Look Beneath the Surface (and Watch the Spirit Arise)

"I am ever present to those who have realized me

in every creature. Seeing all life as my manifestation,

they are never separated from me. They worship me

in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me.

Wherever they live, they abide in me."

                   The Bhagavad Gita, 6:30-31

With that somewhat invisible foundation in place, let's consider that it's really basing our judgments on the surfaces of what we see that creates a great many of our world's problems. They insist that by being the "visible" parts of life, they are also the most important parts—the parts we're actually interacting with all the time. But that's not really true, is it? Aren't we seeing, and more importantly feeling, the invisible parts of life, perhaps more deeply, all the time?

You can neither tell a book by it's cover, nor the content of a person's heart from the clothes they wear. It's impossible for our limited vision to see into the whirring masses of sub-atomic particles all dancing inside of our supposedly solid world. There is an inwardly exponential relationship of the outsides of everything to their insides, where the real story is told in the many pages beneath the cover.

When we're confronted by surfaces—appearances, behaviors, "final outcomes"—it does us no good to compare our insides to those outward presentations, but to start by considering what we don't know about the insides of each. That's where we can find our real understanding. We've all experienced the illusion of something looking really good on the outside, only to find out that it's actually full of pain. (I've picked a lot of chocolates like that...)

So, it's our ability to witness this occupation by spirit, and the outward expression of it (as mysterious as it is miraculous,) that's the most important, truly interactive, and compellingly honest perception we can have—whether we can actually see past the physical surface of something (or someone) or not. When we don't get too wrapped-up with surface appearances, we can see that remarkable relationship pretty plainly...but we have to relax, stop labeling, and allow ourselves to. So try this sometimes—pay as little attention to the surface of things as possible. Practice looking into it (intuit); and just try to witness the spirit arising from within things and people, as often as you can. Like everything that's worth getting good at, it takes practice.

"To God belongs the East and the West;

and wherever you turn,

there is the face of God."

The Qu'ran, Surah 2

These quotes from ancient wisdom sources really say the same thing, don't they? We display a kind of silly ignorance when we rely on visible affirmations—on outside appearances—when we know that every surface changes, and that it's the mystery within that remains Eternal. Everything we witness with our minds, and our eyes, and our hearts, is actually just more proof of our shared elemental composition—the substance of our Source, and our ineffable connection to each other and every living thing. It's all the real "face of God."

So, it's just a matter of our perception, and allowing ourselves to look beneath the surface of things by looking with a vision that's free of judgment and comparison—that's the only way to be more fully, more realistically, engaged by our compassion, identifying with the insides, instead of the outsides. Heres a quote, from a wonderful egghead, that tells us the same thing:

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Albert Einstein

And this last natural note – did you know that bald eagles have naturally "polarized" vision? They can see right past the surface reflections, past the glare, into the river, at all the fish swimming by. Life looks like a parade of candy bars to them. They sit, fully and appropriately engaged, and, once they've learned the proper technique, they swoop down and snatch up the bounty of life, whenever they want.

"The disciples asked him:

'When will the Kingdom come?'

Yeshua answered:

It will not come by watching for it...

The Kingdom...is spread out over the whole earth,

and people do not have eyes to see it."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 113

The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond, based on lessons (learned the hard way) by a three time near death survivor is now available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore! How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying) is due out early 2018, from Llewellyn Worldwide.

The Spiritual Consciousness of Animals – A Vegan Resolution

"I am the true Self in the heart of every creature...the beginning, middle, and end of their existence."

The Bhagavad Gita 10.20

In sharing this thing we call consciousness, we all share the singular expression of the creative source that takes place on this planet. We share what we might call "the Consciousness of Earth." Deep within us, we have a sense of the most basic elemental forces of the Earth; the deepest cold of the icy subterranean. The dense, smoldering pressure and heat of the innermost; the heedless baking burn of the unabated sun.

Deep within us, we know the natural experience of life, of the wild. We feel the elements as any animal does, and like any animal we live the play of forces that govern our needs for sustenance, for regeneration, for love in the form of the mysterious power of creation.

Look within yourself and you'll see that somewhere deep within, you understand the exhilarating speed of the cheetah, or the overwhelming seasonal sleepiness of the grizzly bear – especially on those days when it's tough to get out of bed. Likewise you can identify with the fear a young calf feels when surrounded by the slaughterhouse cries of his family; or the panic of a yellowtail tuna or porpoise as the indiscriminate mile-long nets of a fishing trawler scoop up the contents of your entire world.

It's not just humans that share the experience of this thin veneer of consciousness that tenderly wraps and energetically enlivens this planet, it's all life on earth. Despite our differences, species to species, we are all one thing: the consciousness on this earth.

"...my own true inner being actually exists in every living creature...[and] is the ground of that compassion upon which all true, that is to say, unselfish, virtue rests..."

Schopenhauer

Animals simply live their being. Their consciousness is joined with source purpose and intention, and so they attain a purity of experience within consciousness, through their senses, that humans seldom know. They have developed senses which allow them to live in a much richer world infused by light, sound, and electromagnetic wave perception that connects them to the field of being, and so they are not burdened by elaborately convoluted thinking, as are humans.

Being ignorant, and unwilling to experience or imagine the sublimely transcendent intelligence alive in the spirit/mind of a whale or an elephant, for example, the human ego denies all other creatures their true positions in the hierarchy of being, simply because it threatens human self-enhancement and self-importance. Also because it suggests a fatal assumption of human intelligence; that we have the "divine" right to kill animals for our own purpose – which is a conclusion based solely on delusion and ignorance. Some indigenous peoples have naturally found the way through The Great Spirit to respectably cycle the energies of hunted and farmed animals to meet their needs for sustenance, but this has little to do with the barbaric industry of animal subjugation and slaughter most of us contribute to today. 

And, for those sticklers, I wouldn't suggest that a hungry crocodile wouldn't eat me, if given the chance. That's what he lives to do. Not to accomplish. Not to steward. Not to choose.

The fact is that the actual nutritional needs of the earth's entire population could be met in a much more healthful and efficient manner agriculturally, with a bare minimum of animal slaughter and consumption. (All the flavors, textures, and nutritional qualities that are supposedly exclusive to meat can be reproduced with vegetable substitutes) In this way, wildlife populations would be brought back into balance, and humans could begin to exercise their divine dominion over the other occupants of the planet.

Unfortunately, the regressive human psyche has developed an appetite for something else: the energy of fear. The collective human ego manipulates and exploits it's animal relatives, feeding on the energy of fear generated by this exploitation. Feeding on the bodies of our animal brothers and sisters while ignoring their actual place in the divine order of life, and, without properly honoring their sacrifice, failing to release their spirits with love, imbues people with a deep, negative energy of guilt and fear.

In this way, the collective human ego, the singular most destructive force in all being, enforces the separation of human individuals from the divine source of being, which is the consciousness of the earth. It also contributes to the build-up of the energy of fear at a cellular level in the bodies of meat-eaters that leads to the inability to perceive the spiritual on a personal and collective level, and provides those fear-triggers that are regularly exploited by unethical interests to elicit the ignorant and inhumane mass attitudes that so threaten all life on earth. Simply put, it's why there are far more fist fights at barbecues than at vegan yoga retreats!

It's this essential barbarism, and these more esoteric – even occult – systems of exploitation that we may know, deep in our hearts, but continually deny for the simple, insanely selfish excuse that for a few minutes "it tastes really good." For a direct example of this, consider the epidemic of obesity in our culture, so often blamed on soda pop and fast foods. The chemicals fed factory animal to make them grow at an abnormal rate are consumed by meat-eaters, who then grow abnormally as well. Factory animal production destroys our spirits, our health, and our environment.  

The time has arrived in the evolution of humankind, to stop the barbaric and wasteful subjugation, cannibalization, and vanity slaughter of all crawling, walking, flying, swimming, thinking and feeling sentient creatures; and instead, to seek their wisdom of simple harmonious being-ness. And to stop and redirect the earth's energy and resources, squandered by this pointlessly egomaniacal vivocide, into an intuitively intelligent and sustainable (re: vegetarian) approach to being on earth, aligned with source energy, which is the consciousness of the earth. Studies now definitively demonstrate that it is the heartless, mindless exploitation of animals as a food source that is the single greatest contributor to global warming, sea life destruction, and ecological collapse – greater even than transportation or power generation in many areas.

 Keep in mind that mankind is not the top of the chain of being in this system of consciousness, the Earth is. As mankind continues to hasten the grievous imbalance of energies through the destruction of earth's natural systems and expressions of it's consciousness, the world will simply adjust to maintain it's harmony. We're not talking about the end of the world. The world will continue on, finding new ways to express divine consciousness, only Man will cease to exist. Wouldn't it be wiser to save our vanishing animal species, and live in a union of biodiversity with them, all contributing to the greater, and to the welfare of our precious Earth?

"I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation...The elements and the animals, and the birds, they live in a state of grace. They are absolute, they can do no wrong. It is only we, the two-leggeds, that can do this. And when we do this to our brothers, then we do the worst in the eyes of the Creator."

Oren Lyons, to the United Nations (1977)



Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

Look Beneath the Surface (and Watch the Spirit Arise)

"I am ever present to those who have realized me

in every creature. Seeing all life as my manifestation,

they are never separated from me. They worship me

in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me.

Wherever they live, they abide in me."

                   The Bhagavad Gita, 6:30-31

With that somewhat invisible foundation in place, let's consider that it's really basing our judgements on the surfaces of what we see that creates a great many of our world's problems. They insist that by being the "visible" parts of life, they are also the most important parts—the parts we're actually interacting with all the time. But that's not really true, is it? Aren't we seeing, and more importantly feeling, the invisible parts of life, perhaps more deeply, all the time?

You can neither tell a book by it's cover, nor the content of a person's heart from the clothes they wear. It's impossible for our limited vision to see into the whirring masses of sub-atomic particles all dancing inside of our supposedly solid world. There is an inwardly exponential relationship of the outsides of everything to their insides, where the real story is told in the many pages beneath the cover.

When we're confronted by surfaces—appearances, behaviors, "final outcomes"—it does us no good to compare our insides to those outward presentations, but to start by considering what we don't know about the insides of each. That's where we can find our real understanding. We've all experienced the illusion of something looking really good on the outside, only to find out that it's actually full of pain. (I've picked a lot of chocolates like that...)
So, it's our ability to witness this occupation by spirit, and the outward expression of it (as mysterious as it is miraculous,) that's the most important, truly interactive, and compellingly honest perception we can have—whether we can actually see past the physical surface of something (or someone) or not. When we don't get too wrapped-up with surface appearances, we can see that remarkable relationship pretty plainly...but we have to relax, stop labeling, and allow ourselves to. So try this sometimes—pay as little attention to the surface of things as possible. Practice looking into it (intuit); and just try to witness the spirit arising from within things and people, as often as you can. Like everything that's worth getting good at, it takes practice.

"To God belongs the East and the West;

and wherever you turn,

there is the face of God."

The Qu'ran, Surah 2

These quotes from ancient wisdom sources really say the same thing, don't they? We display a kind of silly ignorance when we rely on visible affirmations—on outside appearances—when we know that every surface changes, and that it's the mystery within that remains Eternal. Everything we witness with our minds, and our eyes, and our hearts, is actually just more proof of our shared elemental compo-sition—the substance of our Source, and our ineffable connec-tion to each other and every living thing. It's all the real "face of God."

 

So, it's just a matter of our perception, and allowing ourselves to look beneath the surface of things by looking with a vision that's free of judgment and comparison—that's the only way to be more fully, more realistically, engaged by our compassion, identifying with the insides, instead of the outsides. Heres a quote, from a wonderful egghead, that tells us the same thing:

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Albert Einstein

And this last natural note – did you know that bald eagles have naturally "polarized" vision? They can see right past the surface reflections, past the glare, into the river, at all the fish swimming by. Life looks like a parade of candy bars to them. They sit, fully and appropriately engaged, and, once they've learned the proper technique, they swoop down and snatch up the bounty of life, whenever they want.

                 "The disciples asked him:

'When will the Kingdom come?'

Yeshua answered:

It will not come by watching for it...

The Kingdom...is spread out over the whole earth,

and people do not have eyes to see it."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 113

The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond, based on lessons (learned the hard way) by a three time near death survivor is now available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore! How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying) is due out early 2018, from Llewellyn Worldwide.

What I Learned From "Dying," Part 2: My Three Purposes

Earlier, I briefly described my three "Near Death Experiences" and what I learned from each of those distinctly different passages about the apparent structure of our lives here – on this Earth, and now in the "Eternal Moment," stretching out beyond this physical being...but it was left to me to realize the Why?

We're passengers (passer-bys) in these bodies. We're each a fully accounted-for part of an unimaginably spectacular, largely unperceived spiritual system. Each of us has a "mission" to be fulfilled – a set of lessons to learn, karmic tasks to achieve for our process of spiritual evolution. It's really the stuff that myths are made of, and for.

"Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told."

Joseph Campbell

Before I tell you what I came to about the Why?– about our three great purposes – I feel I need to mention a serious underlying conundrum that's accompanied me since my experiences crystallized in my life: That nothing any one of us thinks, does, or says is really all that important at all on a planet that's funneled many billions of souls...but then our feelings, thoughts, and actions also connect us to everything that is really important in Life. It stands to reason that I only need to take Life's lessons seriously, not myself.

So for our first great purpose, it's about Expression – about discovering the best qualities of being human. Not the most selfishly gratifying, but the most fulfilling. Naturally this includes all the wonderfully human experiences of passion, sex, sentiment, thrill and chills, accomplishment, and sacrifice – not just for selfish, self-centered ends (and never to the detriment of any other sentient being), but instead selflessly contributing to the welfare of others whenever possible.

I mean self-expression as in discovering your authentic self – who you really are, and what your positive, life-fulfilling role is – whether it's protecting and caring for others, building bridges, fixing finances, creating revelatory art, expressing your soul on paper, etc. – all the things we can do for one another (all the "markets" we find). It's not always fabulous at all, or about being rich and famous, or about what others might think of you. It's a more meaningful definition of success. It's about being who you're meant to be in this life. Being alive in your expression, and respecting the pure expression of all Life.

Next, it's about Evolution. About that which motivates us to our greatest good, to our highest spiritual state. What sends us into tomorrow morning, or into "The Sweet Hereafter" growing and continuing to learn and expand into our shared Source of Being in the best and most fulfilling way possible. Naturally this includes an ongoing effort to develop real character, compassion, tolerance, and willingness. To become truly open-hearted, and expansive within your emotional life, and outward through your philosophy and approach to living. All negativity is resisting this personal spiritual evolution.

This amounts to not only the spiritual evolution of the self that we personally carry through every life, but also to the evolution of all Life, as the whole is a confluence of all it's smallest parts. We are all of one growing mind, alive in an ocean of consciousness, expressing that growth in each of our own little ways; but unlike the other divine life forms on this Earth, we alone have the spiritual responsibility of stewardship. The material demands of human ego and desire are only aspects of this little human-being we must overcome –  obstacles that impede us, but that we all inevitably surrender to our expansion into spirit (like it or not). It's best way to do this comes by finding our true medium (the third purpose)...

It's about discovering that Love is the true medium of Life – the substance that all positive creation springs from. It is the air creation breathes, the water it drinks, the lubricant upon which it glides along – within us or without us. It's easy for us to believe that material powers: force, decay, the physical flesh and elements of this life are it's medium, but they are only it's constituents, or symptoms of being human – the realities of Consciousness animating as different forms. They aren't what creates it, lies beneath it all, flows through it, enfolds it's beginning and "end," and provides this life it's ultimate gratifications, fulfillments, and achievements (which are those heart-based rewards that completely overwhelm the senses and intellect).

Love creates all those motivations and sensations that humankind struggles to describe as it's greatest testament to Being. Our collective mission is to return to that medium of Life – to return to Love (apologies to Ms. Williamson). Every question is answered, every problem is solved, every challenge is met best by Love. It's the smallest, the largest, and the actual medium of Life itself...and so, it is our home. It's where we are destined to return to. It is the why in "Why are we here?"

This second part concludes my simplest summation of every thing I learned by dying, for the first three times. Now I just have to try to live it, and encourage you to live it too.

"In the end, love is the only medicine that can heal the wounds of the world. In this universe, it is love that binds everything together. As this awareness dawns within us, all disharmony will cease."

Amma

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this site, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!