Spheres of Awareness
Posted on May 16, 2007
Filed Under Journal, Spirituality, Consciousness |
Spiritual growth is an ongoing process that is never really complete. In many ways it gets easier as it goes on - but even still it requires constant work and never-ending self-development. The hardest part is the initial push, some people experiences this as a sudden awakening to the belief that all which is around them is not as it appears to be. Others have an whispering in their mind all their lives - telling them that something isn’t right with the world, that there has somehow got to be more to life than we are led to believe. There are many other paths besides.
The one constant factor is that eventually people who find them selves upon a path of spiritual growth are confronted with an awareness of reality that can at first appear to be quite shocking - and to many brings them a degree of pain. What happens as we question the world around us - as we take a closer look at the systems and structures of our cultures is that we begin to comprehend that they are not a true reflection of reality. We learn that life doesn’t reflect what we are shown on TV or in the newspapers; there is indeed something far deeper going on.
And so our awareness begins to expand - up until this point of recognition we live in the world unquestioningly. But the moment we open our eyes, we begin an inexorable walk away from “conditioned reality”. Conditioned reality is the world that we know from birth - the world of the five-physical senses, of work, society, economics, science, materialism and structured belief systems. Rising up out of this can be very tough going.
Author Stuart Wilde best describes this process as climbing an almost vertical cliff - a long gruling climb, until finally you reach a plataue. From here life looks very different indeed. But this isn’t the end of the journey by any means as you awareness and perception will continue to expand. However all future climbs are never as steep as that first vertical climb; the rest being gentler slopes which you may walk over indeterminate about of times - sometimes days, and other times years. For me, I believe Stuart Wilde’s description is very accurate.
So the inital factor of escaping conditioned reality can present quite a problem for many - not least because many people are content in their views on life - and generally will not budge, instead preferring to huddle somewhere within the centre of their conditioned sphere of reality. Those with a more curious mind slowly edge upwards and outwards, away from those “set-in-stone” views. This sometimes causes times of awkwardness as you may sometimes be viewed as rocking the boat. Unfortunately it is part of the process and a part of what makes that initial climb so hard. I think it helps to know that you aren’t alone, and your aren’t weird or odd. Just keep questioning and keep following your own feelings and intuition.
Now at some point upon that plateau you exit the small circle of societies perspective and move out further into a larger and greater sphere of awareness. From here life begins to look very different.
It’s an ever ongoing process of self-development - the kind of self transformation that is spoken of here. When stuck within the inner spheres I always found it difficult to visualise how this all worked. I thought it was sometime complicated and mysterious - but in truth it is nothing more self-discovery. It’s all about being honest with yourself, facing your Shadow and living what you perceive. It took me a long time to learn that my perception is only limited by my beliefs - which in turn are hindered by my ego-personality. Reality itself is far less complex - our society makes reality out to be a dark stodgy mess that is all but impossible to navigate through. In the end though, that view is the hard impenetrable belief that our collective egos try and grasp onto. A black circle contained within an ever expanding sphere of awareness.
As we continue our climb on our journey of spiritual growth, we pass through sphere after sphere of awareness. Each one in turn showing us more of reality. The progress ever upward and outward sooner or later drastically changes our experience of reality. Things begin to seem extremely “weird” and unusual; experience of all sorts of phenomenon become quite common. The existence of other realms becomes a given, along with the beings and entities that reside within them. Synchronisities, visions, so called “psychic” abilities eventually become the norm. Not something to be merely believed in, because at this point you see them as being as real as gravity.
Regardless of how many Spheres of Awareness we pass through, eventually the realisation comes that each sphere is merely a form of our individual perspectives - the further the journey goes, the more indistinct and ethereal these spheres become - until eventually there comes a glimmer of understanding that reality just might exist outside of any such sphere.
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Great thoughts again, marcus!
When you talk about becoming weird or odd, I remembered the case of Jung. He said, that when he decided to go deeper and somewhat exclusively being absorbed in his introspection, those around him thought that he actually went crazy. For the outer world he looked and acted like an insane.
Actually I think this might be a problem, a so called obstacle in the awareness break trough. Especially in the case when the break trough wasn’t a result of a conscious decision, a volitional act. In this case there is the possibility to believe the insanity impeachment. So I guess it is vital to understand for those starting a spiritual quest to be fully aware of this. And only an extreme lucidity can keep the soberness required not loose the mind. It is very good that you pointed that out.
Another excellent observation you make is that “perception is only limited by my beliefs”. Even if it sounds like a trivia, it is an unavoidable fact. Concluding, this means that changing beliefs changes perception. Seems easy to say, but almost impossible to do. I guess one solution to this might be to truly understand what a belief is in this context. What do you think?
You say, “Synchronisities, visions, so called “psychic” abilities eventually become the norm”. Might be very much true. But this sounds like something desirable from the lower level of awareness. Like a bait. My take on this is that whether these become a norm or not, it is not important. Instead I would put the accent on starting to be aware of synchronicities from the actual level of awareness. Those phenomenons are present all the time, it is just the (lower) level of awareness and understanding that thinks of them as synchronicities. We are so much trapped in the causal thinking that it is real hard to learn again the acausal one.
[ Quote ]It certainly can feel as though you are going mad once you break through to different levels of awareness. In fact recently I have begun to feel increasingly as though I am living on an alien planet. People’s attitudes and beliefs seem to me to be at odds with what is actually going on in our reality. But that is to be expected and I will adjust just has I have done previously.
But certainly you are right that this is something that people need to be aware of. That they needn’t worry if they think they are appearing strange to others - or that they don’t “fit in”, because it is all a natural part of the process of self-development.
“Concluding, this means that changing beliefs changes perception. Seems easy to say, but almost impossible to do. I guess one solution to this might be to truly understand what a belief is in this context. What do you think?”
I think that beliefs are relatively easy to change. But people make the mistake of starting big. It’s important to challenge the little things. Don’t pose questions like; “Do I believe in God?”, “Is the paranormal really real?”, “What is life?” I find it far more effective to avoid those sort of philosophical questions and instead focus on things of a more practical nature.
Why do I react in a certain way to specific circumstances. Why are certain questions important to me…indeed are they *really* important to me. Is there a reason I keep consuming sugar, or is it just conditioned habit. What do I feel *inside* myself when in a cathedral or church.
Beliefs build up from those little things. And those things aren’t really all that hard to understand and then change, given time and patience.
As for the paranormal, synchronicities, visions etc. becoming the “norm”. You are right in that those sorts of things are around us all the time, I probably didn’t express that paragraph very clearly. It is our lack of awareness that causes us to fail to see them. The more we develop our awareness the more we can experience. It’s like any other faculty we possess. Lifting weights makes us stronger, running makes us faster…and so on.
I have a post coming up about this in a few days, it’s a massive subject indeed…
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