“Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.” – Bruce Lee
Expanding Your Consciousness
For me, the most uncomfortable feeling in the world, is the feeling of stagnation, of feeling restricted. Just as the greatest feeling, is the feeling of expansion, of growth. Within all of us there is something that longs to be boundless.
Expansion is all we want. If your focus in life is money, love, traveling, whatever it may be, you want to expand it. We hate being restricted in any way shape or form.
There’s something inside us that wants to go beyond boundaries, this is because it is “non-physical”, it can’t be contained by boundaries. But when we only identify to the physical world, the world of matter, we fail to acknowledge our non-physical presence. We then live a life of struggle, of mental anguish, because the essential part of our being is not being touched. Life is not perceived in it’s proper light.
You will only start to become at “ease” with life, when you start getting a taste for the non-physical. When I realized that life was not as it appeared to be, that I was experiencing this reality in a very limited way, my search began into why this was so.
I then devoted my life to learning about myself. I moved abroad to focus on myself without having the day to day influence of my family, friends, and society to interfere. I spent my time: practicing meditation, learning about tantra, kriya yoga, the human psyche, I read and practiced anything that would deepen my understanding. As my awareness to perceive reality expanded, moments of inexplicable beauty would penetrate my being to the core. My inner space felt so expansive, felt free, boundless. When you abide in this space of boundlessness, life just feels good. You walk on air, you are graceful.
Your perception must go beyond the five senses, only then the non-physical will enter your life, you will understand what it means to have a spiritual life. Your senses are designed for the material world and how we perceive reality with the five senses is just an approximation to reality. Used together they are the best tools we have. The problem is we have become identified to them, we don’t question the reality that they present to us, they keep us from experiencing a higher reality.
“All that is seen is You, Lord, the expansion of the expanse. Says Nanak, the Guru has removed my doubts; I recognize God in all.”- Sri Guru Granth Sahib
But if you are able to go beyond the senses, even just a glimpse, you will then be able to sense the immaterial energy that animates the whole world. Every object in your physical world is just a manifestation of the same energy. You begin to understand that every form that appears in reality can only exist because of the formless, it’s the basis of reality. Sure the table in your kitchen feels solid, and we experience it as such, but in reality it is just energy that is vibrating at such a slow frequency that it feels solid. Nothing is permanent, even a stone is changing each moment, it’s just so slow we can’t perceive it, in a few million years it will have completely changed form.
Unless you do the right thing, right things will not happen to you. If you want to penetrate into the formless world, you need to do the right things, meditation is one way in. But before meditation is allowed to happen, we need to get our house in order. A huge part of this is existentially understanding how our minds become attached to sensual pleasures, how these attachments cause us to have endless desires.
This is why Buddha said that one must be desire-less, because a mind buzzing with desires, cant be silent, to make contact with the formless dimension the mind must become utterly quiet. Buddha’s teaching of being desire-less doesn’t really mesh well with people, they don’t see the practicality of it, they don’t understand how it can make their lives any better.
There is nothing wrong with having and doing things, the problem is our psychological attachment to inner and outer objects. You just need to have enough clarity to see the whole process of how your mind becomes attached to these objects. If you can remain aware and unidentified, you can use and appreciate the objects without becoming a slave to them. If you are not able to remain aware to yourself, to your presence, you need to deeply inquire why this is so. You need to find out what you can about it.
One Love
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” – Albert Einstein
When the mind becomes silent what’s left is an awareness that is free to perceive the subtle dimensions of existence. You realize that there really isn’t an inner and an outer, that in reality it is all just one huge ocean of consciousness. This is why in the scared texts like the Upanishads they declare “that you are that”. Meaning, that you are the very existence itself, the ultimate reality, but this will not have any real significance to people if it remains a purely intellectual understanding. Your identification to the body and mind gives you the feeling that you exist separately and independently from other people, from the world.
When your mental activity becomes less, and your awareness grows, this awareness allows you to rise above and not be identified to your thinking processes. Sooner or later through diligent work on oneself, you will begin to have many mystical experiences, such as feeling the boundaries between you and the world melt. In this deep feeling of oneness you realize what Jesus meant, when he declared that “god is love”. In this oneness you don’t see the other as separate from you, you recognize yourself in the other. How then could you hurt the other?
The more mindfulness, more awareness, that you cultivate in your life, the more you will understand what your “true” needs are in life. Which for me where surprisingly few. Not being pulled in hundreds of contradicting directions, allows your inner space to merge with the outer space, thus you feel this sublime feeling of expansiveness. Expansion is life, is creation, is you.
If you know yourself, you know everything worth knowing. God speed my friend.
I enjoyed writing this for you, it surely was not a waste of my time, so I sincerely hope it is not a waste of yours…what are your thoughts on this post?…join the conversation below……thank you and be well….
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Very insightful Ivan, thanks again.
my pleasure my friend…be well…peace 🙂
Hey Mezz, I once again enjoyed the read your post, you encourage me to think that we have more people that think in way that I like to think. It’s an amazing thing, that moment that you Quiets the thought, immediately you get to your truth. I just read this yesterday (Barry Long), he writes, do not try to change anything, just to quiet the mind and look at what that comes up now. It’s really interesting point. Well I should end here, but it’s really a huge issue. Thank you 🙂 continuing a great day – bili
it is my pleasure my friend 🙂 I appreciate you contributing to the conversation..be well 🙂
It’s important to stay with your feet on the ground while your head is in the clouds [spirituality]. I understand what you’re saying about desires but i think that the solution is to use them for your spiritual development instead of suppressing them b/c eventually anything you try to hide floats back up. 🙂
thanks so much for contributing :)..and i agree, anything you suppress causes inner conflict..I just meant that when you can clearly “see”, there is no need to suppress…
“God is Love” I really believe that.
That’s why, when someone asks me whether I believe in God? I tell him – tell me what is God for you, and I will tell you if I believe it 🙂
This is a great article.
I think that people are finally realizing what it is that we’ve been missing after all of these years. The reason for so much aggression, so much hate, and so much disease. We’ve finally realized that it’s because we’ve lost touch with who we truly are, we’ve lost touch with ourselves and the universal connection that we all strive to acquire.
I hope you don’t mind me leaving a link here, but I feel that it’s highly relevant and that you and your readers might enjoy it.
http://www.wisdomdome.com/what-is-consciousness/
I’m glad I found this today, its just what I needed to hear to confirm these thoughts that fill my inner space when I close myself off to the outer world.
Its funny what you say about removing yourself from the things you desire. I didn’t do this by conscious choice, it just seemed to happen. In hind sight, I have a better more clear understanding of who I am and what I really need. My values have changed and a lot of times I feel I live in a world that is hostile to my whole being and leaves me feeling like I’m starving. Or like the things that I need to sustain myself aren’t very abundant in North America or Western society.
I see value in other people but I don’t think a lot of other people see that same value. So when I make choices in my life, some people think I’m strange or dumb. Some people say that I still have a lot to learn, I agree but not what they think I need to learn. When I make choices, my choices are based on the desires and needs of others and most people don’t expect that and even have a hard time dealing with it. It leaves them feeling weird, I only know this because I have learned how to feel other peoples feelings. I do this by feeling my own presense like you say, then I can feel other peoples presense against mine.
My only desire in these moments latley are to find more people like myself that I can talk to. I need real answers. The kind of answers most people hide from you because they don’t know themself well enough or, they do but have not accepted they’re truth and therefor cannot answer my questions because the answer is being filtered by mis-guided fear. I need to surround myself with people who are not afraid to show me thier real struggles so I can see that these struggles exist within myself aswell. Sometimes people need other people to reflect back problems within themself. I’m ready to accept that I have problems and I want to work with them to overcome them. I need to find more people who have similiar needs and are ready to move forward. This is where I am in my 26 year life span and I feel like the first day of my life hasn’t even started yet or at the most’ its at the very early stages. I’m ready to live and I don’t want to waste another moment waiting around for the world to get better. I’m ready to make the world a better place with the talents I came here with. These talents aren’t mine. They belong to this world and I’ve been hoarding them for too long so now its time to share them as to inspire others to share there own. But like I said, I need to see people who have problems similiar to myself to see what they are doing to deal with it.
Thanjs for this message and letting me express mine. It was very theraputic.
Shalome
Really appreciate your post. I can totally relate! I have so many questions and have been seeking the answers, and I just feel that I can’t talk to anyone about it. Everytime I do, they can’t handle it, or don’t want to open their eyes and all this information is out there while people stay in the dark about whats going on on our planet. I want to be more spiritual, and help others see our own potential!
Here is also a great video. You can watch the trailer for free but the movie costs $5. to stream it. Well worth it though!!
http://www.thrivemovement.com
thanks so much for sharing Christine…just learn to go within…all will be revealed to you :)…peace
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts Mike. I am delighted to see your on your own journey making your own discoveries…keep it up…hope all is well…much love…peace….
WHAT YOU ASSUME, I ASSUME. SO, WHAT SHOULD BE ADDRESSED OR COMMENTED FOR ONESELF?
expanded by the one for the one. 🙂
Hi everyone.
Thanks goes to Ivan for this wonderful blog. It’s nice to see beautiful spirituality brought from the delight. It’s quite extraordinary if you try to look at it from a perspective of the sleeping you. What I’m saying is that everyone that has had a personal experience with God knows for sure that he exists, because if he already has them, he has past the physical barrier of the world. Consciousness is who we are. Our consciousness is part of that which I call God. God is the whole universal consciousness. And we in the material world are but fragments of it. In my perspective it is very important to be open-minded. Listening to someone with fully attentive awareness is like nourishing their soul and its cry. Our souls always cry, just not like us. They cry for divine qualities. Our souls is us, therefore our consciousness is our soul. And our soul is always connected with the universal soul. Through our soul we can enter into the universal soul and rest in delight. Silent delight, bliss and light. I’m going to start to travel in a month or so. As soon as I finish my high school and graduate from it. My goal is to become one with the road and go and experience the world. I have created some spiritual-ego concepts on how stuff works in life, but I’ve done my best to be non-attached to them. I do still enjoy them for being true. That’s all from me. I wish you all a good and fulfilling meditation next time you do it. 🙂 Happy trails to everyone!
Read “a book in every home”. Its 39 pages. I think you will enjoy it number 6