Run into the Lake. Jump into the Lake. Just Get into the Lake of the Divine Qualities
September 1, 2021
https://goldenageofgaia.com/?p=325883
I'm going to make this article sticky for a couple of days because it answers the question: How will I, as a lightworker, manage a large project? How will I host a radio show? How will I paint such a large mural?
I had a remarkable development happen around ten minutes ago. Yes, I raced for my laptop. Around 8:15 am, Aug. 31, 2021. And here I am in the midst of the experience.
You remember I said that so much depends on whether we recognize something? If bliss arises and it's unrecognized, it leaves. If bliss arises and it's recognized as bliss, it immediately expands and takes up the whole space, as if to say "Yes!" The genie is out of the bottle. We find ourselves immersed in it.
Well, a few minutes ago I just experienced such a life-changing event. An immersion. A baptism.
Ten minutes ago, I was getting ready to go to Costco. I have a number of things I need to do today and so I was planning things out. I'd now gotten everything arranged and felt quite satisfied.
I looked at my emotional field, my mental field. All was satisfaction, except....
Imagine that my whole field of emotions was lemon-yellow flowers. There was one strand among all that yellow which was a different color. It stood out from all the rest.
I had to feel into it to know what it was, it was so foreign.
When I did, I recognized it as something I haven't known since my very earliest years - confidence.
It immediately expanded and took up the whole space. I'm immersed in it now. I never considered whether confidence was a divine quality. Just as I never considered that abundance or mastery were divine qualities. But they all are.
Remember I'm an Ascension ethnographer by self-decree so I'm connecting dots here, some sociological, some spiritual.
This experience, happening right now, is an event in understanding (what sociologists call verstehen), verifiable only by me. You either accept my version or not but no further proof will be forthcoming. (1)
This experience allows me to confirm my distinction between a feeling and a divine state. A feeling arises in and is associated with a part of me - my heart, my stomach, my throat, my head. But a divine state is like jumping into a lake. It completely surrounds you. You're immersed in it.
Run into the lake, jump into the lake. Just get into the lake, Sri Ramakrishna said. (2)
We're not really immersed. The feeling is more like a blotting paper soaking up water. I am "full" of confidence at this moment, so to speak.
What's happened, I think, is that we've triggered a remembrance of a state of being that is ours naturally but which we've covered over with persisting defensive measures like vasanas, behavior patterns, and other counterproductive creations. It's the overburden that needs to go, with nothing put in its place.
Usually something catastrophic happens in the course of which we either see or realize our original pure and innocent state in the form of a particular divine quality (for me in this case, confidence)
But it doesn't have to be that way if we'd only watch for those subtle appearances of the divine state among everything else happening in our emotional field. Once we see it, we try it on to find out what it is and bingo! It expands. Game over.
Yes, it subsides. All experiences short of sahaja samadhi or Ascension do subside, at least somewhat, over time. But we're left with a residue.
This is a clever plan on the part of the Company of Heaven because it gives us the evidence and encouragement that things are happening (in my case a burst of confidence). But it leaves us in a state of reduced experience of the divine state, where we can still manage to interact with the world. (As lightworkers rather than lightholders, we need to remain able to navigate in this world.) So it accomplishes both indisputable encouragement and increased capacity for the job. I say this is how the Company of Heaven is going to make managers of us.
So my job now is to describe confidence as clearly as I can, in just a few words.
Well, until now, I've been using bravado, image-management, other-direction (character formation in response to what others say), etc., etc., to navigate my world.
There's always been a tinny ring to it. Something wasn't quite right. And I never knew what.
My brother had things right. But I never knew what it was about him that that was. Well, I now see it was confidence.
How is confidence different from the bravado I see I've used until now? For one thing, there's no effort involved in being confident.
But in bravado, there's a heck of a lot of stage and prop management, management of our lines and looks, watching the way we walk and talk, on and on it goes. All of that goes out the window now. It isn't needed.
In confidence, all of that falls away with nothing needed to replace it. I repeat: With nothing needed to replace it. Confidence itself ... and here again I search for words ... is felt as a substantial addition to oneself which allows ... not quite fuels ... us to walk through life without the very questions and urgencies that not having confidence gave rise to.
"Substantial addition"? It lends substance to our words. It adds weight to our opinions. We seem confident in ourselves, in then outcome, etc. Use it for negative purposes and I guarantee that it'll disappear and we'll be back to image and stage management by bravado, which other people recognize at some level.
I think of the Tinman in The Wizard of Oz. I always had a tinman quality to me.
"Without the questions"? The very questions bravado addressed have disappeared along with the situations in which bravado was called for. "How am I going to do this? What will I say?" All the rehearsals and soul-searching are gone with nothing but confidence to replace them. And confidence is more than enough to have one stride forth positively.
Confidence is not a Third-Dimensional feeling. It's wrap-around. It's enveloping. Soon I'll lose awareness of it but, while I'm in it, it's ubiquitous, all-embracing.
That's why we need to put nothing in its place to replace bravado. That's why Da Free John could say his space was the space of no dilemma. Yes, I see it now. There are no dilemmas in confidence, only steps to take; no problems, only situations.
That's why Lao Tzu could say do nothing. In the space of confidence, I do nothing to address what I would have been addressing in the other space by doing a great deal, constantly.
Remember I said I now know how we're going to manage the large projects expected of us later on? The Mother or her legions would bestow on us as much light as we need to wake up our hidden capabilities.
I'm describing one instance of it as it happens.
I look at myself. There's no cold chill running up my spine. There's no feeling of dismay such as in "How am I going to do this?"
There is just a warm nowness in which whatever shows up is fine.
A very thorny problem just came to mind and the solution was instantaneous. I get to see that it wasn't that I had no solutions; the solution was right there in front of me. It's that I lacked the confidence to just put forward the obvious.
Not courage, but my courage always came married to bravado. I haven't tested my confidence out in a situation calling for courage so I don't know what's so right now.
This space could last minutes, hours, days. A residue of it will, I'm sure, stay with me. But for however long it lasts, I love it. Divine states like this make life worth living.
Who cares for a Lamborghini, compared with a wonderful, nurturing space like confidence? Doesn't a person buy a Lamborghini because he wants a space as satisfying as this? Does it work?
Notice: I did not get this space from another. We might want to stop seeking love, peace, bliss, and now confidence outside ourselves altogether. We have them already. Just let go of the overburden of vasanas, behavior patterns, etc. Or recognize the wisps of confidence and bliss as they pass through your emotional field.
Run into the lake. Jump into the lake. Just get into the lake of the divine qualities.
Footnotes
(1) I will not debate my findings with empirical materialists, I'm afraid, or submit them for academic approval. The academic paradigm of empirical materialism is too small for me to achieve the understanding and results I want to, such as enlightenment.
(2) "You see, the thing is somehow or other to get into the Lake of the Nectar of Immortality. Suppose one person gets into It by propitiating the Deity with hymns and worship, and you are pushed into It. The result will be the same. Both of you will certainly become immortal." (Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Nikhilananda, Swami, trans. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 217.)
Immortality = No necessity to die and be reborn = immortality. Sri Ramakrishna is discussing Ascension.