The Way Life Works for me | Steve Beckow

By Steve Beckow, February 20, 2021

(Golden Age of Gaia)

The Way Life Works for Me – Part 1/2

One way I go from feeling power-less to affect the large world out there – which is in the process of waking up from the longest-imaginable sleep – to power-full is to remember that my absolutely most powerful position and best contribution is to change, to refashion, to transform myself.

Never mind that I’m now beginning to understand the impact of one person’s Light on the collective consciousness. Truly understand.

Never mind that transforming myself rather than my neighbor is a fulfillment of the universal law.

Never mind even the political, as in “Be the change you wish to be.”

Let me just restrict it to the way we feel … real personal … dialing down the microscope … there.

I remain inside myself, a spirit housed in a body. I’m aware that I’m not my body. (1)

What is most important to me? I – and I believe we humans as a species – value how I feel above almost anything else I can think of. Perhaps not above the call of patriotic duty. We’d die for that. But most everyday competing attractions.

Changing myself, reforming myself, transforming myself seems to involve clearing away the obstacles to the natural me, the Self, which I already know to be pure and innocent. (Isn’t it funny. I need no reference or footnote for that statement. I know its truth.) (2)

Now, for a moment, let’s widen the view of the microscope … go up to the Mega-Macro level. We know what the purpose of life is (to know our true identity). We know that that purpose is God-given and that the universes are constructed as schools to help us realize that purpose.

We know that the heavens conspire to help us gain that knowledge. And we also know that everyone ultimately reaches it.

In fact it’s been often said that we could not reach God if left to our own efforts. Ramana Maharshi tells us:

“Your efforts can extend only thus far. Then the Beyond will take care of itself. You are helpless there. No effort can reach it.” (3)

Bernadette Roberts assures us:

“At a certain point, when we have done all we can [to bring about an abiding union with the divine], the divine steps in and takes over.” (4)

OK, if this is so, then we only need to worry about our part.

And what is that part? Let’s look at that tomorrow.

(Concluded in Part 2, tomorrow.)

Footnotes

(1) As a result of a 1977 out-of-body experience.

(2) But I will give a footnote nevertheless because I love research. I’m referring to an experience of the Self that occurred at Xenia Retreat Center in Sept. 2018. I experienced the Self as purity and innocence and never forgot it. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning but I can remember that experience.

See “Original Innocence,” Sept. 21, 2018, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/09/21/original-innocence-2/

(3) Sri Ramana Maharshi, “Question 197,” Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Downloaded from https://www.ramana-maharshi.org/books.htm, 31 August 2005.

(4) Bernadette Roberts, “The Path to No-Self” in Stephan Bodian, ed. Timeless Visions, Healing Voices. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1991, 131.



By Steve Beckow, February 21, 2021

(Golden Age of Gaia)

The Way Life Works for Me – Part 2/2

(Concluded from Part 1, yesterday.)

If we bring that knowledge now down to the personal, if we narrow the range of the microscope again to the individual … well, me … then what I want to do (and for you it may be different) is to remove the obstacles to feeling wonderful in my life.

As I begin to consider that work, I take an inventory. I see what I have in my toolbox.

(1) I know that my Self is innocent and pure rather than sinful and tarnished

(2) I know that, behind the scenes, the universe is benevolent and bent to help me be successful.

(3) I know that I can do this if I focus my attention and invoke my will fully.

So I’m not a broken being repairing itself but a fully-capable light warrior breaking his chains.

And we’re all doing this. You hear different channels use different terms for cleansing ourselves of our vasanas. But they’re all saying, let go of your issues; divest yourself of your resentments; leave your arguments behind.

Some call them core issues. Some call them old baggage, etc. But it’s all the same: we’re cleansing ourselves of our old programs, buried deep in our memories and surfacing as dysfunctional behavior patterns.

We’re emerging from them, in part through our own efforts and in part through the impact of the Mother’s tsunami of love.

The only troublesome vasanas are the ones that don’t work or harm others. A vasana of charitableness, providing it’s not dysfunctional, isn’t harmful.

Ramana says that the toxic vasanas don’t survive Sahaja Samadhi, which we call Ascension. But apparently the good vasanas do. They don’t violate our soul’s design and so can come with us. (1)

So in terms of processing (or cleansing myself of) vasanas, I think I’m on the right track there. But the behavior patterns born of vasanas are independent. They require reparenting, re-education, and retraining. But that also is in process.

And like everything else the cleansing fire that Ascension is will burn the seeds of future action (our vasanas) to a crisp. (2)

What we’re doing now simply gets us there quicker, allows us to feel better sooner, and increases the range of our Ascension later. (3)

Footnotes

(1) “Vasanas which do not obstruct Self-Realization remain [after Self-Realization]. In Yoga Vasistha two classes of vasanas are distinguished: those of enjoyment and those of bondage. The former remain even after Mukti [liberation, Ascension, beyond Brahmajnana] is attained, but the latter are destroyed by it. Attachment is the cause of binding vasanas, but enjoyment without attachment does not bind and continues even in Sahaja.” (Ramana Maharshi in S.S. Cohen, Guru Ramana. Memories and Notes. 6th edition. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1993, 89.)

(2) “The flame of illumination … is kindled by discrimination between Atman [Self] and non-Atman [i.e., Self-Realizaion]. [It] will burn away the effects of ignorance [i.e., the vasanas], down to their very roots.” (Shankara in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher lsherwood, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1975; c1947, 39.)

(3) Landing on the Fifth? Sixth? Seventh?