(I composed this for a presentation I gave at an L/L workshop in August. If you have no familiarity with the Law of One material, you may enjoy spending your time doing something other than reading this presentation, as it will bear little in the way of sense to you.)
I. VEIL
There is so much to know about this universe, its structure, its single Law, the entities that populate it, and its infinite possibilities. I would like to begin by focusing on one of the most important factors in the experience of our lives, so important, in fact, that it shapes our experience in this very moment underneath this tent, has shaped and will shape our understanding of our identity throughout the whole of our sojourn through third density, and, the choice made possible because of it, will be the crux upon which turns the remainder of our evolutionary journey through the system of densities.
This is the veil. The veil, as most of you are intellectually aware, hides from us the truth and the mystery, much like, as Ra says, the mantle of this great planet hides Earth’s many precious, beautiful, and varied jewels from the naked eye. The Earth’s crust, while occasionally dropping a jewel or two in our lap by seemingly chance occurrence, holds these precious stones out of sight. These gems are obtained only by the entity who embarks upon a quest to pierce the surface in order to mine them from their subterranean holding places. A metaphor for the process of bringing into conscious awareness those truths hidden underneath ancient and biographical layers of distortion and illusion, layers which, taken all together, form a very real geography or landscape of the self.
Once I gained a basic intellectual understanding of the fundamentals of Ra’s unitary cosmology, especially of this veil, and synthesized those fundamentals with my other spiritual study, in other words, once I got a basic sense of how evolution works, the next and most important question to take shape within myself was the HOW question. Without mediation from external authority, how do I gain a direct and immediate experience of the Creator? How do I open my heart and faithfully experience the mystery inherent in this moment? How do I alchemically transform base metal into the gold of spiritual vision? How do I die to this self and become reborn to the Self with his feet planted on the ground but his heart and his mind anchored in the heavens?
In short, how do I pierce this veil which hides the truth from me and become conscious of what already IS: unity, love, light, joy, and perfection.
My life is my best response to that question. This essay is, in distilled form, the best that I can articulate my understanding.
Questioner: What techniques and methods of penetration of the veil were planned and are there any others that have occurred other that those planned?
Ra:. There were none planned by the first great experiment. As all experiments, this rested upon the nakedness of hypothesis. The outcome was unknown. It was discovered, experientially and empirically, that there were as many ways to penetrate the veil as the imagination of mind/body/spirit complexes could provide.
What is important to understand in Ra’s statement, in my opinion, is that this veil which is an all-important determining factor in the make-up of each of our identities as we now perceive ourselves, is an *experiment*.
In the experiment, no pre-ordained systems of study or fail-safe techniques were provided to the entities within the experiment which, when applied, would yield certain discovery of truth. It appears to me that, once the veil was implemented, the entities under its delusive force were left to their own methods with respect to solving the puzzle. It was unknown how the puzzle would or could be solved.
As is true with us, those entities were not on their own and left to the dogs -- in the sense that they were not without help; what this universe seems to do better than anything else is to help itself. Whether they were aware of it or not, they could, like we can now, call upon help and expect to receive aid, but they were not given a road map. And no one single approach to piercing the veil, it seems, was struck upon which caused the universe to rejoice with a single collective ”ah hah!”.
So infinite is the variety in the universe that methods for piercing the veil vary from locale to locale. This is a chief reason why the the best channeled sources of information can generally speak only in terms of the spiritual principles of evolution. There are a basic set of spiritual principles which contain the keys to evolution, but those principles are uniquely interpreted, uniquely accessed, and uniquely applied to the unique circumstances of ones present moment.
Ra does say that the road to intelligent infinity is at the end of a straight and narrow path. I understand this in terms of the metaphor of the ascent to the summit of the mountain. The mountain, representing the spiritual quest, can be climbed from a multitude of starting points, but the higher one ascends, the less there is room for deviation, the less the options become, the less climbers there are for company, the more arduous is the climb, and the greater is the stamina and determination needed. This does not however mean that there are a finite number of ways to scale the mountain. There are certain basic requirements, I would imagine, but one has an infinite range of creative and imaginative methods to employ in getting their body up to the summit.
This understanding is evident here on Earth. Individuals from all across the board, from various cultural, historical, and religious backgrounds have discovered a unitary, mystical truth which sounds remarkably the same no matter their background or position in time. It is said of mystics that they all speak the same language, regardless of their native tongue. They achieved the Creator from such a diversity of starting points that one must conclude that God, the Creator, the Truth is not a Christian god, is not a Buddhist experience, nor a Hindu deity --- these are just a sampling of the multitude of different approaches and models for the seeker of truth to utilize on his ascent to the summit. These models never equate with the truth for which they provide only symbols, that truth which is living and flowing radiantly from the center of each moment. The Creator is beyond these models and approaches but is interpreted by the seeker of truth through the lens of his theological distortion.
Nevertheless, while the Creator transcends all systems of thought, it behooves the student of evolution to synthesize the many disparate nuggets of truth, which they extract from various wisdom traditions, into a relatively consistent and coherent system within which they will approach that which transcends all systems of thought.
II. WILL
On my particular evolutionary journey, there is one principle or understanding, one critically central and indispensable key whose unlimited power, when wielded appropriately, opens up the door to infinity, or unknowing.
Ra: Perhaps the most important and significant function that occurred due to the veiling of the mind from itself is not in itself a function of mind but rather is a product of the potential created by this veiling. This is the faculty of will or pure desire.
Ra: The will of the entity as it evolves is the single measure of the rate and fastidiousness of the activation and balancing of the various energy centers.
This is where a great deal of my own work lies at the moment. This, the will present within each of us, is the engine of evolution that powers evolution forward along the upward spiraling line at a speed in direct proportion to our careful and constant application of the will.
Ra: Acceptance of self, forgiveness of self, and the direction of the will; this is the path towards the disciplined personality. Your faculty of will is that which is powerful within you as co-Creator. You cannot ascribe to this faculty too much importance. Thus it must be carefully used and directed in service-to-others for those upon the positively oriented path.
There is great danger in the use of the will as the personality becomes stronger, for it may be used even subconsciously in ways reducing the polarity of the entity.[1]
In the Law of One books, never would I say that Ra was prone to exaggeration. In fact, things which seem of such great magnitude and importance to us, like Earth changes and the varieties of the human drama, were to them inconsequential and trivial. Ra was so incredibly exact in selecting and placing each word in the appropriate context in order to elicit as precise a meaning as was possible within the built-in limits of the language. Thusly, when Ra says you cannot ascribe to this faculty too much importance, assigning no upper limit, it means (in my interpretation) that no matter how much importance we place on this faculty, we can never exaggerate its importance in the cosmic scheme of things. Attributing importance to the will is forever open-ended. It is that important.
Not just important in the sense that its use through faith is the key to further evolution, but important in the sense that everything we experience, on one level or another, is a result of our desires and our conscious or unconscious use of our will. I believe that gaining a preliminary understanding of oneself and the circumstances about oneself begins with questions such as:
“What is it that I am seeking?
What do I want?
What do I desire?
What motivates my many actions and thoughts?
To what degree am I functioning as an instrument of my unconscious desires?
To what degree am I consciously choosing the focus of my desires?”
Look to the desires of an entity to gain an understanding of their life situation – because what we experience, *all of it*, traces back to our desires. We know ourselves to the extent that we know our desires.
III. INNER LIGHT
Ra: Firstly, there is the inner light which is Polaris of the self, the guiding star. This is the birthright and true nature of all entities. This energy dwells within.
The second point of ingress is the polar opposite of the North Star, shall we say, and may be seen, if you wish to use the physical body as an analog for the magnetic field, as coming through the feet from the earth and through the lower point of the spine. This point of ingress of the universal light energy is undifferentiated until it begins its filtering process through the energy centers. The requirements of each center and the efficiency with which the individual has learned to tap into the inner light determine the nature of the use made by the entity of these in-streamings.
We have addressed the filtering process by which in-coming energies are pulled upwards according to the distortions of each energy center and the strength of will or desire emanating from the awareness of inner light
Our use of the will, then, is the measure of the efficiency with which we have learned to tap into that inner light. It is also our awareness of the inner light within. I hope not to oversimplify it when I say that the greater our awareness of the inner light, the greater our will; the greater our will, the greater our awareness of the inner light. The use and the strength of our will derives directly from an awareness of our inner light within, which may manifest itself within our life pattern as a progressively intensifying love of the truth and desire for the truth. In spiritual evolution, we become increasingly aware of that inner light already shining brightly within us. In the clarity of that light, we can see ever more clearly the power of our will to live who we are rather than unconsciously live the false vision of ourselves rooted in conditioned patterns.
Ra calls the inner light the “Polaris” of self because, like the North Star, it is fixed and there to navigate by when stumbling through the metaphysical darkness of the Earth plane. Exercising our will through faith, we *aim* all of our energies upon the One by keeping our eyes steady on Polaris.
Ra: Meanwhile the Creator lies within. In the north pole the crown is already upon the head and the entity is potentially a god. This energy is brought into being by the humble and trusting acceptance of this energy through meditation and contemplation of the self and of the Creator. [2]
The preceding selection was taken from a question and answer about kundalini. You can find the full quote at the end of this presentation. The full quote is a more sophisticated look at that which is echoed throughout spiritual literature, that being that we are already enlightened, already liberated, already perfect and whole and complete. The One is present in its entirety within the most infinitesimal part of ourselves. The circuit is already complete, the crown is already upon the head. It is the will that calls that energy upward and awakens the coiled serpent to begin its ascent through the energy system.
RA: The upward spiraling light developed in its path by the will, and ultimately reaching an high place of mating with the inward fire of the One Creator
This upward spiraling line of light -- is the Original Desire -- is our inner light -- is the *deepest* universal evolutionary current moving the creation along the circle of being. I love seeing it as a current. It is intelligent energy moving from intelligent infinity to intelligent infinity. The alpha and the omega exist. They are. The current is in motion and our awareness of the current, our inner light, says Ra, is that which is your heart of being. Its strength equals your strength of will to seek the light.
When I speak of will, I do not necessarily mean the will to force the world to conform with your perceptions of it, to push oneself through rapid change, to force growth, to make oneself adopt a new configuration of energy by sheer will without having balanced, understood, and accepted that configuration of energy.
I speak of its consistent, gradual, compassionate, and gentle use over time. I speak of the vigilant and endlessly repeated attempts to bring the attention to rest upon what is happening within the moment. Will is ultimately, I believe, a leap of faith into the present moment, an act of surrender which says ‘yes’ to the perfection of the moment, which, with intense presence, stares single-pointedly at the experience at hand without grasping and without aversion, without needing to manipulate, control, or change. In disciplined fashion, this will gazes lovingly and unflinchingly at the catalyst in front of us and the terror which the catalyst brings, and the will sees the okayness… or…. suchness of our experience *as it is*. As in meditation, the will is used ultimately to experience and become one with what is already there.
This state of mind is the result of a great deal of discipline. Keeping the attention lovingly focused on the actual catalyst of the moment, releasing any need for the catalyst to be other than it is, is the fruit of much self-work and retraining of the mind. The point I am trying to make here is that our adventure of being and becoming is inextricably tied to the use of our will in every single moment that we exist.
Even what is considered to be the highest expression of spiritual development, a state of surrender, is invariably an act of volition. It is an act of the will to release the personal will and say “yes” to that which initially can not be accepted. It is an act of will to place the attention upon the moment, rather than meander endlessly down the illusions of past and future running constantly through our minds. It is an act of will not to be fearful, to choose the invisible, to let down the defenses in order to be open and vulnerable, and to choose the higher road over the immediate sense gratifications of the lower. It is an act of the will to choose to attempt to understand, to attempt to seek the truth. It all begins with the will, including love itself. It is our power, it is our awareness of our own native inner light, it is our engine of evolution.
IV. ANALYSIS OF DESIRE/THE ORIGINAL DESIRE
Once one awakens to their will, it is best not to go about haphazardly willing things. You don’t will yourself to be more intelligent, you don’t will the red light to turn green, and, if you are polarizing positively, you don’t will your co-worker into submission… unless they really, really deserve it. : )
Ra: The orientation develops due to analysis of desire. These desires become more and more distorted towards conscious application of love/light as the entity furnishes itself with distilled experience.
The Self is our material for study and our doorway to the infinite. What right use of will entails is coming to know and accept your self so that you might come face to face with your true desire and thus know in what direction you wish to aim your will. We all have a million and one desires, running the continuum from “I will kill you” to “I will make you sacred and cherish you”; from “This is mine, not yours, find your own glazed donut!”, to “Here, I do not need my glazed donut, have mine.” Our desires are often tangled like Christmas lights among one another, many of them often in opposition to or locked in battle with each other, but in the center of that complex chaos, in the heart of the wild jungle of the subconscious, there is a desire so central that it was with us before we were born and will persist after we die. It transcends and includes each and every one of our multi-layered and multi-directional desires. What is the king of all desires?
Stanislav Grof, in referencing the work of another great philosopher, Ken Wilber, says this:
In the most general sense, the deepest transpersonal roots of insatiable green can best be understood in terms of Ken Wilber’s concept of the Atman Project. Our true nature is divine – God, Cosmic Christ, Allah, Buddha, Brahma, the Tao – and although the process of creation separates and alienates us from our source, the awareness of this fact is never completely lost. The deepest motivating force in the psyche on all levels of consciousness evolution is to return to the experience of our divinity.
Real transcendence [returning to our divinity] requires death of the separate self. Because of the fear of annihilation and because of grasping onto the ego, the individual has to settle for Atman substitutes or surrogates, which are specific for each particular stage. For the fetus and the newborn, this means the satisfaction experience in the good womb or on the good breast. For an infant, this is satisfaction of age-specific physiological needs. For the adult, the range of possible Atman projects is large; it includes besides food and sex and money, fame, power, appearance, knowledge, and many others.
Apparently, then, all these external things which we look to for comfort, security, pleasure, distraction, sleep, and identity, all of these “Atman Projects”, are poor substitutes for a deeper and more fundamental, creation-wide need. All these lesser desires are fragments of a greater desire.
What Grof and Wilber describe is what Ra calls more simply, “The Original Desire’.
Ra: The Original Desire is that entities seek and become one.
If this is the “original” desire, if, as Ra says elsewhere in the Law of One, our seeking of love in the moment is so central an act of will that it empowers our progress by way of squaring, (even if there are flaws of insincerity), then pouring the energy of our will and our desire into the Original Desire is our safest bet. Knowing that, on one level or another, we create our reality as a result of that which we desire – however fragmented and/or unconscious those desires may be – we can conclude that this universe is not a static and mechanistic universe of cold, lifeless matter but is an intelligent energy, an *intelligent* field of opportunity and response. We participate in this evolving cosmos and it participates with us. We receive feedback, we receive response, we receive that which we seek – eventually becoming that which we seek, the universe, the Creator.
Hatton: Desire, my friends, is the key to what you receive. If you desire it, you shall receive it. This was the Creator’s plan, a plan in which all of His parts would receive exactly what they desire. My friends, often in the illusion which you now experience it seems that you do not acquire what you desire. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case in many, many instances. It is a paradox, it seems, that such a statement should be made and that such apparent results of desire are manifested, and yet we state, without exception, that man receives exactly what he desires. Perhaps, my friends, you do not understand desire. Perhaps this understanding is not within the intellectual mind. Perhaps it will be necessary to spend time in meditation to become aware of your real desire. For, my friends, there is much, much more of you and of the creation than you presently appreciate with your intellectual abilities in your present illusion.
If the Creator or the manifest Creator (i.e., the universe) fulfills our wayward and, for lack of a better term, “non-spiritual” desires, imagine the response to the Original Desire vibrating at full strength within us. Not knowing how to articulate this any better, it is as if the universe itself harmonizes or resonates with that foundational, central, whole-being desire to seek and to become one. In the act of honoring and bringing into conscious manifestation this Original Desire, it is as if every resource of the infinite universe begins to work closely with us in support of this desire.
Ra: At the point at which an entity, either by accident or design, reflects an archetype, the archetypical mind resonates.
Just so, as we reflect the Original Desire, the universe resonates. Imagine that the truth of unity is being broadcast like a radio signal omnipresently from every point in the universe. When we exercise the will consistently in the direction of the Original Desire, aiming or pointing our energies toward this end, we will of necessity magnetize our beings towards receiving and incorporating this signal. In so doing we will become single, of one mind and of one purpose. (Much death will ensue within us, btw.)
In the cosmic sense of things, it is literally impossible to “go astray”. There is no deviation from the Tao, we will awake at some moment in time to the Original Desire. The ultimate outcome is never in doubt. If we wish to begin the conscious portion of our journey towards this ultimate and inevitable conclusion, then we can attune the radio dial of ourselves to receive this omnipresent broadcast of unity, we can consciously and consistently and patiently and humbly and lovingly and gently express our desire to know the one in order to serve, in every moment of every day.
Pretend we are a structure made of stone blocks. Because are desires are scattered and non-unified, because they often seek the shallow and transitory, the blocks of our structure are dispersed and strewn about the ground; that or they are not put into place properly, individual blocks are out of alignment with one another and consequently our structure is not fitted according to our architectural design. Our building loses its functionality and its full ability to serve as an instrument. When we consistently exercise the will in the direction of the Original Desire, we route all of our criss-crossing desires into a single channel: the yearning for the Creator. As this happens, we put into place those structural elements which are misaligned, we gather our building blocks strewn about the ground and we create a unified structure. It is helpful for me to conceive of this structure of energy as a pyramid, because a pyramid illustrates many desires moving upward from the ground of being to a central focus, the apex, the contact between the finite and the infinite. As we unify our desires through the constant application of will, we become a functional structure, such as the pyramid is.
We can exercise our will in attempting to see the One in the many. As we do this over a period of time, piece by tiny piece the illusion of a separate self is chipped away until infinity’s signal is broadcast through the instrument of ourselves. We, as fragile and flawed as we are, become the infinitely crystalline, transparent broadcasters of this universal signal or frequency.
Scattered throughout the Law of One books are these gems of light which stand out above the others because they focus like a laser directly on the focus of all foci. These selections speak to the source and goal of the Original Desire, the One Infinite Creator.
V. THE SEEKER SEEKS THE ONE
- RA: In the experiences of the mystical search for unity, these need never be considered, for they are but part of an illusory system. The seeker seeks the One. The One is to be sought, as we have said, by the balanced and self-accepting self aware, both of its apparent distortions and its total perfection. Resting in this balanced awareness, the entity then opens the self to the universe which it is. The light energy of all things may then be attracted by this intense seeking, and wherever the inner seeking meets the attracted cosmic prana, realization of the One takes place.
The purpose of clearing each energy center is to allow that meeting place to occur at the indigo ray vibration, thus making contact with intelligent infinity and dissolving all illusions. Service-to-others is automatic at the released energy generated by this state of consciousness. - You are aware of the concept of initiation and realize that it demands the centering of the being upon the seeking of the Creator. We have hoped to balance this understanding by enunciating the Law of One, that is, that all things are One Creator. Thus seeking the Creator is done not just in meditation and in the work of an adept but in the experiential nexus of each moment.
- The initiation of the Queen’s Chamber has to do with the abandoning of self to such desire to know the Creator in full that the purified in-streaming light is drawn in balanced fashion through all energy centers, meeting in indigo and opening the gate to intelligent infinity. Thus the entity experiences true life or, as your people call it, resurrection.
- QUESTIONER: Is there then, from the point of view of an individual who wishes to follow the service-to-others path, anything of importance other than disciplines of personality, knowledge of self, and strengthening of will?
RA: I am Ra. This is technique. This is not the heart. Let us examine the heart of evolution.
Let us remember that we are all one. This is the great learning/teaching. In this unity lies love. This is a great learn/teaching. In this unity lies light. This is the fundamental teaching of all planes of existence in materialization. Unity, love, light, and joy; this is the heart of evolution of the spirit.
The second-ranking lessons are learn/taught in meditation and in service. At some point the mind/body/spirit complex is so smoothly activated and balanced by these central thoughts or distortions that the techniques you have mentioned become quite significant. However, the universe, its mystery unbroken, is one. Always begin and end in the Creator, not in technique. - To put this into perspective we must gaze then at the stunning mystery of the One Infinite Creator. The archetypical mind does not resolve any paradoxes or bring all into unity. This is not the property of any source which is of the third-density. Therefore, may we ask the student to look up from inward working and behold the glory, the might, the majesty, the mystery, and the peace of oneness. Let no consideration of bird or beast, darkness or light, shape or shadow keep any which seeks from the central consideration of unity.
- It shall be understood that any portion, no matter how small, of any density or illusory pattern, contains, as in an holographic picture, the One Creator which is infinity. Thus all begins and ends in mystery.
- …recognizing always that in the simplest iota of this complex exists in its entirety the One Infinite Creator. ----- The Original Desire is that entities seek and become one.
- We leave you in appreciation of the circumstances of the great illusion in which you now choose to play the pipe and timbrel and move in rhythm. We are also players upon a stage. The stage changes. The acts ring down. The lights come up once again. And throughout the grand illusion and the following and the following there is the undergirding majesty of the One Infinite Creator. All is well. Nothing is lost. Go forth rejoicing in the love and the light, the peace and the power of the One Infinite Creator.
- The understanding, experiencing, accepting, and merging of self with self and other-self, and finally with the Creator, is the path to the heart of self. In each infinitesimal part of your self resides the One in all of Its power. Therefore, we can only encourage these lines of contemplation or prayer as a means of subjectively/objectively using or combining various understandings to enhance the seeking process. Without such a method of reversing the analytical process, one could not integrate into unity the many understandings gained in such seeking.
- There is but one service. The Law is One. The offering of self to Creator is the greatest service, the unity, the fountainhead. The entity who seeks the One Creator is with infinite intelligence. From this seeking, from this offering, a great multiplicity of opportunities will evolve depending upon the mind/body/spirit complexes’ distortions with regard to the various illusory aspects or energy centers of the various complexes of your illusion.
Thus, some become healers, some workers, some teachers, and so forth. - This is why we iterate quite often, when asked for specific information, that it pales to insignificance, just as the grass withers and dies while the love and the light of the One Infinite Creator redounds to the very infinite realms of creation forever and ever, creating and creating itself in perpetuity.
Why then be concerned with the grass that blooms, withers and dies in its season only to grow once again due to the infinite love and light of the One Creator? This is the message we bring. Each entity is only superficially that which blooms and dies. In the deeper sense there is no end to being-ness. - QUESTIONER: As you have stated, it is a straight and narrow path. There are many distractions.
Within the “Seeker Seeks the One” portion of this presentation, Ra shares what I personally feel to be one of the most important understandings one can take from the “Law of One”.
The second-ranking lessons are learn/taught in meditation and in service. At some point the mind/body/spirit complex is so smoothly activated and balanced by these central thoughts or distortions that the techniques you have mentioned become quite significant. However, the universe, its mystery unbroken, is one. Always begin and end in the Creator, not in technique.
Meditation and service are extremely important techniques for the purpose of accelerating evolution. At the heart of that evolution are these fundamental teachings, not only within the third density illusion, but within all conceivable planes of existence: unity, love, light, and joy.
What the Creator is, what precisely love and wisdom are, I remain mostly in the dark. But knowing of the strength of the will or inner light within and its power to strip away the small self in order that I might be one with the Creator, I continually talk and pray and direct my energies toward the One which I do not know. This involves a great deal of faith and refusal to doubt the self and the rightness of the path because strong portions of myself within would have me believe that this is a pointless and useless pursuit which will end in my emptiness and unhappiness. Yet, I persist. I persist in asking the HOW question. HOW might I know and experience the truth for myself?
Always, always beginning and ending in Creator, in those fundamental teachings of all planes of existence, the how question moves into methodology. The question becomes, “What methods will be most efficacious in the uniting of my heart with the heart of the Creator?”
VI. METHODS
To begin with, I would like to draw an important distinction between methods and results. This distinction, made clear to me very recently in the book “Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Path of Buddhist Attention” by Ken McLeod, has proven very helpful in my efforts recently and will likely continue to be helpful for a long time to come.
New students often tell me how frustrated they are with meditation. They’ve read a book or two, and the instructions include such phrases as “Open your mind,” “Be centered,” “Let your mind be empty,” or “Be one with your body”. They can’t figure out what to do because these “instructions” are effects of practice, not methods.
When students sit down and try to feel centered, try to open their minds, and try to be one with their bodies, nothing happens and they end up feeling frustrated.
Tell a tense person to relax, and he will usually become tenser in the efforts. He is tense because he doesn’t know how to relax. Tell him to take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then take another breath, and let it out slowly. Then he will relax. The method is breathing slowly and deeply. The result is relaxation. In meditation, the method is resting attention on the breath. When you do this, you will at some point feel centered, your mind will open and relax, and you will feel more connected with your body”
We cannot make a flower grow. A flower or any other plant will grow of its own accord. What we can do is to provide the right conditions for the growth – such as water, good soil, sunlight, and protection from any animals or insects – and allow the flower to grow on its own.
Methods, as distinct from results, are much the same way. Evolution (or becoming the Creator) is the result; our practices of prayer and meditation and placing our attention upon the moment are the methods. When we put into practice our best efforts persistently, the upward spiraling line of light will of necessity blossom forth from the old energies of the separate or shadow self.
Ra: …we may only offer that information useful to that particular caller. This is the basic difficulty. Entities receive the basic information about the Original Thought and the means, that is meditation and service-to-others, whereby this Original Thought may be obtained.
Once this basic information is received it is not put into practice in the heart and in the life experience but instead rattles about within the mind complex distortions as would a building block which has lost its place and simply rolls from side to side uselessly, yet still the entity calls. Therefore, the same basic information is repeated. Ultimately the entity decides that it is weary of this repetitive informatIion. However, if an entity puts into practice that which it is given, it will not find repetition except when needed.
To the best of my understanding, the first and most important method of reaching the One is in the simple exercise of the will. I have a great deal of faith that the naked, raw desire - as expressed in our yearning for the One - is our greatest ally. I do not know precisely how to chart a course to the One, but in simply affirming my seeking of the One, in expressing my desire for the One, and in harmonizing every aspect of my life to the fullest possible extent with this desire, I am certain that those opportunities for growth are being magnetically or resonantly drawn to me in the right proportion at the right time. As I said in my “Who Am I?” essay from Channeling Intensive One,
The intensification of the will is the intensification of a homing beacon, I feel. While I carry and bear the burden, the homing beacon does the bulk of the work because the will, carefully directed in service to others, operating largely below the threshold of conscious awareness, knows its way home. Though I am the caged bird who breathes free air but does not yet know freedom as an immediate experience, I am a creature possessed of will. The will, persistently exercised, intelligently calls to it those opportunities which unlock the self from its material prison with each act of self-sacrifice. As that bird, I use the will to seek the One and let go of the cage.
I have this faith that the will does the work. We don’t make the flower grow with our will, but we provide the right conditions for the growth to take place within us through the exercise of our will. Just as the flower will not survive being trampled by a crowd of three hundred people, just so we must approach this flower delicately, with great sensitivity and love. The inner truth is so subtle a matter when viewed against the gross sensory and conceptual distortions of third density. Though the highest truth is all inclusive, all encompassing, all strength, it wisps away with any attempt at force. Becoming consciously delicate in the inner movements is especially helpful for the male, as his cultural training may predispose him towards manhandling something which can not be grasped, controlled, or held onto.
For me, this involves primarily the exercise of the will on a daily, and to whatever extent possible, moment-by-moment basis. As the chariot (representing the spirit shuttle, I believe) in the “Great Way of the Mind” tarot image is drawn forward through time, just so is the will strengthened by its constant exercise over a period of consistent time, just so do we ripen and progress over the same period of time.
Ra: Patience is requested and suggested, for the catalyst is intense upon your plane and its use must be appreciated over a period of consistent learn/teaching.
That to me is the true strength of the will. The strength of will can indeed be expressed in a moment of crisis when the car is lifted to allow the person caught beneath it to extricate themselves, but I think that the true test is in the wills consistent and conscious exercise as often and frequently as possible. I constantly attempt to be constant in the attempt.
Ra: The principle which moves in accordance with the dynamics of teach/learning with most efficiency is constancy.
VII. SINGLE-POINTED
The best two words that express all that I am trying to say are “single” and “pointed”, put together to make single-pointed. To me, to become single-pointed in the seeking of the Creator is the supreme use of will, it is the essential method at the foundation of all other methods.
If the mind is fixed on God and continues so, the senses will obey it. It is like hanging a needle on a magnet and then another needle onto that, and so on… As long as the first needle clings to the magnet, the rest will hang on to it; but if the first drops off, it will lose the rest. And so, as long as the mind is firmly fixed on God, the senses will obey it; but when the mind drops away from God, the senses drop off from the mind and are unruly. Meister Eckhart
The Yogi focuses his mind on God, and on naught else. Undecided dreamers dissipate their mental powers in the confusion of endless, many branched pathways of interests and desires. Paramahansa Yogananda
If an eye never falls asleep, All dreams will cease of themselves;
If the Mind retains its absoluteness, the ten thousand things are of one substance. From “The Perennial Philosophy”
Saints are neither double-minded nor half-hearted, but single and, however great their intellectual gifts, profoundly simple. The multiplicity of Legion (throng, multitude) has given place to one-pointedness – not to any of those evil one-pointednesses of ambition or covetousness, or lust for power and fame, not even to any of the nobler, but still all too human one-pointednesses of art, scholarship and science, regarded as ends in themselves, but to the supreme, more than human one-pointedness that is the very being of those souls who consciously and consistently pursue man’s final end, the knowledge of Eternal Reality.
The cultivated and mentally active have an insatiable appetite for novelty, diversity and distraction. But the saints, however commanding their talents and whatever the nature of their professional activities, are all incessantly preoccupied with only one subject – spiritual Reality and the means by which they and their fellows can come to the unitive knowledge of that Reality. Aldous Huxley
Being single-pointed in seeking the Creator is like standing on the streets of New York City and, for a fleeting instant, hearing a birdsong somewhere far off in the distance. Standing on the street, taxi drivers honking their horns, throngs of people walking to and fro, jackhammers and car stereos, shop doors opening and closing, vendors selling their goods on the street, the endless monologue of your own thoughts running through your mind, you are not even sure if you caught that single note of the sparrow floating through the air. Yet you are compelled to search for it. This requires great dedication and single-pointedness. You must tune out all the distraction to focus exclusively on the subtle and delicate birdsong somewhere off in the distance, or you must submit to all the distraction and somehow select the birdsong from the noise and chaos. Either way, you must stay with the birdsong in each moment and learn to see through the distractions at hand. The man that bumps into you and provokes your anger, the half-naked woman that provokes something different, the hunger in your stomach for the candy you see in the window, the excitement in the air from the live band in the nearby bar, the cell phone’s vibration from a friend calling, the memory of sorrow stirred up within you at the sight of a movie poster --- single-pointedness sees through all of this catalyst to the heart of your search, that being in this analogy, the discovery of the source of the birdsong.
With single-pointedness, we are constantly adjusting our attitude and our attention to vector towards the Creator. No matter which way catalyst spins us, no matter how lost we feel we are or whether we know up from down, with single-pointed attention on the creator, we are never lost and can never be disoriented, no matter the chaos of our outward circumstances. As suggested in the tarot image Experience of the Mind…
Ra: The figure is expressing the nature of experience by having its attention caught by what may be termed the left-hand catalyst. Meanwhile, the power, the magic, is available upon the right-hand path.
The nature of experience is such that the attention shall be constantly given varieties of experience. Those that are presumed to be negative, or interpreted as negative, may seem in abundance. It is a great challenge to take catalyst and devise the magical, positive experience.
…our attention will continually be caught by catalyst of the left hand path. We can however become conscious however of our errant eyes and refocus them yet again on seeking the One. Keeping the mind and the senses fixed upon the Creator is none too easy a task, as you can imagine. I think I could successfully discipline a gymnasium full of wild four year olds on sugar, monkeys, ice cream trucks, and free bananas better than I could my own mind!
Huston Smith, in discussing the Eightfold Path of Buddhism in his book The World’s Religions, says of Right Intent, the second step of the Eightfold Path:
Whereas the first step summoned us to make up our mind as to what life’s problem basically is, the second advises us to make up our hearts as to what we really want. Is it really enlightenment, or do our affections wing this way and that, dipping like kites with every current of distraction? If we are able to make appreciable headway, persistence is indispensable. People who achieve greatness are almost invariably passionately invested in some one thing. They do a thousand things each day, but behind these stands the one thing they count supreme. When people seek liberation with single-mindedness of this order, they may expect their steps to turn from sliding sandbank scrambles into ground-gripping strides.
To be able to keep your mind fixed upon the ever present Creator in this way involves not having the mind’s attention taken away down other less useful paths by the constant bombardment from the stimuli around us. The Creator within the moment is not half as obvious nor immediate and blatant as are the million and one other signals within and around us that effectively and totally drown the Creator out. But with one-pointed attention, we gather all those signals – all that energy being expended in a million different ways – and we organize the agents of sleep and distraction into a disciplined and loving focus upon the Source of all of it. We gradually awaken.
If you would like to read more about active, conscious attention and how it alone is the alchemical agent responsible for transmuting darkness into light, I would recommend any of Eckhart Tolle’s books. His work communicates the essence of this truth better than any other, in my humble opinion. In the same spirit as Tolle, Ken McLeod offers an understanding about the transformative powers of using the will as attention upon the moment:
Attention acts on the wall of habituated patterns in the same way that the energy of sunlight acts on a block of ice. Heat from the sun raises the level of energy in the water molecules until they can no longer remain in the compact crystalline structure of ice. The crystal breaks up, and ice melts into water.
(I finished this presentation by reading "Ramanama", my post of March 16, 2008. If you have made it this far and survived and would like to continue reading the presentation as a whole, follow this link: http://steppingfeet.blogspot.com/2008/03/ramanama.html.)
[1] MCLEOD PG 88
Finally, there is one pitfall in meditation practice that you must avoid. Meditation practice raises the level of energy in your system in the form of active attention. The higher level of energy inevitably brings you into contact with reactive emotional patterns. If you now become selective and repress emotions, pushing them out of attention, two things happen. The higher level of energy in your system flows into the reactive pattern, making that stronger. Both the reactive patterns of the emotion and the repression are reinforced. You end up splitting in two. One part of you is capable of attention and response. The other part becomes increasingly rigid and inflexible. It takes over unpredictably whenever the repressed emotion is triggered by events or situation. Typically, a person becomes more arrogant, self-indulgent, obsessed with power, money, sex, security, or other fixations, and acts in ways to control or amass the object of obsession. Long-term practitioners and teachers who protect areas of their lives from their practice frequently run into this problem with unfortunate and sometimes tragic results. We run the risk of a similar fate if we protect any area of our personality or lives from the increased awareness that develops in meditation.
To protect against this problem, always have at least one person, a teacher, colleague, or friend, with whom you discuss all aspects of your practice and your life. The person needs to be someone you trust and to whom you will listen regardless of the state of mind you are in or what he or she says. The only way to be sure that you will not protect an area of your habituated personality from the effects of practice is to have such a person in your life.
[2] Session #49
RA: I am Ra. The metaphor of the coiled serpent being called upwards is vastly appropriate for consideration by your peoples. This is what you are attempting when you seek. There are, as we have stated, great misapprehensions concerning this metaphor and the nature of pursuing its goal. We must generalize and ask that you grasp the fact that this in effect renders far less useful that which we share. However, as each entity is unique, generalities are our lot when communicating for your possible edification.
We have two types of energy. We are attempting then, as entities in any true color of this octave, to move the meeting place of inner and outer natures further and further along or upward along the energy centers. The two methods of approaching this with sensible method are first, the seating within one’s self of those experiences which are attracted to the entity through the south pole. Each experience will need to be observed, experienced, balanced, accepted, and seated within the individual. As the entity grows in self-acceptance and awareness of catalyst the location of the comfortable seating of these experiences will rise to the new true color entity. The experience, whatever it may be, will be seated in red ray and considered as to its survival content and so forth.
Each experience will be sequentially understood by the growing and seeking mind/body/spirit complex in terms of survival, then in terms of personal identity, then in terms of social relations, then in terms of universal love, then in terms of how the experience may beget free communication, then in terms of how the experience may be linked to universal energies, and finally in terms of the sacramental nature of each experience.
Meanwhile the Creator lies within. In the north pole the crown is already upon the head and the entity is potentially a god. This energy is brought into being by the humble and trusting acceptance of this energy through meditation and contemplation of the self and of the Creator.
Where these energies meet is where the serpent will have achieved its height. When this uncoiled energy approaches universal love and radiant being the entity is in a state whereby the harvestability of the entity comes nigh.