Showing posts with label Upset Clearing Process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Upset Clearing Process. Show all posts

Saturday, July 6, 2024

Never Let Your Guard Down

Never Let Your Guard Down

By Steve Beckow

Posted on July 6, 2024


A graphic from my Dad’s “storyboard” or life story


Growing up under a parent who served in the Second World War offered its challenges to me. Discipline was the back of the hand. I may as well have been in boot camp.

I was a lazy no-good good-for-nothing because I liked to read rather than swim and golf and play tennis.

At this very moment, I’m in the midst of a most welcome and long-overdue breakthrough around my relationship with my Dad.

Until now I’ve always considered that I needed to love my Dad. Take him with me. Talk to him.

I could never “get” this. I didn’t feel love for my Dad. It was definitely a bridge too far.

And then, this morning, in the shower – out of reach of my computer! – I got it. I didn’t need to love my Dad. What I do best is to listen. I can listen to my Dad.

I’m not saying Dad talked. The words formed in my mind. And the pictures.

I saw a fireman in the hold of a merchant vessel in World War 2, sailing the Atlantic knowing full well that, if a torpedo hit, it’d be highly unlikely that anyone in the bowels of the ship would survive.

Dad was all about survival. And conspicuous survival was even better. I get why he was that way now.  “Look at me! I made it. Despite the odds. Despite no one believing in me.”

His Dad was violent with him.  He did a “storyboard” of his life once and one of the graphics was a frightened child saying, “What did I do now?” (See graphic above.) That said a lot.

His Dad finally kicked him out, probably as his own dad had done to Grandpa. (1) My Dad rode the rails, spent a night in jail, and then was back on the rails again. He worked his way up from what he probably considered to be nothing to owner of a company and moderately wealthy. He’d show his Dad that he was a worthy man, not like his youngest, the no-good good-for-nothing who just lay around reading books.

I did not want to be a father because the only movies I had in my head were movies of my own father. And who wanted to pass those along? I was determined to stop what Michael called “legacy behavior.” The way to do that was to not be a father.

Wow. I feel the first degree of release on this one – the truth will set you free. I’m still aware that there’s more holding in my solar plexus, my hara center.

Dad’s favorite sayings were things like “you have to keep your guard up. Never let your guard down. You can’t trust anyone,” etc.  Our family may as well have been on a wartime footing long, long after the war was over.

Yes, this is the appropriate way for me to handle this persistent vasana of father hatred. I have no trouble listening.  Probably when I hear more of his situation, the love may start to trickle.

Just a little. … Never let your guard down….

Footnotes

(1) Because Grandpa left home and migrated from Russia to America. It may have been opportunity or he may have been kicked out of the nest.



Steve Beckow


Thursday, August 17, 2023

Set in His Ways? Must be His Cast of Mind

Set in His Ways?

Must be His Cast of Mind

By Steve Beckow

Posted on August 17, 2023


What is my cast of mind?

I follow the path of awareness, as you know. The basic agreement is to remain aware of yourself and to share your awareness, responsibly and truthfully, with others.

That’s a good part of what I do here:  Go up with everyone else and share my Ascension journey. Michael calls it “Everyman.” (1) I’m sharing what I become aware of.

Consequently, as you might expect, I’ve been sitting here examining my way of being with people.

Kat once suggested I needed more honey and less vinegar. That was good advice.

But I wasn’t able to put my finger on what exactly was being pointed at and then, as reliable as Old Faithful, I got: “It’s your cast of mind.”

Cast of mind? Chrikey, I wish I’d thought of that myself.  Thank you, inspiring angel. (2)

Cast of mind. Good lord. Doesn’t that say it all?

A cast – we pour the plaster into a mold – and it sets. We want it to set forever. If it does we’ve disposed of the matter and move on.

However gradually we become “set in our ways.”

This is no different than me saying how the twig is bent, the tree inclines. (Relating to vasanas or core issues.) (3)

We then forget about the mold we’ve cast. It becomes part of the background of obviousness, to use Werner Erhard’s insightful words. We are genuinely set in our ways.

Where is my favorite shot of the old man, nodding in his rocking chir, set in his ways:

All we have left is our vasanas.

Kat was pointing at my cast of mind. And I do see it now. I am more vinegary than sweet.

I’m much more of a warrior than a diplomat.   I know I need to abandon it at some point. But scrapping for me is like a fix. Chrikey, I like to fight.

I just flashed on me and so many not-fights during karate times.

Other people would trade words. I’d say, come on. Let’s fight. And people would immediately back away.

I’ve been in two confrontations on the bus in the last two years or so (in defense of myself or others) and in both the other man backed down.  I was so looking forward to it.

My Dad used to say I had a chip on my shoulder. Well, yah. A survivor of an endless cycle of abuse. Yah.

Belligerent, looking for a fight. There, wherever the action is. I used to think of myself as a global policeman.

I wasn’t able to do much when I was a young child and my Dad was beating my Mom but I have enough energy now for anyone who’s beating on someone else that I could clean the world.

This is my cast of mind.

And all of this has to go….

***

What do we do with a cast of mind when it ceases to be useful and becomes counter-productive?

We break the mold.

We can do it ourselves or we can allow the forces of karma to do it for us, so to speak.

What is my cast of mind? Grand motif? (4) Always-already listening?

How do I break the mold?

Footnotes

(1) Archangel Michael: There is much to be said for Everyman, and that is part of the role you play. Yes, you are a pillar [here till the end]. You are an anchor. You’re [a monitor] but you’re also playing the role of Everyman – with curiosity, with exploration, with insight. So our desire is not to separate you from the collective. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Nov. 11, 2015.) (Hereafter AAM.)

(2)  Archangel Michael: Know that I am right next to you. Sometimes I am typing, sometimes I am moving your pen, always I am whispering in your ear. (AAM, Nov. 21, 2012.)

(3) See Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R3.pdf

(4) “My grand motif is: ‘You can’t trust anyone.’” It’s also my always-already listening. See “The Grand Motif,” 

Download The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Purpose-of-Life-is-Enlightenment-3.pdf

Download Vasanas: Preparing for Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R4.pdf

 

Steve Beckow

Thursday, August 10, 2023

How do I Feel after the Storm Subsides?

How do I Feel after the Storm Subsides?

Posted by Steve Beckow

on August 10, 2023


Well, no, not this! This is the storm.


My experience of dismay continues. (1)

As I remained with it and interacted with other people, I noticed a companion feeling to dismay and that was one of dread.

Boy, are deep-seated matters coming up now or what?

I have a dentist appointment at 3:30 today and I’m dreading not being ready for it.

I have several other things to get done and I’m dreading forgetting something.

Dread, dread, dread … I go around dreading something.

It’s not hard to see what it is – the back of my Dad’s hand, his putdowns, or his orders.  I lived in dread of the kick under the table, the angry outburst, etc.

I’m feeling Michael’s signal for “yes” go off repeatedly.  I’d best keep experiencing this….

The memories flood back.

I used to think of my Dad as a shark, who’d eat anyone when angered. He once rushed at the three of us with a knife raised over his head. My brother wrestled it out of his hand and threw him down the basement stairs. That was the end of that.

All of these memories arise. The experience needs to be at least seen and at best re-experienced to be released.

When I think of my dad, the only face I see, again and again, is a gif of him getting mad.  EBS going off. All bets are off. Everybody head for the hills.

I can breathe again.  A layer of muscular tension has lifted. I’m repeating myself but the truth has set me free. I need to keep emphasizing that as one of two principles that underlie this work. (2) The second principle is what you resist persists; what you re-experience disappears. (3)

And here is the ultimate irony of all this. How do I feel after the storm subsides? How do I feel as I release myself from traps I set for myself perhaps sixty-five years ago?  How, after a monumental piece of work, do I feel?

I feel normal.

Normal.

What does that say?

Footnotes

(1) See “Reminiscence Interrupted – Part 2/2,” 

(2) See Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R3.pdf

(3) With acknowledgment on this subject to Werner Erhard.

Steve Beckow

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Bent Twigs Incline Trees

Bent Twigs Incline Trees

by Steve Beckow

Posted on July 26, 2023

 


When I look back on the differences between my father’s WWII generation and my own, their Depression and then their war experiences seem to have colored their demeanor.

Disciplined, cooperative, focused on a goal that everyone could get behind, they loved nothing more than to get together after work and cajole and reminisce.

They swaggered and lived in their stories. As far as they were concerned, what they achieved in the war was the pinnacle of their lives.

And it may very well have been.

And I don’t blame them. My Dad risked his life every day in the belly of a ship. No chance for survival if a torpedo hit.

What they knew about relationship they learned from the boys or from the services.

At night, I’d hear all the other boys on the block getting whacked by their sergeant-majors … uhhh, fathers. How could men who fought for liberty come home and enforce their will upon their children? That always escaped me.

They didn’t seem concerned with the Big Questions. They seemed just to want to live and enjoy life. The American Dream was born.

***

I’d have to leave it to someone else to describe some of the traits of my own generation, the boomers. Whatever I said about it would be heavily self-serving.

By the time historians turn to it, it won’t be necessary. We’ll have devices that will allow us to view historic events as they happened. (They already exist on the astral planes.) (1)

What did I learn from all that? I came out in favor of the underdog. I learned to respect free will. And I resolved that I was going to stop the intergenerational transfer of atrocious qualities (Michael calls them “learned lineage behaviours”) (2)  in my family.

Emergence from plotting, manipulating, and enforcing was my aim growing up. Fortunately at the same time I was emerging, we had the growth movement. I was able to benefit from encounter groups, est Trainings, and enlightenment intensives to expedite that process.

***

It wasn’t until I saw the purpose of life, on Feb. 13, 1987, (3) and came to know what love is, on March 13, 2015, (4) that all the suffering in our lives began to make sense to me.

With the vision of the purpose of life, I now knew where all this was going, where it was not going, and what my task in relation to it was.

The purpose? We travel from God to God for a fateful meeting. When we realize ourselves, God meets God. And for that meeting was all of this made.

My job is to do what I just did: Write about it!

With the heart opening, I had a taste of what awaited us at journey’s end. Just a hint. I see a Walt Disney chef flashing the OK sign and saying, between two fingers, “A soupçon!”

I’ve said repeatedly that my life started at that moment.  Think Scrooge on Christmas Day!  I got it! I got it! THIS is what we’re all looking for! And all we want to do when we find it is share it.

When I look back and ask myself, why all the suffering? I recall the story of the owner of the Hard Rock Cafe, asking his guru why it was necessary for him to suffer so many deaths in his family. The guru answered, “To open your heart.”

OK, I get that too. And it did. Hopefully it opened it enough to turn me into a useful humanitarian philanthropist.

***

Whenever I feel that love, my qualms and complaints disappear in an instant. But I’m weeping now when I look back on all my fumbling efforts, angry behavior, disappointment, and insularity.

All because of my wrong choices when growing up in the war zone my early family was. Vasanas (core issues) – bent twigs incline trees…. (5)

When I finish forgiving the outside world for imagined wrongs, I’ll have much to forgive in myself.

Footnotes

(1) All the quotes that follow are available in New Maps of Heaven at https://goldengaiadb.com/index.php?title=New_Maps_of_Heaven.

This is just one type of museum exhibit in the Higher Summerlands, Astral Planes:

“At length a blue mist began to fill the central space. Then a ray of light swept round the hall and rested on the globe which represented the earth. As it hovered about it the sphere appeared to absorb the ray and became luminous, and, after a time, the ray being withdrawn, we saw the earth globe was shining as if from within. Then another ray was sent on to it of a deeper and different kind and the globe slowly left the pedestal, or pivot, or whatever it rested on and began to float out from the wall.

“As it approached the centre of the space it entered the blue mist and immediately on contact began to enlarge until it became a great sphere glowing with its own light and floating in the blue space. It was exceedingly beautiful. Slowly, very slowly, it revolved on its own axis, evidently in the same way the earth does and we were able to see the oceans and continents. These were flat patterns, like those on the terrestrial globes used on earth. But as it revolved they began to assume a different aspect.

“The mountains and hills began to stand out and the waters to sway and ripple: and presently we saw minute models of the cities, and even details of the buildings. And still more detailed grew the model of the earth till we could see the people themselves, first the crowds and then the individuals. This will be hard for you to understand, that on a globe of some perhaps eighty to a hundred feet in diameter we are able to see individual men and animals. But that is part of the science of this institution – the enabling of these details being seen individually.

“Still more distinct grew these wonderful scenes, and, as the globe revolved, we saw men hurrying about the cities and working in the fields. We saw the wide spaces of prairie and desert and forest and the animals roaming in them. And as the globe slowly circled we saw the oceans and the seas, some placid and the others tossing and roaring, and here and there a ship. And all the life of earth passed before our eyes….

“Soon the scenes began to change on the revolving sphere and we were taken back thousands of years of the life of the earth and the generations of men and animals and plant life which had been from the present to the ages when men were just emerging from the forest to settle in colonies on the plains. … When we had satisfied our eyes for a while, the globe gradually became smaller and smaller and floated back to the niche in the wall and then the light faded out from it and it looked like an alabaster carving, just as we had seen it at first, set there as an ornament.” (The mother of G. Vale Owen quoted in Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, Many Mansions. (London, etc.: Rider and Co., n.d. , 57-9.)

In the libraries are books by famous people, in which they correct earthly accounts and say what really happened. Monsignor Hugh Benson tells us that:

“The histories of nations and events [are there], with the facts set down in strict accordance with the absolute truth written by men who now find that equivocation is impossible.” (Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson through Anthony Borgia, medium, Life in the World Unseen. M.A.P., 1993, 118.)

“The reader would be able to gain, for the first time, the truth about the history of his country. Every word contained in these books was the literal truth, Concealment is impossible, because nothing but truth can enter these realms.” (Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, ibid., 47.)

Their books are not like ours; theirs “come alive,” Monsignor Benson explains.

“The books thus produced are not dead things that require a concentration of the whole mind upon them. They live just as much as the paintings we saw were living. To pick up a book and begin reading it meant also to perceive with the mind, in a way not possible on earth, the whole story as it was being told, whether it be history or science, or the arts. The book, once taken in hand by the reader, instantly responds, in very much the same way as the flowers respond when one approaches close to them. The purpose is different of course.” (Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, ibid., 49-50.)

Rev. Mattson tells us:

“The time comes when you no longer want to go around in a regular library and get information in this way. Your own thinking and your own progress give you a desire to get information a quicker way. We can then go to memory-bank reference libraries, which contain records of everything that has ever happened.” (Ruth Mattson Taylor, ed., Witness from Beyond. New Cosmic Concepts on Death and Survival from the Late A.D. Mattson, S.T.D., through the Clairvoyant Margaret Flavell Tweddell. Portland, ME: Foreword Books, 1975, 86.)

(2) The whole quotation is noteworthy:

AAM: You fall into reactive, shall we say, learned lineage behaviours.

But even underneath that is that what you are truly afraid of is a deeper level of intimacy, a deeper level of exposure of your sacred self, of your heart, of your feelings.

So there is some fear and there is some defensiveness, self defence enough in this reactivity. So what you have done is you have allowed some old patterns, learned from your parents, to come to distract you from these fears.

And so what you do is you bring your attention to, “Oh, I don’t want to behave that way!” And you bring your attention to resolving that issue rather than looking at the underlying one which is truly the fear of greater intimacy and in that greater intimacy, the greater knowing and connection to your heart, to your being, to your purpose and to who you are.
 (AAM, March 28, 2018.)

(3) See 
“The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment – Ch. 13 – Epilogue” in The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment at http://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Purpose-of-Life-is-Enlightenment.pdf

(4)  See “Submerged in Love,” March 14, 2015, in An Ascension Ethnography at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/An-Ascension-Ethnography-5.pdf, and after.

(5) On the journey out from under our vasanas, see Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R3.pdf

Steve Beckow

Saturday, July 15, 2023

My Relationship to Anger is Changing

My Relationship to Anger is Changing

By Steve Beckow

Posted on July 15, 2023

 

 

As the love energies increase on the planet, my relationship to anger is changing.

The background is that my Dad shouted at me from inches in front of my face at age 7. My personality shattered. That bent the twig and the tree inclined in the direction of dissociation – for another 50 years – and anger.

Dissociation meant I had no sense of myself. In the journey back, years later, I saw that I had a public and a private self and that they had never met. When they met, at age 40, I went off like a volcano for around two weeks. (1) Definitely toxic. Nobody to be around.

The fact that I was a house divided was not a pleasant experience and I sought ways out of it. Not like I knew exactly what “it” was for years and years.

Karate was one such way. I discovered that I was such a fearsome-looking fighter that no one in the dojo wanted to come near me.

I attracted violence on the street, in the subway, even in the classroom, so aggressive were my vibes.

In fact when a fight was pending, I preferred to cut to the chase and dispense with the words. Let’s get on with it.

I liked anger. It had distinct advantages over being defenseless in my household.

Now my Dad could never come within five feet of me or I’d make him regret it.

A big plus was that I fused back together again temporarily whenever I got angry. I felt powerful again, strong, my self, etc. So I’ve grown up all these years seeing anger as my friend and as the place I’m more than happy to end up in.

Well, now, as the Reval looms, and with it very large duties, anger becomes a liability. And the vasanas (or core issues) behind the anger are an even greater liability. (2) The whole thing becomes what I called the other day a “vulnerability,” “fatal flaw,” or “Achilles’ heel.” (3)

Our channeled sources tell us often that the rising love energies are going to raise to the surface all our vasanas. There’s nothing hid that shall not be known – before we ascend, I imagine.

The hid shall be made known to us, not to the readers of the New York Times. The rising energies are forcing our remaining issues to the surface, in my opinion. But Ascension is a private and individual process … errr, unless writing about it is part of your soul contract.

Especially since I realized the true context in which I’m operating – a co-creative partner with Archangel Michael, something we can all be  – changes have been happening. None are more dramatic than the fact that, when I feel angry, I don’t like the way I feel any more.

I have thoughts like: Anger has brought most of the sorrow into my life. The rest has been brought in by hatred, jealousy, greed, and all the rest, but anger is the big one.

At the same time, I can’t now dissociate from my angry self. That’ll recreate the problem. I have to have it walk with me and talk with me. I have to get to know it, understand how it got to be angry, and love it out of its despondency.

I already know that anger has no place in the higher dimensions. It isn’t that it has no place because it’s taboo. It has no place because the love the flows there, like the air here, lifts us up to such a level that no harmful thoughts (1) can arise, (2) do arise, and (3) would ever arise.

So anger was my friend and still is. But now it’s mine to bring back into the fold and into the center.  Mine to inform that the war is over. Mission accomplished. Come join the banquet with the rest of us.

Footnotes

(1) My then-girlfriend said to me on the fairgrounds of Expo 86, “Do you know you have the profile of an abused child?” And both my private and public selves came forward at the same time to say, “Yes!” It was as if they looked at each other and said, “Who are you?” I then knew I had split off from myself.  It took eighteen more years for me to fuse back together again (at age 58).

Eleven more years and I had the heart opening. This completely revolutionized my life. I could say that my life really only started at age 69.

(2) VAH-sa-nas. A Vedantic term for the seeds of future action or karma. What we do today returns to us. I use it to mean the complex of conclusions and decisions arising from earlier traumatic incidents that influence – and sometimes determine – present-day behavior.

See Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R3.pdf

(3) “For Humanitarian Philanthropists: An Example of an Achilles’ Heel,” July 11, 2023, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2023/07/11/for-humanitarian-philanthropists-an-example-of-an-achilles-heel/.

 
Steve Beckow

Sunday, May 14, 2023

Therein Lies the Work

Therein Lies the Work

By Steve Beckow

Posted on May 12, 2023


Will Rogers as the 1931 Connecticut Yankee


If the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court went forward in time to this age, what would he see?

Well, first of all, he wouldn’t travel to King Arthur’s court; he’d be surfing the Internet.  And his liege lord, Arthur, wouldn’t be worrying about his wife running off with his chief knight.

The current ruler would probably be worried about being offed, if they’re not already replaced by a clone or masked actor.

And the ones doing the offing would be worried about their heads as well.

And it wouldn’t be just the realm that would be in peril. If you listen to the mockingbird heralds of today – hear ye, hear ye – the whole world would be in peril.

And from several sources. Uhhh, manmade climate change. Mmmm, multiple manmade pandemics. Errr, manmade energy scarcity. What happened to killer bees? Manmade?

How did we get here, pray tell?

I have a private opinion. You can agree with me or toss it, as you wish.

I think it all stems from us giving in to the same impulses on a social level which today, on a personal level, ruin marriages, businesses, all good ventures. We extend out into the social sphere the very impulses that eat away at our marriage and family structures.  Or am I the only one who does?

Resentments, judgments, malintentions, gossip, all the flotsam and jetsam of billions of ruined lives. On and on, down through time via .. what did Michael call it? – “legacy learned behavior.” (1) Excellent description. Intergenerational transfer. Like father like son.

I’ve actually stopped the clock at times when I’m acting poorly, and I hear “that’ll teach him a lesson.” I can see my Dad and hear him speaking as if in an inner movie. In my anger, I’m copying the behavior.  It’s the only movie I have and the only one that plays. Otherwise I have to consciously reject it, assuming I’m even aware of what’s going on.

In fact I didn’t want to be a father because I knew that the only movies I had in my head were unsuitable for parenting. I wanted to stop the intergenerational transfer but for me that meant no parenting at all.

Meanwhile, the rising love energies are going to squeeze all the bad thoughts out of us. But anyone who feels like taking the “emergency exit” out of their own private collapsing world should know that they can handle the matter without leaving, by processing these disagreeable thoughts and words. (See fn 2)

Here comes the bad news, to some: We do it, not by projecting our bad thoughts and feelings outwards, scalding others, which feels good for a moment but bad for a lifetime.

We do it by experiencing our thoughts and feelings to completion, which feels bad for a moment but good for a lifetime.

But therein lies our work.

We’re looking for the original incident that bent the twig and inclined the tree, on the premise that the truth will set us free. And it will set us free. We can use an increasing sense of release to guide us.

That’s a change of direction and it made all the difference in the world to me.  It’d be as if people were now saying “I love you” to you, instead of “why don’t you [fill in the blanks]? ”

Or like me, at the Safeway. Clerks are smiling at me instead of giving me a look that says, “Who is this jerk?” This is so new to me that I often stop and stare at them.

Meanwhile, in the wider world, so few people seem to make eye contact right now. We seem to feel, not defeated, but deflated after Covid. Will it take time or a gigantic effort or a Wave of Love to jackhammer us out of what appears to be a social malaise?

Footnotes

(1) AAM, March 28, 2019. We take inner movies of our parents’ and siblings’ “bad behavior” and that becomes the raw resource we unconsciously draw on and act out later. The result is that we become like our parents’ worst sides as well as their best, without knowing it. Thus is bad behavior perpetuated and works its way outwards.

(2) See “How to Handle Unwanted Feelings: The Upset Clearing Process,” December 29, 2018, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/12/29/how-to-handle-unwanted-feelings-the-upset-clearing-process-2/, also a chapter in Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R2.pdf.

A vasana is a patterned response to an earlier traumatic situation. It includes a conclusion, a decision, assessments, strategies, etc., etc, that govern future behavior.

Steve Beckow


Monday, May 8, 2023

Breaking the Self-Serving Cycle

Breaking the Self-Serving Cycle

By Steve Beckow

Posted on May 6, 2023


Peter the Great



Long. A little technical, maybe complicated. I’m OK if you skip it and go on to the next article.

As living, breathing beings, while in human form (as opposed to angelic form), (1) in my view, we create ourselves.

Some people call what we create a “personality” or an “ego.” (“Ego” means “I.”) I think of it as a constructed self, a product of our own conditioning.

As human beings, we don’t act by stimulus/response. Because we’re cultural animals, (2) we act by stimulus/thought/response. I think of thought as the cultural gap.

The way we condition ourselves is that we observe the stimulus, in the cultural gap, make conclusions about it, and decide how we’ll respond now and in the future. Then we act.

If we were lions, we’d never catch anything. We’d probably sit around and talk about it.

Some of these components may happen in a fraction of a second. What we decide becomes the planks out of which we build our personality

Every element of what I’ve just said deserves separate study.

***

The stimulus of our thought and action – the motivator – is usually our feelings. The Buddha called the principal troublemakers the polar opposites “craving and aversion.”

Like/don’t like, love/hate, want/detest decide the matter and then we ransack Heaven and Earth for “reasons” to explain and justify why we just thought and acted the way we did.

Meanwhile we go back and forth between avoiding what we don’t like and getting what we like. Life becomes a continual cycling between the two.

Trauma-based reactions I’ve called vasanas, (3) to link it up with Vedanta (4) generally and Sri Ramana Maharshi in particular. (5) Vasanas (VAH-sa-nas) are our core issues, old baggage, resentments, gunnysack, whatever you want to call our unfinished business.

These fear-based responses, especially, chisel the form of the statue, our David, our masterpiece, that we become. (I think I’m a master at being me.) Some like our creation; others don’t.

***

You may call the self we project onto the world the personality, the constructed self, or the ego. It’s all about survival.

As it works its way through life and the world, it creates a self-serving story of its own exploits and misfortunes.

It tries its story out on all and sundry, modifies the parts that don’t fly, and then presents the final product to the world.

“Here’s why I didn’t get my Ph.d. at the University of Toronto. Here’s why I didn’t get my Ph.d. at the University of BC. It wasn’t me,. Empirical materialism. Couldn’t live with restraints. Went on to write many books.”

We glorify ourselves in our own story. Where we vanquished our foe, our input was crucial.  Where we faltered or lost, we couldn’t help it. Praise us; under no circumstances blame us.

Marcel the Man Crusher

Blame us and you “cross the line.” You’re now not a friend but an enemy and we switch to a different protocol.

How much learning can there be in a life constructed and constricted in this way? How much real love, which doesn’t show up in a lie? How does such a life line up with the purpose of life?

I’ll come to the latter in a moment.

I notice that we spend our conscious years undoing all these conclusions, decisions, and constructions that form our personality. Try something new, the Company of Heaven invites us. Creak, creak, creak. We move painfully in that direction.

***

So there I am, a walking stimulus/thought/response machine, constructing his self-serving story telling the world how he saved it from its peril. I explain my misfortunes as the subtly-implied incompetence of others and the group’s rise to success and fame as a result of my own contribution.

Ah me. Another day, another douleur (pain … in the rear). (6)

How to break this cycle and become a free and spontaneous human being? Well, first of all, fear not. Ascension will do it and every day we draw closer to that.

So, as with so many other things these days, we’re only talking about the time between now and then.

What to do?

Too good for the likes of you

Remember what Krishnamurti said: “Without first knowing yourself, how can you know that which is true? Illusion is inevitable without self-knowledge.” (7)

He wasn’t talking about Self-Knowledge. He was talking about getting to know the ways of the personality, the small-s self.

Because those are what you are not.

On the path of awareness? Watch. Observe the ways of the personality. It can be fun. “Oh, here I am being self-serving. What will I say this time?” (8)

What else to observe? One critical thing is our vasanas – our trauma-based reactions, as I mentioned earlier.

Vedantists like Sri Ramana consider vasanas to be the seeds of future action (karma).

Ascension, which is Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi, burns those seeds to a crisp. We’re freed from our karma or need to act.

Without observing and understanding the personality or constructed self and its ways, there’s no way to be able to distinguish the real Self out from it when we encounter it.

***

Krishna said: “Lose discrimination, and you miss life’s only purpose.” (9)  Why would he say that?

I said we’d come to it: Well, what is life’s purpose? To realize who we are. Why? When one of us realizes its true identity, in that moment, God meets God. And for that meeting was all of this created. (10)

If that’s life’s purpose, how is it accomplished? Well, in the tradition to which Krishna was directing his remarks, he was saying that we accomplish life’s purpose by discriminating between the Real and the unreal (neti, neti – not this, not this), detaching from the unreal, and attaching to the Real.

We begin to piece together  the “seeds” of our action. We begin to see the personality, the statue, the constructed self and its modes of operation. That is not who we are. Neti, neti. Not this, not this.

In a moment of our seeing and distinguishing it out, I predict we’ll realize the Self behind the personality. (11)

***

One desire does not hurt us, Krishna says:

I am all that a man may desire
Without transgressing
The law of his nature. (12)

When we desire God and contribute that to the makeup of our constructed self, it frees us rather than restraining us. By the Law of Attraction, we draw closer and closer to the One and Realization.

We help that along by first discriminating between everything unreal and the Real.  Life helps us do that.

We discover a very well-planned life, with soul contracts and missions, (13) that keeps us moving toward Self-Realization and conscious Re-union with the One. (14)

That’s the spiritual alternative to dressing up our created, constructed self, selling our story of its accomplishments to the world, and having a “very good life.” Going this route, we may never awaken to the alternative.

Hopefully we’re leaving self-servingness behind. When we’re washed by the love in the higher realms – the real River Jordan – we’ll forget about it completely.

Footnotes

(1) Divine Mother: Let me be clear. There is not one being – human, starseed, hybrid or earthkeeper – that is not one of my Angelic Beings. And it matters not whether you belong to the Legion of Michael or the Tribe of Uriel, the Praisers of Metatron or the Truth Speakers of Gabrielle. It does not matter your colour, your hue. You are my Angels, birthed from my being – birthed not only from my womb, but from my heart. (“The Mother’s Clarion Call to All of Humanity!” April 20, 2020, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2020/04/20/the-mothers-clarion-call-to-all-of-humanity/.)

See An Explosion in the Meaning of Humanness at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/An-Explosion-in-the-Meaning-of-Humanness-11.pdf

(2) As a cultural historian by profession,  I define culture as an organization of ideas, manifest in act and artifact though consisting of neither, by means of which Third-Dimensional humans make sense of their world and take purposeful action.

(3) On vasanas or core issues, see Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R2.pdf.

(4) Vedanta refers to the Vedas, the non-dual portion of the Hindu scripture, the Upanishads.

(5) See for example “Vasanas (Latent Tendencies)” at https://goldengaiadb.com/index.php?title=V#Vasanas_.28Latent_Tendencies.29

(6) I have to stop saying that. That’s probably how I got arthritis in the hip in the first place.

(7) J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living. First Series. Bombay, etc.: B.I. Publications, 1972; c1974, 1, 20.

(8) I love the icebreaker exercise group leader John Enright used in his workshops: Turn to the person on your right and tell him or her how you’re going to manage your impression in here today – what manipulations you’ll use, what qualities you’ll project.

(9) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 42.

(10) See The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Purpose-of-Life-is-Enlightenment-3.pdf

(11) Not like I have any basis for predicting such an outcome. I am not an enlightened man and hence not a spiritual teacher. I just love to write.

Sri Ramakrishna compared the situation of an aspirant who chooses an unqualified teacher to a garter snake trying to swallow a frog. The garter snake cannot swallow it but won’t let go; the frog is not swallowed and they both die.

However, if a king cobra (a qualified spiritual teacher) comes along, it swallows the frog in one gulp.

(12) Sri Krishna in Bhagavad-Gita, ibid., 71.

(13) See What is a Soul Contract? at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/What-is-a-Soul-Contract.pdf

(14) As if we could ever leave the One, where would we go?


Steve Beckow