Spiritual Awareness, an Awakened Journey Towards Enlightenment series

By
Steve Robertson
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SPIRITUAL AWARENESS, an Awakened Journey Towards Enlightenment series. 

Question? What stops you from being powerful and creating the life you most desire.  Read ahead and get a glimpse.  More importantly, learn how to empower yourself to bring your most dreamed of possibilities into reality.

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Spiritual awareness often begins at the point where our inner thoughts reflectively seek meaning in the external world of a dramatic situation. Each inward thought process offers the opportunity to transform unconscious perception into awakened vision. Such clarity eventually creates the understanding that we are always, consciously or unconsciously, choosing and co-creating our existence and the realities around us.

Most people tend to live their lives as though they are sleepwalking in a fog bank. They grope for direction and meaning while frequently and painfully stubbing their toes on the hidden potholes of life’s dramas. Life appears to happen randomly, and from these beliefs, it is easy to see ourselves, as the victim of circumstance. As a result, one tends to live their lives in a state of reaction rather than a response.

Life from this perspective can, at times, seem like a constant barrage of painful experiences, each of which seemingly validates that we are not in control of our own destiny. It becomes easy to imagine unforeseen forces that plot against the joy we most want. Life from this challenging perspective tends to run its course until the day that enough pain and negativity has stacked up and, like the last straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back, the sleepwalker wakes up and boldly declares “Enough… That is it… NO, I’m not taking this anymore. I’m done with this.” Any number of infinite life lessons around the subjects of romance, parents, siblings, children, money, career, health, home, responsibility, recovery, you name it, can trigger the opportunity for an awakening and/or spiritual breakthrough.

In truth, the declaration of “NO” begins our first baby step in proclaiming our clarity about what we do not want to create so that we give ourselves a clearer pathway to understanding and claiming what we DO WANT TO CREATE. This moment of truth prompts a courageous stand from which one resolves to face what may be their greatest fear. Regardless of what instigates the declaration, it appears that this courageous stand opens a momentary space of grace from which the proverbial sleepwalker’s head now pops up out of the fog bank of emotional pain and suffering.

With one’s head now above the fog bank, and looking beyond, the sleepwalker now sees with clearer vision. They sense, with great excitement, new possibilities. Pain and suffering has been replaced by peace and insight. To the ego (our fearfully-attached part of consciousness) such moments of awakened insight creates a signal of alert that suffering will soon be released and that with this, a wise new vision will soon replace and be anchored in its place.

Attentive to its job, the ego quickly shifts into high gear in order to neutralize such a transformational awareness, for its’ life existence literally depends on it. The ego’s neutralizing strategy is accomplished through redirecting attention back at the original unresolved pain and fear that had eventually prompted a determined moment of awakening. Once consciousness is turned and prompted back towards fear, the tactic is to replay the painful experience over and over again until an attachment and suffering reoccur. Does this sound familiar?

“It is your attachments that causes your suffering” Buddha 

Not to blame, the ego is doing its job of self-preservation, for it knows once full awareness or enlightenment is achieved, it ceases to exist. So, prepared for such moments, the ego has strategically projected our deepest fears (not being loved or finding love, failing, not being successful, etc.) into the future. The ego, which has harvested all of our prior fearful thoughts, words, and actions, has placed them there. These future fears are at the command of ego and they await its order to be released, collide with and obliterate our newly-awakened insight. Our collected fears sit in waiting like a metaphorical and metaphysical kitchen sink that is clogged with our drama.

At the time of our new awareness, a choice has sparked a new sense of peace and joyful perception. With this, the ego now calls for the release of our fears, and like a mighty slingshot,  the drama-filled kitchen sink is now launched back toward us at warp speed. Quickly, the fearful and attached part of the mind reacts and redirects our attention. We were once at peace, in the moment, and our head above the drama (fog bank); however, now our attention is turned to the concern of an object that is moving dangerously at us from a distance. As kitchen sink draws nearer we sense its high rate of speed and a pending threat. As it gets ever closer it appears to be on a collision course with our head, which now rests just safely above the fog bank. As it draws even closer we prepare for impact.

As the kitchen sink approaches closer and closer, so also does our survival center alarm: “Danger: Kitchen sink coming at the head at warp speed, prepare to duck.” As it reaches the point of near impact, we instinctively duck. Instantly, we notice we are alive and that our head, which once rested peacefully above the fog bank, is now back (body and all) in the same landscape of drama and suffering of the past.

Again, our life slips back into a familiar and unpleasant groove, and these situations reach another prompting point of change. Fortunately, our lessons learned to aid us in reducing our suffering, and this time we move quickly to declare, “No, I’m really, really done with this situation this time.” Again, instantaneously, we find our awareness/head has popped out of the fog bank of emotional pain and suffering. The renewed perspective is as we remembered: peaceful, full of hope and possibilities.

Again, the ego mind immediately jumps into action and our mind becomes momentarily distracted by the memory of the kitchen sink, its possible return and the experience of dropping back into the fog bank. More consciously, we begin to recall that in the past and at the fearful moment the kitchen sink had almost hit us that we chosen duck to avoid the collision. We also vividly remember that at the moment we ducked we also dropped back down into the fog bank and returned to suffering. Inwardly, we courageously commit that we will not duck if the sink comes again.

As the thought of this new conviction passes, the sink, in fact, does reappear and rapidly approaches on course with our head. However, this time, and just before an apparent impact we choose to hold true to our commitment and we do not duck.  Instead, we choose to blink our eyes. In a nanosecond, we again find ourselves back in the fog bank of our drama and suffering.

The groove of our drama now seems deeper and more painful, yet our awareness is now peaked and accompanied by a resolve to end the suffering as quickly as possible. We will no longer allow our drama to chain the freedom that lifts our fearful perceptions into loving vision. As our life situation boils again to another quick point of clarity we proclaim, “No, No, NO I’m really, really, really done with this… this time.”

Again, as if by a miracle, we find our head above the turmoil and glimpse an even greater beauty and peace than we had prior seen or experienced. As we bathe in the experience of this moment, we again become mindful of our once-projected fears now returning in a collision course with our present time awareness.  These fears, as embodied in the kitchen sink, now materializes once more.  As it draws ever nearer and in a reflective pause, we recall from our lessons and clarity that both ducking and blinking (avoiding the confrontation of our fear) had caused us to return back to the fog bank of drama and suffering.

With lessons learned we now draw from an even deeper courage and conviction. We vow to ourselves that we will not duck or blink in the face of fear, even if it means losing our head and life. We confirm in a valiant surrender that if the kitchen sink were to hit us and literally take our head off, we will not even flinch. As quickly as this thought passes, the sink appears out of nowhere and is clearly on a direct course of impact with our head. Firmly we hold to our resolve, and just at the moment of pending impact, we watch as the sink just vaporizes. We now understand that our fears have been and always are illusions.

Instantly, we now discover that our entire body has popped out of the fog bank. With our greatest fear now faced, our breakthrough realized and an even greater vision of possibilities on the horizon, we now more fully own our courage and triumphantly declare: “I take full responsibility for my co-creativity and from this moment forward I WILL choose to create from ONLY what I DO WANT LOVINGLY TO EXPERIENCE.”

Ultimately, it is the courage to confront and journey towards our greatest fears is what empowers us to claim our hero within, to choose another way and create breakthrough realizations that reveal the kingdom of our enlightenment within. Onward, courageous heroes!

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” Patañjali, the compiler of the Yoga Sutras (Sanskrit: 150 BCE)

Suggested Exercises

For the next two days become very present to painful experiences and people that seem to continually show up in your life. Write these down as each thought or situation occur.

Observe how each situation makes you feel: tired, negative, repelled, jealous, envious, judging, reactive etc. It could be a phrase that someone says to you or about something you find that causes pain or irritation.

Write all of this down. Reflect on how often this same or very similar situation appears to show up in your life. Commit to facing your fears around this subject matter and to do so with clarity, love and courage. RESPOND to this commonly occurring theme in your life in a way that is opposite from how you would normally, from the ego’s reactive and fearful state, react.

Be loving and courageous in facing each these issues that you fear. Write each item of attention down and then immediately do the Ho’oponopono four (4) times on each subject matter. This will empower you to release, dissolve the hot rock of suffering and co-create from a new and more empowered vision of possibilities.

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