(continued from the above post) A few things to remember
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There are a few things to remember here: (1) Everything happens now. There is no "past anger", only anger that you still carry around in your energy field now. (2) You have 2 chances to "catch" egoic reactions -- two portals into the Now.
The first is as the reaction is happening. If you have enough awareness, you will see the reaction, but because you have enough awareness, you will be able to choose what you will do with it (let's just say that if you are aware, there's a damn good chance you'll choose NOT to live it out -- anything else would probably create suffering, but you can never know what a truely aware person will do, so it may happen differently).
The second "portal" is after you have had the reaction, or as it is happening. This is when you have the chance to look at it and become aware that it is happening. Watching it shifts your focus -- your awareness --
from the reaction
to awareness. This state isn't always comfortable, and it's easy to slip back into a reaction
to the reaction.
Eventually you'll learn not to do that, but unless you're a rare individual, there's a good chance you'll suffer a fair bit until you get this down. But suffering is not a bad thing -- it is your teacher. My suffering acted as a pointer to my lack of awareness, which, itself, acted as a portal to awareness. Suffering may seem unpleasant in the moment, but that is only because you are resisting it. If you can accept it consciously, you will see it's other face -- a face that is much more pleasant. This isn't always easy to do though -- I still have trouble with it sometimes -- and you'll probably see your suffering collapse by itself and leave you in a state of awareness before you learn to consciously let it go.
Awareness - it either is or isn't in the moment
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Another thing you'll come to learn is that you are either aware, or you are not. For a while you'll probably dwell somewhere in between, and while that stage is a good stepping stone, you must not come to rely on it. It will probably take a while before you experience a relatively "full" state of awareness, and even then, it probably won't last long, but you'll know it when you experience it -- it will be like nothing you've ever experienced before.
Your experience on this journey will be unique to you, but you will share many parallels with other travelers on the journey. One of those parallels will be that you probably won't always be ready to practice awareness. I tend to phase between awareness and suffering myself, usually because the suffering is educational. I'm yet to be able to maintain awareness consciously all the time -- even when I'm suffering -- but I am getting much better. I find that I now have a "core" of awareness that never leaves me, and while it can get obscured, if it is really needed, it will shine through any suffering I have and dissolve it. I usually have no control over this, but it can be used consciously with practice.
Resistance: Simultaneously your greatest challenge and teacher
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Your resistance to your suffering will probably be one of your greatest challenges, but eventually you'll stop resisting it so much. I used to largely use knowledge to combat suffering, but now I'm much more intuitive in my approach, largely because I have both the knowledge and the experience the knowledge helped create.
Knowledge acts as a contrasting agent, but knowledge itself is of the mind, and can only act as a pointer. Be careful not to become relent on it, otherwise you'll constantly strive to reach an ideal you hold in your mind, and forever miss what is happening right now -- which is the most important thing there is.
Another thing you'll notice is that there are two levels to reality -- your internal state, and the external world. I learned to accept the external world very early, but for a long time, I resisted my internal state. You'll probably do something similar if your internal state is somewhat conflicted, but eventually you'll start seeing both fragments -- the external and the internal -- as one whole, not two things you have to manage separately. Again, this is a case where your experience and suffering itself will teach you more then I ever could.
Exactly what I needed right now
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Interestingly, writing this very post has made me aware once more that I haven't been practicing awareness for many months. This is because I've been exploring some other concepts (specifically, those to do with Abraham-Hicks -- lets just say it took me a while to understand them enough to make them work with Eckhart's teachings), and I often need to explore another model before I can assimilate it with others that I've come to learn, but I can see it's now time to turn more of my focus on my state of consciousness. If you're anything like me, you'll probably learn that in the periods where you don't actively practice awareness, you'll come out vastly more capable then you were before.
For example, I remember where I left off months ago. I had just bought Eckhart's "Findhorn Retreat" DVD (which is excellent, but probably something you should save for later) and I was very consciously practicing awareness. Suffice to say that life threw me a lot of experiences in that time period that I was not yet ready to deal with, and I tended to suffer through those experiences a fair bit, but now that some time has passed, I feel... well, it's hard to describe. It's as if that suffering carved out an even greater gap for awareness to come through, and right now I feel much more capable then I did a few months ago.
I've seen this pattern before, and I can't be sure, but I think it has something to do with knowledge and the perspective that knowledge helps give you when you experience things. Perspective seems to cultivate awareness, even in the midst of suffering, and when you are ready to return to a state of conscious awareness once again, it's as if you are returning to a deeper "well" of awareness then before. Right now, I feel I have more "choice" then I had before in that I can choose to remain aware, or not, and I must say, it is very welcome.
Time and enlightenment
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If I was to ask you what the time is, what would you say?
Would you tell me what the time is in clock time? Would you tell me that the time is Now? Would you tell me that the time is Now, but saying that out of intellectual understanding, and not a sense that there is no time? Are you aware of the time in clock time while still being aware of this moment and how it feels?
Just some things for you to ponder.
The paradoxical importance of knowledge
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Anyway, to cap this post off, as a disclaimer, I'll admit that while I'm pretty good with most of Eckhart's stuff, I'm still not all that knowledgeable about/good at dealing with the "pain body" that Eckhart mentions. And just like there is much I could still tell you, there is much I still don't know and am yet to experience.
Knowledge is very important when it comes to Eckhart's teachings, since it helps you identify ego where previously it would run unchecked. You'll probably end up going through a stage where you label many things you do as "egoic", but that labeling itself is egoic. That stage wasn't easy for me to pass, but eventually I upgraded my model of what "enlightenment" looked like.
Suffice to say it's pretty hard to describe, but let's just say that you'll probably have many unrealistic assumptions about enlightenment/presence, both in terms of what it is, as well as what it is not. "Real" enlightenment is very, very different to how I first imagined it, and when I finally understood that, I partially realised it in my experience as well. I stopped struggling against my ego so much, and just let it be. But you will have your own journey with this, so I will let your experience teach you. To quote Eckhart from
A New Earth:
Quote:
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Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.
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