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The Mystic's Life Lesson #30

Two Vital Concerns

While higher consciousness will prove itself to you as your greatest asset and your true resource for a finer life, there is a misconception about higher consciousness that can prove very dangerous. Understand higher consciousness for what it is or you might pay a very big price.

Consider the patient who watched with apprehension as the doctor sawed the casts off his two broken arms. "Doctor, Doctor, will I be able to play the piano?"

The doctor examined the arms minutely, tested the fingers: "Yes," the doctor replied, "you will be able to play the piano."

"That's strange," replied the patient, "I couldn't play it before I broke my arms."

Remember, in finding your higher consciousness, you are not entering into the realm of miracles or dreamland. You are rapidly accelerating your consciousness. You're discovering a vast amount of talent and awareness that goes unused and undiscovered in the life of the average person. Through your higher consciousness you are realizing "Who am I?" — solving the riddle of your existence, satisfying the yearning of your heart. But becoming awakened to your higher consciousness does not mean you will, necessarily, pole vault the world record or "knock 'em dead" on your concert tour of Europe.

What the awakening of higher consciousness represents to you is remarkable improvements in many areas of life, of course. There are higher states of consciousness which are sublime and which will magnificently enrich you. Also, through discovering your higher consciousness you will find that most everything works better. Your mind becomes more and more capable of thinking clearly and penetrating deeply into whatever you want to think about. Your emotions become free of chaos; you develop a continual sense of well being. Then, too, your empathy increases and you become an extremely thoughtful person in your sensitivity to the lives of others. Your physical body inevitably gains more vitality and greater health usually occurs, provided you have not strained in order to achieve higher consciousness.

Also, with body, mind, and emotions working together, you will find yourself much more coordinated. You will also sleep better and face obstacles and stress with much increased confidence, having discovered marvelous inner resources with which to face life's challenges.

Living in inspiration and progressively higher levels of love and joy, you now have faith and confidence. You will be extremely intuitive, often being astounded at the insights which flood your mind with new opportunities and precious solutions to daily problems.

1 — Beware of Ego Fantasies

The attributes of higher consciousness become yours. Insight, security, peace, and joy, along with an inner power to change circumstances, will come within your easy, immediate access. You will be awakened in your true nature and begin to live a new life at last. You find yourself participating in the creation of a new and happier world.

Now, as to pole vaulting higher than anyone has ever vaulted, or becoming a sudden genius in piano playing, higher consciousness will definitely help you a great deal toward these goals; but the physical skills, which are complex and intricate, still need to be developed The coordination of the body with the mind and the backlog of experience required in the mind would have to be instilled through much training. The emotions have to be attuned, and to develop that coordination between the mind and emotions takes great courage and sensitivity. So, while higher consciousness will accelerate you in developing abilities and talents in such desires as pole vaulting or virtuosity at the keyboard, higher consciousness in no way guarantees fulfillment of your ego's fantasies.

Higher consciousness is really concerned with your soul's deepest expression. It enables realization of your true potential. This realization of potential is far more valuable than the accomplishment of fantasies — higher consciousness being a very thorough expression of your reality. The potential of your being in harmony with the creative consciousness can bring about, in most instances, a life and world beyond fantasies and dreams.

In awakening to your higher consciousness, you truly give yourself a chance at a finer life. You enable yourself to find the greatest satisfaction you can ever know: you discover the other nine-tenths of yourself. Because higher consciousness is an aspect of reality and your very own nature, you establish, at every level of your being, lasting and ongoing fulfillment. You experience the true zest of life and see in many ways the wonder of your individual nature. Daily you can see the great possibilities of life. Your life, even in the midst of bustle, is ever blissful.

However you conceive of higher consciousness and whatever your approach toward its development, do not misconceive that higher awareness is the world of "wishes." Higher consciousness is not a plane of fantasy but the reality of your true potential which is ready and eager to come forth and move in your life right here and now. It lifts you up to a realization and expression of all the good, the beauty, and the power that abides within your universal self.

2 — Avoid Self-Deception

In your awakening to your true stature as a being of higher consciousness, as one who no longer ignores inner capacities, you must be abidingly aware of another great caution. Early in your quest for higher consciousness, while your mind and emotions are not yet subtle enough to easily and clearly relate to the awakening process — or to distinguish it from fantasies and psychic experiences — you may find it extremely tempting to deceive yourself. Through vivid imagination, coupled with strong desires, you'll be able to "hear" whatever you want to hear and "see" whatever you want to see.

You will find you can infuse your subconscious mind with strong opinions and egocentric yearnings for a few days or weeks and then you will be able to behold some great astral personage speaking to you from a cloud of light, or you will hear a "heavenly voice" revealing into your quiet reflections what you secretly designed. In other words, you can have visions which appear to be from on high but which are self-aggrandizing fantasies. Because you are not yet developed or clear in mind and heart, you may be inclined to presume your "new views" to be true, perhaps even direct information from God.

The caution, then, is be kind to yourself. Avoid the embarrassment and heartbreak of seeing your words and actions smash against reality. Remember, the test of all genuine experience of higher consciousness is that each and every insight from the inner self, or wherever it may come from, must be tried in the light of day — practically expressed and shaped. If your new realization works well in the long and short run, fine. If, on the other hand, the insight doesn't bring excellent results, then a more intense search for wisdom and a new way must be sought.

As with humble amazement you go forward to your new home in higher consciousness, keep these two great, all-important cautions in mind:

    1. Higher consciousness does not fulfill fantasies but unfolds your wondrous potential.

    2. Since it's possible — even easy — to be deceived, test all your insights and inspirations in the light of day.

Consider This

Your discovery of your own higher consciousness is one of the greatest contributions you can make to your fellow man and especially your loved ones. The human world is the way it is right now because of the way people think about themselves and one another. People act and react based on their concepts of what life is about and where happiness or success lie. We wake up and go to bed in a world that could be annihilated in a few minutes. This perilous existence is an indication of our overall human consciousness. Certainly our ability to destroy the world reflects our considerable skills in using matter — electrons, in particular — but, while we are trying, we seem unable to walk away from the edge of oblivion.

Great wise men and women, saints, sages, and above all, the Incarnations who have come to earth from time to time, show us the way to a new awareness — a new way of thinking, a satisfying way of living. A new, more universal way of consciousness is required and they show us, each in his or her own distinctive method, ways for attaining a universal and constructive state of mind. One saint after another demonstrates the healing and joy of a higher consciousness. Consider your own higher consciousness as important, not only to yourself and your career or your family's esteem, but a priceless contribution to people you don't know in far-off countries — a great gift not only to them but to their children and their children's children.

Without more people discovering and abiding in higher consciousness, humanity could lose its future. Caught in ignorance and imprisoning biases, we have lost access to our creative intelligence — and one another. Due to our ignorance and inability to meet human needs — East and West — we may behold the terror-fire of potent, unthinking technology. In split seconds we could become vapor as adeptly-conceived bombs deny life globally. Not only will our future on this planet be over, but our children's futures will be ended, too. And those of any human being again, ever. Finished.

You, in your kindly quest of a higher consciousness — a healing consciousness — are needed. Your love, your insights, your creative intelligence, and your inner power to change circumstances are required.

Do the work. Make the effort. Balance your mind and your life. Awaken in your higher consciousness.

REFLECTION

What is my gift to the world? What do I leave the children?