What is Realization? | Steve Beckow

By Steve Beckow, December 8, 2021

(Golden Age of Gaia)

I’m profoundly interested in the subject of realization. And in this time of the Pause, I find myself reflecting on the subject.

As I’ll discuss below, realization of our true identity is the purpose of life. It’s also the most pleasurable experience I can think of.

But let me not get ahead of myself.

Realization is to the ordinary human being what a pole is to a pole vaulter. It enables us to transcend an obstacle and see life on the other side.

There are minor and major realizations. Not all realizations result in enlightenment. Some are no more than sudden insights or dawning awareness.

Realization itself, in my experience, is the result of the combination of two circumstances: bliss and cognitive dissonance.

If there is no cognitive dissonance, we simply tend to sit passively in bliss, there being few other higher experiences that we can probably think of. In other words, we’ve arrived.

In terms of realization, bliss lifts us up to a dimensional height from which the answer to our difficulty can be more easily seen. When we see it, we say we’ve had an “Aha!” moment, a “Eureka!” moment, an insight, or … a realization.

Cognitive dissonance provides us with a subject of seeing in the space that bliss provides. This table in front of me works. It doesn’t need fixing. Therefore it doesn’t impinge on my awareness. Consequently when I’m in bliss I probably won’t have a thought or realization about the table.

But let’s let’s pretend my relationship with my best friend is out and that’s bothering me. I take that with me into the space of bliss and from the greater height – and of course the ease that bliss lends to everything in and of itself – I see the way through.

I couldn’t see the way through before for any number of reasons, some self-serving, some informational, some energetic, etc. But all these dissipate in the higher space of bliss.

In bliss we drop roles like the complainer, the stick in the mud, and the victim – to borrow a few that I played as a kid. They no longer have relevance and are in fact now counter-productive if they ever were truly productive.

Someone once said that, in the space of bliss, what was a problem becomes just a situation. That’s so true. We simply look for the way through and then take it and complete the needed tasks. No grumbling. No groaning.

Why? Because bliss leaves us feeling that we have everything we need and want. It’s all about feeling wonderful, is it not?

No wonder people in bliss just sit and look. There’s nothing more to do. We’re there.

***

Why am I profoundly interested in the subject of realization? Long-time readers will guess.

The purpose of life, as can be read elsewhere, (1) is enlightenment. The purpose of life is that God should meet God in a moment of our enlightenment.

Enlightenment means the realization of the truth of our identity. When one of us realizes his or her true identity as God, God meets God.

I wonder if this is why sages used to emphasize yearning, a heart troubled for God, as indispensable to enlightenment. (2) The heart troubled for God provides the fuel, the cognitive dissonance. And the bliss that results causes the ignition and explosion of realization.

We realize our Self. Then we realize our Chosen Ideal. Then we realize the Transcendental. Finally, we dissolve in the One … for a while. (3)

Footnotes

(1) See The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment at http://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Purpose-of-Life-is-Enlightenment.pdf.

(2) “They make so many pilgrimages and repeat the name of God so much, but why do they not realize anything? It is because they have no longing for God. God reveals Himself to the devotee if only he calls upon Him with a longing heart.” (Parahmahansa Ramakrishna in Nikhilananda, Swami, trans. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 306.) [Hereafter PR in GSR.]

“One attains God when one feels yearning for Him. An intense restlessness is needed. Through it the whole mind goes to God.” (PR in GSR, 337.)

“A man does not have to suffer any more if God, in His Grace, removes his doubts and reveals Himself to him. But this grace descends upon him only after he has prayed to God with intense yearning of heart and practised spiritual discipline.” (PR in GSR, 116.)

(3) Archangel Michael: When you go home, … you can reunite in the heart of One. Do not think that you go off on another tangent or another journey simply because you feel like it or because you are earning your way back to that linear path. You go back out into the universe as a brilliant spark of pure light!

So you come, you return, you gain not only understanding, wisdom, knowledge [in the heart of One] – what you can think of as spiritual regeneration – and then, in concert with many, including your guides and guardian angels and, many times, whoever you are going to be working with – for example, myself or Archangel Raphael – you emerge again. (Archangel Michael, An Hour with an Angel, March 26, 2012, at http://the2012scenario.com/2012/03/archangels-michael-and-gabriel-on-the-angelic-realm-hour-with-an-angel-transcript-march-26-2012/.)