Robert, Part 3
Where do we begin and where do we end?
What do we know that we don’t know we know?
What can we do that we don’t know we can do?
What are we trying to teach ourselves?
What do we want to learn?
Sharing My Experience with George and his Response
Several days after Robert delivered three babies from inside me during meditation, our Seth group met for our weekly meeting. During the meeting, I shared the details of my experience with George and the other members of the group.
(Roger) George, I have questions about an extraordinary experience that happened during meditation several days ago (June 3, 1980). It involves my Inner Self or Oversoul, Robert.
I told him that I first met Robert through a Ouija Board in 1979 and that, several days ago, I met him again in a lucid dream. I described how, during meditation the next morning, he surprised me by walking out of the wall at home after I thanked him by sending him energy through my hands, and how he entered my body and removed three babies from inside me, and then placed each one on an invisible platform in front of me. I finished by telling him that when Robert was done, he left my body and disappeared back through the wall from whence he came, without a word.*
* For reference, read:
- Robert, Part 1, Meet My Inner Self or Oversoul, Robert. It describes my experience with Robert during a lucid dream, set in Maine.
- Robert, Part 2, Robert Enters My Body and Delivers Three Babies. The baby’s names were Helen, Daniel, and Michael. Helen embodies the energy of love, Daniel, the energy of truth, and Michael, the energy of joy.
- Robert, Part 4, what are Thoughts and how do They Create Our Reality? As we think, feel, act and react, we create. To change what we create, we must change what we think and feel, how we act and react. (Under construction)
George is a non-biological entity that spoke through Carol, a woman in our spiritual exploration group. He spoke regularly and answered questions with a facility and depth the rest of us couldn’t. After more than a year of interaction, we had all come to value and trust him and his understanding of Being and Creation. By the time I told him about my experience with Robert, he had become a valued member of our group.
I’d like to know what you think about my experience, George. However, I’m worried about giving your interpretation more value than my own because of my belief that you know more than I do. I’m not sure how to deal with this situation. Can you help?
(George) “And if I give you some long-winded explanation, would you doubt your own perception?
(Roger) That’s what concerns me, George.
(George) “And I’m not sure of your perception of me either. Am I another being entirely from this personality I share at times?
(Roger) I would say you are and you aren’t.
(George) “Ah, and in what way am I not?
(Roger) You’re not in the sense that you have your own field of awareness and your own unique experience.
(George) I have many fields of awareness and my experiences are extremely broad. Still, I am here and my awareness can be tapped into, you might say, by this individual focal point of awareness, which is here seen as Carol and that point of awareness is an integral part of my beingness. My totality is inseparable from her being and accessible to her always, if she reaches out and connects with it.
“Separateness is an illusion of convenience for you here in your own time and place. It is an acquired knack to remove yourselves from larger frames of reference. You do it knowingly with specific intent and you may, always knowingly, reverse that process and rejoin the community of the greater self. It is what we (those of us in the group, everyone, All That Is?) are about; is it not?
“For many the process is limited by their concern of getting lost, being overwhelmed, forgetting the individual “them-ness” of themselves. It is a constant concern for many, and twinges of fear disturb the process of broadening awareness. The fears are residual from those basic beliefs, which have been necessary to maintain focus within this reality. But, their meaning and their need is becoming less, and this lessening creates possibilities for growth among you all.
“It is time to grow; it is time to change into those more free and unlimited beings which you truly are. Contact with your greater selves is an innovation. At first, it’s new and frightening. Perhaps to your conscious minds, however, it is a great joyful release for the deeper comprehension which has begun to feel stifled in the narrow bounds which you have placed upon it. It is this kind of urging which brings you to these groups. You seek that expansion which is rightfully your own. I am not separated from any of those individual points of consciousness which you call personalities and you, Roger, are part of that greater image which you saw.
(Roger) I would like your impression, George, on what took place, and also what the babies being lifted out of my body represent.
(George) “I do think that you have created an experience in which your aspirations are expressed, and you understand that well; however, the infants were not so much immaturities removed from your greater beingness as talents brought forth that may grow and mature. You might again create that scene if you can, and examine your feelings toward each of those beginnings of new portions of yourself. Look at them for potential and encourage their growth, if you wish. There were healthy infants brought forth, were there not?
(Roger) Yes.
(George) “I think you will find them very rewarding if you cuddle them a bit and nourish them well.”
Getting to Know My Three Babies
The morning after George expressed his thoughts about my experience, and after everyone left for work and school, instead of working on my magazine, I sat in the same spot that gave birth to my three babies. Even before I began to meditate, I felt tremendous energy within and around me. It was unbelievable! Shortly after I began to repeat my mantra, there they were, all three babies, sitting in the air in front me as if no time had passed since they were born.
After observing them for a moment, the focus of my attention settled on the female sitting in the middle. What’s your name, I thought. “Helen,” said a female voice inside my mind. Wow, all I had to do was think a question to receive an answer! It was as if our minds were directly or telepathically intertwined. Without having to consciously think the next question, I knew that Helen was the embodiment of great understanding, empathy, and love. With these qualities, I knew she would become a natural leader whether she did so intentionally or not.
Daniel sat on Helen’s left. As we observed each other, the energy coming from him spoke unmistakably of physical and moral strength, of honesty, and integrity. He was Daniel the Lion Hearted come to life!
Michael, on Helen’s right, was playful. He represented the joy and irreverence that brings a smile to everyone’s face, and laughter to every situation. His was the perspective that makes it possible to ride life with a light reign. When the going gets tough for him or others, he’s the first one to say, so what, big deal! We can do this, and if we can’t, it’s not important enough to do.
Of the three babies, Michael expressed the values I felt least comfortable with. Playfulness and joy grated against my belief in being serious about solving our “problems.” Did this mean they were the values or “talents” I needed to develop most?* I could already see Helen’s grounded, nurturing, and loving nature in myself and Daniel’s penchant for strength, honesty, and integrity but not Michael and his spontaneity, playfulness, and carefree, almost irresponsible (?), behavior. Yes, for much of my life I’ve had a tendency to be serious, critical, and stoic. From my earliest years it was my belief that there were many ways we could treat each other better than we do. For some reason, many of us choose not to. Why? It was demoralizing and frustrating to think this but, I did. I had painted myself into a dark corner and couldn’t think or imagine my way out it.
* To give you an idea of how much I needed Michael’s playful, “so what” attitude, here’s the account of a second experience, I think, amounts to a spiritual intervention, similar to the delivery of Helen, Michael, and Daniel by Robert. It’s possible that this experience under guided imagination added years to my life. Called Guided Imagination – Healing by Fire, it happened a few months before Robert delivered my three babies.
It took time but eventually I came to see as much value in Michael’s irreverent, joyful nature as Helen’s loving and Daniel’s truthful nature. Each quality or value, clarified, adds new dimension to life. Not only are values like love, truth, and joy powerful enough to stand alone, they can work together and add character and balance to the life of any individual, if that is what they want. Evidently, this is what I wanted, even though I wasn’t fully aware of it.
What I learned From Playing With Helen, Michael, and Daniel
George’s suggestion that I cuddle my babies and get to know them sounded like a great idea! Although Robert had removed them several days earlier, I felt no ill effects beyond my first thought that the act of removing them from my body or psyche must necessarily result in a feeling of loss. Think about it. How would you feel if this happened to you?
After giving myself time to digest my experience, I realized that the babies that were removed from inside me were not biological as we normally define “biological.” I couldn’t perceive them through my outer senses. I could only see them through my Inner Senses, in my own private universe of Being and Creation.* Even so, to my inner senses they were just as alive, aware, and full of energy as babies born in a hospital delivery room. So, when George suggested I get to know them better, I was ready to rock with this idea!
* In my experience, the only way two or more beings can participate in the same dream is by agreement at deeper levels of consciousness. For an example of this phenomenon, read My Mule Team – A Lucid Creation Dream. The mule team in this experience included two mules I passed every day on my bus route in northern California. One was black and one was white. The morning after my dream, both mules were standing side by side, belly to belly, just as they stood in my dream when I straddled their backs to let them carry me across a stream to keep from getting dirty and wet. As I drove by slowly, both mules and I followed each other intently as if we were all remembering our experience together from the night before. Acknowledging our shared dream from the night before in this way was awesome and electrifying!
How often do we have amazing dreams like this and forget them? Why would we want to forget something this exciting? Unless, as George says, “Separateness is an illusion of convenience for you here in your own time and place. It is an acquired knack to remove yourselves from larger frames of reference. You do it knowingly with specific intent and you may, always knowingly, reverse that process and rejoin the community of the greater self.”)
Now that I knew the names and primary values of my three babies, what was I going to do with this information? Without much thought about it, I began to make Helen, Michael, and Daniel grow older to see what kind of children and adults they would most likely become. It was fascinating! As they grew older in my imagination, I was able to see how their beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations* shaped their lives into a reality of their own making. This process worked in reverse as well. Like making a yo-yo go up and down, I could make them move back and forth between infancy and adulthood, even old age. I did this a few times and then began to worry about what kind of effect it might have on them. As adults, much of their primary values became actualized. When they returned to infancy, they were once more, babies filled with unexpressed potential.
* For more on Oversouls and exploring beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations, read: The Ball of Light – A Lucid Dream About the Nature of Being and Creation. Much of this experience took place in a high school classroom that contained a small living replica of the Earth about seven or eight feet in diameter. Toward the end of this lucid dream, my attention returned to the classroom and the globe, which had now magically become an advanced computer or psychological prop that allowed me to create other lives in other times and places, like an Oversoul. As these fragments of my personality unfolded and grew in response to the nature of their own personal beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations,** they and I were able to observe and learn from the consequences of their experiences.
** Does this suggest that ideas, like genes, duplicate themselves and become part of the developing individual? Just a thought, a new puzzle to solve. Without the ability to think and feel, to act and react, how can we become or create anything? How can we make the invisible, visible, the unknown, known? How can we create order out of chaos and make sense out of nonsense?
In my Ball of Light Dream, as each individual created and experienced their life, they were able to explore the consequences of their thoughts and feelings, their actions and reactions. When they didn’t like a particular experience they were able to change it by changing what they thought and felt, how they acted and reacted, whether they were consciously aware of it or not, just like you and me! Also, like you and me, they could paint themselves into dark corners they believed they couldn’t get out of, until they did, even if it took more than one try or many lifetimes.
The Ball of Light experience also contains examples of shape-shifting. In this lucid dream, I cycle through a series of less dense bodies, all the way to becoming pure consciousness capable of flying through the illusion of windows, rocks, and the air. In this experience, I even took up residency in a redwood tree and after that, a woman’s mind for enough peace and quiet to get some writing done. It was one heck of a trip!
Back to George
As Beings of Aware Energy, where do we begin and where do we end? – Conscious Creators
So, what does George mean when he says: “I do think that you have created an experience in which your aspirations are expressed, and you understand that well.” First, he says “you have created an experience.” Who in this material world knowingly tells us we create anything, except maybe ourselves in the privacy of our own minds?
Besides suggesting that “you have created an experience in which your aspirations are expressed,” he finishes with, “and you understand that well.” Did I knowingly create an experience in which my aspirations were expressed? Did I understand it well? Is George saying that I knew that Robert was going to enter my body and deliver three babies that represented the values of love, truth, and joy before it actually happened?
Not from my earthbound, human perspective! How does he define human life? Is he seeing us as a combination of both our inner and outer selves, inner awareness and outer awareness? I’ve established a close relationship with my inner self but it’s not like talking to another person and sharing ideas on the fly. It’s more subtle than that, being made up of a combination of inner thoughts and feelings. There are no distinct differences between us that make it easy to identify one source of information from the other, at least, not from my end of the relationship. To maintain biological integrity, however, survival depends on us being able to tell ourselves apart from other people and material objects as we go about the business of Being and Creation. In dreams and imagination, however, our lives don’t depend on making sharp delineations between us and other dream symbols. If we drive our car over a cliff or get stabbed in a fight and die in a dream, all we do is get up and do something else, like actors in a play. In human form, we die but, as multidimensional, vibrational Beings of Aware Energy, we don’t, which prompted me to write the following: Like a dream, death in one form gives birth to life in another.
Again, it’s true that I consciously participated in this experience from beginning to end. But, how aware was I of what was about to unfold each step of the way? It was a surprise to me when Robert not only walked out of the wall toward me, he turned and backed into my body! It was even more of a surprise when he started extracting babies from inside me. Where are the boundaries in our relationship, in our Being? What sets me apart from Robert and George in this matter? Is Robert the voice of my Inner Self as well as my Oversoul? All I know is that when I reach out to Robert or what I think of as my Inner Self, I start getting thoughts that are more insightful than my own. What sets us apart from anyone or anything? Is our apartness from All That Is only a matter of perception and agreement?* Are there bleed-throughs from one time to another, one life to another, one entity to another? Is separation an illusion? Wow, doesn’t that make us both cool and confusing? Yeah, it’s a little scary too! No wonder we don’t like to think about subjects like this unless circumstances force us to.
* For more on boundaries, telepathy and agreements, read Inside Ivy. Before moving to Santa Rosa in 1980, we lived in San Francisco. “Ivy” is the name I gave to an ivy plant we bought to add interest to our home. After Ivy’s vines reached the floor next to our kitchen table, we started stepping on them. To avoid injuring the plant, we moved it to the shelf at the top of the stairs under a skylight. The vines were beautiful as they trailed down the railing in the stairwell. Ivy loved it there and thrived. I loved it there as well because it made admiring the plant’s leaves so easy. Every night I would talk to the leaves as I walked up the stairs. When I reached the top of the stairs, I would rest my elbows on either side of the plant and lower my face close enough to the pot to feel its aura with my own. After saying hello to Ivy, we would…. Well, read the story.
Ultimately, our love for each other dissolved the normal barrier that existed between us and we co-mingled as pure thought, feeling, action and reaction. Even then, we knew ourselves, one from the other. It was an extraordinary experience! Inner knowing or intuitive understanding may be the reason why we all tend to talk to our plants, animals, and other things. What do you think?
One more thing. While my consciousness was entangled within Ivy’s, I learned that Ivy had values. Its primary desire was to express beauty and grace in the world, like a dog’s desire is to express love and loyalty. What values do we, as human beings, seek to express or fulfill in the world? It’s a question worth asking, isn’t it?
My Encounter With the Energy of Unconditional Love began as an experiment in telepathic communication between another driver’s higher self and me as we started up Mt. St. Helena out of Calistoga, California. I directed my questions to her higher self because I didn’t think she was open to this kind of communication. After what seemed like an imagined exchange of ideas driven by me, it became, what I would define as a genuine exchange of ideas between two separate entities, Michele’s higher self and me. After four of five genuine exchanges of ideas, the next time I reached out to ask a question, I encountered a powerful wall of energy that inserted itself between me and Michele’s higher self. Instantly, I began sobbing uncontrollably and had no idea why I was sobbing.
The first two times I made contact with the Energy of Unconditional Love, I had no idea of what it was. Confusing? Yeah! All I knew was that, whatever it was, it made me snap back from it as if I had just touched a searing hot flame with my hand. It was an overwhelming feeling! Every time I felt it, I broke out into sobs. Even though it felt like some kind of release, it was perplexing. Before I reached out to make contact with this wall of energy a third time, I made up my mind to stay with it until I knew for sure what it was. Once I knew that it was the Energy of Unconditional Love, I realized that my Inner Self knew what it was all along.
Why, then, did George, in this situation, say to the outer me, that “you have created an experience in which your aspirations are expressed, and you understand that well?” Did he say it because my Inner Self knew what was going on before I did? From his perspective is he including anything my inner self knows as something I know? If this is so, I’m not sure I agree with this idea. What about you? The separation between my inner and outer self seems pretty complete to me. Even though I try to keep one foot in inner reality and one in outer reality to monitor the energy flowing between the two, the difference between them is not always clear.
To learn more about the Energy of Unconditional Love, read about my experience above. It’s an extraordinary one. It seems many people who find themselves deeply confused and hurt by life are invited to experience the Healing Power of Unconditional Love. However, it was such a powerful, noisy, and intense experience for me, some people might be concerned about letting themselves experience it. By reading about mine and other people’s experiences (read Jay’s Story and do a browser search), perhaps more people will be able to experience the Healing Power of Unconditional Love while they’re still here in human form. To give you a hand with this, read Exploring the Nature of Unconditional Love Through Guided Imagination. It will help you see yourself and the world through the thoughts and feelings of Unconditional Love.
Exploring differences in the Oneness of All That Is creates you and me! – Conscious Creators
Did Robert Perform an Intervention?
Did Robert see an imbalance in my character or psychological makeup that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for me to fulfill my desire to create a meaningful theory of Being and Creation? Did he provide me with a helping hand? By placing the energy of love, truth, and joy outside my body in the form of living babies and all that they symbolize, was he telling me that these particular values were important to any kind of change in myself and maybe, the world? What do you think?*
* The story, Why I Was Pursued in Dream After Dream by a Golem, is also similar in nature to this one. While Robert focused my attention on the development of values like love, truth, and joy, the Golem in my Golem dreams represented the strength and determination needed to overcome the challenge of performance anxiety (who am I to think I can develop a more meaningful understanding of the nature of Being and Creation? Can I do this?). Procrastination, or fear of repudiation, would paralyze my thinking for hours as I sat in my room trying to make the unknown, known, the invisible, visible, as I attempted to create order out of chaos and make sense out of nonsense. Understanding and writing about things that conflict with accepted belief is challenging and frightening, which may explain why so many of us spend so much of our time in a state of mental paralysis, treading water, or denying the need to wake up, wise up, and rise up to greater understanding.
Fear and self-doubt express themselves in many ways. In the past, I’ve had many dreams of building bridges across chasms. The only problem with my bridges was that they ended up with lots of holes in them that I would fall into or through. With these holey bridges, I could never get from one side of a chasm to the other.
It was at once challenging and frustrating because the symbolic message hidden in these bridge dreams kept telling me that the framework of my understanding was far from being fully developed. However, after each frustrating dream, I felt a little stronger and a little more determined to keep on keeping on. You’re familiar with this reaction aren’t you? In some dreams, roofs would become steeper to dump me off and, in still others, I would drive off or, if I was walking, I would fall off the side of a road or path into a ditch. When I tried to get back up to the road or path, the shoulder sand would become steeper and deeper, making it impossible for me to get back on the road or path. These efforts were extremely tiring and depressing. Do you remember having dreams like these? I would guess they’re pretty common.
Before we go any deeper into a discussion about the meaning and importance of love, truth, and joy, let me share an excerpt from my evolving theory of Being and Creation with you. It will help you understand where I’m coming from. In this theory, I replace the word life with the dual concepts of Being and Creation. Why? Put your psychic detective hat on and read the following excerpt from, In the Beginning There Was Nothing.
In the Beginning There Was Nothing
(This is my personal theory about how All That Is began and how It continues to Be and Create itself. From my perspective, it’s what works best and makes me happiest in my oneness with and separation from All That Is – as both a product of creation and creation itself.)
In the beginning, there was nothing – until Nothing realized it was Something! After all, how can nothing exist without Something to define it? Sound hokey? Yeah! But it makes sense to me, so I’m stickin to it! Suddenly, with this one shocking revelation, nothing, which was now both Nothing and Something, came to life, making it possible for Anything and Everything to exist!
This profound event can be defined as the Birth of Original Thought, the Divine Spark of Creation, the First Vibration of Awareness and Action, the First Impulse to Be and Create, the First Response to the Promise of Being and Creation, the Birth of Unconditional Love, the Birth of All That Is, the Birth of One and Zero (1 and 0, on and off, yes and no, oneness and individuality, self and other), the Birth of God, Allah, or the concept of a Supreme Being.
We can also think of this defining moment as the Birth of Consciousness or Aware Energy, whose nature it is to conceive and perceive – to think, feel, act and react. In theory, it was, and is, ALL these things and more, including the moment Aware Energy or Consciousness learned how to condense a portion of itself into what we, in human form, call “matter.”
Even from a human perspective, “matter” is an illusion formed by thought and feeling, action and reaction. According to scientific research, a hydrogen atom is 99.9999999999996% empty space. Why don’t we fall right through each other? Because electrostatic fields that attract and repulse each other provide our biological senses with the illusion of density or “solid” matter.
To borrow the immortal words of Neil Armstrong and the US Space Administration, accepting the idea that Energy possesses Awareness, or Awareness possesses Energy, “is one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.”
Got your Einstein detective hat on? Consider this: without Energy or the power to act, how can Awareness know and express itself? And without the presence of Awareness, what defines and creates a need for Energy? Doesn’t one need the other for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to exist?
To cast off the cloak of limiting, earthbound thinking and open our hearts and minds to greater awareness and understanding, let’s start by asking ourselves a few questions. For example, what are thoughts? Where do they come from and where do they go? What are feelings? Where do they come from and where do they go? Where is the “you” that existed two minutes ago? Where did it go and in what form does it exist now? Where is the “you” that will appear two minutes from now? In what form does it exist before it becomes “you” in the present? What about the earth? Outside of Now, in what form does it exist?
Let’s assume for the moment that every “thing,” including every human being, is a Multidimensional, Vibrational Being of Aware Energy suspended in an infinite field of Aware Energy. How does it feel to be a self-aware “I Am” within your body, mind and All That Is? What does it tell us about ourselves? What does it tell you about yourself?
As a Multidimensional, Vibrational Being of Aware Energy, how would you describe your experience in Being and Creation? To give you a nudge, here’s how I define my experience in Being and Creation:
- I think, feel, act and react; therefore, I AM. (expanded version of “I think therefore I am” by Rene Descartes)
- As I think, feel, act and react (conceive and perceive), I create.
- To change what I create, I change what I think and feel, how I act and react.
- As a Multidimensional, Vibrational Being of Aware Energy, I am both one with and separate from All That Is. I am not only a product of creation; I am creation itself!
- The self (the thinking, feeling, choice-making and action-taking intermediary between inner reality, the body, and outer reality, the “I Am” of what and who I am) is my seat of power.
- The present is my point of power.
- Being and creating what I value is the promise of power.
- Being and Creation are the manifestations of power.
- Being and Creation make the invisible, visible, the unknown, known, driven by the impulse to create order out of chaos and make sense out of nonsense.
To Be, we must create. To create, we must Be.
One creates the other in endless entanglement.
Whether we are individual Aware Energy or Consciousness Units (AEUs or CU’s) or complex gestalts (organizations) of AEUs, like human beings, it works the same. To create what we want, the outer self, ego, or self-identity, pushed from within by the Impulse to Be and Create and drawn from without by the Promise of Being and Creation, the Beating Heart of Consciousness, must learn the difference between what it likes and doesn’t like, what works for it and what doesn’t, what makes it happy and what doesn’t. In other words, to create what we want, we must know what we don’t want.*
* Excerpt from We Create Our Own Reality:
The challenge of Being and Creation is learning how to use the power of thought and imagination to shape energy, money included, into a pleasing reality. The prize is a sense of satisfaction, the feeling of a job well done. Like learning how to walk or talk, it is a personal, subjective endeavor that requires creative aggression. It is a great balancing act that makes falling part of learning how to stand.
Remember:
Thoughts are “things” with a reality of their own and each of us, an artist. With thoughts in the form of beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations, we paint the landscape of our lives. Create a great day!
The value of an idea is in the reality it creates – Conscious Creators
If thoughts, in the form of beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations, create our reality, don’t we want our children to know and understand this? Don’t we all want to know and understand this? Like us, how can they improve themselves or their behavior if they don’t look for or see the connection between what they think and do, and their experiences in life? Letting others think for us may be necessary for a while but isn’t developing the ability to think for ourselves, a natural step in our evolution? Overcoming fear, uncertainty, conflict and limitation is not easy but without the ability or desire to develop greater awareness and understanding, how can we become what we value most? How can we become our true selves, the selves we love to be?*
* In My Recurring Superman Nightmare, I relived the same frightening dream over and over again until I learned what it was trying to teach me. It began to occur when I was eleven and continued to repeat itself at least once a year into my mid-forties. Finally, I had enough and did something about it. The last time my Frankenstein monster, which, to me, symbolized the combined power of all the earth’s major belief systems, reached up to grab my ankle, I turned and knocked him off the side of the building we were climbing. Until this moment, my reaction had always been to wake up in bed just before his hand was about to grab me. Phew, I’m glad that’s over!
Understanding the nature of Being and Creation is the Ultimate Frontier! – Conscious Creators
As my thinking about the nature of Being and Creation evolves, I’ve come to believe that, ultimately, judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, enforced by the shame of guilt and fear of punishment, were meant to be temporary. Eventually, like children everywhere, it seems natural to think that our purpose, as children, is to outgrow the need for “parental” control. What do you think?
I’ve always been unhappy with the bullying, oppressive nature of authoritarianism, competition, comparison and value judgment. Part of me knew it was time to outgrow this phase of development. Maybe you do too! Value judgment is fear-inducing and it makes us look for the worst in ourselves.* It is, by design, meant to control us from the outside-in as if we’re children. It’s possible this is a stage all consciousness must confront and overcome. What do you think?
* If you haven’t already, read What I Learned in Catholic School. It’s a great example of bullying and oppression. Why is it thought to be necessary by some? Can it be that exercising power and control over others we make ourselves “feel” like we’re Somebody, in the absence of the belief that we’re already somebody? Think about it! If you can be convinced that you’re born “bad” and you can’t trust yourself, who’s left to trust? Isn’t it those closest to “God” and His authority? And by association, doesn’t this include government and business officials, parents, teachers and persons with a difference in age, education, looks, sex, race or some other distinguishing factor that can be used to exercise power or leverage over others in a competitive, judgmental world?
Can the root cause of this impulse be tracked back to the Beginning when Nothing was still nothing; to that point before nothing realized it was Something? Does the idea of being “nothing” or “nobody” trigger fear or uncertainty in you? If you’re nothing or nobody, how can you be Someone or Somebody unless you can make others feel as if they’re something less than you? How can you develop power and a sense of control over the expression of your life without making others dependent upon you for their guidance and direction?
Unhappy with this authoritarian system of ideas plagued by conflict and limitation, I began to look for an alternative worldview. There was no way I was going to sit down, shut up, and do as I was told without question when I’d much rather, wake up, wise up, and rise up to greater understanding! If I’m going to be forced to accept full responsibility for the consequences of my thoughts and actions, I want the freedom to choose what to believe about myself and All That Is. I want the freedom to learn the difference between what I like and don’t like, what works for me and what doesn’t, what makes me happy and what doesn’t, in my oneness with and separation from All That Is – as both a product of creation and creation itself.
What I Learned in Catholic School and My Recurring Superman Nightmare, were eye openers for me! It’s important to note that both my recurring superman nightmare and Robert’s dramatic emphasis on the importance of values like love, truth, and joy, resulted from inner awareness and interaction, not just earthbound awareness and interaction. By acknowledging our oneness with, as well as our separation from All That Is, we make it possible to develop and utilize a more personal relationship with Greater Consciousness. We get to explore the difference between our oneness with and separation from All That Is.
Instead of being limited to looking for answers from other people, we get to consult with the universe of All That Is in our search for better answers and greater understanding. Similarly, by acknowledging that we’re not only products of creation; we’re creation itself, we get to explore the differences between these two extremes. We get to explore what it’s like to be a product of creation as well as what it’s like to be a creator of change. Isn’t this cool? Who doesn’t want greater understanding than they have now?
For more on this subject, read the full version of my theory when it becomes available. These are the ideas that work best and make me happiest. Why? Because I can test them out in the laboratory of my own life, and they answer all my questions, not just a few. I’m fussy about that. And, oh yes, it’s a living document that lives, loves, learns and evolves forever, just like you and me! And like you and me, it’s never done.
The entrance to the Department of Humanities and Sciences off the Main Quad at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. The motto, Seek the greatest understanding and serve the highest good, and the Conscious Creators logo, have been digitally superimposed above the school entrance.
Every thought is a suggestion, a blueprint for action. In a universe of Aware Energy, spontaneity, limitless creativity, oneness with and separation from All That Is, the impulse to seek greater understanding and serve a higher good is necessary to make the unknown, known, the invisible, visible, to create order out of chaos and make sense out of nonsense. At first, it doesn’t matter whether we’re consciously aware of what we’re doing or not but, eventually, we feel the need to become more conscious of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. It’s natural for Aware Energy or Consciousness, to grow and build upon itself. You could say that, individually and together, we are forever God becoming.
Play with the ideas, seek the greatest understanding and serve the highest good! What do they know that you don’t? Explore their promise. Take them for a test drive. When you think of what it means to seek the greatest understanding and serve the highest good, what possibilities and probabilities can you imagine? How does the idea of becoming a more conscious creator of your reality feel? You may already suspect that you create your own reality from what you believe about yourself and All That Is but would you dare to stand up in front of an audience and declare out loud that you create your own reality? It’s the same with love. Can you honestly say to yourself and the world that, “I love myself” and mean it?
Practice! To replace old ideas that no longer work for us with new ones that do takes practice. The first time I said “I love myself” to myself, my reaction was, “yeah, right!” I couldn’t feel a smidgeon of love for myself. But, as I kept repeating it over time, my mind began to find reasons to love myself, and by association, love others. Think about how that can improve your relationship with others as well as yourself.
Sure, there may be things we don’t like about ourselves and each other at this moment but they’re usually “small,” and small things can be changed. Condemning a whole person is another matter. A whole person is extraordinarily complex and impossible to change all at once. When we ask, what’s wrong with you to someone else or, what’s wrong with me to ourselves, when what we’re really upset about is something small and improvable, it is unrealistic and unfair. Condemning the whole person for something small and specific, whether it’s you or someone else, makes it difficult to forgive them. It makes it difficult to forgive ourselves.* It makes it difficult to live, love, learn and evolve.
Forgiveness knows we’re doing the best we can with what we know and learning more to do better. – Conscious Creators
* For the story on how forgiveness resolved the lifelong strain between my parents and I, read, The Healing Power of Forgiveness. It describes how forgiveness turns anger, misunderstanding, and hate into love. During meditation in the mid 1980’s, I began to think about all the reasons my parents and I were unhappy with each other. To be honest, a large part of the conflict existed between my stepfather and I. There was a long list of things both my parents did that caused me pain and distress and many things they didn’t do that made me feel unwanted and unloved. Fortunately or unfortunately, it works in both directions. There were many things I did that made life difficult for my parents.
During meditation, instead of thinking about all the things I didn’t like about our relationship, I began to think about all the things I did like, which included the clothing, the shelter, the food, the animals, the gardens and the boats. Then I began to think about my own behavior as a parent and all the times it felt like I was failing my children, my wife, and myself.
The more honest I became with myself and the more my perspective expanded, the more I could see that life is a challenge for everyone and everything. Once I realized this and understood that it was as true for my parents as it was for me and everyone else, all the anger and contempt I had carried around within me all those years, melted away in forgiveness.
Filling the void left behind was the energy of love. In that moment, it occurred to me that, we’re all doing the best we can with what we know and learning more to do better. And, if we’re all doing the best we can with what we know and learning more to do better, what more can we ask of ourselves or each other? Really!
All in this Together – Partners in Evolution
By Roger A. “Pete” Peterson – realtalkworld.com
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ― R. Buckminster Fuller
What others will not or cannot do for us, we must do for ourselves.
Wake up, wise up, and rise up to greater understanding!
Affirm what you believe!
