I don’t know.

***

OK so far. But how does our ultimate enlightenment serve God?

I believe that the One created life forms to experience itself. I had the opportunity to ask the Divine Mother if I was correct in that assumption and she confirmed it:

Divine Mother: You are one that, because of your adherence to Truth, likes to go to the Source. That is alright. That is the way it has been designed. [My emphasis]

Steve:  … What is the way it has been designed, Mother? …

I mean, the Source, the One wants to know itself. Is that correct?… And it can’t because it’s everything. So it’s taken the aspect of Yourself and designed a universe in order for us to learn our true identities. The moment of Enlightenment is when God meets God. Is that correct?

Divine Mother: That is correct. … Yes, it is designed this way. (10)

Again, OK so far.

But think about it for a moment.  Being only One can be a problem if you want to get to know yourself.

(Concluded tomorrow in Part 2/2/)

Footnotes

(1) Matthew’s Message, Aug. 3, 2014, at https://www.matthewbooks.com/

(2) Loc. cit.

(3) On that vision, see “Chapter 13. Epilogue” in The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Purpose-of-Life-is-Enlightenment.pdf

(4) John Ruusbroec in James A. Wiseman, John Ruusbroec. The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works. New York, etc.: Paulist Press, 1985, 72.

(5) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 331. (Hereafter GSR.)

(6) Rumi in A.J. Arberry, trans., Discourses of Rumi. New York; Samuel Weiser, 1977; c1961, 26.

(7) “Archangel Michael on the Process of Lightworker Expansion and Learning,” September 3, 2022, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2022/09/03/archangel-michael-on-the-process-of-lightworker-expansion-and-learning/; from Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, March 10, 2017.) (Hereafter, AAM.)

(8) “Transcript of the Divine Mother on An Hour with an Angel, May 7, 2012,” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/the-2012-scenario/what-role-are-the-angels-playing/transcript-of-the-divine-mother-on-an-hour-with-an-angel-may-7-2012/.

(9) The Mother includes the material or physical; the Father is not physically-perceptible.

On the avoidance of capitals:

Archangel Michael: “We do not want anything capitalized.” (AAM, Aug. 12, 2016.)

(10) “Divine Mother: Know God but Through Joy,” November 4, 2018, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/11/04/divine-mother-know-god-but-through-joy/.

Steve Beckow

• goldenageofgaia.com/

Let’s Go! Let’s Grow!

Let’s Go! Let’s Grow!

by Steve Beckow

Posted on January 17, 2024

Part 1 (Part 2 below)

Long and reflective.

A lot of interesting conversations going on backstage, stirred up by Matthew’s last message.  One piece of feedback that arose was that I’m being too intellectual in trying to understand spiritual states.

While we’re all recovering from the holidays, maybe it’s a good time to push back the chair and reflect. And here I’m about to be intellectual. This is the exploration that the comment raised. Just a reflection.

For me, as you know, there are three levels of knowledge: the intellectual, the experiential, and the realized.  (1)

Let me just dwell on one part of that division for a moment.

I have no control over realization. I freely wander into cognitive dissonance to court paradigmatic breakthrough. (2) I ask for realization. I meditate. But that state is bestowed by the Mother, her archangels, our guides, the masters, etc.

I can describe aspects of it. Realization brings release plus bliss. It’s the bliss that lifts us up to a place where simple knowledge there is seen as realization here.

But I have to be careful. My excursions into higher states do not make me a spiritual teacher. Nor do I want to be one. I’m a writer.

***

I still feel reflective. May I unwind?

When I enter a new field, I say to you that I’m establishing a beachhead of understanding about that field. (3) The beachhead is just a landing zone and may be totally abandoned later on.

If I were a non-dualist, I’d jump for joy that I know nothing and have an empty mind. I would just allow things to be rather than establish a beachhead of understanding, which would be seen as limiting me.

But I’m a dualist this lifetime. I serve the Divine Mother. For that I need understanding and the ability to communicate. Sitting in the cloud of unknowing is not appropriate for me in this go-round.

I need to communicate. To do that I need to stay within the universe of discourse of you, the reader I serve. That can mean reducing the ineffable into the language of the day.

I won’t for instance suddenly lapse into an erudite explanation of quantum physics, even if I knew anything about the subject, which I don’t. (I think this article is erudite enough for folks who are working and raising children.)

As a writer I deal in ideas and the ideas need to be comprehensible to my readers.

But the heart of the feedback was that I was being too intellectual. In spirituality it seems either to boil down to a matter of the heart or a matter of balance. Either way you end up in the same place: The tsunami of love that flows in the heart.

If I can develop that feedback, however, it means, to me, staying too much within the orbit of ideas; never escaping and going higher. It means too often reducing living, breathing entities to ideas, which is a task beyond delicate and perhaps impossible.

The emphasis is on the “too much.”  The emphasis is on leaving the center,  the balance point, the heart and wandering off into the extremes of passion, clouded judgment, and abandoned caution.

That’s fine if you’re a young person breaking free of your parents – whoopee!  But a lightworker committed to service? I think we agree to give up those.

If I want to pierce through the cloud of ideas to the experience of it, no matter what we’re looking at, I have to feel into it with the heart.

(Concluded in Part 2, below.)

Footnotes

(1) See:

• “Realization is Simply Seeing from a Higher Level of Consciousness,” February 25, 2022, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2022/02/25/realization-is-simply-seeing-from-a-higher-level-of-consciousness/.
• “Who’s Behind the Curtain?” February 13, 2023, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/category/news/spirituality/intellectual-experiential-realized-knowledge/

NB:

“Truth begins as intellectual knowledge, but can never manifest into expression until realized.” (“The Arcturian Group via Marilyn Raffaele. January 10, 2016,” January 11, 2016, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2016/01/11/the-arcturian-group-via-marilyn-raffaele-january-10-2016/.)

(2) See Paradigmatic Breakthrough: Essays in New-Age Philosophy at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Paradigmatic-Breakthrough-4.pages.pdf and “Paradigmatic Breakthrough as a Type of Spiritual Realization,” October 11, 2020, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/?p=313922.

(3)  See:

• “A Beachhead of Understanding,” August 16, 2013, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/08/16/a-beachhead-of-understanding/
• “Establishing a Beachhead of Understanding,” February 10, 2014, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/02/10/establishing-a-beachhead-of-understanding/.
• “Establishing a Beachhead of Understanding in a New Context,” January 13, 2019, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2019/01/13/establishing-a-beachhead-of-understanding-in-a-new-context/

OK, OK, some abandon is healthy!

(Concluded from Part 1, above.)

A word about awareness and “getting in touch with” something.

In a three-month residential encounter group I did in 1975-6, even critics who were habitually driven to point out blemishes “got in touch with” what was driving them  And it turned out they were just like everyone else except starved for listening and validation.

Getting in touch with a matter frees us from it. Feedback is what assists us with the process.

Awareness has that property, as Jesus tells us here:

Jesus: You have to realize that consciousness is something very powerful. It is much more than a passive registering of an emotion – consciousness is an intense creative force. …

Consciousness is not something static; things do not remain as they are. You will notice that if you do not nourish the energy of the emotion or of your judgment about it, they will gradually dissipate. …

Awareness transforms – it is the major instrument for change. (1)

We’re talking about simple, bare awareness. We’re not talking about having a good idea or analyzing the unanalyzable (love, for instance). And we’re certainly not talking about arguing over something, which, multiplied, leads us to where we are now, in a war of exchange, reduced to arguments, compressed into memes. Not many signs of intelligent life here, as the comedian said.

As a social movement, the path of awareness became “consciousness raising.” We need to re-acquire their tools we left behind some time ago (1982, to be exact). (2)

Raise something to simple, bare, non-judgmental awareness and allow it to be while observing it and you’ll see the issue leave more quickly than otherwise, because of our awareness.

Additionally, you, sitting there passively, paying attention to it but allowing it to do its own thing, is like raising your hand when greeting. It shows you have no (intellectual) weapon in it.

You’re not wrestling with the issue; if you were, it’d remain forever. What we resist persists, as Werner Erhard said. What we allow leaves under its own steam.

***

Well, that was a rewarding stock-taking for me. Yes, I am very intellectual.

I’m dealing with whole-system interpretations and analyses. What experiential knowledge would look like at this level of generality, I’m not sure I know. I find myself chuckling at the assignment.

As I look at my intellectuality, turning it like a diamond in my mind, I see it has a quality of maleness to it. Pushing through to the heart of the matter, wrapping my  arms around a subject, etc. Very male.

I think someone raised female might do a better job. (3)

Either way, let’s settle back, into the task. Put on the coffee.

Let’s go! Let’s grow!

Footnotes

(1) “Jeshua: The Third Way” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/01/jeshua-the-third-way/.

(2) The recession of 1982 was the first instance I’m aware of of a “jobless recovery.” The forces promoting automation used the recession to shed now-obsolescent labor.

They instantly created a buyer’s market for labor, not only comprised of large numbers of people who had lost their jobs, but also large numbers of people who had lost their careers, professions, etc. Unions collapsed.

The attitude was uncaring, much like the mood of the vaccination discourse today.

“Stop finding yourself, pal,” one commentator chimed in; “It’s time to get back to work — if you still have a job, that is.” (David Olive, “The New Hard Line,” Report on Business Magazine, Oct. 1991, 15.)

Masking it as the depradations of a recession allowed it all to happen with no thought being given to the welfare and wellbeing of the people affected.

Now the QFS will automate the financiers and the circle will be complete: The automators will have been automated.

(3) Having written this and looked it over, I see the point. I am intellectual. Hopefully not so much that I create what Michael was worried about – I lose my reader.

Archangel Michael: If you venture, as you would often like, too far ahead of the crowd, then who are you speaking to? (Archangel Michael in. a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Aug. 21, 2015.)

Steve Beckow 

• goldenageofgaia.com/

 

Being the Pilot, not the Passenger

Being the Pilot, not the Passenger

By Steve Beckow

Posted on December 28, 2023

Over the Xmas holidays I watched Groundhog Day with a friend and was greatly impacted. It made a point about core issues or vasanas that I can’t help calling attention to.

“Vasanas” is a Vedantic term for the reaction patterns we’ve formed based on earlier, similar, traumatic incidents. (1)

The premise of the story, as the notes say, is that “a narcissistic, self-centered weatherman [Bill Murray] finds himself in a time loop on Groundhog Day.” The day keeps repeating itself.

Where I’m going in describing its plot is to reveal the silver lining of vasanas. In escaping them, we retain the skills we developed, which enrich us. Bill Murray, in polishing his act every day, then abandoning it, only to find it’s become a part of him, illustrates this.

Add a love interest, the weatherman’s new producer, Andie McDowell, and Bill Murray starts to use this time loop, this repeating day to woo her. He makes note of what she likes and doesn’t like and presents whatever that is to her, more refined each day.

At this point I have to add a distinction that Werner Erhard would make between “at cause” and “at effect” because it forms the key to our explanation of what’s happening here.

If I do something because I want to, love to, or choose to, I’m usually “at cause” with it.

If I do something because I have to, should do, or have been told to, I’m usually “at effect” with it.

The former is powerful, effective, and rewarding; the latter is draining, demoralizing, and self-defeating.

Bill Murray is at effect with wooing Angie and she calls him on his lack of authenticity. She sees him presenting a polished act to her and wants none of it.

In our terms, he hasn’t shifted from being at effect with what he’s doing to being at cause. In a word he seems phoney, unconvincing, ingenuine. He’s being called upon to “produce the goods.”

If these were Birds of Paradise, the female would just have rejected the male suitor. (2)

But instead what we watch is that magic moment in all of what we used to call “breakthrough movies,” (3) the moment when the actor has an epiphany, transformational moment, or realization, and the solution to the problem they’ve been confronting presents itself. (4)

When that happens they usually shift from doing what they’re doing at effect to doing it (or not) at cause. (5)

We now say “they’ve arrived” in life. They’re now here. They’ve shown up on the scene and usually, when they do, that’s the turning point, the breakthrough in the movie.

In Groundhog Day, having done all the things which a thoughtful lover would do and then abandoning it as an act or script he was following, Bill found that the thoughtfulness underneath it remained. Unforeseen, it had become a part of him.

He WAS now thoughtful, kind, and helpful.

***

And this has a profound significance for our examination of core issues or vasanas.

To illustrate it more, let me re-tell a second story.

Remember the story of the boy who lived on top of a mountain and, when his Dad drove down the mountain to the town every day, he had no other means of transportation?

He was isolated and needed a back-up to his Dad in case he or the family were ever in trouble. So he became a networker – the local helpmeet for any circumstance.

And when he grew up, he remained a consummate networker, but, at some point he saw what he was doing, called himself on it, and … stopped doing networking from effect.

But he continued to do it, more moderately, from cause. He had become that way of being. It was now a part of him.

Instead of being extreme in it, however, he was now calmer, more reasonable, and more self-controlled. And, in my eyes anyways, it much better suited him, rather than the frantic helper he previously had been.

And this is the silver lining of vasanas and why I write this article.

In escaping them, we develop skills that remain with us once we move from cause to effect with them. They now enrich us, rather than draining us. We’re now able to be the pilot, not the passenger of our personal plane.

Footnotes

(1) See Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R9.pdf

(2) See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWfyw51DQfU.

(3) Officer and a Gentleman is another example. Breakthrough movies were as much of a genre in the Sixties as any genre today.

(4) They then either take it and act on it and we have a movie or don’t and no one gives another thought to it. It becomes, in the narrative of life, “the road not taken.”

On the more general process being described, see Paradigmatic Breakthrough: Essays in New-Age Philosophy at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Paradigmatic-Breakthrough-12.pdf

(5) Breakthrough moments are common not only to romance movies but to other genres as well. An awakening, epiphany, onset of resolve is a common event in movies. Some are major; some are minor, but they’re nevertheless a staple.

---

Download Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R9.pdf

Download Paradigmatic Breakthrough: Essays in New-Age Philosophy at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Paradigmatic-Breakthrough-12.pdf

Steve Beckow 

• goldenageofgaia.com/