Let go of the past!

We are now diverging onto a different pathway towards Self-Realisation. It’s not necessary better or entirely new, but it is orientated to therapeutic practice as oppose to spiritual practice. There are many religious/spiritual paths already in place, which will be discussed later, as a way of contrasting with a Therapeutic Journey.

Here I explain the rationale for, and the structure of, a new model of working towards our goal without all the baggage of the past.

Religion, God and the Divine –Don’t get bogged down!

I address here the above title, because we want to continue with our Therapeutic Journeys to Self-Realisation, and devise a practice that enables successfully navigation of our route, without getting bogged down in Religion, God, and Divine. Maybe we still want to call our journey – spiritual. Even that is not necessary. For some it may not be beneficial, due to all the previous baggage associated with that word. As an alternative I propose Conscious Enlightenment, with Practice added to qualify it. This makes it Conscious Enlightenment Practice – CEP. I will use this as a formal term from time to time, as in this book I am gearing the content to bypass some traditional pathways. This Journey then avoids, to some degree, being labelled as spiritual or religious. (I will use the word Journey also as “shorthand”).

For a spiritual or religious focused approach there are many other books, or you can read my six previous books! That is not to say that here the content is anti-spiritual. Far from it. It’s about moving on from current terminology. It’s also about moving on from the more established pathways to Self-Realisation within the religious/spiritual fold.

CEP – Conscious Enlightenment Practice

(Conscious is for Consciousness. Enlightenment contains the Light. Practice is our activity on our Journeys).

CEP is about the here and now awareness, so it’s not a per se travelling journey. It’s not really about moving forward, when the end goal is, as discussed, already here. However this CEP illuminates any apparent movement forward to complete the search. This is the light in enlightenment. There is an inherent Duality involved here – non-movement leading to or creating the desired movement. That is one essence of Self-Realisation – knowing intuitively what the Duality is all about. If we see the world as real, we see movement as real. However my philosophy is that Life and the Universe is rather illusory. It seems real like a snake in the dark that scares us, which then turns out to be a piece of old rope. In Sanskrit the word used is Maya. It’s all unreal or illusory! We will get there!

Experience the “divine” as within CEP, but this is a duality where human is on one side and “god” is on another – over there somewhere. Where there is duality there is suffering. (Some suffering will appear to remain in Self-Realisation, because the apparent body/mind exists until death). Either way suffering becomes something that is only apparent, and not a real experience. Fear occurs when there is another, a separate being or separate universe. This is the norm though for the human condition, as it is what we started with when we lived in the Stone Age. Anxiety and angry reactivity have remained over our human history, as a long established human response, originally geared for survival. It was already there along with a bunch of other emotional/mental activities. This now is what we have still got and what we have to work with, even though we are not fighting off wild animals, or killing woolly mammoths for dinner. We are also taught in school that all this Life and the Universe is true, and the only “super –human” alternative is again some god – “over there”. (Or rather up there in the clouds).

Fear, anger sexuality etc. have purposes beyond survival needs, and can be harnessed to engender success in the modern world, or they can destroy. In Consciousness there is no fear, because that is a human creation/experience. Never the less we can harness, transform and transcend fear through our Journey, where the dualities, including having an external “higher power”, can be transcended, leading ultimately beyond duality. We get to understand why we worship a manifested god, who can be a loving or destructive/fierce force, as this is about addressing our human loving and destructive tendencies. Here in CEP, we accept all components: human mind/body, the ego personality, the spiritual/religious drive etc., seeking to transform them via our practice. 

Incidentally, God is not a benign presence, as the next incoming incarnation is depicted as a destroyer.

Ask:

Who am I? What am I? What is life? What is Truth?

We then go into the whole dimension of being conscious of being part of Consciousness.

Our individual consciousness is part of, and the same material as, the Cosmic Consciousness.

You are this because we can choose or place ourselves as inseparable from the Cosmic Consciousness, and do our Journey accordingly. In Self-Realisation this is what we experience as our core nature.

Religion and spirituality issues have become in recent times, part of a mental health clinician’s initial evaluation, or assessment. That doesn’t address the issue of human ego driven attachment, desire identification, nor the consequences of that. It’s a clinical direction that may defer to culture, political correctness, religious groups etc., without really understanding how mental health issues are is bound up with innate Consciousness.

Some researchers now investigate the association of religious/spiritual values with psychiatric disorders, and make comparisons to “prove” either its good or bad. Then there is the issue of a religious or spiritual person who develops mania or psychosis, with obsession or belief to a dangerous point. Historically, persons with “crazy” religious thinking or behaviour, were often seen in a different light by the public, and even put on a pedestal! Unfortunately though, they could be seen as possessed or as witches, with fatal consequences.

It’s the spiritual search that has addressed the issue of human life attachments and “all life is suffering”. Our Journey though could be made without any references to, or involvement with, religion/spirituality, either as belief, or practice, or as morals. Some many say “I am not religious”, but I am spiritual – without seeing that a lot of their spiritual practices, historically, were part of organized religions. Religion and spiritual practice may seem to go hand in hand then, although nowadays this relationship seems more tenuous and even hostile at times. The spiritual or Journey seeker may even find at a certain stage, a burning desire or motivation to escape from or leave behind all or some of previously held religious beliefs and practices. At the higher stage of practice you move on from religion, and even from the teachers and teachings that you started out with.

The Journey is about the goal, the end product, not-withstanding the connections made on the way with organized religion, spiritual practices, or therapies. Religion etc. becomes a block to the Journey when it interferes with, or is allowed to, block further evolvement. The concepts of God, deities, messiahs, avatars or incarnations, belong to the realm of the practitioner but not to the world of the Realised One, who has become awakened, enlightened or “divinely” fulfilled. This word divine also refers to something we don’t usually see ourselves as being, or at ones with. We may have a personal god/goddess “over there”, but not generally as a self-identification. I will use the term Higher Self to replace divine, This Higher Self  is also Oneself. That expression of Self-Realisation may seem to be anarchic, dis-inhibited, and even destructive, in terms of what passes as conventional spiritual belief in ordinary life. It might seem to indicate a madness even. Some yogis or holy-men have presented themselves in India this way, and yet attract crowds of followers and devotees. (See my descriptions of such yogis in my book: English-Man, Beggar-Man, Holy-Man).

Devotion which derives from or is associated with the East (Hindu, Buddhism and others), is sometimes contrasted in a negative way with the Western scientific civilizations, and traditions of Christian and Jewish monotheism. In regards to some New Age practices, they are often contrasted with science or religion, and can be in this basket. Some though, have presented alternative therapy and spiritual practice modes, which have become more mainstream, and acceptable to conservative believers.

There does seem to be an amalgamating or synthesizing impetus happening, which could lead to a more holistic approach to the concept of well-being and awareness. It comes out even in the current mindfulness interest. This seems good reason to say there is a revolution potential, for practices that have a wide appeal to different people, who then have a new outlook on life development endeavours. It probably is actually a synthesis of what has gone before, and not a revolution. People more often, seem to want a religion that is non-judgemental, and accepts a variety of beliefs. This is worlds away from fundamentalism, which though is fighting back to maintain its traditional power base.

No matter how astute one becomes in this Journey, if you remain in a certain headspace of basic ego focused need, you ultimately go nowhere. This CEP cannot be made or experienced by the brains electro-chemical processes. Even if science takes us to longevity, or even immortality, and cures all mental deficiencies as well. This is why we seem to need external “god” interventions, which however, as far as some ancient teaching go, actually come from our own innermost self – the Self-Realised Self. We need to give up on our ego struggle and let our Inner Deity come to the party. We enter, or rather simply exist in, a place powered by something other than who we thought we were. The deeper we go, the more it becomes an easier path, with less frustration about what’s going on in so called real life.

This Inner Deity activation will be the next exercise…………….