Refreshingly New


In a message I have transcribed and edited from a talk given on October 14, 2004, Ishvara speaks to the Alaya community about the quickening pace of Life. His words may be helpful to all those who are interested in becoming all that they can be. - TG.

Ishvara:

Ever since the experience of accelerated awakening I had 17 years ago, my knowing has been that I am on a mission, but the mission is not defined. It is made up as I go along. I make it up from direct experience. The things that happen in each experience inform me of the next step. I don't know what the next step is ahead of time. I rely on a circular thing that happens with people; it is like a feed-back loop. When someone gets it, when someone truly experiences Life directly, everything moves up another notch. So the experience is constantly moving upwards.

You have to do things to keep up with this movement, otherwise you will be left behind. This is fast-forward, and it is going to get faster. It is not about attracting large numbers of people; it is about the quality of people who can resonate with this expanding awareness. It is also about the place where people are in their lives. People may be able to resonate with this, but still not be able to make use of it. They may not be in the position in their life where they are ready for that to happen.

There is no force, no control in this, no "supposed to" at all. I see it as refreshingly new, because everything in the past has been a system, a structure, a "thou shalt." Past teachings have been about "what you should do." I don't see that there is anything you must do; I see there are things you can do. As you reach the place in yourself where you can access that, it starts happening. My work is about shining the light on that, holding you in a place where you can be nurtured, inspired and encouraged, moment by moment, to go as far as you can. Not to push you, not to direct you, not to control you, but just to keep inspiring you to be all you can be.

The only thing I "forbid" is putting any kind of ceiling on what you can be. There is no ceiling, no stopping place. My work involves encouraging each of you to go for it, to go as far as you can in it, and not to become complacent, not to become dissatisfied with where you are at any moment, because wherever you are is the direct experience of presence. Wherever you are in the moment is what is happening. Yes, there is always more; you are never going to get it all, because you are always getting it. If it were possible to "get it all" you would come to a ceiling, a stopping place. I see no stopping place for this; no boundary, no border.

It requires inspiration and encouragement to keep going in the face of upsets. Allowing what-is keeps you fresh, keeps you vital, keeps you connected. When you get to a place where you hit a wall, you can't allow what-is. That blocks you; it distorts things, and you slip off into an intellectual quagmire, becoming temporarily lost. But if you are truly sincere about being all that you can be, you will find yourself again. If you merely want to be what your expectation holds, you are shit out of luck, because that is very limited. On the other hand, if you can just keep going for being all you can be, moment by moment, without being anxious or attached to that, you are "there." And "there" is always evolving, changing and becoming. You are not stagnant, you don't become structured, you just stay fresh, vital, bending; you bend with what-is.

Life is not going to make you a wimp. Life is going to fill you with confidence and awareness. Life doesn't settle for less; it keeps going for more. When you are present and allowing and being inspired, you keep doing that. That blows the mind; it blows the intellect, it blows the concepts about what that is, because there is no label, there is no way to define this. You can talk about pieces of it, but the pieces come together as a synergy, and that synergy expands and becomes a part of an even greater synergy. There is no end to the becoming. Allowing is really the process.

As a unique expression of Life, you will find yourself inspired to do something, and that will be an experience. That's all. You don't do it because it is a "should" or a "shouldn't." You don't do it because you are going to get anything out of it other than an experience of energy, an experience of how things work. You can live in presence and awareness that way, and have the experiences that are necessary for your life.

Each individual has a unique perspective, unique possibilities to fulfill. You hope you are not the person who has to fulfill the responsibility of being locked up in prison for 20 years, but part of Life is doing just that. There are circumstances in Life that are there to be worked through. As you are allowing, aware and connected, you find that you stay on the "upper side" of that. If you become bogged down, separative, concerned with "me first," you experience a slower level of existence where the experiences are not so much fun. The moment you recognize you are having a not-fun experience, you know it is time to speed up. It is time to realize, "OK, I've got that, now it's time to move on." The key is not resisting things, not being attached to things.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

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You Become Life Happening


Ishvara:

When you are completely in the Natural State, there is an infallibility. There is a seeing, a knowing, that transcends every belief, every concept, everything past, even past individuals who have come into the Natural State. Each time one awakens into the Natural State, the awakening is up another level from the previous one. Each one who awakens into the Natural State is riding on the shoulders of all who have gone before. The intellect's reaction to such authority is to call it "ego." It is absolute power, and the human intellect can't deal with it.

That is why humans have created "God." You never actually see God, you never hear God; God doesn't come down and mess with your life. So it is safe to make "God" all-powerful, because God is not going to interfere with your life. You may believe that God interferes with your life, but it is the belief that interferes, not "God."

The belief in "God" puts the absolute power "out there," so that you don't really have to deal with it. Then, if you behave yourself, if you do good things, "God" will take care of you. Coming into the Natural State, you realize that there is no one who will take care of you. You take care of yourself. You make the decisions. You decide how it is going to be, and you do it, and that's it. There is no outside power dictating what you should do. You have to rely on the ability to see the big picture, and to make the choices to move in that direction.

In seeing the bigger picture, you have no time for beliefs or concepts. It is a matter of getting on with Life, being Life, doing it. The intellect says, "How?" There is no how. You have to make it up.

I have no beliefs, but I am dealing with people's beliefs all the time. I see beyond beliefs, beyond concepts, beyond a "way." That makes it difficult. It is hard to see people suffer because of their beliefs. There is no easy answer. You need to exemplify what is beyond their beliefs, and maybe they will get it, but maybe they won't.

With the Natural State comes a tremendous responsibility, because you no longer have the luxury of selfishness or ego. You don't have the luxury of taking a position. You have to always look at what is the highest good, what is the best for the whole. It becomes hard to carry on a personal relationship with anyone, because the good of the whole overrides the good of the one. Even for me, if the good of the whole was for me to depart, I would depart. But also, there is great joy and a lot of serenity in knowing the bigger picture, because ultimately you know it is going to be all right; you just don't know how to get to that "all right." You have the abiding sense that you don't need to worry about it, and so you simply work at what needs to be done next.

Life is experimenting: "Will this work?" Every experience is a part of that. Every experience is always a preparation for something more. If you can embrace the experience without judgment or resistance or attachment, you keep moving. You become Life happening, moment by moment.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

This is the conclusion of a message I have transcribed and edited from a talk Ishvara gave on August 31, 2004. - TG.

Copyright © 2004 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

This message comes to you from Alaya, a nonprofit organization. Alaya depends upon financial contributions for its continued existence. For information on how to make a tax-deductible contribution to Alaya, follow this link.
Thank you for your support.


To learn more about Ishvara and the Alaya® Community, visit our website at www.alaya.org

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Having No Position


In a message that I have transcribed and edited from a talk he gave on August 31, 2004, Ishvara provides some personal reflections on his experience of living in the Natural State. His insights can provide guidance for all who would aspire to this state. - TG.

Ishvara:

In coming in to the Natural State, in seeing a bigger picture, you realize you can't have an opinion, a position, because any position is a consequence of a belief about how things are supposed to be.

Seeing the bigger picture, you realize there is no time to be patient with beliefs. The world is in great turmoil right now, and that is a consequence of beliefs. It is a consequence of separation, selfishness and greed. Those are all positions that people take. People take the position, "I have a right to have what I want." Coming into the Natural State, you realize that you have no "right." There is only a way to be that is absolute and is revealed to you constantly. There is no choice. There is no way to have a position.

You see the suffering that people go through, and you see the cause of their suffering: their beliefs, their conditioning. Yet you have a reluctance to mess with people's position, with their beliefs, because their life may fall apart as a result. There is a fine line to walk in discerning how much to cut away and how much to leave, so as not totally destroy a person.

When you see the consequences of what people believe, the consequences of what religions, traditions and disciplines are teaching, you see that people are not looking at the bigger picture. They are looking myopically at what is good for them, how it serves them, how it makes them feel good, or be liked. Humans have a need to feel good, so they position themselves in ways that may assure that they will feel good. That has to go. The Natural State is not about feeling good. It is not about being liked. It is not about being right or wrong.

Coming into the Natural State, you realize that all of those things mean nothing. In the Natural State, there is no position to take. There is just being, and being is changing all the time. Being doesn't have a place. Being is an energy that is happening, and evolving and changing and flowing, moving with what-is, but without an agenda, without a position.

Coming into the Natural State, you realize that nothing changes by itself. You have to change it. You have to know something more. You have to develop a place of knowing that is superior to consensus reality, conditions, and then you hold to that, without taking a position, because what you are holding to is changing all the time. So you could say that you are "holding on" to change, staying with change as it happens, holding on to no position. It is not something you want to jump into without preparation, because it could drive you insane.

The Natural State means being OK with things, and being OK with things does not allow you to have any position. To keep being OK with things, you must be OK with everything changing. "Being OK" is not a position; it is transitory, changing all the time. What you were OK with yesterday is gone, and something else is now happening to be OK with.

In the Natural State, you see an organic shift that must happen for humanity to survive. You see it, but you don't readily see a way to get there. You see the big picture, but now what do you do?

There is an absolute authority that comes with the Natural State. There is a direct knowing, seeing beyond the conventional, beyond the consensus, seeing consequence. It imbues you with a lot of knowing about what one can do and what one shouldn't do. Having that kind of authority can be scary.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant


Copyright © 2004 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

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Recreating Yourself In The Image Of Life


Ishvara:

People think "Oh, I must purify the mind." The only way to purify the mind is to get the "I must" out of there, and then the mind is pure. "I must" is an agenda. Stopping the intellect is an agenda. Why can't you just be with the way things are? Oh I know, you don't like the way things are. But when you truly are being with the way things are, you recognize how they got there. You watch, and you begin to understand how things work, and as you understand how things work you begin to get over yourself. You don't become aggressive or complacent; you become real. You get to the place where you are not afraid of truth; you actually expect truth every moment. You are not attached to it; you don't resist it. It takes a lot of courage to embrace the truth. It takes a lot of courage to become realized, to wake up, because when you start waking up, you are not going to like what you see. That is a great deterrent for people to really wake up.

People like to "wake up" to an agenda, a system, a structure, a practice, a belief that is mapped out. "Oh, I can handle 'enlightenment.' 'Enlightenment' means I'll be liberated." That is not the way it works. When you wake up, you wake up to truth, and you see the mess you've made of things. You see the mess around you. You also see the flower blooming in the midst of everything. You have to see the flower, otherwise you get too caught up in the mess. Everybody is in a mess; the world is in a mess, but there are lots of flowers blooming from the mess. If you spend all your time feeling sorry for yourself, you don't see what is happening.

Especially in this time of world conflict and chaos, you really have to start looking for the flowers, you really have to start projecting higher possibilities. You may feel alone in that. You don't want to make it into an agenda; you just want to watch. The best way to know what is going on in the world is to watch. That doesn't mean watching television, but watching the people around you. Every person is a barometer of Life. The ups and downs that people are going through are symptomatic of what the world is experiencing. If you watch with non-attachment and non-resistance, you can see. You can begin to see possibilities. You can begin to see, beyond judgment, that there is hope; there are higher possibilities waiting to happen when individuals can awaken, but it involves a lot of courage, because first you have to get over yourself. You have to clean up your own mess first. It is not that hard when you realize that your mess was created in innocence. You can quit feeling guilty about it, and just recognize it. You are not supposed to feel guilty about it. Guilt is a control mechanism that others try to work on you, trying to have it their way and not truth's way.

Guilt is an agenda. You may have your own agenda. Get over it. The world is not going to be the way you want it to be. There is no way to make the world the way you want it to be, because as long as you want something to be a certain way you yourself are deluded.

The first step is allowing things to be the way they are, and then seeing what is possible. Life uses everything to manifest itself. Out of chaos comes harmony. Out of separation comes unity. The universe moves toward an ordered existence.

When you embrace Life, when you forget the past, when you let go of the systems, the structures, the beliefs, the religions, the paths, and embrace Life as-it-is, you become a master of Life, and you know. When you know, you realize that whatever has happened, has happened, and Life will not judge you for what has happened. The "judgment" of Life is instant. You bear the consequence of what is happening now, but Life will not sneak up on you and punish you later. Where you are now is a consequence of what you have believed, what you have accepted, and you can't be guilty for that because you didn't know. So don't spend time feeling guilty about it. Just recognize what is happening and take the next step.

Consensus reality tries to control you, to scare you. You hear the programmed voice saying, "Oh, you've failed. You are being punished. You are suffering karma. It is all your fault. There is no help for you." That voice is a liar. It is a program. You can say no to the program. You can begin from this moment to recreate yourself in the image of Life, not in the image of the past. This moment you are brand new. You can start from this moment, creating a Life that is you, letting go of the consensus, the beliefs, the past, no longer feeling sorry for yourself.

Feeling sorry for yourself is a terrible expenditure of energy that doesn't do anything. It is like sitting down to a gourmet meal that is actually fake food. It is false; it cannot nourish you. That is what consensus reality is. That is what beliefs and concepts bring.

Face what-is. Whatever is in your life now, face it. Don't make it into a system or structure. Don't allow it to say who you are. Just look at it; watch it. There are so many false beliefs that create expectations and resistances. There is no way to be happy in that realm.

You are a creative dynamo. You just need to let it out. Let that creative dynamo go to work for you. Stop restraining it by beliefs and concepts and conditioning and "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts." If you don't activate the creative dynamo that you are, no one will. It involves recognizing that you are power, you are Life, and that nothing is fatal to you. When you face what-is with intention and knowing, you are more than your past, you are more than what you have created. You can re-create, you can create anew, you can transform yourself. You can live without expectations and resistances, and start being who you are, as you find out.

Life is like a fire that melts away the lie. When you willingly submit yourself to Life, to living as-is in the present, you enter the fire, and it melts the lies. You quickly find out what is conditional and consensus. If you stay in the fire, it melts away, as long as you don't try to make it melt. When you try to make it melt, you are interfering with it. So instead, you allow it. The absolute truth of Life, which is "absolute" in this moment, is: Allow. Embrace what is happening, and you begin to become aware of the programming and conditioning that has so controlled the way life has been for you. This is the new consciousness. This is not the way the world is or has been. This is the way it is now. This is new; it cannot be systematized or structured, because it is living, it is living truth happening in the moment, moment by moment, and the only way to be in it is to embrace it, to keep letting go of the past, of expectations, wishes, doubts, fears, all that baggage. The destiny is the moment. Freedom is the moment. Liberation is the moment. It only exists in the moment, and because you are present you become it, moment by moment.

Allow that nothing has any meaning that comes from the outside. All meaning comes from what you give to it in the moment. What you say becomes the absolute truth in the moment. It can move into conflict, or harmony. Moving into non-separation, moving into allowing, into connection, you find strength and support for being all you can be, moment by moment. Allow for the possibility. Allow that it is so in this moment, and immediately you will begin to experience the so-ness of it, as it is now, in this moment, Life's presence inspiring to be all you can be, moment by moment.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

This is the conclusion of a message that I have transcribed and edited from a talk Ishvara gave on August 29, 2004. - TG.





Copyright © 2004 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

To learn more about Ishvara and the Alaya® Community, visit our website at www.alayanet.org

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The Truth Of Being


Ishvara:

All things in your life have their origin in consensus-reality beliefs. You are hypnotized into accepting those things as your reality. Whatever you believe to be true, Life will accommodate and validate. If you believe you are worthless, Life will keep proving to you that you are worthless. People with the same attachment to being worthless will come into your life and confirm your worthlessness.

Each concept has its own morphic field, and you participate in that morphic field by your resistance or attachment. Either one brings you into the same morphic field; you may experience different sides of it, but it is still the same thing. You spend time feeling sorry for yourself, or feeling bad, or feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Well, something is fundamentally wrong: your beliefs. You've accepted your beliefs as your reality, and you now experience that. But it is not fatal; it is just temporary.

You think that consensus reality (your belief) is your home, but it is not. You are just passing through; keep moving; don't stay there, because it is not who you are. All through your life people have told you who you are. People have said things about you. People around you have been mirrors, and you have looked at the mirrors to see what they are saying. But they are funhouse mirrors that are terribly distorted. You can't find out about yourself through those distorted mirrors. The only way to find out about yourself is to watch yourself, pay attention. Watch your reactions, watch your resistances, watch your attachments. All of those say things about you, but don't judge yourself for them. Don't take them personally. Just look at them.

Life becomes so much easier when you stop having judgments and opinions. Life is so much easier when you just look, when you observe without the commentator. The actuality of Life is that there is no right or wrong; things are the way they are. Most things are consequences of other things, and if you really observe, you can see how things have come about, but that is still not grounds for judgment.

It is hard to accept things the way they are, because you know that there is more in you. In you, you know that things do not have to remain the way they are, even though you see ignorance all around you, you see people doing the same things over and over again, suffering and suffering.

As long as you live in separation, with a "they" and an outside to blame for what is happening, you will suffer. When you embrace the whole thing, when you are no longer separate from anything, you recognize how things are, and when you recognize how things are you gain tremendous power to see the more-ness of things. Humans tend to look at things egocentrically. Even religions advocate that: If you don't accept this belief, you will go to hell. If you don't follow certain rules, you will have to come back and do life over again. It is a misguided humanity, but no one is to blame; it is just something that people have accepted.

People think: "Jesus said it, so it must be true." "Buddha said that, so it must be true." The truth is that we have no idea what Jesus actually said, or what Buddha actually said. It is all hearsay, opinion, and interpretation. You cannot trust the past at all. You cannot rely on a system, structure, teacher or belief, or anything else from the past. You can only rely on what you have a direct experience of. And you can't have a direct experience if you are stuck in beliefs and concepts. That is why I tell you to move away from beliefs and concepts, to watch, to watch Life happen.

There is an abundance of truth around you all the time, if you watch. You can see how things work, if you watch, but if you get self centered, or caught up into suffering, it is as if you have blinders on, and you cannot see what is happening. The moment you get blinded, you move back into an interpretation, and you begin to act out the old way. It is like instant karma, instant past: take a belief, add a little bit of feeling sorry for yourself, and it blows out of proportion. The moment you start feeling sorry for yourself, the whole world begins to help you feel sorry for yourself. You join everyone in that big morphic field. The best thing to do when you catch yourself slipping into that thinking is just to laugh at yourself, because if you don't do that, if you don't catch yourself, you can waste much of your life.

I too spent a good deal of time feeling sorry for myself, until Life kicked me in the butt and said "Get over it; there is more to do than to feel sorry for yourself." I realized long ago that no one really gives a damn about me. The only people that cared about me were those who thought they might get something from me, and that was a pretended care. They pretended to care about me, because that was a way to control me, and I was stupid enough to go along with it and do what people wanted me to do. I wanted to "do the right thing." Then I realized that the "right thing" was their interpretation, and by doing the right thing I couldn't do "my thing," so I was in denial of me. I realized that "me" must exist for some reason; I didn't think I was an accident. Life doesn't make accidents. Everything is on purpose, and Life doesn't care if you don't like the purpose.

If I created the world, I would have made it different. Every baby that came into the world would immediately know that it is wanted, that it has purpose, and that it is not to pay any attention to its parents because they are stupid! Just don't buy what they tell you! The moment the priests or ministers come and tell you that you are going to hell, tell them they are already in hell. If they believe what they are saying, they are already there, because hell is self made, heaven is self made. The past is self made.

When you really think about it, you can realize that you don't really know what happened to you in the past. You have an opinion and an interpretation, and you believe that to be true, but is it? Does your state of mind in the past now make you a reliable witness? If you believe you are "less than," your entire view is skewed, while everything around you supports that belief. If you had that belief as a child, then you didn't really see what was happening. You just saw what you believed was happening, and you remembered what you believed, and you carry that luggage for the rest of your life. Let go of your luggage.

Insanity can exist all around you but you don't have to be insane. If you are watching, you can't be insane. If you are buying into what is happening, you are insane, but if you are watching, you can't be insane. When you are watching, you are seeing what is happening. Yes, you may have ups and downs. There is no assurance that life is going to be all roses. Even roses have thorns. Life gives contrasts, and if you are really watching, you can see them and make use of them. Don't fall into judgment on yourself; that doesn't do any good. Just see what is there; look at it. When you are really honest, when you are really present, you will come into knowing. You will know truth. You won't be attached or resistant to it, you will know it. You will know the truth of presence, being.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

This is the second installment of a message that I have transcribed and edited from a talk Ishvara gave on August 29, 2004. - TG.


Copyright © 2004 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

To learn more about Ishvara and the Alaya® Community, visit our website at www.alayanet.org

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Truth Is Only In The Moment


In the first installment of a message that I have transcribed and edited from a talk he gave on August 29, 2004, Ishvara speaks of the suffering that is created by attachment and resistance, and of the truth that comes from accepting Life as-it-is without expectation or belief. - TG.

Ishvara:

How long are you going to suffer? How long are you going to be separate? How much time do you have left? Less than you think. No, it is not the end of things; it is just a new beginning, if you have courage. This beginning will take courage. It will take courage to leave behind your concepts, your beliefs, your attachments and your resistances. It takes courage to be who you are, not to think or believe, but to know and be who you are.

As I watch this unfolding, I see the stumbling blocks. I see how you are in pain; I see your moments of joy. It is all the same to me. You are either in It, or not. When you are in It, it doesn't matter. Suffering means nothing, pain means nothing, because there is no separation. But when you are not in It, when you are in beliefs, concepts, and conditions, you suffer your beliefs; you suffer your expectations; you suffer your resistances and your attachments.

You are resisting something, when the "something" is true. You are attached to something, when it is false. Strange, isn't it? You spend time resisting things because they are true, and being attached to things because they are missing from your life. What you don't want, clings to you, and what you do want, flees from you.

Truth is evasive, because when you look at truth, you bring opinions and beliefs into your perception. You can't quite be sure whether you are grasping the truth, or clinging to an opinion that is the result of conditioning.

Much of the time, you choose to remain stuck, feeling sorry for yourself, feeling that the world is against you. I must inform you: The world doesn't give a damn about you. You may think it does, but it doesn't. The world hardly knows you exist. It is you that has an investment in your existence.

The consequence of attachments and resistances is suffering. And so you spend a lot of time searching, searching for a way out. The only way out is the way you got in: acceptance. You may think you are accepting things as they are, when in actuality you are accepting your belief about how things are. If you are suffering, that's what you've done: you have accepted beliefs about how things are, because in truth there is no suffering. In truth there is no attachment or resistance, no good or evil. Life Is.

This world is full of conditioning, beliefs, concepts, hypnosis. There is ignorance all around. Yet right in the heart of ignorance is truth; right in the chaos is peace; right in the dilemma is the solution. So close, so present, and so missed. Insanity has its way. That is OK, because insanity is not real, but it is not OK that it creates suffering, since suffering is not necessary.

I know the way that doesn't include suffering. It isn't attachment, it isn't resistance. It is none of those things that you believe or expect, because what you expect is so complicated, and has so many agendas, that it is impossible. Truth by its very nature is simple, obvious and present. Truth evolves and changes. The human conditioning expects some absolute truth. Well, continue to expect, and continue to suffer. There is no absolute truth. Truth is what-is in the moment. You attach to it or resist it; you can be complacent or enthusiastic. You create the experience you have. There is no cause for guilt about this. If you knew how powerful you are, you probably would have created things differently, but has anyone ever told you how powerful you are? You learned that, "They did it to me; it's not my fault; it's the government's fault; it's God's fault; it's karma." You blame your problems on something that is nonexistent. Something that is not there becomes the cause of your dilemma, your separation, your suffering. Something that is nonexistent is your problem. You are so bothered by something that is not there.

The more you try to escape Life, the more it clings to you. Yes, it is normal to want to be happy. It is normal to want things to go your way. Insanity is normal, but it is not truth. Truth is evasive, because truth doesn't live up to your expectations. Truth doesn't care. The moment of truth is here, now, and that's the only place where it is: here, now. If you go looking for the truth, you'll miss it, because your are expecting to find something that is nonexistent. So many spend the biggest part of their life searching, trying to get out of pain, trying to be happy, and the key word is "trying." You cannot try. You either do it or you don't.

In order for your life to be all it can be, you have to take charge. You really have to take Life right by the throat and strangle it until it tells you the truth. That is the only way, because otherwise you continue to suffer. The first step is to just acknowledge that you have screwed up; you have totally messed things up. You've made a mess of other people, you've made a mess of yourself. There is no reason to be guilty, because you are not alone in this. Messes happen, but if you continue to live in a mess, you have to question: Why do you do that? Is that all you believe you are worthy of?

When you are sincere and honest, you begin to tell the truth in the moment, realizing that truth is not absolute; truth is only in the moment. The truth is your direct experience of what is happening now, without your interpretation, your attachment, or your judgments. Judgments are insidious things, because you whip out your judgment and you tie yourself to a false arena, and then you proceed to combat it. It is like you create a monster, and then you wait for someone to rescue you, to slay the monster. You forget that you are your own monster-slayer. You created the monster, you can slay it.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant


Copyright © 2004 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

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A New Chemistry


In this week's message, Ishvara speaks of awareness as a shift in body chemistry. "The new species is a bringer of a new chemistry," he says. His message resonates with my experience. I continually find that awakening is an inherently physical process. It is truly a change in chemistry that has powerful and unimagined effects on the body. I have transcribed and edited Ishvara's words from a talk he gave on September 2, 2004. - TG.

Ishvara:

An experience teaches something, but if there is not a high degree of clarity in the experience, if you have an experience while you are in a sense of disconnection, your body learns something negative. After that, any time a similar situation arises, your body starts running that negative response. It literally releases neural peptides that start working with the brain, and the brain gets the message, "Oh, I'm worthless," "I'm bad," "I'm destructive," "I'm judgmental," "I'm incapable" or "I'm whatever." It pulls in the memories of all the failures that the body has been holding. Then you are swamped with chemical validation from your own system, validation that you are a mess. The chemicals are released in the body, and you suffer that.

You may see this as a relatively hopeless situation, but it is not, because everything about you has been learned. You can change what you have learned. That is your power. You don't have to stay where you are; you don't have to stay with what you have known. When you have the "I'm bad" experience, it is because you are running the old tape, the old program that has been established through an emotional context of misunderstanding or misinterpretation or hypnosis as to what actually occurred in the past. There can't be any fault or judgment to that. You can't be blamed for the program.

It is important to realize that emotions are also chemicals; when you find yourself in a situation that seems similar to the past event, the chemicals are released, and you can have the same reaction that you learned long ago. This is where awareness can bring about change. If you practice awareness and presence, you can catch the reaction and realize, "Oh that is just a chemical reaction to what is going on." It really is a chemical reaction to what is happening. When you catch it that way, you can realize, "Wait a minute. I created those chemicals, therefore I can create different chemicals." It requires an intentional shift. You begin to more or less demand that the brain release different chemicals. When you develop the feeling-knowing that this is possible, you are moving toward real transformation.

If you believe you are trapped by your habitual reactions, you will be trapped, because your belief is very powerful. Your belief is like a channel or conduit of the chemicals. The belief allows the chemicals to keep hitting you in the same way, so that you keep having the same experiences. As you begin to realize "I have been this bag of beliefs and conditioning all my life, and I'm damn tired of it; what else is there to me?", a shift can begin to occur. The feeling-knowing that there is more to you is very important. Feeling-knowing can literally change your chemistry.

The new species of humanity is the bringer of a new chemistry, new neural peptides being released in the whole body which allow the cells to begin to activate their lightness, their liberation, so as to function at a higher frequency. As that happens, you can occasionally hit the wall with an experience of old chemicals, but awareness and allowing are very important then. If you don't fall into judgment when the old chemicals are being released, but instead realize, "Oh, that's an old reaction whose days are numbered," you allow neural peptides to carry a chemical to other cells that begin to systematically eliminate the old cells. In time, the old chemistry disappears and you are no longer reacting to things.

It is empowering to realize that Life is chemistry. Just having the awareness that your experience is the result of a learned chemical reaction is so important, even if it requires time for that old experience to begin to diminish in your life. When you have that awareness, you begin to have a greater understanding, and you can no longer be so judgmental of yourself; you see that the old reaction is just a release of chemicals in the body. You see that it is just the past chemistry. You have the past chemistry that circulates, and the present chemistry that is evolving. It is a matter of seeing that the past is systematically being washed out of your system. The process goes more quickly if you can keep from judging yourself when you sense those old chemical reactions taking place.

Awareness begins to release the chemicals that are necessary for evolution, for evolving into a higher frequency and for maintaining that higher frequency. In the new chemistry of this evolving awareness, each experience teaches increasing connection, expanding harmony, and brings about a more vibrant physical being.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant


Copyright © 2004 -2006 by Alaya®.
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Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

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From Survival To Creation


Ishvara speaks of moving from the commentary of the past to the direct experience of the moment, in a message I have transcribed and edited from a talk he gave on August 26, 2004. -TG.

Ishvara:

It is human nature to rely upon past experience in a situation. The brain tends to compare or seek data from the past in order to position itself, but that removes you from what is actually happening by placing the experience into a different context, with the result that you miss what is really happening. You are acting a program, or a concept or a past event, and it can be out of survival, or out the need to control things, or the belief that the past was better than the present is.

As you understand how the intellect injects into the moment its own commentary, you see that the commentary is based on past experience. When you recognize that Life is about direct experience and learning how energy works, you see that by injecting something from the past into the moment, you are bringing in something you have already experienced, so you are missing the opportunity of the moment to experience it in a different way.

Fundamentally, you get to the place where you become fearless and open to the moment and to the experiences that are taking place, and you have a sense of confidence, of alrightness, of "I'm always all right in the moment, I'm always all right with what's happening; nothing can happen that will overwhelm me; I am always present, I am always there with it, not living from a past script, not reacting to Life from the past." That is a way of being really present with what-is, and getting the most out of the direct experience. Sometimes, though, you just can't do that; sometimes it doesn't come off; sometimes you get stuck in the past. Sometimes the intellect is very quick and starts the commentary before you know it.

Ideally, at some point, you catch yourself running the commentary, and you say, "Oh, that's just the past; what is happening now?" Sometimes the commentary is a way of survival because, for whatever reason, you are anxious about what is present and you are seeking some kind of security. It is easy to slip into the intellect and try to handle the situation with a method from the past, but that cheats you of the opportunity to deal with it as yourself in that moment. When you deal with it using something of the past, you are disallowing the clarity and maturity that you can bring to that moment, so there is a sense of betrayal that happens; you take away from yourself. There is nothing wrong with that, but you will want to realize what is happening, because you are missing an opportunity, you are missing a lesson of how energy works, or you are missing a new way of being.

Most of the problems that you experience are due to beliefs, conditioning, programming from the past. If you are evolving and developing the intention to transcend that conditioning, to not be controlled by it, the quality of your life will change. Instead of living from survival and fear, you start to live simply from "I can." On the outside, it may not look very different, but your way of being in the world is totally different. From the outside, you may look normal, doing the things other people do, but you do them because you CAN, not because there is a "should" or a program behind it. You do it just because you can.

When you recognize that most of the problems that you have are the consequence of conditioning, beliefs and concepts, the programs you have bought, you begin to shift from survival to creation. This doesn't mean that you will be exempt from the consensus world, but you will have a better balance, a better way of seeing things, and you won't take things so personally. There is a natural sense of liberation and freedom that takes place.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant


Copyright © 2004 by Alaya®.
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Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

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The Evolution Of Energy


Consensus reality is based on the idea that "This is the way things are." In consensus thinking, life is fixed, it is governed by immutable laws, it is controlled by a force that is "other."

Our experience can change radically when we begin to see that there is very little, if anything, that is fixed in Life. When we begin to realize that everything is energy, Life becomes an experience of evolving, even limitless, possibilities.

Ishvara speaks of Life as the experience of energy, in words I have transcribed and edited from a talk he gave on August 5, 2004. - TG.

Ishvara:

Energy is difficult to talk about because it is everything. Energy is the substance of everything. We could also say light is the substance of everything; light and energy are indistinguishable. (There are frequencies higher than light, but those are unknown to this world).

The whole evolution of Life is the evolution of energy. Energy is always in a learning process. Energy is intelligence; it has memory, it records, it remembers and projects. Intelligence is what is happening to energy as it manifests in all its various forms.

There is a physical intelligence in the body. The body has learned and knows how to function; it makes use of energy, and in turn energy is having a physical experience. The body is essentially evolution of energy; it is evolving greater capacities to experience itself, to experience the rest of what energy can be at various frequencies.

When you look at the physical process, you recognize how you take energy in, and how you expend it. You may not realize how much energy is used just in the process of thinking. Fear, anger and other emotions are big energy consumers. The brain has a way of monitoring these experiences so as not to totally expend the self. Theoretically, you could become so angry that you would dissolve; you could move your energy in such a way that you would be like a bomb going off; you would evaporate. Fortunately, the brain has certain mechanisms, certain parameters which prevent that from happening.

When energy is becoming intelligent as "you," there are built-in safeguards. The physical body can be analogized as training wheels for energy. At the lower frequencies, you are protected in certain ways so that you don't destroy yourself, but you can still create experience, because experience is vital to amassing intelligence, and intelligence is evolving energy--learning how energy works, learning how energy functions, learning possibilities and potentials.

The body is a process of refining energy. You take energy from food and you turn it into energy for the body. You also absorb energy from the sun. Looking at the human utilization of energy, and one's participation in the various frequencies of energy, the intellect tends to divide energy and see it as something separate, but in actuality, energy is not separate; it just moves in different frequencies.

When you are suffering a lot of emotion, you are experiencing a relatively low frequency of energy. At that frequency, energy is sluggish, segmented, and painful, and the creative possibilities are limited. When the body is subdued by emotions, it likewise becomes sluggish and separate, which in turn affects the organs and the tissue.

Energy works from both ends. It works from the upper frequencies, penetrating into the lower frequencies, tending to activate things, align and harmonize things. At the lower frequencies, energy tends to infringe on the higher frequencies. So there is always a kind of balancing act going on in the human arena.

Once you really know--not just think or believe--that everything is energy (slowed-down light), you begin to recognize that you have the capacity to exist at various frequencies, including higher frequencies. Most of the frequencies can't be recognized by you because of conditional, emotional, consensus thinking. But the experience changes once you stop holding on to that kind of thinking.

You are concerned with the energy that sustains your life, and the energy that sustains the planet and the living things around you, but energy is always in a process of transcendence, moving into higher and higher awarenesses and frequencies. In that transcendence you become literally able to see how things are connected in the energy field. It is all a learning, evolving process, moving from a low frequency to higher and higher frequencies.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

Copyright © 2004 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

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MESSAGES to the WORLD from ISHVARA


ARE YOU ALL RIGHT WITH YOURSELF?


As I observe the world, I see that there are many moments where people don’t feel all right about their lives. This is normal, because there is a lot of stress, programming, and conditioning about achievement, about becoming. It is difficult to be all right with yourself as-you-are. You look outside and perceive examples and possibilities that you don’t seem to measure up to.

As children you began with the stress and conditions to achieve, to make a mark on the world, and you react to that. You rebel, or you strive for some goal, some believed-in possibility, but ultimately what you are left with is not all right. You don’t have enough of whatever it takes to be what you’re supposed to be. You feel limited, distracted, distorted. This is human nature.

There are such high ideals placed before you, such goals of achievement. Your parents are pushing you to become something. Friends are stirring up desires to become something. When you look at the world, you can see the consequences of that conditioning. There is never enough. You are not satisfied with what-is. You don’t have the right things, but you perceive that other people do. So your existence is filled with the struggle and stress of striving to get the things you want, even if you have to take them from others. You don’t have the talent or the energy for success, and so you have to manipulate and control your environment to get what you want, to get what you need. No wonder there is so much stress in the world. No wonder there is so much dissatisfaction. It’s just not all right. Life is just not all right. It’s not enough.

The conditional expectations create a lot of self-centeredness and selfishness. You are so self-concerned about what is happening to you, that you fail to see that what is happening to you is happening to the whole world. Everyone is the same. Everyone has the same human, conditional motivations and accomplishments. Naturally, there is the projection of a need to get something, to arrive somewhere, possibly to escape the consensus reality of conditional life. Humans have come up with many ways of escape, yet always there is something wrong with their life. Something is always missing. It is never enough. The brain looks to the outside and attempts to achieve some level of connection in order to gain a sense of satisfaction and all rightness, but doing this is manipulation and control.

With human life being such, does it have a purpose? Could Life waste so much of itself in this striving, or is there simply a misunderstanding? Have humans taken a detour, getting themselves caught in various structures and systems and beliefs and conditions? Are humans missing the point?

Maybe people are missing the point that Life is about being with what-is, and when you are totally being with what-is you also recognize the creative power you have. You have power, you have ability, you have inspiration. These too are human aspects. Oh, the intellect may decide that you’re not good enough, that you’re not capable, but that is simply a misunderstanding of Life, a misinterpretation. You are Life. You are existence. You are now, this moment, this being. And sitting with you in this moment are the expectations, the desires, the projections. You resist. You attach. You want. You don’t want. These are human sentiments that come from the intellect; they are conditional, consensus-reality mechanisms.

The trick is realizing that you are more, that you are sufficient within yourself, that you could not have existed or survived without these mechanisms. Realize that you survived in this world of chaos, of indifference, of conditions, of consensus reality, beliefs, the other. Acknowledge that you are quite good at being in Life. You are efficient. You lived. You have brought yourself to this moment, which is an accomplishment. So it’s getting to that place where you are all right with you the way you are. It’s sometimes hard when you look outside and see others who seem to be better, smarter, more aware, who seem to have more. However, you are also honest. You notice that there are those who have less, know less, can do less, are more limited than you. There is a whole gamut of experiences in Life.

Ideally humans could achieve a degree of awareness where each level of existence could be acknowledged and accepted as-is. You could then look at individuals whom you perceive as less fortunate, as fulfilling some gap in your life experience; they don’t have less because they’re inefficient, they simply have what-is. There is so much competition in this world. Competition leads to strife, distress, struggle, and separation. Nations compete against nations. World powers have to act powerfully in order to remain world powers, which means they have to control a lot, and control is energy inefficient. Control consumes tremendous amounts of energy. In the big control game the energy is most likely to run out at some point, and the super power will be no more. The giant is gone. You could become one of those individuals who run dry, who run out of source energy, inspiration.

It is time for humans to wake up. It is time for you to awaken to who you are and find a place of all rightness with that. The greatest gift in Life is to finally become all right with you, not someone else, but you. Oh yes, there are always those perceptions of not being enough, of lacking this, or having too much of that. Those are minor details. I know, the world makes them major details, but they are minor, because what do they have to do with Is-ness, with who you are?

You learn to live within your energy field. You learn to accept your talents. I see so many individuals who have a lot of talent, but they don’t believe that, because it doesn’t look like talent to them; it doesn’t look like someone else’s ability, so they deny their own resourcefulness. There is so much denial in the world. However, if you can bring yourself to accept who you are, unconditionally, you embrace a great gift. You then simply realize, “OK, this is me. I am this manifestation of Life, of The Consciousness. This is me. This is what’s happening. This is what I can do. Who cares about what I can’t do?” You focus on what you can do. I know that is a novel, unique approach, because you have been conditioned to focus on what you can’t do, even though you have to do it anyway. What a long hard life of stress and disappointments!

To live within one’s means is intelligence. You recognize what you have--your abilities, your capabilities--and you own those qualities. You realize that Life has given you just exactly what you need to be you, not to be someone else, not to achieve someone else’s goal, or dream, or expectation, but to be you, to be who you are. You finally move into this position where you are all right with what-is, where you realize that you have power, ability, and purpose, that you are inspired by Life to live your purpose, your beingness.
It is not predestined. You are a synergy of possibilities, and the more energy you have use of, the more these possibilities manifest. If your energy is being squandered on the other, i.e. on the outside, on resistance, on attachments or projections, you can do the math: you just don’t have enough energy left to be who you are; you have already spent it on who you are not. Such a waste. However, the beauty of energy is that once you wake up to what’s been happening, it comes back to you. You can’t squander it forever. The moment you stop squandering it, it accumulates. It starts up again.

So, you can in this moment become all right with you, and realize that what makes you unhappy, what causes dissatisfaction, are simply conditional expectations about Life. When you become all right with you, you become all right with your life, and you find that your life fills up with beautiful reflections. The gratification of knowing that you are you, that you are valuable, that you are everything you can be in this moment, is one of the greatest kept secrets in the universe: you always are all you can be in the moment. The bare bone fact of it is that you are all you can be in this moment. If you can accept that, and move on from there, you’ll find that all you can be is cumulative. You keep becoming more, because there is no stopping place. There is no limit to being. There is no limit to the manifestation of The Consciousness. There are no boundaries.

With awakening, wonderful things begin to happen with the brain. When one begins to move into the natural state of existence, there are changes that take place within the body and the brain. These changes are subtle, but the ramifications are monumental to society, to humanity, to the earth.




© Alaya® 2003 - 2006



Ishvara is the spiritual leader of Alaya®, an independent non-profit spiritual organization dedicated to the ongoing awakening of the highest consciousness. We invite you to visit our website at www.alaya.org.

Conformity


For many people, "conformity" is not an appealing word. The idea of conforming to a way, a rule, or a group standard raises the specter of losing our identity, becoming blindly submissive. One of the dictionary definitions of "conform" lends credence to this fear. Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (Second ed.) defines the term "conform" as "to have the same form; be or become similar", "to make like" or "to submit." In other words, become someone you are not.

The fear of conformity can keep people from living in community. I find that there is a wonderful, profound experience of the Space of The Consciousness in the Alaya community. People can sense the Space the moment they come in the door, and feel instantly at home. Yet the community environment here can also be daunting to some. The Alaya community functions with a certain orderliness. The premises are kept clean and beautiful. Community members come together for informal sitting almost every morning, and for scheduled talks or question-and-answer sessions given by Ishvara several times each week. There are community meals, in which all are expected to take part, five times a week. Every member has accepted certain jobs and responsibilities, such as cleaning or maintenance or administrative work, to help keep the place functioning smoothly. From the outside, this orderly functioning could appear to be the product of mindless conformance, and that can be intimidating to some who visit here.

Yet there is another meaning to conformity which I find more accurate in this case. The same Webster's dictionary defines conformity also as meaning "to bring into harmony or agreement;...to adapt..." Conformity can thus mean adapting ourselves to what is happening, bringing ourselves into harmony with Life in each moment, without losing our uniqueness. Ishvara speaks to this latter meaning in a message I have transcribed and edited from a talk he gave on August 12, 2004. - TG.

Ishvara:

When you drive on the highway, you conform to traffic laws which are designed to keep accidents from occurring, to prevent harm from happening to people. If everyone on the highway decided to drive as a non-conformist, there could be a terrible disaster.

Blind conformity becomes mindlessness. Intentional conformity, recognizing that there is a certain purpose to it, is awareness--awareness of harmonizing, flowing processes that serve the whole, that create the most harmony, the most balance. A certain structure is necessary when there are more than a few people involved. If there are only one or two people, each can decide when to eat, when to get up in the morning, and so forth, without much problem. But when there are lot of people in the group, there are agreements that need to be made so that there is a harmonizing aspect, because if most of the group wants to go to sleep early at night, they should not have to be disturbed by one person who wants to stay up all night and make noise. There needs to be a group consensus as to what will work best. That is not "conforming" in the sense of emulating; it is creating a structure that serves the whole. On the outside, it may look like blind submission, a mindless structure, but on the inside it is really just a way of arriving at a process that serves the most people and lays aside the most possible confusion and disruption.

Having some kind of order to Life is not necessarily mindless conformity. To purposefully harmonize in a situation is awareness. That awareness may at times run into someone's personal agenda, but when one has made a decision to be in a group or community, it is a decision to lay aside one's personal agenda, because if everybody keeps their personal agenda there is likely to be chaos.

On the other hand, if conformity takes the form of acceptance of something that has been passed down over time, as blind obedience to "this is the way it is done," such that it has become a ritual that has lost touch with its original purpose, one would have to ask the question whether it is still pertinent or not. There may have been a very good reason for the practice at the time it started, but the reason may no longer exist. Washing feet in the ancient Near East had a beneficial purpose: people walked barefoot and their feet became dirty, so it was a beneficial thing to have their feet washed. But washing feet has been ritualized by some religions, even though the original reason may no longer exist. I have read about some communities that also seemingly follow mindless rituals, the original purpose for which has ceased to exist.

At Alaya, we have a practice of taking off our shoes once we come in the door, in order to help keep the inside of the house clean. There is the purpose of keeping the place clean, so the practice is not a mechanical routine. A present community establishes ways of doing things because to do so is harmonizing to the whole. The community is always looking at what creates the greatest order, while at the same time honoring the uniqueness of individuals.

In this community, I have established ways of being, a minimal structure that creates the most harmony and the most opportunity for people to be themselves without causing disruption or chaos, although disruption sometimes happens nevertheless. There is nothing wrong with disruption; it is OK, and we deal with that when it happens. Disruption does not destroy the system, because the system can expand and contract as necessary. We try to allow for the real needs of individuals, but we are also alert to individuals' programming, because the programming is unconscious. The programming doesn't fit.

When people are their real selves and finding True Nature, it will be both unique and congruent with the whole at the same time. The people in this community have found that they can retain their uniqueness and blend with the rest, not sacrificing who they are, but being their real selves--not a programmed bag of emotions and problems. True Nature has a way of blending and harmonizing. People have problems when they are not letting go of old baggage, when they are trying to hold on to some condition from the past; it doesn't fit, and so there is a problem. Once a person realizes that it is just a condition they have adopted, they have the opportunity to look at it and begin to let go of it.

Conforming in the sense of trying to emulate other people is a low-frequency experience. Conforming in the sense of harmonizing and adapting, is a higher frequency. Life is like a giant jigsaw puzzle: to be the piece you are, to find where you fit, is not "conforming" in the sense of copying something or somebody; it is being natural, who you are, finding the most harmonious way of being. When you are free of conditional expectations, there is much more opportunity to be who you are. It is beneficial for people to get over the low-frequency idea of conforming, and see a greater possibility. Living in community, being who you are, is a matter of harmonizing with the situation, moment by moment.

If community members have respect for each other, the community can go a long way toward finding a place of balance and harmony. Finding a place of harmony means having respect for each other, for people outside the community, for humanity, withholding judgments, expectations and opinions, and trying to gain some level of awareness of people as they are, realizing that people have problems, people are conditional, and everybody is striving to be more unconditional, and giving people the benefit of the doubt, trying to inspire people to be more, instead of trying to control them or force them to be more.


This message was written and transcribed by Terry Grant.


Copyright © 2004 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

To learn more about Ishvara and the Alaya® Community, visit our website at www.alayanet.org

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Dealing With Lower Frequencies


Even as we grow in awareness, we seem to continue to revisit old patterns, lower frequencies. Why is that? Why does the old continue to hang around? Ishvara speaks to this experience in words I have transcribed and edited from a talk he gave on August 5, 2004. - TG.


Ishvara:

It is a lot like lifting weights. You lift weights to develop muscles. The normal human frequency is a conditional consensus that is dominant on the planet; that is where people live. There is also an extraordinary consciousness that is developing, but it takes muscle to live there; it requires developing the ability to maintain a higher frequency in spite of what is happening around you. So the bouncing up and down between frequencies is the process of developing neural pathways in your brain that can sustain the higher frequency.

When you find yourself experiencing old patterns, it is familiar and easy. It is easy to be your past, it is easy to be who you were, because it is familiar; it seems very normal. To exercise and build strength, on the other hand, you have to have a taste of something more. In weightlifting, if you kept lifting the same weight you would only develop to a certain point and then stop; that is as far as you would go. But if you keep adding weight to what you lift, you keep developing. Essentially, that is what is happening in Life: you are developing muscle, the ability to sustain a higher frequency. You familiarize yourself by developing neural pathways that are comfortable with a more expanded awareness, and when that becomes you, the old "you" keeps dissipating. One day you look and see that your former self is now only a fleeting shadow.

It is a matter of realizing the difference. Recognizing the differences in the levels of energy is like training that helps you to increasingly identify where things are, where things are coming from, and where things are going. Consequently, you have a clarity, an openness, a bigger picture of things; actually you are moving from the personal to the impersonal. The impersonal is not self-concerned, not stuck in conditional thinking. In the impersonal, you still have your identity as "you" but it is not so focused on the personal; it is not afraid for survival. The impersonal is not concerned with survival; the impersonal is concerned with gaining experience through openness and connection and clarity. So you are constantly developing a sense of clarity through the experiences that you have.

At times you feel the old self, you feel stuck; that can be good, because you realize that is not "you" any more. It is like going back and doing the things you did when you were very young, and realizing they are not fun any more. The past is gradually fading. The past gets re-energized when old neural pathways are triggered, but it has less and less substance. Consequently, you see the evolved "you" more readily and more often. Seeing that difference is really important.

There is a tremendous investment in the familiar, what's comfortable, but you can get so stuck in the familiar that you don't make much progress. The more you embrace the unknown, the difficult, the higher elements of energy, the more you learn how energy works, and consequently the more stable you become in the higher frequencies.

It is a process of moving from human beings to super human beings. In this process you need to remove the residue you have inherited. Some of that residue goes back to the moment of your birth. The process involves going deeper and deeper into the past of "you" to exorcise it, to transcend it.

Now, the endeavor of looking for past conditioning to root it out is premature. On the other hand, when you are just staying present and the deep conditioning comes up, you are ready to deal with it. I don't advocate going to psychotherapy to dig up skeletons, because Life does that in a natural way. Life constantly offers the opportunity to see deeper and deeper into the self and recognize more and more of the past motivations that have controlled and distorted your life. The result is that, as you attain a higher frequency, you are more able to deal with the lower.

You want to be able to deal with the lower, because you do not want to have these past patterns around for you to stumble over. It really is about knowing yourself: you come to know your weaknesses, you know where you can get distracted, you know where things get distorted--you know those things about yourself, and by knowing them you are assisting a transformative process in the brain. It is a process that is deleting old neural pathways once there is the recognition of them, and creating new neural pathways that sustain a higher frequency. It sounds like a lot of work, but once there is the knowing of how it works the process can go swiftly. You can simply see, "Oh, it is that," and be done with it. You don't have to work on it or analyze it; you simply recognize things very quickly and move past them. Once you understand that it is a process of seeing and recognizing, and not working on things, the process can move quickly.

This message was written and transcribed by Terry Grant

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Constant-Expanding In Possibilities


In the conclusion of a talk he gave on July 15, 2004, Ishvara speaks of what occurs in death, and in birth. I have transcribed and edited his words. - TG.

Ishvara:

Seeing death is like seeing a beautiful wave in the ocean. After the wave hits the shore, it goes back into the ocean, and it is gone, although you know it is still part of the ocean. That is not satisfying to the intellect, the personal, but if you can move more into the impersonal, you realize that there is no loss; it is bigger, it has taken on a bigger arena, a bigger form. Bits and pieces of it may come back as another wave, but not as the same individual wave that was before. The individual doesn't come back.

The belief in the permanent individual was created by human beings because they could not see the bigger picture, and therefore death was a dreadful thing to the brain. The brain would work hard, gain experience and knowledge, and then be done; that was discouraging to the brain. For the un-evolved brain, there was no way to know more, so the brain established the permanent "other" out of an ego need for survival, but that has clouded the actuality of experience.

As I have watched people die, I recognize that the essence of the Life Force that they are goes into the big bank of Life Force, bringing all of its experiences, and merging with everything, becoming everything. It is not lost; it is just bigger; it is hard for the brain to recognize it after that point. There is such a strong program about death, with a lot of fear around it, and so beliefs were made up to comfort people. But I have recognized that there is a greater comfort.

People say, "But I need him, I want him!" And I reply, "He is no longer what you recognize, but you can attune, you can have a relationship with the Life Force and realize that he has contributed to a part of this, and is there, and is not lost." In death, the familiarity of the form is lost.

Each of us is the Life Force manifesting as this. By its nature, the manifestation is limited to a certain time--not of necessity, but that is the way it has been. I foresee that, as a new species, we will have a longer life span, and we may not even need to "exit" in the traditional way. We could just expand and accelerate into everything. For the time being, however, a practice of tuning oneself to the lost one (not bringing the lost one to you but going to that one in the greater whole) can be comforting and beneficial.

What about birth?

In birth, The Consciousness is expressing a unique aspect of itself. Birth is The Consciousness taking birth. When that happens, often The Consciousness will birth itself with certain potentials that need to be worked out in intelligence. Sometimes there is a question left from some past experience--"What does that mean?"--so one's birth as a unique expression of The Consciousness comes with that question, that potential. It is not something separate; it is not a separate "soul" taking birth again to have an experience. It is The Consciousness itself.

When you look at The Consciousness as intelligence that is evolving, it is always moving into opportunities and possibilities for expression. It is wonderful when The Consciousness moves to express itself in some way, and that should be celebrated. The same is true when The Consciousness is finished with an expression--that should be celebrated too, not grieved. It is the same at each end. Life comes from the ocean of intelligence, The Consciousness, manifests as corporeal existence, expresses whatever potential is there, whatever connections and possibilities can be realized, and then moves back into the ocean of forever.

When you do not have an attachment to the individual, to separation, you can see the beauty of Life, and how it is so peaceful, so harmonious, creative, so possible, and so forgiving; it doesn't hold grudges, doesn't get mad, doesn't seek retribution. There is no "God" out there who is going to punish people because they did something wrong; each expression is simply part of the experience.

It can take a while to be with this awareness, because it is so different from beliefs and concepts, from what has been taught. When the belief in the "other" is let go, you begin to realize that Life is benevolent, Life is compassion, Life is love. When you start to connect with those attributes, you begin to experience more of them. There comes an unconditional acceptance of what-is, but it is not a limitation. It is constant-expanding in possibilities.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant


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Seeing A Bigger Picture


Below is a continuation of the message that I transcribed and edited from a talk Ishvara gave on July 15, 2004. - TG.

Ishvara:

When one is lacking direct experience of Life, one has only intellectual pursuit. You can be so bogged down in the intellectual pursuit that you avoid the direct experience, which will always confound the intellect. The direct experience will not fit your expectations, your beliefs; it will not fit the past, because the direct experience is absolutely, totally present, and it doesn't care about how it is "supposed" to be or how you want it to be. It is what it is. That can be hard for an ego-bound intellect to accept, because you may have gone to countless seminars and intensives, learned many systems and methods, invested thousands of dollars in amassing information, and to give all of that up is difficult.

Most spiritual systems validate people's beliefs, people's needs. That is fine, because feeling OK in one's self is a step in the right direction, but it can also cause one to become waylaid.

Life is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Each piece fits in a certain place. Usually a piece is only aware of itself, and perhaps the pieces immediately around it, but it doesn't see the big picture. As you begin to embrace the direct experience of Life through the unique expressions of The Consciousness around you, you catch a glimpse of the bigger picture. The picture is multi-dimensional; it is not flat. Just knowing that there is a bigger picture, that you cannot define Life from one part, is important. You can see something from one part, but not all. Trying to understand all of Life by looking only at one part is like trying to define the whole body by looking only at the thumb. Yet that is what most spiritual teachings do: trying to define the whole thing by looking at one point--my "individual" existence--and that ultimately creates so much superstitious belief, so much "other," that Life becomes distorted and people become lost.

As you gain awareness through the direct experience of those around you, you see that each person is a unique expression of The Consciousness that is on purpose, that each carries a certain part of Life's intelligence, each has certain awareness, and the more you can connect with that, the bigger the picture you see. The more beliefs you can let go, the bigger the picture you see. Now, you don't need to curse your beliefs; you can bless them, because beliefs have been like rungs of a ladder that you are ascending. These things of the past have served you, but, like a rung of a ladder, if you stay on one of them, you won't go anywhere. Many systems and structures adhere to one rung and refuse to move on. So it is a matter of being non-attached, without expectation, but having a willingness to explore possibilities, to see bigger connections, and in that kind of willingness you keep seeing a bigger picture, and consequently your life is no longer about survival. Your life becomes about exploration, exploring Life, exploring possibilities, exploring connections, seeing where things go, not standing back in fear or separation.

At a cellular level, there is the "personal," and the necessity of relationship with the personal, because that gives meaning, and that is a direct experience. However, you have to be cautious about not becoming so bogged down in the personal that you lose sight of the bigger picture. I can treat people as friends and as students, because I have the capacity to be both personal and impersonal. Sometimes an individual needs a very personal relationship, a very personal look and connection, and at other times one needs to be blown out totally, to have a bigger picture emerge and to realize that it is not about "you" or "me," it is not about a separate self. So both the personal and the impersonal serve in the process of awareness.

Your brain is the focal point of the mind field that is personalized because of your individual experiences, because of the unique expression of Life that you are. As you accelerate, you extend and include more; there are more connections, and it becomes more and more impersonal. The more impersonal it becomes, the greater access you have to information, because the large bulk of the information has no personal relationship to you, you have no individual experience of it, but there is a collective experience, a universal experience. So as you become more impersonal, you begin to spread out and have access to greater information. The only limit is that the brain will only function with something it can implement--otherwise it is useless information, like reading a physics textbook and not being able to understand it.

As you become more impersonal, you begin to recognize the ongoing Is-ness of Life, realizing that nothing can ever be lost, it can only change. That doesn't satisfy the personal experience of loss and separation, and so the brain has created beliefs and concepts about death, based on the need for permanence, but those are just beliefs.

In death, the energy-field-that-I-am can no longer maintain a physical structure, and the structure begins to dissolve; what-I-am-as-The-Consciousness moves back in to the whole and contributes what it has experienced. It can be difficult when you have lost someone, because there is an intellectual desire to continue to have that security, that support. I have had many experiences with people dying. I even worked in a nursing home for a time, and cared for dying people there. The energy experience I have is consistent with what a friend of mine, whose mother had died, once said to me: "It feels like my mother is everywhere, that she is watching me from everywhere." I said, "Well she is; she is part of The Consciousness and she has become the whole thing."

If we can allow that there is no separation, that separation happens only in systems and structures, then there is no need for grief, because we realize that nothing is ever lost; it just changes, moves on to a higher frequency. There are ways to attune to that, to receive comfort from it, but you have to get out of the beliefs and concepts about separation and an "end."

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant


Copyright © 2004 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

To learn more about Ishvara and the Alaya® Community, visit our website at www.alayanet.org

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