Today we have a final look at the discussion that began here, and continued II, III, and IV.
John: There is an element to this third aspect of beingness that I am baffled by. During one’s sleep, it’s not baffling; it seems very natural. Yet when I put any kind of attention on it, it seems baffling, I think because the third quality that I see inside seems to be operating within the overall beingness; it’s everything, and it’s acting as an energetic consciousness. I seem to be mirroring that by glancing reflectively back to an inner listening center.
The listening center is the second quality and it’s rooted in our physical existence. Then the third quality is attentive to the emergence of the listening center and mirrors what it “hears,” to the degree that it is allowed to by our level of inner quietness. That mirroring is reflected into our outer life (in dreams). The listening center seems to be a tuning fork that can awaken this potentiality. If the insight from your higher self can make that journey within, where we quiet ourselves and listen to it, it can then manifest in our outer life. That is much more of a guided life. Without that guidance, which is available to each of us, we are basically making all our decisions alone, from the narrow egocentric realms. So the difference in what is available to us is dramatic.
Now of course, what I am talking here is mostly a perception that exists during dreams. During the daytime, most of us reside primarily in the first quality of our nature, our ego, which is a hope-and-fear kind of existence. That cuts us off from this sense of beingness where we are connected to everything. Yet more and more this can come through to our daily life. It can be experienced as increased energy levels and a sense of inner freedom. Suddenly the ups and downs of life don’t toss us around quite as much.
Of course, what we are describing goes beyond the building blocks of intimacy and beauty and awe and majesty; it is another octave of freedom and wisdom. The freedom aspect is in the motion, the movement that allows greater coverage of what is occurring. And the wisdom aspect is the ability to differentiate and discern what is going on there, without limiting the view through the narrow perception of one’s personal biases.
Personally, I have a sense that this awakening during my dreams is slowly having an effect on my waking day. I am still unsure what to make of this. I tend to look around for a bit of agitation when I wake up because I am unable to hold onto all this inner energy. Of course that agitation acts to keep it somewhat veiled from me. And then my nature wants to pound on the door to try to open it. There is something in my nature that still has this tendency to come out; the truce tends to be fragile in that way.
In the morning, I can be fairly blissful up to a point, yet I still feel the need to entertain some distractions. That leads to a certain degree of chaos, but it gives me a semblance of the outer reality that I am most accustomed to, the one I share with others. So by the afternoon I am cut off from the inner flow to such a degree that what came through a bit in the morning is no longer there, and I can easily start ranting and raving yet again.
How is it that a softer heart, or grace, or internal connection is able to quicken my nighttime consciousness? After having been made dumb by the myriad goings-on during the day, it is a testament to just how amazing a human being really is in terms of the greater wholeness of which we are a part. I now believe that the purpose of a spiritual life is to awaken that inner dialogue connection, in a way that can be drawn from upon awakening, and to embody and carry it forward as a consciousness into the physical world; to cultivate an inner connectedness that is linked to all of creation.
