67. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Taking into account my recap presentations, this is my 75th offering. In the previous 74 episodes, I looked at a whole range of topics from how the universe came into existence to how many bodies we really have. I was talking about how things work and how they fit together. In this final series of presentations, I wish to look at how all this knowledge should and does play into our personal development. It is all well and good knowing how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin, but where does that information take you in your own personal development? This is the first in a series of presentations looking precisely at this question.

Personal Development

For those of us who happen to reside in what is, euphemistically, called the ‘Developed World’, life is relatively easy. We do not need to toil in the way our ancestors did to survive. I know there is a large spectrum of conditions that go to make up this environment, but I am speaking about the average individual. So, collectively, we have made our lives easier for ourselves. What do we do with the benefits this brings to our changed circumstances? Do we invest the free time we have in furthering our spiritual development? For most of us, the answer is ‘no’. We seem to be more stressed, overworked and insecure. You would think that this should not be the case, as there are far fewer Sabre-Tooth Tigers prowling our neighbourhoods. In an earlier time, our focus was on the large existential dangers in our lives. Now our focus is on money. This one unit of energy has become the be-all and end-all of our lives. This has led to us becoming materialistic, greedy, shallow, impatient, short-tempered, judgmental, rude and unfriendly. We seek a life of excess and expect that this will make us happy.

What has been missing in this headlong bid for ‘happiness’? Well, if you had been paying attention, I spent the whole of Presentation 66 discussing this missing ingredient. The one ingredient that is at the foundation of the Meaning of Life. The material and emotional distractions that we allow to flood our lives lead us to neglect the only thing we are here to achieve, that of developing our consciousness. Why do I say that this is the only thing that really matters in our lives? Because it is the only net gain we can take with us when we leave Earth after our latest incarnation.

Discovering Esoterics

The foundation of this whole series of presentations has been the study of Esoterics. This is a topic that can not be forced on an individual. However, it is something that naturally develops when a soul reaches the end of its journey through the 4th, the Human Kingdom. When does this transformation start to take effect?  It happens when we develop Passive Causal Consciousness. This happens when the monad transitions it focus from its 48:1 permanent atom to its 47:4 permanent molecule. The soul moves from its 3. Cultured phase, into the 4. Compassionate phase. It is at this stage that the monad begins to build the primary links that will eventually unite our superconscious and subconscious minds. This nascent subconscious link, slowly helps us understand the meaning of life and the significance of our incarnation.

I wish to offer a word of caution here. Although we fully awaken to our esoteric potential when we enter into the 4. Compassionate phase of our existence, very few of us are actually there yet. The reality is that most of us are on the stage 3/4 boundary, somewhere between our Cultured and Compassionate phases of existence. If you need any proof of this, just ask yourself, do you have complete control over your emotions? If not, guess where you are still focused!

However, we are here to move forward. The more we develop, the more each incarnation has to be tailored to meet our requirements. In the past, any experience was liable to be a new one. Now we seek specific experiences so that we can complete the portfolio of our life experiences. The good news is that when we truly understand the meaning of life, we generally take a vow to serve the evolution of all life, for eternity.

This is a very productive stage to reach in your life cycles. Your guardian angel is now in a position to ensure that each incarnation you undertake provides you with the optimum opportunities to rediscover what esoteric knowledge you may have gleaned in previous incarnations. This knowledge is not inherent in our brains. It must be learnt. Where does this knowledge come from?  Remember, our persona only comprises 5 per cent of our total causal being. The main reserve of what we have learnt over innumerable incarnations is stored in a format that we can slowly begin to discover. To do this, we need to develop our intuitive capabilities.

This sounds hopeful. What levers do we need to press to regain this super-conscious knowledge? I will come to this shortly. The important thing to note is that re-attaining our previous levels of development in a new incarnation is largely an automatic process. That is a relief. The only fly in the ointment is our karma. Why? Our lowest two envelopes of incarnation are conjoined. The Physical and our Etheric bodies exist as one unit. We focus on our physical vehicle and give great importance to our organic brain. In reality, the fundamental component of this duo is our etheric envelope. It is this structure that is responsible for the activation of our waking consciousness. Our etheric body performs two important functions. It vivifies our brain, providing it with the energy that powers its circuits. Equally importantly, it acts as a link between the physical envelope and brain, back to our higher envelopes of incarnations. The channels of this exchange are our chakras.

So far this seems straight forwards. We have a brain, we have an etheric envelope and it acts as a router, connecting our brain to ‘servers’ that exist on higher planes of matter. Let’s go. The problem, as all of you know, is when it comes to downloading content, bandwidth is king. Our etheric body is made to a blueprint, supplied by the Lords of Karma and the Agents of Destiny. The resulting template is custom made to take into account our share of karma that we need to be transformed in this particular incarnation. This means we have bandwidth restrictors built into our modem. That sucks but that is life for you.

These unavoidable defects in our etheric ‘router’ make it more difficult to reactivate our latent knowledge and abilities. This acts as a brake on the development of our consciousness. The net result is that it is harder for us to reach the true level of development that we would desire. Isn’t this just life writ large? You never quite seem to get the advertised bandwidth. However, in this case, you are ultimately responsible for this inconvenience and it is you that is going to change it.

Looking within our own societies and across the globe, it is apparent that we are all at different levels of development. One monad maybe 10,000 incarnations ahead of you and another, 10,000 incarnations behind you. This may be frustrating when you are trying to communicate with someone that seems to hail from a completely different planet, but we must respect this diversity. We can only walk our own path.

Consciousness Development

The Law of Development states that we are all impelled to develop ourselves. It is a goal that is set by the ABSOLUTE for every monad entering the Universe. The Law of Self reminds us that although we are impelled to evolve, we have to do it ourselves. There are no magic wands waving above our heads. So, we all have an inherent drive to evolve. This does not just apply to ourselves, but all the kingdoms associated with our globe and the six other lifestreams on it as well. Every monad, whether it happens to be a flower or a bird, wants to become the highest expression possible of life and in this way to realise its potential. Getting back to the Law of Self, personal development is wilful cooperation with natural processes. This is all well and good, but evolution takes a very long time. If you wish to become actively involved with developing your consciousness, you need to understand the processes involved.

Many presentations ago I prosed the question, what is more important, subjective or objective consciousness? The answer I gave was, subjective consciousness, as this is what drives you forward. We are subjectively consciousness half a plane of matter ahead of where we are objectively consciousness. This exerts a ‘pulling’ force dictated by the Law of Development. However, you knew there was going to be a, however; we only learn lessons and develop new faculties through direct experience. This is an objective process that feeds in through our five senses. As an example, you can see the word ‘fear’ written on a piece of paper. You can subjectively model what this word may mean and how it may affect you. What you can not do is fully understand what fear means until you experience it.

Life becomes a series of experiences that we slowly convert into a knowledge of the world around us and about ourselves. This knowledge is stored in our mental bodies. We have a problem now. Our mental bodies are not permanent. They are constructed anew at the beginning of each incarnation. This would make the whole process of evolution a lost cause if it were not for the existence of our Lower Causal Body. Experiences that are stored in our mental body are transferred to this causal body, surrounding our other three bodies of incarnation. This happens through a process of resonance. At the end of an incarnation, when the Lower Casual Body reunites with our Higher Casual Body, this body of knowledge is stored in the ‘cloud’, to use a term we know about today. We all know, once our data is stored in the cloud, it is there forever! It isn’t, but keep thinking this way. It serves our purposes at the moment to think it does.

The knowledge that we store in our causal bodies that are gained from experience, needs to be transformed into wisdom, which is more than knowledge. It is an understanding of what goes into the creation of that knowledge. To achieve this next level of comprehension, we need to take that knowledge and turn it into active experiences again, to show that we have truly understood the implications of that knowledge.

As the monad progresses through the Human Kingdom, after its initial phase, focused in the 49:1 permanent atom, it moves into its Desire Body, the Emotional Body. It is now focused in its 48:1 permanent atom. At this stage of its development, material ambition and an egotistical nature drive it onwards and upwards. The Elemental Essences we attract into our Emotional Body, as we express these emotions, have to be slowly eliminated. It takes time, but we finally realise that nothing from outside our own being is going to bring us lasting peace. Think of the development of your consciousness as climbing a spiral staircase. You never close the circle because you are continually ascending. What is more, the spiral you ascend expands at the same time. You encompass wider fields of experience.

I gave a figure of 182,000 incarnations, as the time it takes the average monad to progress its way through the 4th Kingdom of Nature. When I quote this figure to most students of esoterics, they have heart failure. Most of them simply cannot believe it can take so long. After all, are they not going to achieve enlightenment in the next few years? That number is an average if you are making no active efforts yourself. However long it takes a monad to evolve, the simple fact is that it takes tens of thousands of incarnations to pass through the early stages of development. The good news is that the further we progress, the faster we progress. One of the reasons this occurs is because each higher plane of matter has an extra spatial dimension. This gives a total of 4 for the Emotional Plane and 5 for the Mental Plane. This gives our consciousness more dimensions to expand into and speeds up development. 

Our consciousness expands at a geometric rate. It doubles in capacity with each higher molecular kind in our subtle bodies. This is a dramatic acceleration. If a monad has its highest focus in its 47:5 mental molecule and it shifts to the 47:4 molecular level, it doubles its mental capacity. If we assume that it takes 40,000+ incarnations for a monad to pass through the 1st, the Young stage of its evolution, by the time you get to the 5th, the Enlightened phase, it may only take a handful of incarnations to progress through this developmental phase. 

As the whole of humanity evolves, the general level of negativity that floods our environment decrease. I have talked about the pollution we collectively cause on the Mental and Emotional planes of matter. We create giant egregores of negativity that need to be actively diffused. As humanity evolves, the net increase of these egregores decreases. If we pay less attention to them, they eventually dissipate. The net result is that our living environment somehow becomes easier to breathe in. You could say, the air is ‘metaphorically’ clearer. This makes it easier for everyone to progress. You can improve on your own evolution if you are prepared to make a determined effort. It is possible for you to achieve, in one incarnation, what others may take 10 or even 100 to achieve. The bottom line is that if you actively work to increase your level of consciousness, you can drastically speed up the rate of your progress through the Human Kingdom.

Methods of Development

So, I hope we are all in agreement that speeding up your development is a good idea. How do we achieve this desired state? There are two main methods.

  1. Active Development: this can be considered as being the ‘way of the student’. It means that the monad has to actively work on its own development. This rate of development is directly correlated to what you choose to focus your attention on. This relates directly to the Law of Attraction. As an example, someone who has reached the 3. Cultured phase of development, begins to focus their attention on mental and intellectual processes. They can, however, speed up their development if they start to focus their attention on more conceptual material. You know what I am going to say next. They should start to study esoterics.  What is the precise benefit of doing this? They begin to attract higher levels of causal matter into their lower causal envelope. This adds to the development of subjective causal consciousness. This is the stepping-off point to achieving full enlightenment (i3). Examples of active development are constant consciousness awareness, living in the ‘now’, meditation and visualisation exercises.
  1. Passive Development: this is called the ‘way of the saint’. Here the monad seeks to forget itself entirely and dedicates itself to living a life in service to others. This involves helping and protecting others who are less developed, knowledgable or capable than themselves. I have mentioned that the Law of Self requires us all to actively participate in our own development. However, all monads are dependant on energies and information from the higher Kingdoms of Nature. The caveat for receiving this help is that the monad must focus its attention on serving others. “Give and ye shall receive”. Most people use a combination of both methods. Monads functioning primarily on rays 1, 3, 5 and 7 are more inclined to the Active method. Monads functioning on rays 2, 4 and 6 are attracted to the Passive method.

At the end of the day, there are many paths, but they all lead us home as the Law of Development stipulates. I wish to continue the theme of our personal development in my next presentation.

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