21-2-2009

Discourse by Ellaeenah: LIVING IN CONSCIOUS AWARENESS

A few small questions before we start: What was your first thought as soon as you got out of bed, this morning? Which foot did you put down, the right or the left? What time did you make your first call or receive your first call? What were you thinking of when you brushed your teeth this morning? How long did it take you to finish your cup of coffee?

You haven’t answered one question and we’re focusing on only one hour in your day. What awareness were you in when you were waking up and going about your daily chores? You didn’t know what you were thinking, you didn’t know your bodily actions, and you didn’t know what you were feeling. My next question to you is pertinent: How then are you living? And the next question is even more pertinent: Are you really living? If you were, wouldn’t you have known, at least, half the answers?

You don’t know the answers because we move about out of unconscious habit. The habit of unconscious living. Whether we are looking at our physical movements or our thought patterns or our emotional reactions and responses, we are unaware. Obviously then, someone else is living our life because if we were living our lives, we would know what we were doing. So who is living your life? Ever questioned that? Who is living my life? How much power does that person or do those persons have who are living your life for you?

And then the next question: Do you remember ever consciously giving permission to these persons to live your life for you? Do you remember saying, “Alright! Take it and live my life for me.” Now it’s getting even worse. You’re not living your life, you don’t know who’s living your life and you don’t know when you gave them permission to do so. My question then to you is: Why are you living? Is your life that insignificant to you that you move through, day after day, without giving it one moment of significant recognition? Is that how little your life means to you? Is that how little you mean to yourself?

Does this all feel harsh? Of course we get caught in our habits, but the reason why we are here, at this time of the here and the now, is to move beyond those habits. The habits that were meant to facilitate our living existence have now, in fact, become restrictive barriers to our expansion and our growth. The same habits which appear to make our lives easy, even if they are monotonous, have now restricted our growth pattern because we refuse to move beyond our habits.

And it’s not only physical habits, like putting your right foot down first while getting out of bed. These habits go way beyond that. They influence how we think and how we feel and how we interact; how we live.

So we know now, beyond doubt, that we have no awareness of our physical, ego-based, personality-driven existence.

Now let’s move on to a fresh set of questions. When did your Spirit Beingness last make itself heard loudly? When did Spirit Beingness talk through you? When did Spirit Beingness respond?

No replies to these either. So you’re unaware of the personality, and you seem equally unaware of the spirit. The 2 pillars of our existence: our persona (that’s our ego) and the spirit…. and there’s equal non-awareness of both. Is it any wonder then that we often feel like little boats tossed upon stormy waters? Often we wake up out of sorts and wonder, “Why am I feeling out of mood?” or we wake up feeling great and think, “Why am I feeling so happy?” And to neither question do we have an answer.

Living in conscious awareness involves, first, making a decision whether to be conscious of self, as ego, or to be conscious of self, as spirit. And you can do either; both will lead you to the same goal of spiritual growth and expansion. One need not only be conscious of oneness as spirit. You can be completely conscious of yourself as an ego-based, personality-driven human being, and you’ll reach the same goal…. two paths leading to the same end.

We’ll talk about both these paths, and by the end of the evening you may decide which path is appropriate for you. Neither path is right or wrong; it depends on what path suits you best at this moment of the Now. You may choose to follow one path for three months, and then decide to experience the other path. You may choose to experience one path on one day, and another path on another day, and there is nothing fickle about that. As long as you are in conscious awareness, all choices lead to soul expansion. The choice isn’t about living unconsciously or consciously; the choice is: consciously as ego or consciously as spirit.

Let’s discuss living in conscious awareness as spirit first. This is a slightly more difficult path to follow because we cannot tangibly experience our Spirit Beingness. It’s much easier to experience our body or even our mind, our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings. We know, intellectually, that we are spirit beings living in human embodiment, but it becomes difficult to physically experience that intangibility of the spirit. Experience, by its very definition, is a tangible event.

So we have something intangible and wish to experience it as something tangible. It may not be very easy, but it can be done. I’m not talking about meditation or chanting or prayer. In fact, that is based on your choice of conscious awareness as an ego-based, personality-driven being; not as spirit being. Spirit doesn’t need chant and meditation and prayer. Spirit IS. It’s the ego and the persona that needs all of those tools. A person who is in constant conflict would need to sit each day in meditation, because that’s the way the persona comes into equilibrium. A person whose mind is in restless mode would need the chants and the prayer to contain the mind’s energy. Spirit doesn’t need any of this. It already knows experiences its consciousness.

If you should make a choice of living in conscious awareness as spirit, you have to go beyond your mind, and beyond your emotion, and beyond thought, because all of this is ego-based, and personality-driven. This means that in every moment in time, you are going to have to slow down your pace of living.

Spirit does not move at speed. Because it IS, there is no movement from here to there. Spirit doesn’t need to experience itself here or there to know where it is, so there is no movement, and therefore there is no speed. Do not confuse speed with dynamism. Spirit is pure vibration in dynamic motion, so if you are going to make the choice of being in conscious awareness as spirit, you are going to have to train yourself, discipline yourself, to be in constant awareness of yourself as vibration.

As you sit here, are you aware of yourself as vibration? You are aware of how you’re sitting or how you’re thinking or hearing but you’re not aware of yourself as vibration. I wish I could explain to you what vibration feels like, but vibration is so subjective that every single person will experience vibration in a completely unique manner. There are some who experience vibration as a surge or a tingling feeling, as vibration converts itself into a physical feeling. There are some who experience it as smells and fragrances. There are those who experience it as sound. You’re going to have to discover what your unique way is. You can start by holding things, touching things, and allowing the persona to take you to spirit consciousness of that which is held or touched.

While the music was playing before the talk, had many different rhythms, and it fell and rose, and had the human voice and the instruments; at times it was the wind instruments and sometimes only percussion and at times a blend of both. It was urging you to experience vibration as it changes, because the vibration of the tabla will be different from the vibration of the human voice. If you got caught into the sound of the music, you didn’t reach beyond into the vibration of the sound. Granted, this takes a bit of time, but a world opens up for you, which though always there, you had no recognition of. Music then begins to have a depth and a resonance and a presence. The music begins to talk to you.

Flowers, and the fragrances that they emit, have a particular significance, and if you can tune in to their vibrations, you will know which flower you want to keep in your home and in your environment, and for what purpose.

If you’re going to make a choice of being in conscious awareness of yourself as spirit, you will have to push your boundaries of awareness, and go beyond sight and sound and smell; even go beyond words, so that you hear the words, but also tune in to the vibrations of the energies that the words carry. Sometimes, words might sound judgmental but the vibrations may reveal to you that there is no judgment or criticism; there is a pain that is being struggled with.

If you choose conscious awareness as spirit, you will find that your conflicts with people will reduce most significantly. Conflicts arise when we are caught in the sight and sound and smell, because it’s ego-driven, personality-driven. You can train yourself to do this, but it has to be a day-to-day, moment-to-moment choice that you make. You’ve got to give yourself the time to persevere. You have to give your awareness the chance to catch up with your choice.

The easier way, and the way chosen by most people, is living in conscious awareness of yourself as an ego-based, personality-driven individual. Do remember, that if you are living in conscious awareness as spirit, it does not mean that you are being released from the hold of ego. Many come to me and say they want to be released from the hold of ego, and I reply that I can’t help them with that because the only time you’ll be free of ego is when you’re dead.

While you are alive, while you are breathing, you will be an ego-based, personality-driven human being. You are really asking is not to be free of the ego, but to be in control of the ego rather than the ego being in control of you. The ego controls you when you are living in unconsciousness. Then the ego pulls at you, like a puppet. The most joyful moment is when this puppet has had enough of gyrating to someone else’s tune: when it says, “I want to be the master.”

Let’s now consider the aspects of this wonderful vehicle of the spirit. Ego is the vehicle of spirit, so let’s not deride and condemn this wonderful vehicle. Let’s start with the mental, the thought field. We’re all rational, analytical, thinking, logical, intelligent human beings, and we take great pride calling ourselves that: we say we’re the most intelligent of the animal kingdom.

Each time you are thinking, there must be awareness of what you’re thinking. As you’re sitting here right now, a part of you is listening to me, but a part of you is also thinking something else. Are you aware of that thought just as you are aware of the words you are hearing? To be in conscious awareness of the mental is to be aware that there are distinct thoughts running through you, and to choose which one you would like to pay attention to in the Now.

Our thoughts are powerful. You’re not going to be able to make yourself thoughtless; don’t try that. The sage who makes himself so-called ‘mindless’, doesn’t stop thinking. The thoughts still pass but the sage, the guru, the master, chooses which one he will focus upon. The focus of his attention would be upon the thought of being mindless. He contemplates on the thought of being mindless and the mind expands to such a vast extent that it seems as though there is no mind. A whole field of consciousness opens up.

When a word is spoken to you, you must be aware of the word spoken to you, the reply you are giving, and the thought that is crossing your mind, at that moment of hearing the word and giving the reply. Most times, we reply without knowing what we’re thinking.

As soon as you are aware of the thoughts running through you, you will instantly be aware of the feelings. Thoughts and feelings are always inter-related; the two cannot be separated. If you are a very emotional person, then focus upon the emotions that arise when words are spoken to you or events are being experienced by you. That will lead you to the thought.

When you’re living in conscious awareness, you will hear the words, you will know the thought and the feeling that you are experiencing, and then cross that boundary and make yourself aware as to how your physical body is reacting to the thought, the feeling and the word.

You will realize that, at times, your physical body gets tight in certain places, and sometimes there is a loosening up. Or you may cross your legs or your arms. Each time you do that, be in awareness of the movement. Why am I crossing my arms? I’m shutting myself to someone. I’m choosing not to hear the words; I’m ignoring that person.

Let your body talk to you. When you allow this to happen, the intermingling of energies is so profound, that you can sit before a person and experience the other’s physical pain. Some people are afraid of picking up another’s pain. Isn’t that what life is all about: picking up vibrations all around you? When your body responds to someone else’s pain, your body is asking you to be of the person’s emotional structure or the mental structure from where the pain is originating.

When you’re conscious of yourself, the awareness naturally moves to awareness of everyone else, because energy is one, and though we need to distinguish it, as human beings, and make it distinct, as A—B—C—D, it really is not A—B—C—D, but is one. Intellectually we know that. Conscious living makes us experience the knowing of oneness.

Then you move beyond that to your daily habits: what am I eating? How is my body reacting to this food?
Become conscious of your organs. It will take a little time to make you come to a state of instant awareness, but don’t allow this slowness to deter your process.

Then you become aware of what you are spending money on, and why. This is not from the point of view of saving the money. I’ve stopped using the word ‘saving’ because it carries the conditioning of keeping money aside for the day you won’t have it, which means you’re already prepared that you’re not going to have it one day. That’s not my belief system. I now prefer to use the word ‘fund’ A fund is always a ‘gathering in’ and ‘accumulation of’. I love the word fund. For me, it’s FUN-D…fun with divinity.
Then you might come across an expense that you may find difficult to be happy about, e.g. a surgery. But why not think of it in this manner? I’m so joyous to spend money on this operation that’s going to remove from me a part that’s ailing and make me whole and complete again.

The physical body will tell you why you are spending; be aware of the physical body. How does it feel inside? Is there an expansion or is there not?

In these small ways, by paying attention to every little action, you will live in conscious awareness of yourself as an ego based- personality craven human being.

To live in conscious awareness, you have to slow down; you’ve got to learn to speak a little slowly so that you have time to hear your words, your thoughts and your feelings. You’ve got to live in the moment. You’ve got to allow your fingers to talk to you so that when you touch something, it’s more than just e.g. a soft mike and cold hard steel. When I feel the vibration of this soft material, I realize that the material feels dense, but the steel feels sharp and vibrant.

It’s very simple really: it’s being aware of every minute detail. Does that make life more difficult? No. It makes life more interesting, because suddenly you know so much more than before. It’s like being in a brand new world, and it’s your world. And when you know it’s your world, you can modify it, change it, as you desire. That’s the day you will say, “I am the master.”

How easy you can make life for you. Life doesn’t have to be filled with conflict. If you’re conscious of the 24 hours in your day, you won’t just let them pass you by. You are one body, but you are Universal Spirit. Imagine how much that can attain!!!!

Thank you.