Contemplative Notes

(These notes come from Doctor David R Hawkins speaking on Beyond the Ordinary on November 9th 2001. These notes are drawn from part one and two of the program that day.)

Whenever I go, there I am.

I saw that kinesiology as a way to explain states which would be otherwise incomprehensible. A bridge between the visible world and the invisible world of spirit. A way of even calibrating it as a map of consciousness.

In Korea is was common for people if they're shopping to test food using kinesiology

The mind has to be ready for spirituality like a field ready to be tilled

When consciousness hears the truth about itself it awakens to its reality and becomes more prominent. That is why consciousness makes such large advances with exposure to spiritual teachings.

Every time you do something disintegrous it interrupts the meridians. If you are thus for a number of years it begins to effect the physiology in an adverse way.

Everything in the world effects you positively or negatively and this goes on outside of awareness.

The purpose (of TvF) is an overall recontextualisation of humanity as it evolves through all time. As you look over it you get a nonintellectual understanding like a relief map that say moves over time that gives you a feeling for the globe as a whole. The purpose is to give one a greater spiritual awareness so at the end of the book you can almost look at things and almost know where it fits in the overall category of things.

The mind has no ability to tell truth from falsehood. The greatest geniuses ever lived cannot tell truth from falsehood, It's not built into the human consciousness. So the discover of human consciousness is that here for the first time you can tell truth from falsehood with kinesiology.

There are no polarities of either-or. I'm going to show you the way out of dualism. Where you think there's two possibilities there's only one. For instance, heat and cold is not opposites. Heat is either present or not present. When heat is present to a great degree we call it hot, when it's absent we call it cold but there's not two different qualities. It's like light and dark. There's not two variable but one. Light is either present or not. If it's not, we call it darkness but it doesn't have an independent existence. What seems like opposites are really only gradations along a single scale. Not two scales only one scale. So we have no independent reality.

Enlightenment is really removing the clouds and then the radience of the self shines forth. That which allows you to say I is not your personal I. It's the universal I which gives you the gift of the capacity to be conscious and aware that you exist. Nothing can exist unless it is a manifestation of God.

The (book) "Eye of the I" is really how all of reality appears to the third eye of the crown chakra you might say. It's the eye of God as pure consciousness itself. So it's more about the enlightened state itself. What happens when the ego collapses. It identifies divinity as the condition of radical subjectivity.

Man up to this time has had no compass to tell truth from falsehood. A lot of world literature is full of rather serious error which will lead you off into byways for some lifetimes. What I've tried to do it provide a compass.

The Absolute reality the spiritual aspirant is seeking is what I can radical subjectivity. What's real is subjectivity. Awareness of consciousness is present at all time in all living beings. That which is considered objective truth is transitory and without any reality, and it is only a projection of measurement.

...One surrenders all belief that one knows anything to God and then wait to see what is reveal. So as you remove the clouds of belief systems the radience of the Self shines forth. In that instant everything is brilliant and obvious.

This state ripens and progresses of its own.

Steve Pavlina on the concept of a time log:

I really admire this guy.

Here is the essence of Steve Pavlina's post on time and significance:

"The actor James Dean said, “Dream as if you’ll live forever, and live as if you’ll die tomorrow.” There are several popular variations on this quote, and they serve to remind us to pay attention to what we truly value. The finality of mortality endows reality with vitality.

"While it can be difficult to figure out what matters most to us even when considering that we might die tomorrow, perhaps it’s easier to notice what matters least. If you knew you’d die tomorrow, what wouldn’t you do? What activities would you definitely not include in your last 24 hours? Work? TV? Email? Web surfing? What people would you not spend even a moment of your last 24 hours with?

"How would you choose to experience your last day as a human being? Why not find out? Consider taking one day out of your life to have that experience now — perhaps an otherwise empty Saturday. Live that day from dawn til dusk as if it were your last. Feel every precious minute ticking by. What time would you get up? What would you eat for your last breakfast? Who would you spend time with? Where would you go? What would you do?

"If you actually take a day to run this experiment to see what you come up with, perhaps you’ll notice that there are things you would do during those last 24 hours that currently have too little presence in your daily life. Can you bring some of those things into your life right now even if you don’t expect to die tomorrow? Can you cut back on some of those things that would be irrelevant in your final days?"

This is the basic context for a time log, which is simply jotting down the time when you start and stop any activity for a week.

Overwhelming Force

Steve Pavlina says:

“What would it take for me not only to achieve this goal but to absolutely dominate it?” What would you consider overkill? Imagine your goal as if you’re planning a battle that you MUST win, regardless of the cost. Write down what you think it would take to be certain of success.”

From "Overwhelming Force" on www.stevepavlina.com

How to find willpower in yourself, and where

What follows may seem abstract - and indeed it is. But because the power of the will is intrinsic to every being, a little generalisation is necessary to make clear how absolute the principle of will is.

Most psychology does not discuss the will. Or if it does, it speaks in terms of personal willpower. I understand the notion of will in quite a different way.

The common view of ordinary human willpower is that people can't help being what they are, and so the emphasis on willpower is just judgmentalism. And there is certainly a grain of truth in this view. When people often fail, and there seems no easy cause to pin the failure on, then it is easy to blame willpower. Or lack of willpower. Or whatever.

But the understanding of the will which I intend to present here is an powerful context for growth and evolution.

Will is a universal quality in consciousness. So being in all things, it is also in the divine and also part of divinity. Whereas other qualities of consciousness can be distorted into purely human inventions, the experience of the will has a kind of pristine purity and uplifting power which cannot be put fully into words.

The merely "human" will seems so weak and fallible that it seems like only a delusion often. But what is overlooked about the will is that from little things, big things evolve. And the key processes of personal growth occur in relation to a specific attitude of this ordinary human will. What has been discovered is that by using the small willpower we have wisely, enormous power can be released. Small beginnings can lead to to big events and cosmic endings.

But what are these small actions of the everyday will which release infinite power? They are threefold:

1. Surrender
2. Consent
3. Intention

In practice these may occur at once. You realize that the ego is a paltry thing, and if you are fortunate, also discovers the endless Will of divinity, available to anyone the moment they surrender to it, whether they feel or know it or not.

What follows, then, is an exploratory and contemplative process for myself and others. These are more notes towards meaning than pristine statements of truth. But I can do my best to be clear, and thereby serve to clarify others as well. These seven points are not linear, but simply scaffolds to hang meaning on as it unfolds of its own accord. Returning to them several times is best to observe subjective experience of them at different times and learn.

1. Clarity of will is achieved by observing obstacles unfold. As one observes, clarity of will appears automatically.

2. The experience of the will is an exploratory process that begins with consent to experience it. Consent sets up the conditions for it to occur, but intention brings the experience into the everyday.

3. Without everyday application and patient return again and again to clarity, will tends to slowly effect situations around a person invisibly and unconsciously. When intention and consent are aligned, the learning curve tends to speed up as events gain in power and clarity.

4. The qualities of will are:

stillness
relative unchangeability (compared to everyday life)
silence
fixity and stability, and
purity of context.

5. "Great power is supported by purity of context." Contemplating this idea leads one to comprehend the power of pure intention to overcome habit and delusion.

6. "Nothing causes anything. Everything becomes actual as a consequence of potentiality meeting the right conditions and being actualized by intention." Contemplating this idea leads one to comprehend the universal quality of willpower, thus opening the mind to experience it more.

7. Willpower is found in subjective experience, within or without oneself, at anytime, even in dream. The stabilizing, peaceful, wholesome quality of it is universal and enormously powerful. As with most truth, with practice and experience willpower, stability, and purity of context becomes first nature.

A review of Freud's "Psychoanalysis".

I am not sure if Freud's approach in psychoanalysis is superstitution or rational genius.

How does one manage to go beyond the awake and aware mind and remain rational and scientific? I think the key lies in Herr Freud's self-psychoanalysis, which he forbade others to do. I also think that we tend to project our own needs and interests onto this body of work, especially if we become deeply involved in it. For instance, literary critic Harold Bloom projects Shakespeare onto Freud.

You know what "Psychoanalysis" reminds me of? The Blue Book of Alcoholics Anonymous! Here is the same trial and error, trial and success, but in the hands of one man. Here is the same modesty and egotism combined, the same supple and wry awareness of fallibility and of genius insights having fallen into one's hands. And here too is the surprise at having discovered something genuinely new under the sun.

It is customary to opine about the good and bad aspects of Freud's work. This is like giving a compilation of one's projections and biases. The simplicity of Freud's approach stands in stark contrast:

"You may regard psychoanalytic treatment as a continued education for the overcoming of childhood-remnants."

In other words: grow up! become as full a human being as you can! accept you life and your death for what they are.

Here there is a bittersweet and severe wisdom - in common with Cicero's letter on Old Age - which gains flavour the longer we savor it.

What is self confidence?

What is self confidence?

What are seen as the sources or principles of self confidence? What makes one person certain they can try great things, and another falter at unseen obstacles in a world of confusion?

Is it that difficult to learn, given that many if not most people suffer from lack of it?

Or is it that it is difficult to apply - or, rather, that we are unwilling to apply it - even unable to see why it need be applied. Perhaps lack of self confidence is a self-reinforcing thing. The lack of self confidence then obscures itself. While others forge ahead, those lacking in self-confidence seek and find excuses, based on whatever model of the world they accept or fall for.

A few things can be said for certain about self confidence that seem to be timeless and universal.

1. Strong self confidence comes from within.
2. Strong self confidence is generalised, abstract, and broadly applies to all areas of one's life.
3. Strong self confidence is not arrogant nor vain, but humble, simple, and purposeful.

These can be said with certainty. But what of the source of self-confidence?

1. Self confidence exists, but LACK of confidence does not. The basic survival urge springs pure and strong in everyone who lives. It cannot be absent. It can only be obscured or forgotten.
2. The aspect of self known as the will or spirituality is the keeper of self confidence, and in order to become self confident it requires consent alone.
3. Self confidence is exercised in the presence of fear. The perception of fear and low confidence, although it seems loud and clear, can only survive temporarily become subsiding. Self confidence is ever-present, still and silent throughout.

So the process of self-confidence then can be described, but not precisely defined, as it has to do with the abstract level of spirituality.

First, consent of the will allows self confidence to appear within.
Second, the automatic nature of perception creates a temporary perception of fear and lack of self confidence.
Third, the continued consent and awareness of the will allows the self-confidence to sustain itself after fear has subsided.

The consequence of this is to imprint a new pattern of awareness where the potential for self-confidence in the midst of challenge can be asserted. In other words, by being aware of and witnessing the reality that self confidence is our primal nature, we actualise the potential for growth in ourselves and by example in others.