The Masters are beings who, while in the physical, simply know how to BE.
BEing is simply to exist, as yourself, with no thoughts, considerations, or beliefs present.
To BE is so simple that it makes you feel powerful. Because there is just you, without all the additives!
The exciting thing is that you DO NOT have to be a Master to get a glimpse of your own magnificence. You don't have to be a person without limiting beliefs, or limiting thoughts, to experience yourself as a powerful Being.
All you have to do is, in the moment, BE without them.
I discovered this while on a walk the other day. All of sudden I felt totally powerful, myself, completely in the moment, and rooted into the earth. It was an awesome feeling of power. I suddenly realized I was there, without all of my garbage.
When people try to describe this state, it sounds like you have lost your mind, or that you have entered a sort of zombie state where you can't think or reason or feel. But it is totally the opposite! You feel very powerfully and you know yourself to be an immortal spirit who cannot be harmed, and it feels wonderful. For me, this state was complete in itself. I imagine it to be the condition of a Native State being before (it/he/she) incarnates into the physical and discovers the true meaning of polarity.
As soon as I tried to figure out why and how it happened, the state went away.
The only difference between a Master, and a "mere mortal," is that a Master has discovered how to BE all the time.
Actually, that last statement is absurd, of course, because when you are BEing, there is no time. A Master has learned to BE in the now, and that now moment has expanded to encompass and transcend his or her life, and time itself.
In that moment of clarity I understood that the only thing holding me back from experiencing like this all the time was my own beliefs about how hard it was to attain such a state, and maintain it. In my study of philosophy and metaphysics, I concluded that becoming enlightened would take lifetimes of evolvement. I understood that it was really, really hard, and that in order to BE in such a powerful way, you had to meditate and study and you probably were never going to make it.
Then, on a simple walk, I was there for several minutes. In those moments I understood that my beliefs about enlightenment were the ONLY thing holding me back!
If you ask me whether I have figured out how to do it all the time, I have to say no. But the fact that I attained it doing something as mundane as walking tells me that this condition must be natural for a being. And I believe that a person who has woken up spiritually has a much greater chance of experiencing in this way, than someone who is grinding it out in life, or who believes that success is predicated on accumulating lots of stuff, or who believes that success is related to how many people like you or approve of you, with all the struggle that implies. Such people do experience epiphany's but these epiphanies result from hitting "rock bottom." In a previous newsletter I showed you the "circle of life" where birth and death are at the same, exact point.
Birth is the entry of Spirit into the physical (association with the body and the body's way of perceiving the physical through the sense organs). Death is the exit of Spirit from the physical. The circle represents a physical lifetime. When we are very little we still remember our connection to Native State, but as the body grows we enter into our physical lives, traveling away from remembrance of the "other side." As we grow older, we begin to travel back to that knowledge of our spiritual self as the death of the body becomes more real. When a person hits "rock bottom" he or she is also very near the point of going out, and thus very near the point of return to Native State, and perfect bliss. That's one way to experience this profound state of BEing, of course, but the idea is to not have to suffer so much!
On my walk, I was simply moving my body and I did not even feel time, oddly enough, considering that time is simply the measurement of movement through space. This tells me that the perception of time has nothing to do with the physical: it is a characteristic of Spirit. And when you are simply BEing, the additive that is time just disappears. "So how do you BE?" is probably the question you are asking right now. It’s the question I would ask, because what good is it to say "just BE" if you can't tell somebody how to do it? Well, asking how is the wrong question, because as soon as you ask it, you are already off BEing, because when you BE, you never think of intellectual questions like that. On my walk I felt so powerful that I was simply there, without mental questioning. Which tells me that the way to BEing cannot be through the mind, and so trying to give courses and seminars on it would be fruitless. Perhaps that is why martial arts can be a profound spiritual experience. In an interview recorded before he died, the master martial artist Bruce Lee basically said that one way to spiritual enlightenment was through the discipline of martial arts.
The good news and the bad news is that there is no formula for happiness, BEing, or enlightenment. Despite the number of self-help books, courses, seminars, and inspirational speakers, there are no 12-step formulas for success, no 10 ways to happiness or wealth. This, frankly, is just marketing. There are only individual paths. In other words, you don't need a book, a seminar, or a mentor to show you the way, you have to find your own way. This is the true Secret. The more you try to BE, the more unlikely you are to ever get there.
Some people simply want a recipe for BEing and success. But if that recipe existed, it would wreck everything. The challenge of a physical existence like Earth is to find your own, unique way of BEing.
That's exactly what happened during my walk. My body got into a rhythm and the smooth, easy physical activity acted for me like a mantra. I wasn't even aware of my body as I walked along the quiet, rural dirt road. And then suddenly, my mind and my limiting beliefs, and all of my emotions simply vanished and there I was!
There can be great value in self-help products, however, because they remind you that it is possible to reach a state of BEing without having to be perfection itself.
The laws of the universe guarantee your sovereignty. In other words, the Law of Vibration and the Law of Attraction guarantee that when you align your thoughts and intention toward something, you will manifest it. At the same time, universal laws guarantee that your personal solution to BEing is utterly unique. That is why it feels so fantastic when you get there!
When people like Wayne Dyer or Echkart Tolle write self-help books, they are trying to tell you how they did it. And that is valuable, as long as you understand that your path to BEing must be totally unique. The value of self-help products is the inspiration they bring to you. This inspiration is just a reminder to you that you are already magnificent, and that you don't have to DO anything, or believe anything, in order to BE who you are!
Ever since The Secret came out, people have been using and misusing the Law of Attraction to sell stuff. A lot of people have listened to Esther Hicks and her brilliant series of channeled lectures, and have tried to use the LOA to manifest. I got on that bandwagon myself with the Keys to Deliberate Creation course, which I think is a great summary of these principles and methods. But really, all of this LOA stuff is missing the point! Sure it would be nice to have a lot of money, but money is really trivial indeed compared to the feeling of just BEing. The end result of all of the LOA marketing and manifesting hoopla is a state of BEing. So why not avoid all of that hassle – which isn't going to get you anywhere – and just BE? People are using action steps to ultimately – at the end of the manifestation process – create a state of BEing, when this cannot possibly work! You need the state of BEing BEFORE you can successfully apply the LOA stuff. This is what Esther Hicks is talking about – the "alignment of thought to the goal" is just a state of BEing.
People are looking for the magic bullet of manifestation is a series of action steps, not understanding that the alignment of thought is paramount, and that the alignment of thought to anything is utterly dependent on a state of BEing. To illustrate this idea, let's take the example of the successful marketer, Biff Bifferson, who mad a million dollars in his widget business. This example (from the Keys to Deliberate Creation course) could apply to any field, whether it's self-help, business, relationships, whatever.
Biff is not your typical marketer, who is only interested in manipulating emotions to sell something. Biff knows he is really on to something that could change the world. He has written a formula for success! And now he wants to share it.
He's written down every step he took, right down to the last detail. He's really excited to teach you how to do it too, so he creates a seminar and explains everything you need to do to be successful. Step 1, step 2, etc., here's exactly how to do it. But Biff is genuinely puzzled when only a few have limited success, and the rest fail.
Biff thinks that there is some magic in his action steps, not understanding that he can't teach you the personal alignment of thought and intent that lead to his success; he can only teach you the actions he took based on that personal alignment. And that is the key to why any self-help or marketing technique will only work for a few. You cannot teach a state of being. That's because the fulcrum upon which everything in the physical universe rests is consciousness. A state of being is a creation of consciousness.
There are probably a few in the audience at Biff's marketing seminar who think just like Biff; for them, his program will be easy because they are already aligned to it. But what about the others? They will fail, it's as simple as that.
It's just common sense! No matter how good the program, if what you are trying to do doesn't feel right to you, then you won't do it. Either that, or you will attempt to bull your way through and try to force it. But that's like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
The same applies to self-improvement books and seminars. Eckhart Tolle found enlightenment, but how many people who have read his books or attended his seminars have done so? How many who have read "Think and Grow Rich" have actually gotten rich? I've never read that book myself, but I know some mighty poor people who have.
Neale Donald Walsch discovered his personal epiphany, homeless, on a park bench. He was one of those "rock bottom" guys we talked about before.
Eckhart Tolle made a quantum leap into being as well, after also hitting rock bottom.
The "rock bottom" approach is unteachable because the enlightened state of being comes from a descent into darkness, followed by the inevitable step into the Light. But how the hell do you teach that? Sure you are now in the Light, but how did you get there?
A simple thing like a walk can get you there without all of the mess and struggle. And it's important to realize that the rock-bottom approach is only one way to get there, and an approach that involves struggle and pain. It teaches you that you have to work real hard to attain a state of being that you can experience without all that hassle.
The point of the newsletter this month is to understand two things:
Your personal enlightenment depends only on YOU, not on anyone else, no matter how successful they appear to be.
A state of BEing is created not with DOING or PROCESS, but by simply BEing. A state of BEing only requires a decision and an intention.
You can't program enlightenment, in other words. But you can create your own personal state of BEing effortlessly. That's because a state of BEing is 100% spiritual, and 0% physical.
It's why the action steps and the processes don't work until you understand that what you want is coming from the spiritual aspect of you, and that whatever you are doing physically in incidental. That is, you may be doing a walking meditation, or engaged in a martial arts discipline, or you may chant a mantra. But these things have absolutely nothing to do with the state of BEing you desire! On earth we have it backwards, as usual. We think that a process or an action step or a ritual or a ceremony are vital elements in the "enlightenment equation." But there really is no equation to BEing, and the process is unnecessary.
I have achieved this state of BEing several times in my life, and each time the situation was completely different. One time I was sitting in my car after work, at a stop light, and felt my life just go away and a powerful sense of BEing and well-being flooded my consciousness and my body. That lasted for several minutes as I drove home.
Like a lot of people, I got excited by the Law of Attraction, and decided to try to manifest. But I quickly discovered that the "manifestation game" was a trap, and it was taking me away from my life, and even my wife. One day as I was "creating my reality" through thought, my wife was outside gardening. I went outside and she said, "you aren't interested in me anymore, and I don't know what to do." And then she started crying.
I was shocked. Jenny is the love of my life, but I was so busy playing the manifestation game that I lost sight of the important things in my life. And the most important thing was love. Love is a state of being I create with Jenny, but I had forgotten that it is the foundation of my life.
Right then and there I saw the manifestation trap, and I shucked the "creation of my reality" through process, and stated doing it through BEing. And I can tell you that the latter feels a whole lot better!
The same thing happened with a friend of mine who got heavy into Buddhism. One day he came over and he was literally a different person. He was so much into Buddhism that his wife almost left him. He seemed very distant, in his own world. I think this is what happens to a lot of people when they embark on "enlightenment." Sometimes you get so into the process you forget about what makes the process worthwhile – a state of BEing.
A state of BEing is just like point A in the circle diagram above. It's the alpha and the omega of life and of happiness. It represents the invisible, but most important factor.
So how do you BE? That's the wrong question.
You just BE.
Decide how you want to feel and create a state of BEing around that. Now you are standing in the right place – the quintessential place of Spirit, which is who we all are.
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Ken is freelance writer and
researcher who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Since
childhood, Ken has been thinking about the Big Picture
and how to increase spiritual understanding in the
world.
