The Edge & Waiting

The Risen book is richly deep with material that is often dense, mysterious, and challenging -- even for me, with all my years of intimacy with it and with its bearers. The information is also, and continues to be, relevant in equally deep and mysterious ways to me personally. I continue to turn to it in times of stress and confusion, and still marvel at the new things that emerge from its depths with each re-reading, and even the peace and solace that come from increased understanding. In spite of what seems to be its seriousness, there is much love of the active kind that streams forth from it. I recently found such loving solace in the Appendix of The Risen:

The Edge & Waiting

“How do you know but ev'ry Bird
 that cuts the airy way,

 Is an immense world of delight, 
clos'd by your senses five?”

~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

T

 he visionary Blake wrote a great deal about Authentic Self’s experience in a material mind-body, constrained by the reduction of five senses and by societal and institutional conventions—“the mind-forg’d manacles,” as he called them. He realized that having only two or three senses would not give us the ability to predict any more beyond them—and so it would be with but five. He lived in the knowledge that imagination flies free above the senses, and that it is the actual image of God in which we are made. God is imagination, which is the act of imaging. Imagination is not present to the five senses, which are mind-body components that filter incoming evidence of Greater Reality.

       The ego-mind makes all decisions for the embodied, sleeping Authentic Self about what is acceptable as real. From these decisions simulate selves emerge. Because a simulate self is manifested from the ego-mind, its experiences and its choices about the universe are not authentic—they are not real but simulated. Authentic choices come only from a fully-conscious, self-aware Authentic Self. Authentic Self is the true author of one’s life—the script-writer of its dramas, the set designer, the decider of staging and dialogue.

~ 25 ~

These words may not make conscious sense at this time, but my spiritual senses comprehend and retain this knowledge for Authentic Self.

The Edge

       The edge is the perimeter of the reduced life experience within an unlimited personal universe. Lacking imagination, the ego-mind limits experience, utilizing the restrictive five senses as motivated through anxiety and fear. The imposed limitation is a “sphere of experience” that surrounds an individualized mind-body, which in turn seems disconnected from the conscious awareness of Authentic Self. Because of its spherical affect, which surrounds us on all sides, it appears to be all there is. But it is no more than a human goldfish bowl, its curvature reflecting back only that which the ego-mind projects. This sphere of forced experience is the kingdom of the simulate selves as ruled by the ego-mind. The ego-mind enforces the belief that its kingdom is unlimited and supreme. The result of this base inconsistency is a constant feeling of emotional strife to Authentic Self—angst—or worry and anguish.

       The ego-mind may allow for a permeability of the edge if this fits its agenda. Individualized mind-bodies can then join and develop a group sphere of experience, attracted by like vibration and held together by like beliefs as dictated by the ego-mind. A group can be small like a couple or a family, or a larger sphere of several groups such as tribes, organizations, corporations, and nations. The separate ego-minds are never fully in agreement and so strife and dissention are inherent in these systems. The spheres of many ego-minds often interpenetrate one another. Intergenerational transmission of beliefs is also highly likely, as parents, usually in total unawareness, pass on belief systems to their children, sometimes down through many centuries. Formalized institutions of the ego-mind such as governments and churches also transmit and strengthen barriers to authentic and unlimited experience.

       The edge of the sphere of experience is seldom visited by its inhabitant—there is usually no awareness of its existence. This edge can be seen in the belief of the flat earth, which successfully kept people from exploring their physical environment for fear of falling off into an abyss of unknown territory. Even though it has since been realized that the earth is not flat, the same fear-generated scheme, which was developed by the ego-mind, still actively exists in the ego-mind collective. Although we can now venture around the material globe, most of us are still encased in our invisible, protective sphere of ego-mentality, the flatland of the simulate self.

       The ego-mind maintains the structure of its kingdom through beliefs that are engendered by deception. The edge or border of its kingdom is held in place by a force field of anxiety, like an electric fence. Should one move too close to this edge, alarms go off and trigger the feeling of anxiety. One of the ego-mind’s lies is that the anxiety is unlimited beyond the perimeter, and that once the edge is transgressed the anxiety will go on forever. What makes this lie believable is that the sleeping Authentic Self is still aware of the actual limitlessness beyond the edge. The ego-mind lies that this limitlessness is identical to unrelieved anxiety and so we the avoid the edge. Unlimited, authentic living is effectively pinched off into a limited, simulated experience. This experiential avoidance results in a feeling of having “split,” manifesting a “less-than” experience for Authentic Self, which remains unconscious of the reality, while sensing the loss as inexplicable sadness, grief, and depression. Although the feeling of being split is ultimately an illusion, we feel compelled to correct it and bring the two “halves” back together—typically by looking for other people, or careers—anything—to join with and complete us.

       Change is the nature of the manifested material universe, enabling individualized manifestations of Authentic Self to move about from one geography of experience to another. Transformation of vibration cannot take place without this movement. Inherent in the design of humankind is ever-arising stimuli, causing individual forms to shift and change form in some way—that is, to transform. This stimulus, which is Original Creator Source’s aspiration for novelty—or newness—is equally inherent in, and activated and detected, by our senses. That is, if we didn’t have senses, we wouldn’t be stimulated to transform. All physical and non-physical senses are affected in this way.

       What lies beyond this edge? Nothing until we get there. As a natural course, one is brought up against one’s edge as a result of Authentic Self’s directive to transform. One feels suffocated in a relationship, or stifled by a career, or bored by the current lifestyle. A barrier to movement, the edge is a result of the ego-mind’s need to control. It uses anxiety to keep an individuated Authentic Self from moving beyond the edge and hence from transforming. The ego-mind drives our mind-body vehicle around and around the perimeter of our experiential sphere. This habitual circumnavigation, which often becomes obsessive and compulsive behavior, causes unrelenting emotional, mental, and physical stress. As a result, Authentic Self is unable to inherit its Divine Realm as infinitely bestowed by Original Creator Source, and instead endures a frozen hell of restrictive movement, masterminded and ruled by the ego-mind. This restricted movement, as directed by the ego-mind, is also a limited attempt to simulate Original Creative Source.

Waiting

       Being future-oriented, the ego-mind cannot wait. Instant gratification is its motivation. Addiction of some kind—mild to wild—is the eventual consequence. The ego-mind can simulate waiting in the form of a simulate self, which uses patience as a form of control to endure hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience against one’s true, authentic desire. The ego-mind neutralizes our ability for self-control and the ability to tolerate delay.

       Waiting, which is inherent in the nature of Authentic Self, is not meant here as patience. Because it is oriented in the present, Authentic Self has no need for patience and instead resides in resting in the feeling experience of Selfness. For Authentic Self, waiting is rest—and it is always at rest. For the ego-mind, which uses thoughts to generate a simulation of experience, waiting is unthinkable and unimaginable. Imagination and rest belongs to Authentic Self; worry and unrest belong to the ego-mind. Authentic Self has neither knowledge nor fear of death; the ego-mind lives to destroy this serenity.

       Authentic Self can imagine experiences that appear to call for endurance if It so desires. But its nature is to enjoy rather than endure an experience. “Enjoy” is not meant here as the ego-mind’s concept of getting joy out of something. Rather, putting joy into something is what Authentic Self brings to the table of experience, at which It serves as the Good Steward. For the Good Steward, to enjoy is to give. To reside and rest in the feeling of authentic enjoyment is Authentic Self’s motivation. Joy is another word for that which gives life, or Original Creator Source, which is never-ending and unceasingly pours into one’s universe through the channel of Authentic Self. When joy is withheld from outflowing, the feeling of life shuts down. Depression, illness, and the eventual cessation of material existence are the resulting effects.

       Authentic Self becomes consciously aware of anxiety when it finds the edge of a simulate self’s sphere of existence. If Authentic Self is in the driver’s seat it can choose to pull over and stop and make observations and choices about what it sees as opportunities for change, rather than as barriers against danger. We all know what it’s like to come up against our life’s edges. For those who have been endeavoring to raise and sustain spiritual consciousness there may be the additional experience of not being able to turn around and go back, once up against the edge. This has been described as being on the edge of a cliff, over a dark abyss, or within a cloud of unknowing.

       This is where waiting, or resting in the feeling of Authentic Self, comes in. When unknowing arises, one has simultaneously reached the feeling of Authentic Source. A simulate self will avoid the cliff’s edge. Authentic Self, having awakened to the truth of its immortal existence and to the lie of death, will be able to contain anxiety while resting in mental stillness at the edge, and even bring joy to the experience. It may choose to rest as long as it wants, or to examine the belief system generating the barrier. It makes this examination by focusing its full, attentive awareness upon the belief system. Under Its quiet gaze—“quiet” meaning without the ego-mind’s critical chatter—the belief system will be revealed as a misunderstanding, and then fade back into the nothingness from whence it came. The barrier dissolves and Authentic Self, as an individuated mind-body, can then move in the direction it chooses.

       Authentic Self may also decide not to move, or perhaps to jump off the cliff. Having reached an awareness of its wings of immortality, fear no longer prevents or accompanies its choices. Whatever happens, there will be unlimited opportunity to bring joy along as a companion.