Personal development can be taken to mean many things. An infant lying in a cot is trying to fathom how its limbs function. A toddler is struggling with standing upright. When you are a teenager, life itself is the problem. Passing through all these stages, the monad is just recapitulating what it has achieved tens of thousands of times before in each successive incarnation. It is a real bore but it has to be done to get to a jumping-off point where the monad begins to expand its envelope of experiences. This is a slow laborious process, with almost as many steps backwards as forwards. Added to all these frustrations is the Law of Karma in operation, which may put obstacles in our path that we have to navigate, above and beyond the normal set of challenges.
I ended the last presentation by outlining two fundamental ways of developing our consciousness. The first method was Active, the second was Passive. Both lead to the same outcome, one of expanding one’s consciousness to the point where each envelope of incarnation is productively used in service to Humanity. The monad, when it reaches Enlightenment (i3), has learnt the lessons that the 4th Kingdom of Nature has to teach it. There is the small issue of its remaining karma that has to be transmuted and then off the Monad trundles to the 5th Kingdom. This is the theory, now let’s continue to explore the practices that are going to get us all to this happy state of affairs.
Rapid Development
I mentioned that as we ascend the molecular sub-levels of each envelope, our progression is geometric, doubling at each new level of achievement. This allows the monad to dramatically speed up its development. This development is not a given, it has to be earned and it is a reward for unselfish actions with one’s environment. We are part of a chain. We hold hands and we help others and get helped in return. We can increase our rate of development by helping others understand the Meaning of Life, in the same way, we have come to understand it. This is facilitated by helping others appreciate the Laws of Life and the benefits of living within their prescribed limits.
To get to this stage of being able to help others, and here I am obviously talking from an esoteric point of view, we need to have an understanding of life itself and the stages of human development. If you do not know why you are here, you are not going to make a convincing case to anyone else about the need to develop one’s consciousness.
We have walked the path we have and we understand its difficulties. We should by now have an understanding of the various stages we have to go through. The challenge is then being able to express this knowledge to others, taking into consideration, what they are capable of learning. On a personal note, my whole life has been the challenge of trying to explain certain ideas to people, trying to find a lexicon that they can resonate with. This has been the driving motivation for this whole series of presentations. I have not even begun to talk about what really interests me. I knew I first had to lay out a framework that would allow someone to begin to grasp where my ideas were coming from and what underpinned their assertions. I am nearly at the end of this introductory series and then I will begin…………..
So, there you are, you think you have something worthwhile communicating to others. The first thing that you have to bear in mind is that people’s freedom must never be violated. Remember that law? When people reflect on the Meaning of Life, they often develop their own belief systems. To aid in this process and to contribute to the speeding up of their development, a person needs to turbo-charge two aspects of their life. The first is the awareness they have of their surroundings and the second is the will-power to sustain their focus on their objective.
This is easier said than done. You need to maintain constant awareness of your desires, emotions and thoughts. This is of prime importance. If we are not aware of our weaknesses, how are we going to address them? Ok, so we are now aware of our weaknesses, starting at one and going onto 2,358! Being aware of them is not enough. This is where will-power enters the equation. We need will-power, tons of it, to overcomes our weaknesses. This will-power has to be sustained, not just for your current incarnation, but for subsequent ones as well.
Why is it always so difficult to overcome our negative thoughts and emotions? The reason is that as we exert our will-power to overcome this or that trait or habit, our persona fights back. The rotter. If you ever needed proof of this, just try quietening your mind. You see the resistance you face trying to achieve something you think you have complete control over? Is there any value to this resistance we all seem to face? Yes, there is. As you begin to walk the path as an ‘Aspirant’, these tests crop up to see if you are up to the task ahead. Remember, the path you are walking may be your own, but to walk it you need assistance and that assistance is only given if you are prepared to sign on the dotted line. That dotted line is a contract that binds you to serve Humanity, not your self-interest. Black magicians sign a different contract, foolishly, without reading the indemnity clauses.
I have not spoken about the mechanics of taking and passing the (i3). I just briefly wish to say that it starts with someone realising that there is more to life than meets the eye. The next step is to try and find out what that is. To achieve this, you aspire to walk a particular path. This is known as the path of ‘Discipleship’. The first step is to aspire to walk this path, hence the term ‘aspirant’. Everyone is going to get to the top of the hill. Most will take a meandering path and 182,000 incarnations to reach the summit. The aspirant decides to walk straight up the hill, not meandering around it. Many start up this path but lack the will-power to sustain their efforts and slide back down. Now, you may well say, that is not going to be me. Just let me remind you of the last diet you started. Sticking with the diet analogy, it is better to find a sustainable level of effort that you are able to maintain for a whole lifetime.
The first thing you notice when you begin to walk the path of the aspirant is that you annoyingly realise that results are not immediate. You may feel this is grossly unfair, after all, you have been sitting there cross-legged for at least 5 minutes, where is your ‘guide’? There is a reason this test of patients is there. It is there to protect us. It is making sure we are truly ready for what is coming next.
A Life of Service
So what is coming next? Well, if you have been paying attention, I have already told you. A life of service. The Koran states “for every man, there is a purpose, which he sets up for his life and which he pursues. Let yours be the doing of good deeds.” This theme extends to the New Testament where Mark (9:35) tells us that “whoever wants to be the first, must be the last and the servant of all”. The Hierarchy knows a secret that we all need to understand as well. For the successful operation of the whole Universe, service is the key. It is through your efforts to serve others that you receive guidance in return. I have mentioned that no seeker of the ‘truth’ can find it unaided. All the knowledge we know around us is ‘truth’ that has been revealed to us over time. We did not find this knowledge ourselves. It was planted on the Mental Plane for us to stumble upon and call it our own. We, therefore, seek guidance from the Hierarchy for knowledge that lies on the Causal Plane. Only they can give it to us, not Black Magicians, who claim to be masters and prophets. How can they know? They are cut off from the Casual plane by their own selfish actions. They have chosen to serve no one else but themselves. If we are prepared to accept this guidance from the Hierarchy, then we can enter the 5th Kingdom, just as the Law of Development says we have to.
The choice is a simple one. If you are unwilling to help others and the general evolution of Humanity you forfeit your right to receive guidance. Remember, our goal as Humans is to migrate to the 5th Kingdom. This plane of matter is called Unity Consciousness for a reason. Consciousness is collective on this plane, so there is no place for ‘ego’. The best way to forget yourself and liberate your ego is to enter into a life of service. I have talked a lot about service. What exactly do I mean by this term? I wish to start by first saying that service is not just about being a nurse, teacher or social worker. We, each of us, have different strengths and abilities that allow us to contribute to society. Just by living your life in a positive manner, doing your job to the best of your ability, creates an environment that all benefit from.
I have spoken about thought-forms and the creation of egregores. If you fill your mental envelope with positive thoughts, this means negative thoughts are missing. It is those negative thoughts that escape from your mental body and detrimentally impact others. It is worth remembering that just by ‘being’, our auras radiate energies that influence our environment. I have known people that have such a negative view of themselves and life in general that plants and unable to survive in their environment. One day, Humanity is going to collectively realise that we are all karmically responsible for our mental and emotional emanations. It is going to come as a shock to most people that these emanations affect others. The bottom line is that we acquire a lot of bad karma from our uncontrolled consciousness.
Know Yourself
If we are honest with ourselves, we are usually too busy looking around and judging others to have time to look at ourselves. It’s is a truism that “to know yourself is to accept yourself”. This means accepting your warts and that less than perfect waistline. We all have a dark side that can suddenly rear its ugly head. I hope during the course of these presentations you have begun to understand where these traits and habits can suddenly emerge from. Out of character behaviour can occur to the best of us. For the rest of us, it is business as usual. If we are prepared, to be honest with ourselves and realise that there are sides to our character that need concerted effort to improve, we are liable to gain humility. Getting off our high horse and swallowing our pride is one of the most difficult feats we are likely to perform in our lives. Pride is the love of self. This is what bedevils the black magician. The challenge we all face is to replace this pride of self with love for all. This love must know no exception. Now there is a challenge for me and my relationship with Brussel sprouts.
Self-knowledge of yourself becomes a very important asset as you reach the final stages of human development. The challenge, as already mentioned, is to become aware of the ‘present’ moment. Notice your thoughts, feeling and emotions as they arise. What we are seeking to understand by all this mindfulness, is to understand what exactly triggers these negative events in our subtle bodies. As we gain greater awareness of ourselves, we have the opportunity to step in and prevent these emotions from ever surfacing. By an active suppression of these automated subconscious patterns, their frequency drops. When they are not regularly activated, they become weaker and eventually dissolve. The term ‘dissolve’ implies they are something solid and indeed they are. If you have a trait or habit, they are composed of tertiary matter. It is shaped in such a way that when it activates, it triggers a specific response. If that matter is ignored, the energy that holds it in that configuration dissipates. The matter now takes a form that does not elicit the negative action. When this happens, the denser Elemental Essences that inhabit the lower sub-levels of our Emotional or Mental bodies, also become redundant. It is these Elemental Essences that get shaped into the Elementals that become the expression of a thought or emotion. These redundant essences, which is Secondary Matter, is then expelled from our subtle bodies.
This process of refinement that I have been talking about is given a name that we all use frequently. It is termed “working on yourself”. If you look at the diagram of our Consciousness, the aspects we are talking about at the moment are to be found in our Subconscious. The very fact that it is not found in our Waking conscious means that we don’t know it is there until it arrives consciously for us to register it. If you look at the width of our waking conscious, as represented in the diagram, it is much smaller than our subconscious. This means, in any incarnation, we do not know our complete ‘self’. We only know that a small fraction of ourself that has been activated. This is a good thing, considering what seems to pop up out if this subterranean world of our thoughts and emotions.
This slow release of our subconscious traits and habits means that it is going to take many lifetimes of continual refinement, for us to work on all our issues. At the Temple of Delphi, there were three inscribed aphorisms. The first was “know thyself”. Well, clearly this is a tall order. We do not know ourselves. What we can know is our level of development. However, this can not be determined without a thorough understanding of esoterics. If we do not have an understanding of The Nature of Reality or the processes of development, we are unable to gauge our position on the evolutionary ladder. A word of caution here though; the student of esoterics is invariably going to overestimate their development. It is human nature. It is our ego’s preening themselves before the mirror of vanity. Beware, all who seek the truth, for the truth can be ugly but it is in that ugliness that lies the gold. It may be tempting to place yourself, several rungs above your real position on the ladder. How does this help in your endeavour to refine your envelopes of incarnation? If you think you are just about to walk through the Looking Glass, don’t complain when you get a bloody nose.
Having said all this, it is still important to realise that if we wish to find our way out of the jungle, we have to gauge where we are on the map. If you ask yourself honest questions, the answer you return should give you a fairly accurate indication of where you are. It should be borne in mind that information about The Nature of Reality is useless. It is interesting in itself but serves no higher purpose until we understand our place in the Universe. We are then in a position to see our goals and we can begin to plot a course on how we are going to get to our destination. Our objective is to leave the Human Kingdom and enter the 5th Kingdom. The Kingdom of Divine Love/Wisdom.
On that note, I wish to draw this presentation to a close and will continue next time to elucidate further one aspect of development I have spoken about today, that of constant awareness.