If you don’t do anything in terms of inner change only the forces of nature will be operating upon you. For spiritual change you have to activate the spiritual part within, which is consciousness, and develop it. Consciousness can be recognized in perception, which is to be aware.
Awareness is consciousness activated, but to activate it, you need to remember to be aware. To remember, you have to train your mind in it, as it’s the mind that remembers. You might occasionally get a feeling that pushes you to be aware. But usually the thought of remembering has to be recorded into the mind, and that’s a matter of looking at what you do with your day, and how you plan for your inner work.
If you plan to do spiritual practices at certain times in the day, then you’ll have a much better chance of doing them by planning, than if your thoughts are just in the everyday things you are going to do, and you carry out a practice whenever you feel. When thoughts are into the activities of the day, then you look for results, which means that the mind is directed along that track. Thoughts work in the subconscious, and if you want a result in something, a chain of related thoughts like a current runs underneath activities. And when there are conflicts that have to be dealt with, they tend to dominate the thoughts. This all adds up to a mind full of thoughts about things other than remembering to be aware, or practicing spiritual exercises.
To help to counteract this, when you can, do activities that are part of or related to spiritual awakening. Whether its practicing, teaching, putting spiritual artwork in your home, or meeting others who are interested in the same thing. This gets thoughts about spiritual awakening going, and serves as a reminder to practice for it.
Enthusiasm and Resistance
When exercises go well and there are esoteric experiences, there’s more of an incentive to do the work. Whereas feeling low drags a person down, and that can make it more difficult to remember to be aware, and then you get caught in a vicious circle, stuck feeling low in a mundane way of living. Then there’s a resistance towards being aware and doing internal things, and there’s a further task to do which is to break the resistance that’s developed.
Resistance is a big obstacle because it means that you don’t feel like doing something, so you might not feel like observing yourself, or feel like doing a practice of meditation for example. The way to overcome that resistance is to do the things which you know you need to do, but don’t feel like doing. When you do that, you break out of that low cycle of inertia. On a mundane level if someone’s at home feeling low, then just getting out and doing something, such as going shopping, talking, or meeting other people can bring them out of it to a certain extent. Low states drag a person into a pit and self-perpetuate, bringing a craving for pleasure to counteract the pain, but pleasure is still a low state, but in an opposite form to pain, and it eventually brings its opposite which is misery. To break out of this become active, do things, and interact with people. If you can, apply the counter force to resistance, which is activity. This can lift up the inner state or octave, then you can remember about the inner work more, especially if you plan things you are going to do throughout the day.
When things work well, it creates its own momentum, but most start with a little enthusiasm, which soon runs out and then they’re left with a mundane esoteric work which doesn’t improve and never progresses, that’s because have to make change happen. Growth in spirituality is not like the process of nature where things grow and develop and decay of their own accord, you have to make things happen. This is an inner revolution.
Being aware of the traps you can start to make progress. And if you help other people in their own spiritual search, then you’ll also get help and inner strength. Doing exercises with groups of people also generates strength, and that helps you to generate activity, which is so important for moving forward spiritually and psychologically. If you just live an ordinary life and try to integrate this work into it, you won’t succeed, because the forces acting against you will be too great for you to overcome the resistance to.
Making a Commitment to Enlightenment
Being fully committed and active is important in breaking the cycle of stagnation. Sitting on the fence or in a comfortable zone while watching others struggling to defend the work and watching others working to get the message out, is going to lead nowhere. Neither will doing tasks at a mediocre standard while in a comfortable space. People can participate in this work for a very long time just doing external things and doing practices here and there without it really touching their lives, but if they don’t partake in the spiritual revolution and do a proper esoteric work they will never improve. On top of that are the tests of initiation on the esoteric path, which are terrible, and if someone can hardly do things in an ordinary sense throughout the day and just keep forgetting all the time, how would they face the tests of the path to the awakening?
How can we measure our success in the inner work? Is there some objective way to see how we’re doing? Sometimes awareness seems so easy in easy circumstances, whereas in difficult circumstances I may not be as aware but sometimes I’m fighting harder.
Try to get the consciousness as clear and objective as possible, as subconscious states cause subjective perceptions.
You can’t measure progress simply by awareness however, progress is measured according to the advancement upon the esoteric path. Progress is not how you feel, its measure is the path, so you have to be able to get onto it, and, if you do, you need to see what you are doing on it. But if the mind is clouded by the subconscious then you’re not going to see where you stand objectively, you can think that all sorts of things are happening, but it may just be pure fantasy. So it’s important as a starting measure to get the consciousness as objective as possible, and that means starting from life, being aware of life, doing things in a more aware and conscious way, watching the different egos, the different inner states, and getting rid of egos that appear, understanding yourself, and going through the different tests.
The path is the measure of real progress, you can be doing practices and be aware and feel really good, have lots of positive results and everything seems to be going well, but you may not making any progress on the path whatsoever, perhaps because there are certain inner states, or actions that are done which are not meeting its requirements, to advance upon the path therefore, you need to tackle those things which are blocking its progress. And to get some clues about those, read what the path’s about, and particularly the very first tests, the probative path, and the things that are required to start the path. Also look into dreams, where you’ll see your obstacles.
Dreams contain different states and events which can highlight what needs to be corrected. You may for example have dreams in which you are stealing or being angry. That can let you know you need to correct that inner state or action. So as soon as you see a dream like that, watch out for that related defect during the day. Watch out for it carefully and see where it arises, what it makes you think, and then correct it. Keep doing this and that inner state in your dreams will be modified, then you’ll have different aspects of it show up, then work on those, then other related dreams will come up. Every time you see defects within dreams, work on them because they are a way of telling you what you presently need to change and correct. Don’t let a day pass where you’ve had a dream about an ego but you don’t act upon it.
As soon as you see an ego in a dream, act upon by observing it and dying to it in daily life, because it’s a way of showing you that you need to work on that inner state or action and change it. By working like this you learn to use your dreams as a guide, but you’ve got to do this side by side with getting the consciousness as objective as possible. Then you’ll start to see the stages of the path happen, they happen in an order—and once you see that beginning then you move along it, with all of the requirements that need to be fulfilled for it. That is the true priority, and the measure by which you can judge your success. What does it really matter if you can concentrate for hours and be aware for much of the day, if you’ve made no progress internally along this path?
The path is the important thing in life. On it, you can get off the wheel of nature, you ‘re led to enlightenment, to liberation from nature and all of the things which bind and chain you. And unless that’s the ultimate and most important goal of life, no one will be able to advance with the dedication that’s required to achieve it. You’ll only know the existence of the path if you get on it. So if you believe that there’s no path, then you won’t step on it, you have no chance. Most people will say there’s no path, because they have no knowledge of it, as they’ve never walked on it. Statement are made in ignorance and blindness by those who can’t see the path, and who would never step on to it.
The successes of a mundane life are not really success, they all happen within time, they are events that appear in time and end in it. Whereas what is gained inwardly with the path, stays with a person beyond the three dimensions and time, that’s worth having, and it is taken to eternity. Dreams and OBE’s take place in eternity, every night with sleep a person enters eternity, you were in eternity before you were born and will be there after you die. Everyone was there and comes here temporarily.
I have a question about the state of humanity, and what we can do as a whole. I was wondering if we all really come from the same source, we all come from the light originally into this place, how come it is that we don’t all share the same longing and so few people want to return, or go to the light which is what we come from in the first place, sort of what we belong to?
It’s because on this planet the weight of negativity is too large—the animalistic inner states, the egos are too strong, and they smother the consciousness, and the longings for spirituality. Another reason is that the Monads of some people can’t muster enough activity in these circumstances. The weight of the negativity in this world is so strong that spiritual longings and yearnings are crushed, and humanity is losing its intelligence and spiritual capabilities in favor of its intellect. That’s why you have to push yourself to do spiritual practices so that the consciousness can get the sustenance and strength it needs to do the work to awaken.
A talk by Belsebuub, 2009
