This awakening of mass consciousness that we’re seeing in humanity today, let’s put it into a larger context so that we can see where this fits. Enlightenment is not the final stage in our journey as spiritual beings, not by a long shot.

Expanding Awareness

Awareness. Awareness has the ability to focus. It can focus on just the tip of your finger. It can encompass your whole body. It can even expand and fill the whole room to the point where there doesn’t feel like there’s a boundary between your skin and the room. This expansion of conscious awareness is often used as a meditative technique to feel beyond the limited sense of self.

You can expand awareness infinitely far, yet when you feel out to infinity, you probably won’t be conscious of what’s going on in distant galaxies right now or even on the other side of our planet. Awareness, despite being limitless, has some limitations in its distance, at least in the way that you and I are using conscious awareness in our current human existence at this stage in our soul’s evolution.

Okay, so awareness can contract to a point or expand infinitely far. Cool. I guess it’s kinda like an accordion.

Local vs. Nonlocal Existence

In the dream state, it feels like “I” exist in a particular location. There is a “me” that exists in a point in space. Here I am and there you are.

When one awakens, it is discovered that there is no location where one exists. There is simply conscious awareness. It has no location at all, and it is everything, yet it’s not simultaneously consciously aware of all of itself. It’s like knowing you are all the channels on TV, yet watching only one of them at a time.

So you find you are actually completely unlimited, yet there is still somehow the experience of limitation in physical manifestation to a greater or lesser degree.

In his book I Am That, enlightened sage Nisargadatta Maharaj and a student engage in a discussion. Upon hearing Nisargadatta explain that he is consciousness ever-present in all time and space, the student challenges him to reveal what is currently happening in New York while the two of them are sitting together having their conversation in India. Nisargadatta responds that he hasn’t done the necessarily yogic training to be able to do so.

Going Beyond Physical Limitation

We are infinite beings and by letting go of fears, letting go of doubt, letting go of limitation, and letting go of what we are not, we consciously expand into more of ourselves. Heck, even in normal people speak, when we overcome obstacles, we are said to have become “a bigger person.”

Our awareness is not necessarily limited to this body and this lifetime. In dreams we can experience other worlds, just like in our imagination. We can astrally project into other dimensions. We can tap into past lives and experience living in other times and space. We can have deja vu which is really just a remembrance of something we actually have already experienced before, but in another lifetime or otherwise.

We are not as confined and limited to this one physical body as we may think.

The world’s great masters have been able to perform various amazing feats such as teleportation and bilocation. They have literally been able to play with the illusion of time and space while being sourced in a reality which sees through the illusions and the “laws” of physical reality which are not really laws at all, but more like collective beliefs that we all buy into when we play this game called “traditional human experience.”

Normally people project their consciousness into one body at a time and are consciously aware of only one lifetime at a time. Yet these masters have been able to expand not just astrally and mentally into other realms, but physically as well. They are showing us what is possible beyond the limits of what we have traditionally denoted to be a regular ole’ human.

Expansion of Consciousness

Every lifetime we’ve ever lived is occurring here and now. This is why we can experience them in various ways. If they weren’t going on now, we couldn’t tap into them. They’re not really past lives, but multiple simultaneous incarnations.

Teleportation and time travel is nothing more than vibrationally shifting your consciousness to tune into another point in time and space, not unlike changing the frequency on the TV to focus awareness onto another channel.

Not only can we tune into other frequencies, we can even begin tapping into multiple frequencies of existence simultaneously, or multiple lives or multiple experiences within the same life.

In the same way that consciousness can focus on the tip of your finger, expand to the whole of our body, or expand out to the most distant corners of the universe, consciousness can expand to be simultaneously aware of multiple points within time and space.

Moving beyond the experience of bilocation, imagine consciousness being able to eventually experience every point in time of your life all at once, kinda like when your life flashes before your eyes in an instant, but even more real than that.

Then consciousness expands to encompass not only every point in your life simultaneously, but every possible version of this lifetime all at once.

Then consciousness expands to encompass all of your simultaneously existing incarnations all at once.

Then consciousness expands beyond the concept of “you” and “your lives” and starts to simultaneously experience the lives of another person, and then all people, and then all living creatures on earth, and then all living and non-living things on this planet, then the whole milky way galaxy, then all forms of life in this universe including all aliens, then all forms of life in all universes, then All That Is in its entirety, throughout all time and space, in every version of itself… until consciousness expands and entirely remembers and experiences who it really is, in the ultimate merge back into Oneness ever!

WHEW!

What a ride! Go God Go!!

So… Enlightenment?

So what we call enlightenment, the realization that you are All That Is, aka Spirit, and that Spirit expresses itself here in physical reality as form… this awakening from the belief of being a separate self to the realization that you are the Infinite… this enlightenment thing isn’t the final part in the process at all!

So if you’re thinking that when you get enlightened, that’s the end of the road, well, think again!

Photo by gwenturnerjuarez

When people talk about growing up, taking on life’s challenges, and becoming a “bigger person,” this metaphor of being a “bigger person” has a lot of truth to it.

The phrase stems from the recognition that you have expanded. You can handle bigger problems, more energy, more love, more people, more money, more abundance, more lightness, more darkness, more LIFE.

The size of the problems you can handle in life is directly related to the size of YOU.

Spiritual and personal growth is all about validating and accepting every portion of yourself. Expansion is ultimately the process of inclusion, not exclusion.

Being Aware of Darkness, But Choosing Light

The farther you go into the light, the more aware of the darkness you’re able to become. This doesn’t mean you have to then choose darkness, but you become more aware of the choices you have on both sides and you look at them simply as choices because that’s all they are. You have the power of awareness.

Remember, this physical reality is all about choices. Just because you may become more aware of evil, “negative choices,” or “dark choices” doesn’t mean you have to actually go and experience them. In fact, the more willing you are to become more aware of them without resistance or judgment, the less you need to experience them because you are allowing them to become equally valid to any choice you could make. When they become equally valid to any choice you could make, you are then effortlessly capable of choosing what you prefer without invalidating what you don’t prefer. The inner struggle drops away. Such is the power of acceptance and self-acceptance. This is the true freedom of non-judgment. This is the essence of allowing.

It becomes a recognition that that’s simply not where you live anymore. You live in this new house now, not that old house. It doesn’t mean that your old house is a bad house. It served you well. It brought you to the place where you can now choose this house. So bless it, love it, keep it, own it, but leave it in its place. It’s a place you no longer live, but someone else may still be using that neighborhood and bless them for experiencing those things you have experienced, knowing that they are also going up the ladder in their own way, in their own time. Make it all equal and you will have equal ability to choose anything you wish. Anything at all.

People talk about having a “spiritual awakening” and being a “conscious being,” but what does this really mean?

Awakening and consciousness are words that attempt to define the undefinable, so it’s only natural that there will be numerous definitions and descriptions of awakening and consciousness. Not only this, but the word means different things at different points along the spiritual path so not everyone is always talking about the same thing.

Some people use the term “awakening” to mean that I am awake and not being currently controlled by the ego. If I’m Present in the Now, I am awake, but this is only one stage in the process of awakening.

I actually use the word “awakening” to mean something very different. In my vocabulary, it is synonymous with “enlightenment.” It means to realize your true nature, not just intellectually, but to actually BE it. It is a radical shift of identity that involves the direct realization of the nonexistence of the “me” that I think I am. It is the direct experience of Oneness and Infinity/Nothingness as One’s actual Reality.

Let’s take a look at several different stages of awakening.

The following is not by any means an all-inclusive list, but it does highlight some of the common stages along the path to enlightenment.

Total Unconsciousness

At this level, a person is totally asleep. “I am the voice in my head. I am my body. My name, job, personality, beliefs, and opinions all define me. My mind runs incessantly, constantly talking about me, my life, and everything in my life that relates to me. I am like the star of my own show.”

They’re totally identified with their thoughts, but they don’t realize it at all. When the unruly mind gets especially chattery, we’ll hear this identification with thought reflected in their statement, “I’m driving myself crazy!” (I am the barrage of thoughts.)

The person often feels like they’re at odds against the world, struggling and fighting to make things happen the way they want. Life is a constant struggle to gain pleasure and avoid pain caused by external separate things.

Unconscious people are constantly looking to feel safe, to control life the way they want, and to gain the approval of others.

The unconscious person is an automatic stimulus/response junkie. Someone insults them and they must automatically fight back to defend their honor, get revenge, or whatever other justification they conjure up.

The problem is that an eye for an eye makes us all blind.

This is the dream world, being totally asleep. It’s just like dreaming when you’re asleep at night and you think the world you’re experiencing is actually real, independent of you.

The Mind/Body/Soul

Many traditions teach us that we are a three-part being composed of mind, body, and spirit or soul. The three of them interact somehow, on some level. The mind and body feel very real, but where’s this soul thing? Is it somewhere inside our body? Is the body the boundary of the soul and the temple of the soul? If so, we must then be disconnected from all other bodies and souls since I’m over here and you’re over there. Heck, we must be disconnected from God too! Oh no!!!

Hopefully when we die, our soul will reunite with God. Until then, we’re down here on earth bobbing along and hopefully being a good person to earn the right to “get back to” God up in Heaven. Please please please!

Ego? I have a what?

Eventually, and at the perfect time in the person’s evolution, the person learns about the existence of the ego. We are told that our thoughts are not who we are at all. We hear that we are some sort of mystical unseen consciousness or spirit or soul which we’ve likely heard about before, but now we’re being told that we’re made up more of “consciousness,” and less of “thought” and “physical body.”

Instead of feeling like a three-part being as before, we are now a spiritual being having a human experience. We are spirit/consciousness using the body and mind as tools, very much like how we use our cars as tools to interact with the road, but the cars are not actually us.

When we are fully in the present moment, aware of our own existence rather than being fully absorbed in the drama of the mind, we are being a conscious person. That is, we are not under the unconscious grip of the ego and thus have the ability to consciously respond to situations instead of automatically reacting to them.

Enlightenment

Eventually, one way or another, consciousness itself awakens to its true nature and comes to realize that it truly is the One and the All. This beingness literally is the Infinite itself.

Instead of a “me” who has awareness, it is recognized that awareness itself simply is and there is no “me” who is aware. It is consciousness itself that is conscious. It is awareness itself that is aware. Awareness is not something that a “me” can turn on or off. Awareness has no bounds that can be limited by a “me” for it does not exist within a “me.”

When enlightenment “happens,” the enlightened being who was there the whole time may awaken all in one go the way Buddha under the bodhi tree, the way Eckhart Tolle did when his ego collapsed under its own weight overnight, or the way Ramana Maharshi did at the age of 16.

More commonly, however, it begins to happen in glimpses and spurts the way it’s happening with me starting at the age of 24 or the way it did with Adyashanti who began having his non-abiding awakenings at the age of 25.

Either way, rather than being an individual person who is aware of their own consciousness, they become consciousness itself, being. The true “I” is. I am. There is no real person there who is awakened and enlightened, despite the fact that that’s how it appears from an external perspective.

The Spiritual Awakening of Mass Consciousness

Awakened authors like Eckhart Tolle are becoming more prominent now and are helping the rest of the world awaken as well.

It’s one stage to awaken to the fact that you have an ego, to realize just how identified you’ve been with it, and to see how much control it’s had over you. From here you simply notice the ego, notice the fact that you’re conscious, and notice that this mind is something you’re witnessing rather than something you are.

It’s another thing entirely to truly awaken to your true nature and experience a “death” of the separate self entirely and “become” enlightened.

Both levels are fantastic and neither one is “better” than the other in any way, but they are different levels nonetheless.

It’s a wonderful time to be alive and be a part of this mass awakening of consciousness here on earth. What a glorious time in human history!

Are you ready to awaken to your true nature?

There is this theory floating around our world today, the theory of LACK.

It says that there are finite resources on this planet. There is not enough for everyone and thus we must struggle with one another and compete for what there is not enough of.

Who gets the resources? Why, the strongest of course! It’s survival of the fittest, a natural by product of evolution. “It’s how things work!”

This is the way things work when people are cut off from their true source within and are trapped in pure egoic consciousness.

The mind of the ego can be likened to an animalistic mind, just purely survival and reproduction based. It can not see beyond itself, beyond physicality. Thus it sees only what it has and recognizes that sometimes what it wants is here, but other times it’s not.

So what it wants is limited and since other people are also trying to take what it wants, it must compete with others for what it wants.

This is the current state of many people in this planet, particularly where we see the strong elite dominating the majority of people who live in poverty and lack.

The reason this mentality is able to thrive is because people have cut themselves off from the inherent source of creation which allows them to create MORE of that which they want.

Grow more food, create more money, share with people more freely, give what you have extra of, even give what seems to be lacking because you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that you abide in abundance and there is ALWAYS more where that came from.

There is always more where that came from.

You see, as more people start raising their consciousness by connecting to the Source of All That Is (and thus entering the kingdom of God), they will begin to realize, both intellectually and experientially, their own inherent powers of Creation.

People will begin to further develop their skills of manifestation, of being able to create something out of thin air!

Isn’t that what growing food is all about? You nourish plants and animals, give them food, water, sunlight, a healthy atmosphere, and food is created from the loving ingredients of Source.

Same thing with everything else. When we nourish certain mindsets, beliefs, and understandings in the right way, we allow them to flourish.

We welcome views of abundance and act upon these states of being and thus make them real here on earth.

Evolution is not just about the strongest surviving. Evolution also entails continual expansion, growth, becoming MORE! That’s what Creation is all about. It’s about becoming more, about experiencing more, about having more, about appreciating more, about loving more, about sharing more.

Not because you’re trying to gain more in order have more and hopefully fill a void within.

Quite the opposite. It’s because you BECOME more that you then experiencing HAVING more, more abundance, more love, more unity, more peace.

So it truly comes down to us becoming more as people and raising our levels of consciousness to being open to abundance, open to all having enough to survive, and open to building the underlying foundation which allows each and every one of us to not only survive, but to THRIVE!

Abundance, Abundance, Abundance. That’s what it’s all about.

We must choose it for ourselves. It is totally up to us. Your abundance is totally up to you.

As you begin to acknowledge the Source of Creation within you, call it God, Existence, Christ, Allah, Spirit, Consciousness, whatever you wish… as you acknowledge that all Creation flows through us and ultimately IS us, you’ll find that you truly ARE the source of All Creation.

It’s interesting to see how much people resist death. Fear of death is actually the ego’s biggest fear, its core fear.

Death is seen as basically the worst possible thing that could ever happen. Doctors in our (American) society today are often taught to consider death of a patient a failure while the prolonging or prevention of their death, even if it creates a state of suffering, a success.

This is not a judgment one way or another, but simply an observation of this intense fear of death and man’s attempted avoidance of it.

We see this fear reflected in the way man generally treats nature.

There’s so many conservation projects in action trying to save this or that species. This also seems linked to this inherent fear of death built into all our egos as well as its resistance to allowing change.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that we should promote killing off all species in the name of change without a second thought. Afterall, it’s pretty clear that humans are creating some pretty serious damage to this planet in terms of pollution, overfarming soil, destroying rainforests, and all these other topics we’ve heard about time and time again.

People also seem to get upset when they find out that a fire (whether sparked by man or by nature) is going to wipe out an entire species of plant or animal. They will become extinct just like the dodo bird (pictured here) did. Bye bye birdie.

Death is an inevitable part of life, an integral part of the process.

Death is not, however, the opposite of Life. Life has no opposite. Life is.

The “opposite” of death is birth. (It’s not truly its opposite, but actually the same thing seen differently. That’s another topic entirely, however. Read Home with God for more information.)

What we call Life is a continuous cyclical process that depends on both what we call birth and what we call death. If we were to experience only birth, we would effectively be seeing a cancerous growth. In this day and age, death is just as much a part of Life as birth for our mortal bodies.

People welcome birth and celebrate it, yet they fear death and mourn it. Both parts are equal parts of a cyclical whole.

So why all this fear about the extinction of a particular species of plant or animal? New species are being created. Older species die off. It’s just part of the constant process of creation we call evolution.

What’s your take on it?

Is the extinction of a particular species really something to rally against and get worked up over?

Is it something to simply something to accept as a natural part of the cycle of birth and death?

Should we do all we can to prevent a species from being wiped out?

Is it simply a symptom of a larger problem: that we feel separate from each other, from mother nature, and from all of Life?

What do you think?