Risen On Earth

Image © Mark Rehorst 2005

[The following is some as-yet unpublished material from a book apparently meant to follow-up The Risen: Dialogues of Love, Grief & Survival Beyond Death. Called "Risen On Earth," as far as I can tell — which isn't very far — it's in the aid of helping us still on the Earth with incorporating some of the ways the Risen experience life in their geography. –August]

The Risen would seem to have a lot of time to do some serious thinking. However, they don’t "have time” nor do they sit around thinking. They don’t think at all, in the way we think – if there was a word that meant “observe + experience + process x joy” it might begin to touch upon how the Risen use their minds – but not really. Already, one can see here that not only do we on earth engage in thinking, but in “thinking about thinking.” Thinking – as we think we know it – is a purely embodied utilization of the human brain. Once fully-transitioned to a Risen state, one is “engaged with Mind.” Because there is no “thinking” there is less margin, if any, ever, for error. There is a great deal of margin of error for embodied terrestrial thinking, which is the basis of suffering. Suffering is not pain, for one can have pain without suffering. Suffering is the ego-mind’s tongue probing the sore tooth of a simulate self’s worry – and remember that worry is about the future. Pain keeps us in the present, which is perhaps why we on the earth tend to learn from pain instead of joy, which the Risen bring to the equation “observe + experience + process.”

One error, as a result of thinking, which has evolved to a belief instilled in and transmitted by countless earthly cultures, is that somehow, in some way, suffering is good for us – “it’s for your own good.” It gives us an invitation to heaven, a ticket to God’s private Neverland, where it’s believed by ego-mind that we will never have to suffer again. Ironically, this belief does get us into Neverland, for there, we will never be able to be who we really are. True to its nature, the ego-mind believes it has come up with a way to use suffering for its own good, by rationalizing that this is something God wants us to experience. Therefore, we should “offer it up to God” who will then enter us into the lottery in the hopes we might get into Neverland. The more we suffer, the more lottery tickets we get, the more we worry that we won’t win, and the more energy we feed into hope. Even more mistakenly — and tragically — because we accept the ego-mind's purposeful misdirection, we retain and transmit to others the belief that "God wants us to suffer." And that God gets mad if we don't suffer — and suffer gladly without any complaints — because this somehow means we don't care about nor love God. Clearly, this kind of sad manipulation is not very god-like, is it?

"Hope" is contained within beliefs, about which The Risen points out “. . . are acceptances of others’ second-hand accounts—or hearsay—without our ever having actually experienced them.” (p. 39). Beliefs, hope, and suffering keep us out of the present, which is what the Risen experience as “time.” It goes on to say in The Risen, “. . . once we’ve experienced something for ourselves we no longer have to believe in it, because we now know. Having empowered ourselves with experiential knowledge, we are then in a position to choose to change or let go of beliefs.” This letting go of beliefs is part of the transitional awakening process to the Risen state, but it can also be a part of our earthly transition process to an awakened state: Risen on Earth.

How to begin to experience time the Risen way, which is to be awake and present to one’s continued expansion with Creator Source? We have also developed complex rituals and cultural systems to counter negative thinking, which over the millennia has devolved into any thinking that those authorities over us deem as “inappropriate” or “wrong.” So, is there ever “right” thinking? Only if thinking is finite and something within itself. But it’s not – thinking is a process, always moving, never static, always needy and seeking for more, more, more – even if “more” is thought to be the goal. But the goal is never reached, so thinking, a circular process, never stops. Once thinking stops, then we have arrived where we started – Authentic Self. And we actually never left Authentic Self to begin with. If we think that to stop thinking is the goal, we will never reach it. This is what K. means when he said in The Risen: “Those of us who are still circling in the slave’s walk of hope and are desperate enough to long for something better, a simpler life with less demands and more rewards, are often more aware of ourselves through the medium of our suffering.” (p. 225) Here, “ourselves” means the simulate selves, not Authentic Self.

To counter negative thinking, ego-mind has rationalized that we should cultivate positive thinking. This is like embracing anti-violence in order to stop violence. It seems to make sense, a kind of neutralizing effort or balancing out of numbers to reach a null state of rest. But both require thinking, beliefs, suffering. Can more suffering achieve less suffering, or no suffering? Here is the ageless dilemma of power. Power must be manifested through someone, and that someone needs to manifest their power through someone else: master and slave. It can be seen that one is dependent on the other, so who is really master, and who is really slave? Violence and anti-violence are also dynamics of power that are inextricably interrelated, as are authority and obedience. Authentic Self, is inextricably interrelated – or one – with Creator Source, and so has been given sole authority over Itself and dominion over all its manifestations – which are also one with It – and so has no need of such power dynamics. There is only one Power, which cannot be divided. To believe it can or pretend to do so is a delusion of the ego-mind; it does this by manifesting simulate selves.

So we have all kinds of systems, many of which appeared in the 19th-20th centuries, involving “affirmative thinking” such as promoting the opposite of something that only exists in the ego-mind. Instead, here’s a suggestion as an alternative to prolonging thinking. Utilize the ego-mind’s trick that says we must suffer and then offer it up to God. Whenever a negative thought or belief rises up in our mind, don’t counter it, or wrestle with it, or debate or reason or yell at it. Envision, in your mind’s eye, a simple but beautiful silver platter floating in the air before you. Imagine putting the thought on the platter and then letting it rise up into the air. Imagine a great big pair of hands coming down and reaching out to take the platter up and away out of site. Say “thank you!” Imagine a voice answering back, “No, thank you!’

If the concept of anti-gravity and heavy things floating is a bit too much for you to imagine, get creative (remember, The Risen defines “creative” as “having fun.”) Take the platter and put it into a dumb-waiter, and then push a button (or heave on some pulleys, if you still believe that you have to work hard to make something happen) and send it on up to the next floor above you. You can still yell “thank you” up the shaft if you like, and wait to hear “thank you” back. If you can’t come up with anything other than these two suggestions, ask your guides for help – they’re waiting. Maybe you can envision one of your guides as a waiter.

After one arrives at the solution to the first error, which is to let go of beliefs, the ego-mind will very likely attempt to counter this by putting forth a second error as “truth.” So we have the cultural myth that the really wise and serene people are the ones who sit in caves or monasteries or in some other isolated way, and do nothing but sitting there doing nothing. This originally was meant as a metaphysical allegory, a symbolic representation of Authentic Self, which doesn’t need to do anything, because it has no needs. “I need do nothing” is an all-powerful internal realization. Ego-mind, as it has so many other truths, has seized and distorted it for its own fear-based agenda.

But a lot of people have taken this allegory way too literally, and so we have entire cultures and religions that embrace, promote and honor people who sit around doing nothing, and many people strive for this goal. And as we now understand, having a goal and achieving it is not waking up, but staying asleep. One of the first things it says in The Risen is, “Everyone in this (Risen) world is free to do whatever they like and as much or as little of it. Work is play, and play is work—they are indistinguishable from one another.” This is a description of creative manifestation. Someone Risen is always engaged in some kind of creative activity; “a little” or “a lot” are relative, but they aren’t nothing. It is always up to us, to each individual, to decide about the activity and assign meaning. The Risen don’t bother assigning meaning, which bypasses the trap of ending up feeling meaningless because meaning is needed.

In The Risen, Tim shares,

“I sense you wondering about what I do here in my Risen geography. Even ‘do’ is not the right verb. In fact, verbs aren’t used here to begin with—they’re only necessary and useful for the machinists and their devices. ‘Things’ are ‘done’ with ‘devices.’ ‘Doing’ here, where I am, in the way you ‘do things’ there, would be like using dynamite to create a delicate ice sculpture. It seems correct to say that I am a kind of intern or student, or better yet, a learner. . . (but I’m told that) Earthers will misinterpret ‘learner.’ The innermost meaning of ‘disciple’ would come closest, although it is also tainted by misconception and misuse. Not too helpful, is it? I will have to use verbs after all, since your material language, if you have not guessed it by now, is a machine as well, although new spiritual elements are ever-so-slowly trickling back down into it. Fully-spiritual language is non-mechanical, purely organic, and living.”

Perhaps this last phrase, “non-mechanical, purely organic, and living” — when added to “observe + experience + process x joy” — brings us a bit closer to how the Risen enjoy the gift of life.

From The Archives: Wake up.

[First posted May 21, 2006]

"Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house."
— John Keats, Hyperion

"Awakening from the dream . . . " — we say that a lot around here, in fact a lot of people have said it for a long time in a lot of ways.

It looks good on paper, but what does is mean? How does one awaken?

We know what being awake is like, so what's the big deal? Or do we just think we know?

Think of the few times — the very few, most likely — when you were so aware of the moment that time was no longer apparent or important and there was no longer any moment. Perhaps you were so happy that the emotion carried you over and beyond some edge without warning at light speed like a roller coaster. The emotion then stopped, but you did not. You were beyond "deliriously happy" or "immeasurably sad" or "scared shitless." You had arrived to a place of all peace and no time. The fact that you can recall these "moments" tells you that you were very aware of being conscious at those particular points of your life.

Each moment that you allow your self to recall these particular points of aware consciousness melts away as these points of reality pour like golden liquid into your present presence. When we're very old and can't or don't want to move much around anymore, we will be able to conjure these golden moments up with expertise, able to live in them more and more. Anyone looking at us will probably think we're not fully "there" anymore. They'd be right, for we'd be fully "here."

What about all the stretches of time between those particular points — can you recall them? Probably not, because you were not very aware of being conscious then — you were "under conscious," or beneath the surface of awakedness. It's darker beneath the surface, there's less light, like having your eyes closed all the time, while watching the projections on your inner eyelids and believing you're seeing reality.

A suggestion: even when we open our eyes, we're still projecting on our inner screens, with the belief that what we're seeing is outside and real.

Many like to think they're on some kind of "path" throughout their life. However, those lit-up points of aware consciousness that you can access now, with all their colours, sounds, smells and textures — are like separate stepping stones -- not a continuous path — with varying lengths of distance between them.

Try this. It will only serve those who have had the experience usually known as "lucid dreaming" — where one's body is sleeping and the consciousness is still traveling — it never stops traveling — but one becomes aware of the consciousness's journey, simultaneously aware that one is not in the body but "must be dreaming." During lucid dream experiences, one is awake — more awake than when one is awake in the body, for the body is a dense filter with special responses and chemicals to dampen most of our awareness. This filter is also known as the ego-mind, or as the Risen say, "the simulate self." There is the experience of hyper-reality in a lucid dream — every thing is "more real" — every thing is experienced as alive. Colours are glowing, sounds are vibrating, the jaw drops from the sheer texture of life in this "dream." One is no longer alone as a living thing, but completely immersed in a sharing with all living things.

There is a tendency to emphasize lucid dreams from the point of one's discovery that one can "control" one's environment in the dream. This may be so, but it's not important, for play is play for its own sake. It's when the lucid dreamer stops trying to control, ceases to struggle, that there arises a very surprising feeling of oh-my-god-this-is-real! juxtaposed with the feeling of oh-my-god-this-can't-be-real!. It is beyond "awe," a sensation which implies fear on some level.

A word for this feeling might be "glee" — a word of ancient Indo-European roots (Sanskrit) — ghel-² — referring to any colour with a golden shine. This golden light of every colour fills one with amazement and wonder, or "astonishment." "Astonish" carries evidence of incredibly ancient "vocal" origins, meaning a word that arose from pure throat sounds, the kinds of sounds that are caused by emotion, not thought, and perhaps best reflected in our modern word "thunder," which also has the same roots as "glee." Although the modern word "thunder" doesn't sound like thunder, think of the feelings and emotions that arise when you are surprised, without warning, by one of those thunderclaps that shakes the teeth, raises the hair and causes primal pants-wetting. And yet some of us like - nay, love —this kind of storm, for it makes us laugh in maniacal glee, and we live and wait for the next one. Do it again!! Why? It makes us feel alive. A real eye-opener, a wake-me-upper.

This is the same feeling that arises, like an unbidden thunderclap, when one wakes up in a dream, while the dream country still remains all around.

The is the same kind of feeling that must be bidden in order to wake up in this terrestrial dream world, which will also still remain all around.

Why wait?

When this is experienced in enough of certain ways, one will be led to make the next and previously hidden connection, and that is, now that one is lucid in this dream, can one change it?