Maybe he’ll get a truck or a derrick here, or ambu lances, and
maybe he won’ t. Maybe you’ll breathe; maybe you won’ t.
What happens then is you need to come back to this particular life again,
with the acceptance of mortality as an inevitability and get over the fear of
it. And it is only a matter of acceptance. The fear of death is what makesthis seem awful, because you’re struggling with it. Once you accept it, it’s
not awful at all. Y ou die . . . so what? Big deal. It’ s okay . One reason people have a fear of dying is because of moral
accountability . The reason they don’t want to die is because they know
they’re going to be faced with it. Seeing yourself as you really are, you
think, I don’t want that to be on my soul forever. I don’t want that. I don’t
want that unkindness. I don’t want that negativity . I don’t want that
selfishness to be there, and I beg for a chance to correct that. Then, you’re
going to be more sympathetic, more understanding, more forgiving, more
loving. You’re going to value life above winning. Moral accountability is
why most people are afraid to die, because you realize that you’re about to
get confronted with the truth of what you have been. If we accept moral
accountability as we go through life, we don’ t build up a fear about it. Of course, at this point you see your beliefs of divinity come forth as part
of your moral accountability and part of your fear of death. As you grow
spiritually you can see that the fear of death lessens, because you picture
God as merciful. You realize on your deathbed you’re going  to have a
companion. The concept of divinity is merc iful or punitive. The depths of hell is not
something anyone wants to experience, even for a few seconds. Besides,
you can’t experience it for a few seconds, because each second is
experientially an eternity . So, in choosing between heaven and hell, one
decision takes you closer to heaven and the next decision takes you closer
to hell. If you become spiritual ly very advanced, you realize that it’s not
worth taking the chance. There’ s a temporary gain to vanity , and controlling
others, and getting revenge. There’ s a short chuckle as you punch somebody
in the face. Maybe they deserved it. However , moral accountability then
takes you to a choice between two doors. One door leads to heaven and the
other door leads to hell. God does not throw you into hell; you yourself by your own choices have
brought you to that state of abject despair and hopelessness. What are the
limits of freedom? Frankly , there aren’ t any, are there? There  aren’ t any
limits to freedom. You can choose to hate God. You can choose to love
God. You can choose to be gene rous. You can choose to be stingy . What are
the limits of freedom? Only the capacity of the human mind to see what the
options are—the willingness to see the options, whether you’re grasping or
generous, flexib le, and able to learn, grow , mature. Most people  say, “Well,I think what I’ll do is I’ll try to learn from this experience. I’ll try and make
every part of my life about growing and maturing, and developing
spiritually .” There’ s an innate energy to life. It’s called élan vital , and that’s
a French  term meaning one’s life energy. The energy flows throu gh you as a
certain ener gy. Life flows as an ener gy. You can look at it theologically as a reality . We know that the calibrated
levels of consciousness go all the way to 1,000, and what the world calls
evil is below 200. There are TV programs where everybody applauds the
negativity . The host is overtly pouring forth hatred, conspiracy theories. Now , where do they get such an audience? Would a group of spiritually
evolved people be interested in watching conspiracy theories spit out with
contempt, anger , and hatred? How much appeal would it have in heaven? It
would have a big audience in hell. Killing, murder , and torture are not very
appealing as you spiritually evolve, and when it comes on screen, you say,
“Good God, what do I want to watch that for?”
#9: Developing a sense of humor
You begin to see that humor serves mankind to a greater degree than the
people leading the parade. All the great enthusiasm—save the planet, and
save the world, and all that stuff—making a big, ostentatious display of it
all. Actually , a good sense of humor to me is more spiritually evolved than
all that pious, holier -than-thou do-goodism. Humor recontextualizes things. It puts it in a different context. And
humor arises out of the contrast between the linear content and the
nonlinear conte xt, which is what makes it humorous. And the great
humorists live long. People like Jack Benny or Geor ge Burns. Geor ge
Burns made it to 100. Half the time they fall over in the bathtub and die of a
fractured skull. I’m reminding myself, when I get to be their age—do not
take showers in the bathtub. CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL GROWTH
I think Ronald Reagan demonstrated the characteristics of conscious
spiritual growth. He calibrated like 500 or something. Winston Churchill,
too; he single-ha ndedly held together the British empire in its darkest day.Churchill calibrated over 500. He was the heart of the lion; he stood up and
got the British people to face the blitz. The rallying call can come from people with greatness of heart, and
Churchill had that. There are scientists who had greatness of spirit, like
Louis Pasteur . They got ridiculed for the advances they made. Greatness of
spirit means even though you know you’re going to be criticiz ed, you see
the great benefit. Some people believed bacteria caused infection, and they
almost got killed for believing it. But because of it, we have the discovery
of antibiotics and other life-saving innovations. Anything that relieves
human suffering and furthers the evolution of consciousness is of great
value. Some people spearhead it and contribute by their endorsement of it. These great philanthropic organizations uplift others by promoting
education and health. How can we help others? First, you fulfill what you can, and then you
reach the point where you become philanthropic, not necessarily financially ,
but philanthropi c as a state of consciousness. You ask yourself , What do I
want from the world right now? Nothing. Then, What do I do with my life? Because most people spend their whole lives chasing their wants, their
desires. Well, what happens then, when you have them all? What happens
when you’ve fulfilled all your desires? Does your life then become
worthless? No. Because you share what you have become with others. You
share what you have become. The ultimate act of lovingness is to share that which you have become, so
that your life becomes a prayer . You become that which you preach and
teach. You hold with love, you hold with respect, you hold the world
together in a way within your arms of love. Close your eyes now and picture the whole world and the whole
population of the world. Open your heart and radiate that light to the world
and embrace it. Let’s all put our arms around this whole world, every living
thing on the world, every little toad, every kangaroo, every person, and put
our arms  around it and radiate that love and uplift the love by our intention. By becoming infinitely loving, we become the destiny of mankind, which is
the realization of divinity within as the source of one’ s existence. In the beginning, people learn. They have to, otherwise they don’t even
know it’s possible. Then after a while, learning gets in the way because they
get caught up in belief systems instead of realizing the truth of it
experientially . To learn, in the beginning, is to get oriented to the subject;then you pick what seems comfortable and useful in your life, and you
pursue that. And then at a certai n point you stop reading about it. I’ve given
my own spiritual library away several times in my lifetime. You accumulate
a couple hundred books and then you say, “This is all mentalism and
linearity ,” and you give it all away. Then another decade or two later, you
start accumulating the books all over again. Then you clear them all out
again. THE GREA TEST MISCONCEPTION ABOUT SPIRITUAL
GROWTH
People think spiritual growth is going to involve sacrifice, but it doesn’ t.
You sacrifice the negatives, and some people would consider that a
sacrifice, I suppose. There’ s time and energy, and if you’ve got a family ,
you may wonder where do you get the time and the energy? There are
certain periods of life when you’ve got a young, growing family  and you’re
trying to make it in the world, and this is not usually the best time to decide
you’re going to become a monk. You can make a lifestyle change perhaps later in life. I think  a lot of
people look forw ard to getting older, when they will have what ’s needed to
spend more time on spiritual life. In many churches you’ll see the
congregation is primarily older . There will be some young people with
children, yes, but you’ll see that well over half the congregation is gray
haired (in some churches mayb e 80 percent gray and white hair). Cynics
might say, “Well they’re just afraid of dying, that’s all.” No, it’s because
they’ve finally got enough space  in their lives and the leisure to do it. They
now have the time and the energy and the spiritual interest to improve their
lives. Young people say, “I have n’t got time for this.” Well, wait until a later
time. Or learn to do spiritual work in small bits, in snippets. Five minutes of
friendliness. I say the best thing to do is to be friendly to everybody and
loving toward everybody . Every clerk in the store, I alway s thank them, and
people will just practically faint. Try it with every clerk in every store and
every person you run into—just be as smiling and loving toward them as
you can be. It just bowls them over. They just look at you like, “Huh? What?”I did this for years in New York City. I would walk by an apartment
building on Fifth Avenue, past the doormen, and I would say good morning
to them all and smile. Pretty soon, they looked forward to it, and I
discovered that one can smile and stop and say hello to anybody . I can walk
down any New York City street and strike up a conversation with almost
anybody almost  instantly . Because of your openness and your lovingness,
they don’t feel danger or fear. The animal instinct in them perceives that
you’re a safe space. As your conscio usness evolves , people treat you differently . They look
forward to seeing you; they feel uplifted by your presence. If you attend the
party , it’s a success. Just your energy radiates around the whole room. You
serve others by what you have become. The more loving you become, the
more you’re serving your fellow man and serving God. OceanofPDF .comChapter 8
SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
Now that you have the fundamentals of conscious spiritual growth in
place, you need  to begin a program of regular spiritual pract ices to keep
you in spiritual shape and help you deepen your sense of spiritual
awar eness. In this enlightening chapter , Dr. Hawkins will describe some of the most
important and effective spiritua l practices he recommends, from the most
basic practices to the most advanced. MEDIT ATION
The meditative practice deepens  your understanding of any religion, much
like contemplat ion. What I usually emphasize is both meditation and
aligning your life so that you make your life the prayer . You try to live and
become that which you are studying and learning. You become forgiving. In
the beginning, forgivingness seems like an artificial practice. Jesus Christ
said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That’ s a
mentalization, and when you’re angry at somebody , it may cross your mind,
and you think, Well, I should probably be seeing it differ ently , but I don’t. But as you get deeper in it, then you think, Well, how can I see this through
differ ent eyes? How can I alter my experience of this? Then that requires a
deeper study. You’re trying to go from the familiarity of the intellectual to
the expe riential. You’re trying to become that which was formerly mentaland is now incorporated into your personality and your way of actually
being in the world. Meditation, of course, has a great history and we could spend hours just
describing all the meditative pathways. I’ve experimented and tried them
all. I belonged to the First Zen Institute in New York City back  in the '50s,
and I practiced Zen meditatio n for many years. For over 20 years, I
meditated an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. You
meditate on some specific truth that you’ve picked up until you really
become the awareness of the truth and the reality of that. Then you don’t
need to tell yourself, “Well, I should be forgiving that person.” You start to
see, eventually , that everybody is only being what they are, what they can
be at the mom ent. Everybody is just being what they could  be at the
moment, and if not, it’s because they can’t be. If they were  able to be
different, they would be. You have a certain sympathy for everyone, that
everyone is pretty much stuck with the human condition. And the human
condition is, frankly , extremely  difficult, for the individual as well as for
whole societies and civilizations. The thing about meditation is it takes you away from the world. In other
words, you’ve got to set aside an hour in the morning and an hour in the
afternoon or at night, like I did. And what happens to a lot of people is they
compartmentalize it. When they’re meditating, that’s one thing, and then
they go back into the world, and that’s another thing. People do that with
religion, too, of course. On Sunday , they’re very religious and then Monday ,
they’re back to their usual business, padding the bill as usual but maybe
feeling a little guilty about it. But it gets compartmentalized. After a while, many people give up meditation because it interferes with
daily life. They’re too busy this morning, so they skip it, and then
tomorrow’ s too busy, too. Meditation then tends to get lost. Contemplation
is a lifestyle of sharpened awareness. The nearest classic teach ing of it is
mindfulness. Mindfulness is to always be aware, to be conscious ly aware of
what your mind  is doing at all times, to not go unconscious and become
oblivious to your own inner mental workings. You become familiar with the
mind. By becoming familiar , the mind actually changes as you become
more and more familiar with it. A conte mplative lifestyle is more effective. It’s a way of being in the
world, because now you’re trying to become  that which you have studied. You can do it continuously . A person can be contemplative no matter whatthey’re doing. My own lifestyle was contemplative for many years, and I
was aware of exactly how I was being with each specific incident. That
way, you become more aware of the reality of other people, as well. You
become aware of their reality , and get out of the solipsistic view that reality
is how you see it. You become aware that there’ s a reality , and this is just
the way you are seeing it. This is not the way the world is—it’ s the way
you’re seeing the world. A sudden understanding of that came relatively early in my life, when I
was on all kinds of big talk shows in New York City. When you go to these
places, because you’re the celebrity of the day, everybody flatters you and
they take you into the makeup room and you get all made up. You’re the
star of the moment. The TV show starts, and there are millions of people
watching you. But, when the show ends, all the lights go out, the hundreds
of people in the studio disappear , and you can hear almost an echo. You
leave the building, and there you are, out on the street, and sudd enly there is
a sinkin g feeling. I understand why rock stars and celebritie s do drugs,
because when the show is over, you can’t handle going from that high to a
crash to nothing. I have a sympathy for them. With meditation, in the beginning at least, you can go into states of
samadhi, very high states, and in the beginning the state only lasts while
you’re in that state, while your eyes are closed and you’re sitting cross-
legged and breathing, and all such, and that marvelous state comes. But
then as you get up and walk  around, it disappears. Then, as spiritual
evolution progresses, the state continues. In the next stage, it continues even when you open your eyes,  and then
when you get up and walk around, it disappears. But then the state gets
more and more prevailing, and you can get up and walk around in that state,
and it remains. Then eventually , you can continue a relatively normal life
and the conditio n is permanent. Eventually , the state precludes what you
would call ordinary mentalization all together and you more or less stay in
the state. Then the state eventually prevails, and you leave the world, which
is what I did. Y ou didn’ t have any choice; you left the world. And then after some years, one learns how to reaccommodate the world. It took me many  years to learn how to become functional within the world
again. It’s a completely different nature. It’s something that you witness. Just as I’m talking to you now, there’ s an aspect that witnesses this as a
phenomenon that is occurring of its own. It doesn’ t have anything to dowith a personal I or me. It happens autonomously , just like the bird flies
through the air. It happens of its own, and it becomes what I call the
persona. There’ s an interactive energy between the world and the Self with
a capital S that learns how to re-function in the world. Most people when they reach an extremely high level of consciousness
do not return to the world. They do not function in the world. It’s really
quite statistically unusual to do so, in fact. Most people stay in a permanent
retreat, or they live in an ashram, and if you want to see them, you travel
many miles and they smile at you sweetly and bless you and then that’ s it. By the grace of God, my capability to explain things and teach  returned,
so I accepted that was the case,  and therefore, I continued to teach. But at
the time, because of the extrem e nature of the change of consciousness,
there wasn’t any choice but to leave the world. Its values had no more
attraction. There was no point to persevere in that, and also, one has an
intuitive knowingness that some thing else quite different is being called for,
so I more or less walked away from everything that the world cherishes as
the ultimate. When you reach this state, you just witness the transition and the
changes. People  worry about what will happen to them if they reach a
certain state where they can’t function in the world, so I tell them, “Well, at
that state, you can’t function in the world.” The thing is, when that state
arises, you’re no longer afraid of it. It’s just like your hair turning gray; it’s
not exactly scary . It’s just what it is. • • •
There’ s a certain point where you’re satisfied with what you can do in the
world, and you can see that if you keep doing it, it’s just more, but it’s more
of the same. After you have enough millions, what are you going to do with
an extra million? It’s just a nuisance, you know? You have to call an
accountant and say, “Look, I got an extra five million from the company . Figure out what to do with it, okay?” And you hang up. There’ s no interest. Pursuing success within the world loses its meaning once you’ve
achieved it, and you know that you’ve achieved it. Now , a person who you
might say is karmically destined to evolve will first satisfy himself. They
have satisfied everything that they want from the world, and then they look
for something beyond, and they find that they are attracted to spiritualwork. A certain number of people are attracted once they’ve reached
success. There are many people , of course, who are highly attracted along
the way. They don’t wait that many years to feel they’ve mastered the world
before they decide to leave it. They just leave it because the spiritual
motivation is strong. People have karmic propensity , strong karmic propensities. Some people
have powerful spiritual drives from early life, but then the person turns
away from the world and now finds a whole new area of interest. It’s like
being reborn. It’s a new life. Some people would call it being reborn, being
awakened to the spiritual reality  and a whole new dimension and meaning
to existence. And then rarely , one in 10 million will decide they are
attracted to the whole pathway to enlightenment and decide they will make
whatever decisions they have to in their life to facilitate that. They may join
an ashram. Certainly , they begin to meditate on a very regular , major basis. When I first came out to a small town, I spent the entire day in a
meditative state. I’d start to meditate at 7:00 in the morning. It was just a
total change of lifestyle. But I always tell people, you don’t have to worry
about it, because it won’ t happen until you’re ready for it. You’re not going
to be suddenly jerked out of your desk at your office and forced to join an
ashram. More likely , it’s as if you’ve had enough chocolate and now you
want to move on to vanilla. You’ve satiated that desiringness. You’re giving
up your addiction to the world when you hit bottom. For people who are addicted to the world and the novelty of the world
and the entertainment of the world, if they keep doing spiritual work,
eventually and suddenly , they get released from that addiction. The real
addiction, of course, is to the ego’s experiencing of the world. Remember ,
it’s not the world. It’s your experience  of the world. So, there’ s something
about the way you’re experiencing the world that you now have become
addicted to. And if you focus there, then you really start to make fast
progress. You realize you’re not addicted to the world, you’re addicted to what you
get out of it. You begin to look at how the ego is juicing every experience. What is it getting out of these experiences? And then you begin
surrendering that to God. So you don’t have to surrender the Cadillac, what
you surrender is the feeling of pride and success and the narcissistic
satisfaction of owning that Cadillac.With spiritual progression, you begin to appreciate simplicity , and the
simpler things are, the better they are. CONTEMPLA TION
There’ s meditation and then there’ s contemplation. I favor contemplation
because contem plation is a way of being in the world. To make your life
appear is a form of contemplation. Contemplation is a way in which you
align yourself with context instead of content; with context and intention
that your life is of service to the Lord and to your fellow human being, and
out of unconditional love, you ask God to transform how you understand
the world. It’s a way of being in the world, and it’s context ualizing the
meaning, significance, and intention of your life. That recontextualization
then transforms perception, and how you see things dif fers from the way the
world sees them. The mind looks out and it sees form. That’ s the linear . The mind registers
that and it recognizes it. How does it do this? It does it because the mind is
always watching . At first you think you’re the content, that you’re linear
and restricted. This registers, and it’s recognition, but how do you know
what’ s going out? Here’ s the first jump you can make. You can realize that
you are not the content  of what is being witnessed. You think, I am the
witnesser . I am the watcher , the experiencer , the observer witness. If you
have a contemplative lifestyle, it’s very easy to recognize. You don’t have
to meditate, do a lot of weird breathing and stuff. Pranayama breathing, by
the way, calibrates at 190. That’ s the hard way to get there. It takes a lot of
Kleenex because of all of the snif fling. I don’t believe in artificial means of energy manipulation. There are
many technique s out there that are sold for a price. “Secr ets of the ancient
mystics . . . for only $5,000, I’ll tell you what they are.” By intention, it’s
very simple to see that the reason you know what’ s going on is because
there is a watch ingness and an experiencingness and this phenomena is
happening spontaneously . There’ s no you that’s watching or experiencing. That’ s a conclusion. Watching and experiencing and awareness, the
observing and the witnessing, is happening autonomously . When you move from identify ing with “out there,” you realize that
consciousness is observing and witnessing all the time, and this phenomena
is autonomous. There’ s no you deciding to be aware. Awareness ishappening of its own accord. It’s a phenomenon that’s intrin sic to your
existence. The light of consciousness is intrinsic to your existe nce. It’s not
volitional. You withdraw from  out-there-ness and you begin to see
everything is occurring sponta neously on its own because of its own
potential actualizing. The potentiality actualizes spontaneously . There is no you that thinks
about it and decides to do it and then takes the credit or blame for having
had it happen. You begin to realize that being aware itself is spontaneous,
autonomous, and non-volitional. Behind the light of consciousness, you
then begin to realize the self, and out of that, the awareness that even the
self is spontaneously being what it is. There’ s no you involved in all of it, so
there’ s no personal you involved in anything about your life at all. It’s all
delusional. Isn’ t that nice? I think intention is what sets karmic patterns. Because actions are pretty
autonomous. I mean, what you’re taking responsibility for is the intenti on. There’ s a famous saying used in 12-Step groups: you’re respon sible for the
effort and not the result. You’re karmically accountable for your intention,
but the consequences of the action are up to God and the whole universe,
and the world the way it is. Intention sets your karmic pattern, and it’s your
culpability . You can make a big mistake out of innocence and although
you’re accounta ble, you’re not severely culpable. You can make very
serious errors and be extremely culpable for things that are really vicious by
intention. You see it all the time, with certain websites and blogs. The
intention of these sites is to injure and hurt another person. Even if they
feign innocence and have some excuse, nevertheless, the intention is quite
glaringly obvious, which is to personally injure a person and insult and
denigrate them. If you do that, then you have the karmic consequence of
intending to harm another person out of malice. You can try to veil it with
some pseudo-so phisticated sophistry , but the intention is pretty clear and
obvious. As you evolve, spiritually you become more and more aware of essence
and you become more difficult to fool. People are more difficult to fool as
they sharpen their awareness. PRACTICAL STEPS FOR A MEDIT ATION PRACTICEMeditation, of course, has a great history going back thousands  of years,
and almo st every body does it in either a Hindu or Buddhic style. Meditation
is a part of Christianity too, but it is not stylized like it is in Eastern
religions. I tell people the simpler you can make it, the better . You just sit
quietly and close your eyes. Now if you do that, and you look straight
ahead, you’ll notice it’s not only just dark, but there are tiny, dancing little
pinpoints of light. Those are called phosphenes, and you just stare straight
ahead. Now some people recommend concentrating on the breath. To me, that’s
even too complicated, but if you like you can become aware of the breath. Then, what you do is become the witness of the phenomena that arise
within the mind. You don’t try to do anything about it. You don’t try to
suppress though t. You become a witness of that which parades across the
mental landscap e. You begin to study with constant focus. You become
aware that thoughts are not following each other . The sequence is one of
witnessing. Actu ally, thoughts are coming out of nothingness. People say, “I
can’t meditate because there are all these thoughts,” and they try to stop
thoughts. That’ s a waste of time. Y ou cannot stop thoughts. There’ s a certain spiritual belief  system that there is a space between two
thoughts, and you will glimpse eternity between two thoughts. Well, I tell
you, you will not glimpse etern ity between two thoughts. I’ve asked many
large congregations of people, “Has anybody every succeeded?” And
nobody ever has, because that’s not where the blankness is. The blankness
is below  the thoughts. It’s prior to the thoughts. The thoughts follow each
other in 1/10,000th of a second. Now , the experiencer , the perceiver aspect
of the experiencer function of the ego, can’t operate that fast. Therefore,
you’re trying the impossible. You’re trying to see something that occurs in
less than 1/10,000th of a second, and the detector of this doesn’ t operate
that fast. Y ou’ll never find a blank space between two thoughts. What’ s happening is the thoughts are like flying fish coming out of the
ocean. As you see each flying fish, you notice that this fish over here is not
causing that fish over there. So, you don’t look to the flying fish; the
thoughts have occurred already . What you look to is the ocean. You look
below  thoughts. The place to look for the infinite silent space is below
thoughts. If you look at thoughts as a field on the horizon, now you look
below the thoughts and you will see that each thought is arising separately ,
individually , autonomously out of an infinite field of silence, and even asyou read these words right now, you think that your mind is busy reading
but unde rneath that is an infinite  silence. If it wasn’ t for that infinite silence,
you wouldn’ t be able to read nor discern the meaning of the words nor
detect the languaging. It’ s because of the infinite silence of the mind. For this same reason, when you’re out in the woods, you wouldn’ t be
able to hear a bird if it wasn’ t for the infinite silence. Without the infinite
silence in the background, you would not be able to hear anything. The
bird’ s song is not interfering with the silence, it’s occurring within  the
silence, and therefore, you approach the mind with the same understanding. Because of the silence, you’re aware of what you’re thinking and feeling. Look to the silence. When you look at a room, it’s because of the emptiness
of the room that you can see the furniture. You begin to functi on closer to
that which you are. Ever, ever closer is the infinite silence itself, because
that’s the silence of the field of consciousness itself. The reason these
discussions about science and consciousness go nowhere is because they
constantly ruminate about intellectualizations about the content  of
consciousness. Consciousness is the field itself. It’s the field itself in which the
thinkingness and all goes on. Consciousness is infinite and it’s formless. It’s
outside of time and space. That’ s why with consciousness resea rch, using a
simple kinesiologic question and answer , you can discern anything that ever
happened anywh ere in time or space. Everything that happens is recorded
within this infinite field of consciousness forever . For eternity . Everything,
every thought, feeling, deed, everything you’ve ever said is recorded
forever . That is the foundation and the basis of karma. Karma means by intention,
every action has now imprinted  forever in the field of consciousness itself. One, therefore, is accountable for that which you have chosen to become. What happens to you then is merely the consequence of your own
choices. There is no arbitrary god sitting up there as a big horrible judge
that’s going to throw you in hell if he’s mad at you or favor you and have
the rain fall on you in great years of prosperity . That’ s primitive, mythical,
cultural, but not really the way it looks when you examine it up close. Divinity is impartial. By virtue of what it is, all things sort themselves out
by virtue of that which they have become. And that which they have
become, they have become via their own options and decisions. So to be
responsible means to be aware of that. Do you want the karma of doingthat? Don’ t ask yourself, Do I want to do that? Ask yourself, Do I want the
karma of doing that? Then you see you have responsibilities. You could weigh options by saying, “Which karmic consequence would I
like?” When you look at it from that viewpoint, it’s a lot easier to make
moral decisions. What do I want to have to live with, for God knows how
long (in eternity , even)? As I talk about accountability and culpability
versus responsib ility, it becomes clear that you’re responsible, and then the
degree of morality is a whole different understanding. People mix up the
two, but you can innocently make a mistake. It’s always the intention  of the
action. W isdom evolves slowly . PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDIT ATION
With psychological meditation, there are usually trainings. They’ll give
you a mantra to repeat or a divine image to hold in mind, or a combination,
and certain postures and breathing styles. You might say that’s the formal
mechanics. That’ s the content of the meditative style: how you sit, how you
breathe, which mantra and symbols you use, et cetera. That’ s one style. Then you begin  to witness. You try to move to the witness/observer . You
begin to witness the phenomena of the mind as they rebuild themselves
without doing anything about them. At that point, as I mentioned briefly
before, you go past the form of the thoughts themselves and you find the
infinite silent space. The infinit e silent space then leads you to what is the
infinite silent space and the awareness of consciousness itself, which is
intrinsically without content. And, how does one know that the silent space is there? It’s because of
awareness. One becomes aware of an infinite silence that is below and more
universal than the content of the mind, and then one starts trying to move
into the source, the very source of that consciousness awareness. The source
of the consciousness awareness leads you to the pronoun I. Then comes the
unveiling of the fact there is no such entity and as you look for the personal
I, no such thing exists. You come to a final definition of the I when you’ve
let go of all of the descriptions,  all the adjectives and the adverbs. The I is
not doing anything, and one comes to the source of this sense of I, and one
comes to the awareness that I is the source of life, that I and life are united. That leads you to very advanc ed states, including the abandonment of
even life itself to God. The abandonment of self as the very source of lifecreated an agonizing experience of death. On the other side of that door
stood the glory and infinite reality out of which emer ges all of the universe
as a continual emergence, which we call life; but that’s the appearance  of
life. That’ s not life itself. One confuses the appearance of life with the
source of life. The source of life is invisible. The appearance of life is
transitory so you can’t get attached to the transitory appearance. Instead,
you constantly look within. The phenomena are all happening of their own. The talkingness is
happening of its own, and your questioning this is happening spontaneous
and autonomously . The two of us are here together , due to our joint karmic
inheritance and that of the whole world. In fact, all eternity has occurred up
to this very moment. This is the emer gence of the future that we’re sitting
on. We’re sitting on the disappea ring edge of the past and the advancing age
of the future, so if we’re clever , we’ll stay put and avoid both of them. Reality is not aligned with either one. It transcends them. It trans cends time. Even once you’re aware of that—that what is speaking now is not even
occurring in time, that time is something that you project onto things, and
that time and space and location are all projections of the human
consciousness—you won’ t bypass the mind when you first start meditating,
because what you’re confronted with is the traffic on the street and the
sounds and the thoughts going and the feeling and the itch in your foot and
all these things. You’re not going to bypass that because bypassing it is
pretty late stage , to be independ ent of the content of the mind. Eventually ,
the mind stops and becomes silent. It’ s a great relief. There are different stages. They’re not different styles; they’re really a
stage. Even when you get to advanced stages of meditation, when you first
sit down , the mind is still talkin g, but now you’ve learned quickly how to
bypass it. You go through the stages much more quickly . Also, there’ s
certain visual phenomena. It’s like the inside of your mind lights up and
there’ s a certain  sequence to that. I can remember there was a meditation
group I went to one time many years ago, and there was a certain stage we
called the Bright Blue after you’d been meditating a certain number of
minutes. It’s like all of a sudden everything within the mind is lit up in a
rather intense blue. The deeper stages were beyond the Bright Blue, but the Bright Blue told
you that you were entering a deeper meditation. You’re going into deeper
and deeper layers of the mind, of the unconscious, of the spirit ofconsciousness. Deeper and deep er levels, and at each one, you say, “This
must be the ultimate.” It’s like a door opens. This must be the ultimate, but
beyond the ultimate is another ultimate and beyond that ultimate is another
ultimate. And that’s how you get really intrigued with meditation, because
just as you escape one level to a state of even greater ecstasy , joy, and
awareness, there  is yet another stage beyond that, and yet another , and yet
another , and you see what it is that’s holding you back from yet another . Let’s say, for example, you can get attached to familiarity . You say, “Oh, I
can see. I’m attached to ‘this is the way it’ s going to be.’”
The Bright Blue  is very intriguing and then you got to let go of being
hooked on the Bright Blue and let it be of its own. CONTEMPLA TION PRACTICES
Contemplation is continuous. It’s like you’re constantly paying attention
to one thing. Let’s say that your assignment for the day is to become aware
of the intrinsic perfection and beauty of all that exists, the holiness and the
sacredness of all of creation. Wow. That’ll keep you busy for the next 20,
30 years! But in the orientation, you say, “Dear God, I’m trying to see the
perfection and beau ty of all of existence and I ask for thy blessing.” There’ s
supplication to God to help you on this trip, and then you’ve  stated your
intention. Your intention is to go beyond the linear , beyond perception,
beyond your thoughts, opinions, and all of that narcissistic stuff about the
world, and see the world as it exists. You’re going past differentiation
between perception and essence. What you’re really asking in meditation and contemplation is to go
beyond duality , to stop interpreting perception as reality . Instead, to sense
the essence of things, to sense the exquisite. For instance, this morning I
walked around and it was still dark, and suddenly in the darkness, I heard
this loud purr. And that was my white kitty, picking up the energy of that
which I am. When I pick up his ener gy, the interaction of those two ener gies
sends us both into a state of bliss, happiness, contentment, and love, with
the joyful presence of God. I don’t have to do anything withi n the linear
domain except be there. All I have to do is stand there, and the white kitty
starts to purr. He purrs because I’m there, because of that which I am. You
see, that which the cat is, the cat is a responder to love. In the presence of
love, the white kitty automatically starts to purr. In fact, all I have to do islook across the room and think  of him, and have a loving thought about
him, and it turns him on and he starts to purr. It’s just amazing. That’ s the
way the world becomes. It’s just like when people say New Y ork is a cold, unfriendly place, which
I mentioned in Chapter 3 . Give me a break. I could walk on any street, start
talking to anybody about anything, and have an instant friendly
conversation strike up, just like we were all friends for hundreds of years. Meditation and contemplation are very exciting. They’re very exciting
because the discoveries that you make are amazing. You start looking
within for what’ s exciting in the world and not what’ s without. In this next part, Dr. Hawkins takes you into the world of the true mystic. He shares some of the character istics that you can look for and expect when
you seek to discover the enligh tened state. He also shares some practical
exercises that you can begin to practice that will assist you in the evolution
of your consciousness. THE 9 CENTRAL ELEMENTS OF SERIOUSL Y
COMMITTED INNER SPIRITUAL WORK
#1: Discipline of focus without deviation. One-pointedness of mind is a certain style of meditation. You focus on an
object, a thought, a feeling, a divine figure, a mantra, or a sound perhaps. With fixity of mind, you keep your focus on it. This takes discipline. The
mind wants to wander away , and with the undisciplined mind, passing
thoughts run away with the mind. You start by disciplining your mind to
concentrate on the point of a pen and to keep it there unwaveringly . Eventually , you can perfect it so that nothing breaks your concentration. #2: W illingness to surrender all desires and fears to God. Spiritual awareness is far beyond emotionality . You’re willing to
surrender the emotion. What you’re really surrendering is the payoff of the
emotion, because first there is the emotion, then there’ s what you get out of
that emotion. And to let go of emotion, you have to let go of the payof f.
People love to be indignant. They love to be the victim. They wallow in it.They really play it, and you can see it in the media, the glorification of
narcissism. People will do anything to achieve fame. They’ll confess to
crimes they didn’ t even commit to get on television. #3: W illingness to endure transitory anguish until the difficulty
is transcended. Spiritual work is sometimes difficult. To face one’s inner feelings,
sometimes you’ll experience a state of disappointment at what you discover ,
like playing the victim. You look at what you’re holding onto, and then you
realize, to your dismay , that you’re milking it and that you’re really
wallowing in victimhood. So, that transitory disappointment that you go
through when you admit the truth of something to yourself is a temporary
passing discomfort. You can see how selfish you are in a relationship. You
can see how self-interested you are. You can see how indifferent you are. You can see how unloving you are in some areas. It become s somewhat
painful, the pathway of inner searching. That’ s why some people, like 12-
Step groups, take a fearless moral inventory . It’s often recommended that
you have somebody to discuss it with so that you don’t get hooked in some
negative viewpoint and can’ t get out of it. The Christian saints say how they went from elated states to states of
despair: “Oh my beloved, how could you have deserted me?”  Don’ t worry
about the states of great anguish. Just surrender the anguish itself to God
and constantly surrender all of it. Don’ t resist the anguish if it comes up,
because if you’re serious, it very likely will come up again. I never knew anybody who just went into a state of happiness and stayed
there all the way to enlighten ment. Jesus Christ sweated blood in the
Garden of Gethsemane. There’s anguish along the way, but that
experientially is what goes on and you say, “This too I’m willing to go
through, oh Lord, whatever this anguish may mean or whatever it
signifies.”
Everybody along the spiritual pathway can benefit from having a mentor
who, at times, can reflect back  things that would be far more difficult to
handle on your own. #4: Constancy and watchfulness.Mindfulness is being watchful and witnessing the phenomena going on in
the mind . Many people are completely oblivious to their own mode and
style of thinking and behaving. People can be shocked and of fended all over
the place  by others, and they’re not even aware they’re being the same way:
completely out of place, inappropriate, undiplomatic, not thinking of the
sensitivities of others. With mindfulness, you become aware of your
shortcomings, you honestly admit them, and then you ask God for help to
overcome them. The first thing is to become self-aware. Then, having become more self-
aware, you’re now more motivated to try to grow . Let’s say you discover
that you’re really being quite selfish in every single interaction, so now you
ask God to help you overcome this selfishness. When you ask God for help,
you’re opening a doorway of energy that wasn’ t there before. If you just
ignore it, nothin g much happens, but if you say, “Dear God, I am unable to
overcome this self-interest and it seems to color everything I do. There must
certainly be some great motivation that I could align with than just
satisfying the personal ego.” First of all, the personal ego is temporary , and
when you leave the body , hope fully there’ s going to be something that’s
going to carry you further than the pits of the ego. #5: Moving from self-interest as a participant/experiencer to that
of the witness/observer . If you are serio usly interested in enlightenment, first you identify with
the mind and think, I am that. You see yourself as the doer of all actions,
and then you think, Well, what is it that knows that?” You realize it’s
because you’re witnessing and observing it, so then you move and you see
that you move to identify the witness/observer , and then from there, you
move to the experiencer , which  is a far more advanced and more refined
thing to transce nd, to stop identifying as the experiencer . However , it is
relatively easy to see that that which you are as the witness and the
observer , and then on an even more advanced level, you’re the witness, the
observer , and also the experiencer . What you need to realize is those things are autonomous. There’ s no you
that is witnessing. There’ s no you that is experiencing. There’ s no you that
is observing. These are automatically happening of their own accord as a
consequence of the nature of consciousness itself. It’s consciousness  thathas all these capacities, not a personal you. We’re talking about how to
transcend identi fication with the ego, the pronoun of a personal self as a
primary source of volition. The ego wants to take credit for that which is actually spontan eous and
automatic. It’d be like the ego always taking credit for the weather . “Well, I
certainly did a nice job of today ,” it says. The sun is shining without you. But if it could get away with it, the ego would take credit for the sun
shining. #6: W illingness to relinquish judgmentalism and opinion about
what is observed. This is probably the hardest stage, because you see, our society itself is
intrinsically narcissistic. The right to free speech and all that kind of thing
—it’s like everybody feels oblig ated to get out there and tell you how they
feel about thing s. In reality , who cares what you feel about it? Nobody
really gives a whit what you think or feel about it! I’ll tell you why:
Because they care about what they think or feel about it. They don’t really
care what you think about it. In fact, the only thing you do is add grist to
their mill, so they can tell you how they think and feel about how you think
and feel. The idea is that by being truthfu l and integrous, you can’t win. You have
to manip ulate it. We were sayin g the consciousness level of America has
dropped. That’ s one of the reasons, the political dishonesty and the
dominance of the media, which  displays it all, and the seduction of all of
that. That plus relativism, which allows it all to happen and have its
blessing. If truth is no different than falsehood, then you can lie your head
off and not feel guilty about it. You can say there is no such thing as
absolute reality and no such thing as truth, and that everything is relative. Then you can avoid all kinds of guilt and you can be narcissistic  for all your
life without any responsibility . Some people project their own narcissism
onto everything. There are, however , many motivations that have nothing to do with
narcissism. There are motivations having to do with merely being that
which you are. Let’s say you run marathons, and you enjoy them and you
have the capaci ty to do them. Not everybody has the ability to do that. Another person could create music because it’s the fulfillment of apotential. There are many motivations other than personal gain. There is
fulfilling one’s destiny . So there  is a pleasure in being all that you can be to
the greatest extent you can be, and that’s a spiritual satisfaction of
potentiality becoming an actuality , a fulfillment of a promise. The human being is created with the capacity for the evolution of
consciousness and the development of spiritual awareness, so the
fulfillment of that potentiality then is the acknowledgment of a divine gift
of the potentialit y of life itself, and there is a gratification that comes from a
knowingness of having fulfilled  one’s destiny . But I understand also what
the critic says about it, that altruism and humanitarianism can also be
accompanied by egocentricity . “Oh, look what a great donor I am. I’ve
given my millions to the poor.” Yes, and that does also happen. The two
things can coinc ide. You can on the one hand be the integrous fulfillment of
your potential and then the ego can also chime in and try to play off of it,
and of course, that’s so-called spiritual pride. People will become holier
than thou. People become proud of their humility . “Look how humble I
am!”
#7: Identifying with the field rather than with the content of the
field. This has to do with identifyin g with context—seeing that within the
phenomena perceived to be occurring, you are not the content, you are the
field. What is the infinite field of your ultimate reality? And that is
consciousness itself. You’re not the content of consciousne ss, you are
consciousness. Without conscio usness, you would not even be aware that
you exist. Did you know that below 200 people and animals do not really realize
they exist? They are, but they do not comprehend that they are. A rabbit is,
but it doesn’ t comprehend that it is. It’s only over level 200 that you
comprehend that you are. #8: Accepting that enlightenment is one’ s destiny ,
understanding it is a condition that ensues as a consequence of
decision, intention, and devotional dedication consequent to
both karma and divine grace.To avoid the spiritual ego, you stop seeing life as something to be
accomplished, won, or succeeded at. You become that way because you’re
attracted to being that way, and not because you’re driven by a goal. You
become more loving when you let go of the limitations, the things that
block it. A person doesn’ t just say, “I think I’m going to become more
loving.” You try to remove the obstacles to love—judgmentalism and
various attachments and aversions. People who are interested in spiritual work are really responding to an
inner knowingness that, karmica lly, they are destined to reach higher levels
of awareness. When I look at a lecture class, I’ll ask, “What percentage of
this class is destined for enlightenment?” They all are. Why? Who else
would be in the class except people who are destined for enlight enment and
how to reach enlightenment? Who would be in a class on golfing unless
they’re planning to go out on the green and golf? It’s because there’ s an
inner knowingness that you’re attracted to, and that knowingness doesn’ t
care what’ s involved. It just keeps pulling you like a current in that
direction. #9: A voiding glamorizing or aggrandizing the endeavor or its
destination and relying instead on devotion for its own sake. This is about appreciating beauty for its own sake, not because by
appreciating beauty, you’re going to become something better or more
accomplished. It’s seeing the intrinsic value of a thing, and prizing it and
valuing it because of its inner perfection. This is easier and easie r as you go
on, because you let go of blocks to it. You see the perfection and beauty of
all things, and through revelation, the absolute perfection and the essence of
divinity in all that exists shines forth with a stunning radiance. It’s so
stunning, it leaves the mind silent. DIVINE LOVE AND PERSONAL LOVE
Personal love is looking for a gain, a gain of acquisition. It’s solar plexus
to solar plexus. With personal love, people are aligned by infatuation and
craving: “I must have you or I will die.” It’s gratification, satisfaction,
ownership, et cetera. Divine love is of the heart, and it’s not personal.Divine love is a way of being in the world. Members of spiritual
communities develop this love for each other . Men in the armed service
develop a profound lifetime love for each other—a commitment to each
other that transc ends all gain. If you see a shipmate from 40 years ago, what
happens is you break out in tears. This happened to me. Suddenly , the
phone rang one day, and a voice  at the other end was familiar , and instantly ,
I broke into tears. I said, “My God.” Then I apologized for crying. He said,
“Well, I’ve been  contacting the remaining guys from the ship who are still
alive. There’ s only five or six left. Each one, when I contacted them, every
one of them cried like that. Don’t feel embarrassed by it.” That is a
profound bond of love. Divine  love is like a bonding. There’ s no gain
involved. There’ s no gain in bonding. An old friend is an old friend, and the
joy is simply in their presence. Personal love is always lookin g for the seeking of a fulfillment of an
instinctual drive. The craving for a need is coming out of the instinctual
realm; that cravingness, desiringness, and feeling incomplete without
something is an attachment and a trap. LETTING GO OF THE DESIRE OF THINKINGNESS
The child is easily distracted by the phenomena in the world. It drives
their parents crazy, because they are so distractible. You take them with you
into the supermarket, and instan tly they’re lost between the aisles. They’re
checking out the merchandise on the shelves. No one transcends their
distractibility , and we see that the child’ s distractibility is what gives the
mind its attraction. The adult is thinking all the time, because of the juice they’re getting out
of think ingness. The way to stop thinkingness is to look at what you are
getting out of that thinkingness. Y ou ener gize the experiencer , for one thing. When you look at what you’re extracting out of thinkingness, you can let
go of the desire  of thinkingness and thinkingness will stop. Nothing there. And then you see that there’ s no one in the auditorium. The auditorium is
empty and the infinite field is silent. The infinite field is silen t when you
stop wanting to attract thoughts; when you stop extracting any gain from
them, they stop. The reason you think is because you want to think. You
might say, “No, I don’t want to think. I want my mind to be silent. I want to
meditate.” Well, that means that the gain, the desire is hidden from you, andyou have to be more honest with yourself. Y ou enjoy the entertainment. Y ou
enjoy the feeling that thinkingne ss gives you—a sense of existing and being
alive, and that you are. It’s observing the illusion that you are a separate individual being having
these unique thoughts. It’s propping up the sense of an independent
personal self. The child is dealing with perception, the witnes sing of the
visual phenomena. You might say a mystic would not be aware of the
details, but they are witnessing the beauty of God’ s creation in this form, in
the form of the clouds, the sky, the rain. Everything testifies to the presence
of God as the source, an ongoing source of all of creation. The divinity is then present in all things, not more in this than in that. OceanofPDF .comChapter 9
ENLIGHTENED 
HEALERS
The further one progresses along the path of enlightenment, the more one
becomes acutely awar e of the profound relationship between mind and
body . On the path of the ego, wher e the mind and body appear to be
separate, the process of healing  is treated with pills or delegated to doctors
to fix the body;  wher eas on the path of enlightenment, one sees the mind
and body as an integrated whole and understands that the mind, and even
the soul, can play a profound role in healing a variety of conditions, from
colds and aller gies to depr ession and other forms of mental illness. In this chapter , Dr. Hawkins will expand upon this profound
understanding of what it means to be an enlightened healer . So we’v e come up with this mathematical model in which the relative
power of energy fields is calibr ated so that you see that apathy , which is
calibrated at 50, has only half the power of fear, which is calibrated at 100. Fear, on the other hand, has only half the power or energy of courage,
which is calibra ted at 200. Not only do these energy fields have different
relative power to each other , but we see that the energy fields go in a certain
direction. All the energy fields  under courage are directed in a negative
anti-life that which is oriented toward destruction. The energy fields below
courage then tend to be anti-life in their ef fect.At the level of courage, the needle swings to the midline, and as we go
beyond the energy field of 200 up to neutral, willingness, acceptance, and
love. These energy fields now go to the right, indicating that they nurture
and supp ort life, that they are energy giving, life giving, and they increase
aliveness. As we go up the scale we go into energy fields of increasing
aliveness, that which support life and the truth. As we get to the bottom of
the field, we get to that which does not support life, which is anti-life,
which does not represent the truth. Death is calibrated at zero. At about 600, we leave the field of duality . We leave the field of illusion. We leave the identification with the small self, which is the ego in common
parlance, and we move on into fields of enlightenment, so that the great
enlightened beings, the great spiritual masters, the avatars, their energy
fields begin in the 700s, and go on up into infinity . The truth really indicates that which is supportive: supportive of life,
supportive of aliveness. So when we’re talking about health, we’re talking
about aliveness. What we’re talking about is the expression of an energy
field. The body expresses that which the mind holds. We’re only subject to
what we hold in mind. And therefore, the greater the negativity that is being
held in mind, the greater the negative energy field effect on the body’ s
physical health. The greater the positive energy being held in mind and
consciousness, the more powerfully positive will be the ener gy field of life. This gives us a tool now, a way of approaching things: does this support
life, or does it not support life? We can substitute the word health , because
health is nothing but the expression of life; we have energy fields that
support illness, and we have energy fields that support life. Each of these
energy fields reflects themselves  in an emotion, so that which is anti-life, as
you would expect, has negative emotions. These negative emotions include
self-hatred, hopelessness, despair , regret, depression, worry , anxiety ,
cravingness, resentment, hatred, and arrogance. Negative emotions then
accompany ill health. We see the process going on, in consciousness
coming out of these emotional states: destruction, loss of energy, loss of
spirit, deflation, entrapment, overexpansion, overinflation, loss of power . We see the kind of world a person experiences out of these negative
mental states. This is a world of sin and suffering, hopelessne ss, sadness,
fear, frustration, and competition . It’s a world of status. We see the negative
conceptualizations of God that come out of a lower energy field. God is the
ultimate enemy of man—the one who hates him, the destroyer , the one whothrows him into hell forever . Or there’ s the God who ignores man. There’ s
the God who’ s dead, who’ s punitive, who’ s retaliatory . We can then see how
the negative view of the world and of God all correlate with ill health. • • •
Illness is physic al, mental, and spiritual. You can be spiritually ill and be
physically well. Or you can be physically ill and spiritually well. Physical,
mental, and spiritual—everything has a dif ferent dimension. THE BENEFITS OF ILLNESS
It may be not necessarily a physical benefit, but there is a philosophic
benefit to when  you realize what you couldn’ t have lived with before is
trivial and you can indeed live with it. You realiz e that you are far more
than just your physical dimension. The physical dimension can be quite
limited, and you can still be in a state of great happiness and spiritual grace
in spite of it. You can look at it in these ways, philosophically and spiritually ,
intellectually , and physically , and ask yourself, What am I getting so
nervous about? Or what is distr essing me? What is it that I’m r esisting? It could be that a person who is resisting is really experiencing out grief. They’re suppr essing  the grief instead of just giving into it and weeping for a
day or two, and then letting it all go. Don’ t forget everything that happens
has a karmic antecedent. The grief you feel for a loss in this lifetime brings
up all the grief of all the losses over all the lifetimes. People say, “Why am I
so upset over this little thing?” Well, it isn’t just this little thing. You’ve got
a whole  stack of suppressed feelings for many lifetimes, in which you
didn’ t experienc e it out. There are resentments and angers and self-pities
and God knows what else. So you could take advantage of it. When
something comes up in this lifetime, feel it all the way until it finally runs
out. If you’re angry, you’re not angry enough. Lay on the floor and pound
your fist and scream and screech and squeal until all the angriness is gone,
and do the same with the grief. And that way your vulnerability  is lowered. If people are angry , I tell them the trouble is you’re not angry enough. Go in
the other room and scream and jump and shriek and clench your fists and
pound the wall until you’ve got it all out.People suppress those feelings; they don’t like them. We’re trained in a
social way to repress them and not express them. And if you’re a guy,
you’re not supp osed to have grief or cry or anything like that. Let it go. Jump up and down and curse. Just go crazy with it. Finally , you can see it’s
ridiculous and it makes you laugh. • • •
We have to look at the relations hip between mind and body , because that
is of great importance in the field of health, and it is one that is not really
clearly understo od. There is a certain principle, and it’s demonstrated
clinically , that we are only subje ct to what we hold in mind. Now , this is a
principle of healing and a principle of health, two different sides of the
same coin. Illnes s being one side of the coin, health the other . We’re subject
to what we’re holding in mind. We see the illness then is coming out of a
program, a belief system. The program went in and we are now subject to
that for the rest of our life, with no memory of where that came from. Because of childhood amnesia, many people can’t remember what
happened before  the age of five. And some people even, at a much later
age, they have no memory of anything from their entire childhood, or very
few memories. Even for peopl e with good memories of their childhood,
there are vast areas of vacant forgottenness. And in those areas of vacant
forgottenness are the many programs which are now expressing later on in
various forms of ill health. You might hear things like, “Heart disease runs
in our family ,” or “Aller gies run in our family ,” et cetera. These thoughts
then become a program and it goes into the mind and we see that it’s the
same as though the person was hypnotized. Until that program  has made
been conscious and canceled, it remains operative within the unconscious. Now , why does the mind have such power over the body? Perhaps we
can look at the physics of it a little bit. The physics would make it very
easily understandable. We said in our calibrated system here that death is
zero and guilt is 30. We can get the energy field of anything in the world. And so we calibrate the energy field of the body itself, and we find that the
physical body is not a reversed state like this. The body is not a negative
state, but the energy field of the body is about 100. In other words, its
power , its ener gy field is about 100.The energy field of mind begins around 400. It runs between 400 and
500. Those are the energy fields  of the intellect, reason, logic, and what the
mind believes. And therefore, if we hold a thought in the mind that says,
Seeds give me diverticulitis , then the body , which only has an energy field
of 100 is overpowered by the power of the pattern of that belief. All thoughts have a form.
_OceanofPDF.com_The_Wisdom_of_Dr_David_Hawkins_-_David_R_Hawkins.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Maybe he’ll get a truck or a derrick here, or ambu lances, and
maybe he won’ t. Maybe you’ll breathe; maybe you won’ t. What happens then is you need to come back to this particular life again,
with the acceptance of mortality as an inevitability and get over the fear of
it. And it is only a matter of acceptance. The fear of death is what makesthis seem awful, because you’re struggling with it. Once you accept it, it’s
not awful at all. Y ou die. so what. Big deal. It’ s okay. One reason people have a fear of dying is because of moral
accountability. The reason they don’t want to die is because they know
they’re going to be faced with it. Seeing yourself as you really are, you
think, I don’t want that to be on my soul forever. I don’t want that. I don’t
want that unkindness. I don’t want that negativity. I don’t want that
selfishness to be there, and I beg for a chance to correct that. Then, you’re
going to be more sympathetic, more understanding, more forgiving, more
loving. You’re going to value life above winning. Moral accountability is
why most people are afraid to die, because you realize that you’re about to
get confronted with the truth of what you have been. If we accept moral
accountability as we go through life, we don’ t build up a fear about it. Of course, at this point you see your beliefs of divinity come forth as part
of your moral accountability and part of your fear of death. As you grow
spiritually you can see that the fear of death lessens, because you picture
God as merciful. You realize on your deathbed you’re going  to have a
companion. The concept of divinity is merc iful or punitive. The depths of hell is not
something anyone wants to experience, even for a few seconds. Besides,
you can’t experience it for a few seconds, because each second is
experientially an eternity. So, in choosing between heaven and hell, one
decision takes you closer to heaven and the next decision takes you closer
to hell. If you become spiritual ly very advanced, you realize that it’s not
worth taking the chance. There’ s a temporary gain to vanity, and controlling
others, and getting revenge. There’ s a short chuckle as you punch somebody
in the face. Maybe they deserved it. However, moral accountability then
takes you to a choice between two doors. One door leads to heaven and the
other door leads to hell. God does not throw you into hell; you yourself by your own choices have
brought you to that state of abject despair and hopelessness. What are the
limits of freedom. Frankly, there aren’ t any, are there. There  aren’ t any
limits to freedom. You can choose to hate God. You can choose to love
God. You can choose to be gene rous. You can choose to be stingy. What are
the limits of freedom. Only the capacity of the human mind to see what the
options are—the willingness to see the options, whether you’re grasping or
generous, flexib le, and able to learn, grow, mature. Most people  say, “Well,I think what I’ll do is I’ll try to learn from this experience. I’ll try and make
every part of my life about growing and maturing, and developing
spiritually. ” There’ s an innate energy to life. It’s called élan vital, and that’s
a French  term meaning one’s life energy. The energy flows throu gh you as a
certain ener gy. Life flows as an ener gy. You can look at it theologically as a reality. We know that the calibrated
levels of consciousness go all the way to 1,000, and what the world calls
evil is below 200. There are TV programs where everybody applauds the
negativity. The host is overtly pouring forth hatred, conspiracy theories. Now, where do they get such an audience. Would a group of spiritually
evolved people be interested in watching conspiracy theories spit out with
contempt, anger, and hatred. How much appeal would it have in heaven. It
would have a big audience in hell. Killing, murder, and torture are not very
appealing as you spiritually evolve, and when it comes on screen, you say,
“Good God, what do I want to watch that for. ”
#9: Developing a sense of humor
You begin to see that humor serves mankind to a greater degree than the
people leading the parade. All the great enthusiasm—save the planet, and
save the world, and all that stuff—making a big, ostentatious display of it
all. Actually, a good sense of humor to me is more spiritually evolved than
all that pious, holier -than-thou do-goodism. Humor recontextualizes things. It puts it in a different context. And
humor arises out of the contrast between the linear content and the
nonlinear conte xt, which is what makes it humorous. And the great
humorists live long. People like Jack Benny or Geor ge Burns. Geor ge
Burns made it to 100. Half the time they fall over in the bathtub and die of a
fractured skull. I’m reminding myself, when I get to be their age—do not
take showers in the bathtub. CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL GROWTH
I think Ronald Reagan demonstrated the characteristics of conscious
spiritual growth. He calibrated like 500 or something. Winston Churchill,
too; he single-ha ndedly held together the British empire in its darkest day. Churchill calibrated over 500. He was the heart of the lion; he stood up and
got the British people to face the blitz. The rallying call can come from people with greatness of heart, and
Churchill had that. There are scientists who had greatness of spirit, like
Louis Pasteur. They got ridiculed for the advances they made. Greatness of
spirit means even though you know you’re going to be criticiz ed, you see
the great benefit. Some people believed bacteria caused infection, and they
almost got killed for believing it. But because of it, we have the discovery
of antibiotics and other life-saving innovations. Anything that relieves
human suffering and furthers the evolution of consciousness is of great
value. Some people spearhead it and contribute by their endorsement of it. These great philanthropic organizations uplift others by promoting
education and health. How can we help others. First, you fulfill what you can, and then you
reach the point where you become philanthropic, not necessarily financially,
but philanthropi c as a state of consciousness. You ask yourself, What do I
want from the world right now. Nothing. Then, What do I do with my life. Because most people spend their whole lives chasing their wants, their
desires. Well, what happens then, when you have them all. What happens
when you’ve fulfilled all your desires. Does your life then become
worthless. No. Because you share what you have become with others. You
share what you have become. The ultimate act of lovingness is to share that which you have become, so
that your life becomes a prayer. You become that which you preach and
teach. You hold with love, you hold with respect, you hold the world
together in a way within your arms of love. Close your eyes now and picture the whole world and the whole
population of the world. Open your heart and radiate that light to the world
and embrace it. Let’s all put our arms around this whole world, every living
thing on the world, every little toad, every kangaroo, every person, and put
our arms  around it and radiate that love and uplift the love by our intention. By becoming infinitely loving, we become the destiny of mankind, which is
the realization of divinity within as the source of one’ s existence. In the beginning, people learn. They have to, otherwise they don’t even
know it’s possible. Then after a while, learning gets in the way because they
get caught up in belief systems instead of realizing the truth of it
experientially. To learn, in the beginning, is to get oriented to the subject;then you pick what seems comfortable and useful in your life, and you
pursue that. And then at a certai n point you stop reading about it. I’ve given
my own spiritual library away several times in my lifetime. You accumulate
a couple hundred books and then you say, “This is all mentalism and
linearity,” and you give it all away. Then another decade or two later, you
start accumulating the books all over again. Then you clear them all out
again. THE GREA TEST MISCONCEPTION ABOUT SPIRITUAL
GROWTH
People think spiritual growth is going to involve sacrifice, but it doesn’ t. You sacrifice the negatives, and some people would consider that a
sacrifice, I suppose. There’ s time and energy, and if you’ve got a family,
you may wonder where do you get the time and the energy. There are
certain periods of life when you’ve got a young, growing family  and you’re
trying to make it in the world, and this is not usually the best time to decide
you’re going to become a monk. You can make a lifestyle change perhaps later in life. I think  a lot of
people look forw ard to getting older, when they will have what ’s needed to
spend more time on spiritual life. In many churches you’ll see the
congregation is primarily older. There will be some young people with
children, yes, but you’ll see that well over half the congregation is gray
haired (in some churches mayb e 80 percent gray and white hair). Cynics
might say, “Well they’re just afraid of dying, that’s all. ” No, it’s because
they’ve finally got enough space  in their lives and the leisure to do it. They
now have the time and the energy and the spiritual interest to improve their
lives. Young people say, “I have n’t got time for this. ” Well, wait until a later
time. Or learn to do spiritual work in small bits, in snippets. Five minutes of
friendliness. I say the best thing to do is to be friendly to everybody and
loving toward everybody. Every clerk in the store, I alway s thank them, and
people will just practically faint. Try it with every clerk in every store and
every person you run into—just be as smiling and loving toward them as
you can be. It just bowls them over. They just look at you like, “Huh. What. ”I did this for years in New York City. I would walk by an apartment
building on Fifth Avenue, past the doormen, and I would say good morning
to them all and smile. Pretty soon, they looked forward to it, and I
discovered that one can smile and stop and say hello to anybody. I can walk
down any New York City street and strike up a conversation with almost
anybody almost  instantly. Because of your openness and your lovingness,
they don’t feel danger or fear. The animal instinct in them perceives that
you’re a safe space. As your conscio usness evolves, people treat you differently. They look
forward to seeing you; they feel uplifted by your presence. If you attend the
party, it’s a success. Just your energy radiates around the whole room. You
serve others by what you have become. The more loving you become, the
more you’re serving your fellow man and serving God. OceanofPDF. comChapter 8
SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
Now that you have the fundamentals of conscious spiritual growth in
place, you need  to begin a program of regular spiritual pract ices to keep
you in spiritual shape and help you deepen your sense of spiritual
awar eness. In this enlightening chapter, Dr. Hawkins will describe some of the most
important and effective spiritua l practices he recommends, from the most
basic practices to the most advanced. MEDIT ATION
The meditative practice deepens  your understanding of any religion, much
like contemplat ion. What I usually emphasize is both meditation and
aligning your life so that you make your life the prayer. You try to live and
become that which you are studying and learning. You become forgiving. In
the beginning, forgivingness seems like an artificial practice. Jesus Christ
said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do. ” That’ s a
mentalization, and when you’re angry at somebody, it may cross your mind,
and you think, Well, I should probably be seeing it differ ently, but I don’t. But as you get deeper in it, then you think, Well, how can I see this through
differ ent eyes. How can I alter my experience of this. Then that requires a
deeper study. You’re trying to go from the familiarity of the intellectual to
the expe riential. You’re trying to become that which was formerly mentaland is now incorporated into your personality and your way of actually
being in the world. Meditation, of course, has a great history and we could spend hours just
describing all the meditative pathways. I’ve experimented and tried them
all. I belonged to the First Zen Institute in New York City back  in the '50s,
and I practiced Zen meditatio n for many years. For over 20 years, I
meditated an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. You
meditate on some specific truth that you’ve picked up until you really
become the awareness of the truth and the reality of that. Then you don’t
need to tell yourself, “Well, I should be forgiving that person. ” You start to
see, eventually, that everybody is only being what they are, what they can
be at the mom ent. Everybody is just being what they could  be at the
moment, and if not, it’s because they can’t be. If they were  able to be
different, they would be. You have a certain sympathy for everyone, that
everyone is pretty much stuck with the human condition. And the human
condition is, frankly, extremely  difficult, for the individual as well as for
whole societies and civilizations. The thing about meditation is it takes you away from the world. In other
words, you’ve got to set aside an hour in the morning and an hour in the
afternoon or at night, like I did. And what happens to a lot of people is they
compartmentalize it. When they’re meditating, that’s one thing, and then
they go back into the world, and that’s another thing. People do that with
religion, too, of course. On Sunday, they’re very religious and then Monday,
they’re back to their usual business, padding the bill as usual but maybe
feeling a little guilty about it. But it gets compartmentalized. After a while, many people give up meditation because it interferes with
daily life. They’re too busy this morning, so they skip it, and then
tomorrow’ s too busy, too. Meditation then tends to get lost. Contemplation
is a lifestyle of sharpened awareness. The nearest classic teach ing of it is
mindfulness. Mindfulness is to always be aware, to be conscious ly aware of
what your mind  is doing at all times, to not go unconscious and become
oblivious to your own inner mental workings. You become familiar with the
mind. By becoming familiar, the mind actually changes as you become
more and more familiar with it. A conte mplative lifestyle is more effective. It’s a way of being in the
world, because now you’re trying to become  that which you have studied. You can do it continuously. A person can be contemplative no matter whatthey’re doing. My own lifestyle was contemplative for many years, and I
was aware of exactly how I was being with each specific incident. That
way, you become more aware of the reality of other people, as well. You
become aware of their reality, and get out of the solipsistic view that reality
is how you see it. You become aware that there’ s a reality, and this is just
the way you are seeing it. This is not the way the world is—it’ s the way
you’re seeing the world. A sudden understanding of that came relatively early in my life, when I
was on all kinds of big talk shows in New York City. When you go to these
places, because you’re the celebrity of the day, everybody flatters you and
they take you into the makeup room and you get all made up. You’re the
star of the moment. The TV show starts, and there are millions of people
watching you. But, when the show ends, all the lights go out, the hundreds
of people in the studio disappear, and you can hear almost an echo. You
leave the building, and there you are, out on the street, and sudd enly there is
a sinkin g feeling. I understand why rock stars and celebritie s do drugs,
because when the show is over, you can’t handle going from that high to a
crash to nothing. I have a sympathy for them. With meditation, in the beginning at least, you can go into states of
samadhi, very high states, and in the beginning the state only lasts while
you’re in that state, while your eyes are closed and you’re sitting cross-
legged and breathing, and all such, and that marvelous state comes. But
then as you get up and walk  around, it disappears. Then, as spiritual
evolution progresses, the state continues. In the next stage, it continues even when you open your eyes,  and then
when you get up and walk around, it disappears. But then the state gets
more and more prevailing, and you can get up and walk around in that state,
and it remains. Then eventually, you can continue a relatively normal life
and the conditio n is permanent. Eventually, the state precludes what you
would call ordinary mentalization all together and you more or less stay in
the state. Then the state eventually prevails, and you leave the world, which
is what I did. Y ou didn’ t have any choice; you left the world. And then after some years, one learns how to reaccommodate the world. It took me many  years to learn how to become functional within the world
again. It’s a completely different nature. It’s something that you witness. Just as I’m talking to you now, there’ s an aspect that witnesses this as a
phenomenon that is occurring of its own. It doesn’ t have anything to dowith a personal I or me. It happens autonomously, just like the bird flies
through the air. It happens of its own, and it becomes what I call the
persona. There’ s an interactive energy between the world and the Self with
a capital S that learns how to re-function in the world. Most people when they reach an extremely high level of consciousness
do not return to the world. They do not function in the world. It’s really
quite statistically unusual to do so, in fact. Most people stay in a permanent
retreat, or they live in an ashram, and if you want to see them, you travel
many miles and they smile at you sweetly and bless you and then that’ s it. By the grace of God, my capability to explain things and teach  returned,
so I accepted that was the case,  and therefore, I continued to teach. But at
the time, because of the extrem e nature of the change of consciousness,
there wasn’t any choice but to leave the world. Its values had no more
attraction. There was no point to persevere in that, and also, one has an
intuitive knowingness that some thing else quite different is being called for,
so I more or less walked away from everything that the world cherishes as
the ultimate. When you reach this state, you just witness the transition and the
changes. People  worry about what will happen to them if they reach a
certain state where they can’t function in the world, so I tell them, “Well, at
that state, you can’t function in the world. ” The thing is, when that state
arises, you’re no longer afraid of it. It’s just like your hair turning gray; it’s
not exactly scary. It’s just what it is. • • •
There’ s a certain point where you’re satisfied with what you can do in the
world, and you can see that if you keep doing it, it’s just more, but it’s more
of the same. After you have enough millions, what are you going to do with
an extra million. It’s just a nuisance, you know. You have to call an
accountant and say, “Look, I got an extra five million from the company. Figure out what to do with it, okay. ” And you hang up. There’ s no interest. Pursuing success within the world loses its meaning once you’ve
achieved it, and you know that you’ve achieved it. Now, a person who you
might say is karmically destined to evolve will first satisfy himself. They
have satisfied everything that they want from the world, and then they look
for something beyond, and they find that they are attracted to spiritualwork. A certain number of people are attracted once they’ve reached
success. There are many people, of course, who are highly attracted along
the way. They don’t wait that many years to feel they’ve mastered the world
before they decide to leave it. They just leave it because the spiritual
motivation is strong. People have karmic propensity, strong karmic propensities. Some people
have powerful spiritual drives from early life, but then the person turns
away from the world and now finds a whole new area of interest. It’s like
being reborn. It’s a new life. Some people would call it being reborn, being
awakened to the spiritual reality  and a whole new dimension and meaning
to existence. And then rarely, one in 10 million will decide they are
attracted to the whole pathway to enlightenment and decide they will make
whatever decisions they have to in their life to facilitate that. They may join
an ashram. Certainly, they begin to meditate on a very regular, major basis. When I first came out to a small town, I spent the entire day in a
meditative state. I’d start to meditate at 7:00 in the morning. It was just a
total change of lifestyle. But I always tell people, you don’t have to worry
about it, because it won’ t happen until you’re ready for it. You’re not going
to be suddenly jerked out of your desk at your office and forced to join an
ashram. More likely, it’s as if you’ve had enough chocolate and now you
want to move on to vanilla. You’ve satiated that desiringness. You’re giving
up your addiction to the world when you hit bottom. For people who are addicted to the world and the novelty of the world
and the entertainment of the world, if they keep doing spiritual work,
eventually and suddenly, they get released from that addiction. The real
addiction, of course, is to the ego’s experiencing of the world. Remember,
it’s not the world. It’s your experience  of the world. So, there’ s something
about the way you’re experiencing the world that you now have become
addicted to. And if you focus there, then you really start to make fast
progress. You realize you’re not addicted to the world, you’re addicted to what you
get out of it. You begin to look at how the ego is juicing every experience. What is it getting out of these experiences. And then you begin
surrendering that to God. So you don’t have to surrender the Cadillac, what
you surrender is the feeling of pride and success and the narcissistic
satisfaction of owning that Cadillac. With spiritual progression, you begin to appreciate simplicity, and the
simpler things are, the better they are. CONTEMPLA TION
There’ s meditation and then there’ s contemplation. I favor contemplation
because contem plation is a way of being in the world. To make your life
appear is a form of contemplation. Contemplation is a way in which you
align yourself with context instead of content; with context and intention
that your life is of service to the Lord and to your fellow human being, and
out of unconditional love, you ask God to transform how you understand
the world. It’s a way of being in the world, and it’s context ualizing the
meaning, significance, and intention of your life. That recontextualization
then transforms perception, and how you see things dif fers from the way the
world sees them. The mind looks out and it sees form. That’ s the linear. The mind registers
that and it recognizes it. How does it do this. It does it because the mind is
always watching. At first you think you’re the content, that you’re linear
and restricted. This registers, and it’s recognition, but how do you know
what’ s going out. Here’ s the first jump you can make. You can realize that
you are not the content  of what is being witnessed. You think, I am the
witnesser. I am the watcher, the experiencer, the observer witness. If you
have a contemplative lifestyle, it’s very easy to recognize. You don’t have
to meditate, do a lot of weird breathing and stuff. Pranayama breathing, by
the way, calibrates at 190. That’ s the hard way to get there. It takes a lot of
Kleenex because of all of the snif fling. I don’t believe in artificial means of energy manipulation. There are
many technique s out there that are sold for a price. “Secr ets of the ancient
mystics. for only $5,000, I’ll tell you what they are. ” By intention, it’s
very simple to see that the reason you know what’ s going on is because
there is a watch ingness and an experiencingness and this phenomena is
happening spontaneously. There’ s no you that’s watching or experiencing. That’ s a conclusion. Watching and experiencing and awareness, the
observing and the witnessing, is happening autonomously. When you move from identify ing with “out there,” you realize that
consciousness is observing and witnessing all the time, and this phenomena
is autonomous. There’ s no you deciding to be aware. Awareness ishappening of its own accord. It’s a phenomenon that’s intrin sic to your
existence. The light of consciousness is intrinsic to your existe nce. It’s not
volitional. You withdraw from  out-there-ness and you begin to see
everything is occurring sponta neously on its own because of its own
potential actualizing. The potentiality actualizes spontaneously. There is no you that thinks
about it and decides to do it and then takes the credit or blame for having
had it happen. You begin to realize that being aware itself is spontaneous,
autonomous, and non-volitional. Behind the light of consciousness, you
then begin to realize the self, and out of that, the awareness that even the
self is spontaneously being what it is. There’ s no you involved in all of it, so
there’ s no personal you involved in anything about your life at all. It’s all
delusional. Isn’ t that nice. I think intention is what sets karmic patterns. Because actions are pretty
autonomous. I mean, what you’re taking responsibility for is the intenti on. There’ s a famous saying used in 12-Step groups: you’re respon sible for the
effort and not the result. You’re karmically accountable for your intention,
but the consequences of the action are up to God and the whole universe,
and the world the way it is. Intention sets your karmic pattern, and it’s your
culpability. You can make a big mistake out of innocence and although
you’re accounta ble, you’re not severely culpable. You can make very
serious errors and be extremely culpable for things that are really vicious by
intention. You see it all the time, with certain websites and blogs. The
intention of these sites is to injure and hurt another person. Even if they
feign innocence and have some excuse, nevertheless, the intention is quite
glaringly obvious, which is to personally injure a person and insult and
denigrate them. If you do that, then you have the karmic consequence of
intending to harm another person out of malice. You can try to veil it with
some pseudo-so phisticated sophistry, but the intention is pretty clear and
obvious. As you evolve, spiritually you become more and more aware of essence
and you become more difficult to fool. People are more difficult to fool as
they sharpen their awareness. PRACTICAL STEPS FOR A MEDIT ATION PRACTICEMeditation, of course, has a great history going back thousands  of years,
and almo st every body does it in either a Hindu or Buddhic style. Meditation
is a part of Christianity too, but it is not stylized like it is in Eastern
religions. I tell people the simpler you can make it, the better. You just sit
quietly and close your eyes. Now if you do that, and you look straight
ahead, you’ll notice it’s not only just dark, but there are tiny, dancing little
pinpoints of light. Those are called phosphenes, and you just stare straight
ahead. Now some people recommend concentrating on the breath. To me, that’s
even too complicated, but if you like you can become aware of the breath. Then, what you do is become the witness of the phenomena that arise
within the mind. You don’t try to do anything about it. You don’t try to
suppress though t. You become a witness of that which parades across the
mental landscap e. You begin to study with constant focus. You become
aware that thoughts are not following each other. The sequence is one of
witnessing. Actu ally, thoughts are coming out of nothingness. People say, “I
can’t meditate because there are all these thoughts,” and they try to stop
thoughts. That’ s a waste of time. Y ou cannot stop thoughts. There’ s a certain spiritual belief  system that there is a space between two
thoughts, and you will glimpse eternity between two thoughts. Well, I tell
you, you will not glimpse etern ity between two thoughts. I’ve asked many
large congregations of people, “Has anybody every succeeded. ” And
nobody ever has, because that’s not where the blankness is. The blankness
is below  the thoughts. It’s prior to the thoughts. The thoughts follow each
other in 1/10,000th of a second. Now, the experiencer, the perceiver aspect
of the experiencer function of the ego, can’t operate that fast. Therefore,
you’re trying the impossible. You’re trying to see something that occurs in
less than 1/10,000th of a second, and the detector of this doesn’ t operate
that fast. Y ou’ll never find a blank space between two thoughts. What’ s happening is the thoughts are like flying fish coming out of the
ocean. As you see each flying fish, you notice that this fish over here is not
causing that fish over there. So, you don’t look to the flying fish; the
thoughts have occurred already. What you look to is the ocean. You look
below  thoughts. The place to look for the infinite silent space is below
thoughts. If you look at thoughts as a field on the horizon, now you look
below the thoughts and you will see that each thought is arising separately,
individually, autonomously out of an infinite field of silence, and even asyou read these words right now, you think that your mind is busy reading
but unde rneath that is an infinite  silence. If it wasn’ t for that infinite silence,
you wouldn’ t be able to read nor discern the meaning of the words nor
detect the languaging. It’ s because of the infinite silence of the mind. For this same reason, when you’re out in the woods, you wouldn’ t be
able to hear a bird if it wasn’ t for the infinite silence. Without the infinite
silence in the background, you would not be able to hear anything. The
bird’ s song is not interfering with the silence, it’s occurring within  the
silence, and therefore, you approach the mind with the same understanding. Because of the silence, you’re aware of what you’re thinking and feeling. Look to the silence. When you look at a room, it’s because of the emptiness
of the room that you can see the furniture. You begin to functi on closer to
that which you are. Ever, ever closer is the infinite silence itself, because
that’s the silence of the field of consciousness itself. The reason these
discussions about science and consciousness go nowhere is because they
constantly ruminate about intellectualizations about the content  of
consciousness. Consciousness is the field itself. It’s the field itself in which the
thinkingness and all goes on. Consciousness is infinite and it’s formless. It’s
outside of time and space. That’ s why with consciousness resea rch, using a
simple kinesiologic question and answer, you can discern anything that ever
happened anywh ere in time or space. Everything that happens is recorded
within this infinite field of consciousness forever. For eternity. Everything,
every thought, feeling, deed, everything you’ve ever said is recorded
forever. That is the foundation and the basis of karma. Karma means by intention,
every action has now imprinted  forever in the field of consciousness itself. One, therefore, is accountable for that which you have chosen to become. What happens to you then is merely the consequence of your own
choices. There is no arbitrary god sitting up there as a big horrible judge
that’s going to throw you in hell if he’s mad at you or favor you and have
the rain fall on you in great years of prosperity. That’ s primitive, mythical,
cultural, but not really the way it looks when you examine it up close. Divinity is impartial. By virtue of what it is, all things sort themselves out
by virtue of that which they have become. And that which they have
become, they have become via their own options and decisions. So to be
responsible means to be aware of that. Do you want the karma of doingthat. Don’ t ask yourself, Do I want to do that. Ask yourself, Do I want the
karma of doing that. Then you see you have responsibilities. You could weigh options by saying, “Which karmic consequence would I
like. ” When you look at it from that viewpoint, it’s a lot easier to make
moral decisions. What do I want to have to live with, for God knows how
long (in eternity, even). As I talk about accountability and culpability
versus responsib ility, it becomes clear that you’re responsible, and then the
degree of morality is a whole different understanding. People mix up the
two, but you can innocently make a mistake. It’s always the intention  of the
action. W isdom evolves slowly. PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDIT ATION
With psychological meditation, there are usually trainings. They’ll give
you a mantra to repeat or a divine image to hold in mind, or a combination,
and certain postures and breathing styles. You might say that’s the formal
mechanics. That’ s the content of the meditative style: how you sit, how you
breathe, which mantra and symbols you use, et cetera. That’ s one style. Then you begin  to witness. You try to move to the witness/observer. You
begin to witness the phenomena of the mind as they rebuild themselves
without doing anything about them. At that point, as I mentioned briefly
before, you go past the form of the thoughts themselves and you find the
infinite silent space. The infinit e silent space then leads you to what is the
infinite silent space and the awareness of consciousness itself, which is
intrinsically without content. And, how does one know that the silent space is there. It’s because of
awareness. One becomes aware of an infinite silence that is below and more
universal than the content of the mind, and then one starts trying to move
into the source, the very source of that consciousness awareness. The source
of the consciousness awareness leads you to the pronoun I. Then comes the
unveiling of the fact there is no such entity and as you look for the personal
I, no such thing exists. You come to a final definition of the I when you’ve
let go of all of the descriptions,  all the adjectives and the adverbs. The I is
not doing anything, and one comes to the source of this sense of I, and one
comes to the awareness that I is the source of life, that I and life are united. That leads you to very advanc ed states, including the abandonment of
even life itself to God. The abandonment of self as the very source of lifecreated an agonizing experience of death. On the other side of that door
stood the glory and infinite reality out of which emer ges all of the universe
as a continual emergence, which we call life; but that’s the appearance  of
life. That’ s not life itself. One confuses the appearance of life with the
source of life. The source of life is invisible. The appearance of life is
transitory so you can’t get attached to the transitory appearance. Instead,
you constantly look within. The phenomena are all happening of their own. The talkingness is
happening of its own, and your questioning this is happening spontaneous
and autonomously. The two of us are here together, due to our joint karmic
inheritance and that of the whole world. In fact, all eternity has occurred up
to this very moment. This is the emer gence of the future that we’re sitting
on. We’re sitting on the disappea ring edge of the past and the advancing age
of the future, so if we’re clever, we’ll stay put and avoid both of them. Reality is not aligned with either one. It transcends them. It trans cends time. Even once you’re aware of that—that what is speaking now is not even
occurring in time, that time is something that you project onto things, and
that time and space and location are all projections of the human
consciousness—you won’ t bypass the mind when you first start meditating,
because what you’re confronted with is the traffic on the street and the
sounds and the thoughts going and the feeling and the itch in your foot and
all these things. You’re not going to bypass that because bypassing it is
pretty late stage, to be independ ent of the content of the mind. Eventually,
the mind stops and becomes silent. It’ s a great relief. There are different stages. They’re not different styles; they’re really a
stage. Even when you get to advanced stages of meditation, when you first
sit down, the mind is still talkin g, but now you’ve learned quickly how to
bypass it. You go through the stages much more quickly. Also, there’ s
certain visual phenomena. It’s like the inside of your mind lights up and
there’ s a certain  sequence to that. I can remember there was a meditation
group I went to one time many years ago, and there was a certain stage we
called the Bright Blue after you’d been meditating a certain number of
minutes. It’s like all of a sudden everything within the mind is lit up in a
rather intense blue. The deeper stages were beyond the Bright Blue, but the Bright Blue told
you that you were entering a deeper meditation. You’re going into deeper
and deeper layers of the mind, of the unconscious, of the spirit ofconsciousness. Deeper and deep er levels, and at each one, you say, “This
must be the ultimate. ” It’s like a door opens. This must be the ultimate, but
beyond the ultimate is another ultimate and beyond that ultimate is another
ultimate. And that’s how you get really intrigued with meditation, because
just as you escape one level to a state of even greater ecstasy, joy, and
awareness, there  is yet another stage beyond that, and yet another, and yet
another, and you see what it is that’s holding you back from yet another. Let’s say, for example, you can get attached to familiarity. You say, “Oh, I
can see. I’m attached to ‘this is the way it’ s going to be. ’”
The Bright Blue  is very intriguing and then you got to let go of being
hooked on the Bright Blue and let it be of its own. CONTEMPLA TION PRACTICES
Contemplation is continuous. It’s like you’re constantly paying attention
to one thing. Let’s say that your assignment for the day is to become aware
of the intrinsic perfection and beauty of all that exists, the holiness and the
sacredness of all of creation. Wow. That’ll keep you busy for the next 20,
30 years. But in the orientation, you say, “Dear God, I’m trying to see the
perfection and beau ty of all of existence and I ask for thy blessing. ” There’ s
supplication to God to help you on this trip, and then you’ve  stated your
intention. Your intention is to go beyond the linear, beyond perception,
beyond your thoughts, opinions, and all of that narcissistic stuff about the
world, and see the world as it exists. You’re going past differentiation
between perception and essence. What you’re really asking in meditation and contemplation is to go
beyond duality, to stop interpreting perception as reality. Instead, to sense
the essence of things, to sense the exquisite. For instance, this morning I
walked around and it was still dark, and suddenly in the darkness, I heard
this loud purr. And that was my white kitty, picking up the energy of that
which I am. When I pick up his ener gy, the interaction of those two ener gies
sends us both into a state of bliss, happiness, contentment, and love, with
the joyful presence of God. I don’t have to do anything withi n the linear
domain except be there. All I have to do is stand there, and the white kitty
starts to purr. He purrs because I’m there, because of that which I am. You
see, that which the cat is, the cat is a responder to love. In the presence of
love, the white kitty automatically starts to purr. In fact, all I have to do islook across the room and think  of him, and have a loving thought about
him, and it turns him on and he starts to purr. It’s just amazing. That’ s the
way the world becomes. It’s just like when people say New Y ork is a cold, unfriendly place, which
I mentioned in Chapter 3. Give me a break. I could walk on any street, start
talking to anybody about anything, and have an instant friendly
conversation strike up, just like we were all friends for hundreds of years. Meditation and contemplation are very exciting. They’re very exciting
because the discoveries that you make are amazing. You start looking
within for what’ s exciting in the world and not what’ s without. In this next part, Dr. Hawkins takes you into the world of the true mystic. He shares some of the character istics that you can look for and expect when
you seek to discover the enligh tened state. He also shares some practical
exercises that you can begin to practice that will assist you in the evolution
of your consciousness. THE 9 CENTRAL ELEMENTS OF SERIOUSL Y
COMMITTED INNER SPIRITUAL WORK
#1: Discipline of focus without deviation. One-pointedness of mind is a certain style of meditation. You focus on an
object, a thought, a feeling, a divine figure, a mantra, or a sound perhaps. With fixity of mind, you keep your focus on it. This takes discipline. The
mind wants to wander away, and with the undisciplined mind, passing
thoughts run away with the mind. You start by disciplining your mind to
concentrate on the point of a pen and to keep it there unwaveringly. Eventually, you can perfect it so that nothing breaks your concentration. #2: W illingness to surrender all desires and fears to God. Spiritual awareness is far beyond emotionality. You’re willing to
surrender the emotion. What you’re really surrendering is the payoff of the
emotion, because first there is the emotion, then there’ s what you get out of
that emotion. And to let go of emotion, you have to let go of the payof f. People love to be indignant. They love to be the victim. They wallow in it. They really play it, and you can see it in the media, the glorification of
narcissism. People will do anything to achieve fame. They’ll confess to
crimes they didn’ t even commit to get on television. #3: W illingness to endure transitory anguish until the difficulty
is transcended. Spiritual work is sometimes difficult. To face one’s inner feelings,
sometimes you’ll experience a state of disappointment at what you discover,
like playing the victim. You look at what you’re holding onto, and then you
realize, to your dismay, that you’re milking it and that you’re really
wallowing in victimhood. So, that transitory disappointment that you go
through when you admit the truth of something to yourself is a temporary
passing discomfort. You can see how selfish you are in a relationship. You
can see how self-interested you are. You can see how indifferent you are. You can see how unloving you are in some areas. It become s somewhat
painful, the pathway of inner searching. That’ s why some people, like 12-
Step groups, take a fearless moral inventory. It’s often recommended that
you have somebody to discuss it with so that you don’t get hooked in some
negative viewpoint and can’ t get out of it. The Christian saints say how they went from elated states to states of
despair: “Oh my beloved, how could you have deserted me. ”  Don’ t worry
about the states of great anguish. Just surrender the anguish itself to God
and constantly surrender all of it. Don’ t resist the anguish if it comes up,
because if you’re serious, it very likely will come up again. I never knew anybody who just went into a state of happiness and stayed
there all the way to enlighten ment. Jesus Christ sweated blood in the
Garden of Gethsemane. There’s anguish along the way, but that
experientially is what goes on and you say, “This too I’m willing to go
through, oh Lord, whatever this anguish may mean or whatever it
signifies. ”
Everybody along the spiritual pathway can benefit from having a mentor
who, at times, can reflect back  things that would be far more difficult to
handle on your own. #4: Constancy and watchfulness. Mindfulness is being watchful and witnessing the phenomena going on in
the mind. Many people are completely oblivious to their own mode and
style of thinking and behaving. People can be shocked and of fended all over
the place  by others, and they’re not even aware they’re being the same way:
completely out of place, inappropriate, undiplomatic, not thinking of the
sensitivities of others. With mindfulness, you become aware of your
shortcomings, you honestly admit them, and then you ask God for help to
overcome them. The first thing is to become self-aware. Then, having become more self-
aware, you’re now more motivated to try to grow. Let’s say you discover
that you’re really being quite selfish in every single interaction, so now you
ask God to help you overcome this selfishness. When you ask God for help,
you’re opening a doorway of energy that wasn’ t there before. If you just
ignore it, nothin g much happens, but if you say, “Dear God, I am unable to
overcome this self-interest and it seems to color everything I do. There must
certainly be some great motivation that I could align with than just
satisfying the personal ego. ” First of all, the personal ego is temporary, and
when you leave the body, hope fully there’ s going to be something that’s
going to carry you further than the pits of the ego. #5: Moving from self-interest as a participant/experiencer to that
of the witness/observer. If you are serio usly interested in enlightenment, first you identify with
the mind and think, I am that. You see yourself as the doer of all actions,
and then you think, Well, what is it that knows that. ” You realize it’s
because you’re witnessing and observing it, so then you move and you see
that you move to identify the witness/observer, and then from there, you
move to the experiencer, which  is a far more advanced and more refined
thing to transce nd, to stop identifying as the experiencer. However, it is
relatively easy to see that that which you are as the witness and the
observer, and then on an even more advanced level, you’re the witness, the
observer, and also the experiencer. What you need to realize is those things are autonomous. There’ s no you
that is witnessing. There’ s no you that is experiencing. There’ s no you that
is observing. These are automatically happening of their own accord as a
consequence of the nature of consciousness itself. It’s consciousness  thathas all these capacities, not a personal you. We’re talking about how to
transcend identi fication with the ego, the pronoun of a personal self as a
primary source of volition. The ego wants to take credit for that which is actually spontan eous and
automatic. It’d be like the ego always taking credit for the weather. “Well, I
certainly did a nice job of today,” it says. The sun is shining without you. But if it could get away with it, the ego would take credit for the sun
shining. #6: W illingness to relinquish judgmentalism and opinion about
what is observed. This is probably the hardest stage, because you see, our society itself is
intrinsically narcissistic. The right to free speech and all that kind of thing
—it’s like everybody feels oblig ated to get out there and tell you how they
feel about thing s. In reality, who cares what you feel about it. Nobody
really gives a whit what you think or feel about it. I’ll tell you why:
Because they care about what they think or feel about it. They don’t really
care what you think about it. In fact, the only thing you do is add grist to
their mill, so they can tell you how they think and feel about how you think
and feel. The idea is that by being truthfu l and integrous, you can’t win. You have
to manip ulate it. We were sayin g the consciousness level of America has
dropped. That’ s one of the reasons, the political dishonesty and the
dominance of the media, which  displays it all, and the seduction of all of
that. That plus relativism, which allows it all to happen and have its
blessing. If truth is no different than falsehood, then you can lie your head
off and not feel guilty about it. You can say there is no such thing as
absolute reality and no such thing as truth, and that everything is relative. Then you can avoid all kinds of guilt and you can be narcissistic  for all your
life without any responsibility. Some people project their own narcissism
onto everything. There are, however, many motivations that have nothing to do with
narcissism. There are motivations having to do with merely being that
which you are. Let’s say you run marathons, and you enjoy them and you
have the capaci ty to do them. Not everybody has the ability to do that. Another person could create music because it’s the fulfillment of apotential. There are many motivations other than personal gain. There is
fulfilling one’s destiny. So there  is a pleasure in being all that you can be to
the greatest extent you can be, and that’s a spiritual satisfaction of
potentiality becoming an actuality, a fulfillment of a promise. The human being is created with the capacity for the evolution of
consciousness and the development of spiritual awareness, so the
fulfillment of that potentiality then is the acknowledgment of a divine gift
of the potentialit y of life itself, and there is a gratification that comes from a
knowingness of having fulfilled  one’s destiny. But I understand also what
the critic says about it, that altruism and humanitarianism can also be
accompanied by egocentricity. “Oh, look what a great donor I am. I’ve
given my millions to the poor. ” Yes, and that does also happen. The two
things can coinc ide. You can on the one hand be the integrous fulfillment of
your potential and then the ego can also chime in and try to play off of it,
and of course, that’s so-called spiritual pride. People will become holier
than thou. People become proud of their humility. “Look how humble I
am. ”
#7: Identifying with the field rather than with the content of the
field. This has to do with identifyin g with context—seeing that within the
phenomena perceived to be occurring, you are not the content, you are the
field. What is the infinite field of your ultimate reality. And that is
consciousness itself. You’re not the content of consciousne ss, you are
consciousness. Without conscio usness, you would not even be aware that
you exist. Did you know that below 200 people and animals do not really realize
they exist. They are, but they do not comprehend that they are. A rabbit is,
but it doesn’ t comprehend that it is. It’s only over level 200 that you
comprehend that you are. #8: Accepting that enlightenment is one’ s destiny,
understanding it is a condition that ensues as a consequence of
decision, intention, and devotional dedication consequent to
both karma and divine grace. To avoid the spiritual ego, you stop seeing life as something to be
accomplished, won, or succeeded at. You become that way because you’re
attracted to being that way, and not because you’re driven by a goal. You
become more loving when you let go of the limitations, the things that
block it. A person doesn’ t just say, “I think I’m going to become more
loving. ” You try to remove the obstacles to love—judgmentalism and
various attachments and aversions. People who are interested in spiritual work are really responding to an
inner knowingness that, karmica lly, they are destined to reach higher levels
of awareness. When I look at a lecture class, I’ll ask, “What percentage of
this class is destined for enlightenment. ” They all are. Why. Who else
would be in the class except people who are destined for enlight enment and
how to reach enlightenment. Who would be in a class on golfing unless
they’re planning to go out on the green and golf. It’s because there’ s an
inner knowingness that you’re attracted to, and that knowingness doesn’ t
care what’ s involved. It just keeps pulling you like a current in that
direction. #9: A voiding glamorizing or aggrandizing the endeavor or its
destination and relying instead on devotion for its own sake. This is about appreciating beauty for its own sake, not because by
appreciating beauty, you’re going to become something better or more
accomplished. It’s seeing the intrinsic value of a thing, and prizing it and
valuing it because of its inner perfection. This is easier and easie r as you go
on, because you let go of blocks to it. You see the perfection and beauty of
all things, and through revelation, the absolute perfection and the essence of
divinity in all that exists shines forth with a stunning radiance. It’s so
stunning, it leaves the mind silent. DIVINE LOVE AND PERSONAL LOVE
Personal love is looking for a gain, a gain of acquisition. It’s solar plexus
to solar plexus. With personal love, people are aligned by infatuation and
craving: “I must have you or I will die. ” It’s gratification, satisfaction,
ownership, et cetera. Divine love is of the heart, and it’s not personal. Divine love is a way of being in the world. Members of spiritual
communities develop this love for each other. Men in the armed service
develop a profound lifetime love for each other—a commitment to each
other that transc ends all gain. If you see a shipmate from 40 years ago, what
happens is you break out in tears. This happened to me. Suddenly, the
phone rang one day, and a voice  at the other end was familiar, and instantly,
I broke into tears. I said, “My God. ” Then I apologized for crying. He said,
“Well, I’ve been  contacting the remaining guys from the ship who are still
alive. There’ s only five or six left. Each one, when I contacted them, every
one of them cried like that. Don’t feel embarrassed by it. ” That is a
profound bond of love. Divine  love is like a bonding. There’ s no gain
involved. There’ s no gain in bonding. An old friend is an old friend, and the
joy is simply in their presence. Personal love is always lookin g for the seeking of a fulfillment of an
instinctual drive. The craving for a need is coming out of the instinctual
realm; that cravingness, desiringness, and feeling incomplete without
something is an attachment and a trap. LETTING GO OF THE DESIRE OF THINKINGNESS
The child is easily distracted by the phenomena in the world. It drives
their parents crazy, because they are so distractible. You take them with you
into the supermarket, and instan tly they’re lost between the aisles. They’re
checking out the merchandise on the shelves. No one transcends their
distractibility, and we see that the child’ s distractibility is what gives the
mind its attraction. The adult is thinking all the time, because of the juice they’re getting out
of think ingness. The way to stop thinkingness is to look at what you are
getting out of that thinkingness. Y ou ener gize the experiencer, for one thing. When you look at what you’re extracting out of thinkingness, you can let
go of the desire  of thinkingness and thinkingness will stop. Nothing there. And then you see that there’ s no one in the auditorium. The auditorium is
empty and the infinite field is silent. The infinite field is silen t when you
stop wanting to attract thoughts; when you stop extracting any gain from
them, they stop. The reason you think is because you want to think. You
might say, “No, I don’t want to think. I want my mind to be silent. I want to
meditate. ” Well, that means that the gain, the desire is hidden from you, andyou have to be more honest with yourself. Y ou enjoy the entertainment. Y ou
enjoy the feeling that thinkingne ss gives you—a sense of existing and being
alive, and that you are. It’s observing the illusion that you are a separate individual being having
these unique thoughts. It’s propping up the sense of an independent
personal self. The child is dealing with perception, the witnes sing of the
visual phenomena. You might say a mystic would not be aware of the
details, but they are witnessing the beauty of God’ s creation in this form, in
the form of the clouds, the sky, the rain. Everything testifies to the presence
of God as the source, an ongoing source of all of creation. The divinity is then present in all things, not more in this than in that.
Moral accountability
What is the main reason people are afraid to die, according to the author?
Spiritual growth is not about sacrifice, but about letting go of negatives and becoming a better person.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of spiritual growth, and how it progresses?
Meditation is not about achieving a specific state, but about becoming aware of the infinite silence and the infinite field of consciousness.
What is the author's view on the concept of meditation?
The author believes that this concept is primitive and that it's not supported by the reality of the universe.
What is the author's stance on the idea of a personal God who judges and punishes?
The author believes that self-compassion and self-acceptance are essential for spiritual growth and that it's important to let go of self-interest and self-pity.
What is the author's view on the idea of self-compassion and self-acceptance?