Developing Consciousness:
Consciousness develops by moving our attention away from the activity within our subtle bodies (senses, emotions and thoughts) and towards our soul (higher self). Freeing ourselves from identification with our bodies is a particularly difficult and time consuming aspect of our evolution. It can only be achieved by refusing to pay attention to the lowest impulses of our subtle bodies, i.e. negative feelings, emotions and thoughts. This causes the lowest molecular types within our subtle bodies to gradually lose their vitality and become redundant; only then can they be replaced by higher molecular types.
In order to progress, we must free our selves from the automated patterns of our sub-conscious (by continually "watching" our consciousness) and identify more with our super-conscious (by meditation and "living in the now"). We must also dedicate our development towards the service of humanity, and not do it for personal gain. Caring not for our own development and putting the needs of humanity ahead of our own is the only way we can overcome our inherent egotistical nature and attain enlightenment. We shouldn’t ponder over how far we have come or how many incarnations remain, because these things don’t matter. What is important is to make the best of the incarnation we are in now. If we rush to achieve enlightenment we will never get there, because we will not have learned the most important lesson of all: You need to forget about your self in order to free your self. By helping yourself you help no one, but by helping others you also help yourself.
As we progress we must be careful not to develop a "spiritual ego" or think we are special because we are more advanced than others. A spiritual ego is no better than a regular ego but is a trap that we all fall into many times during our human development. It’s not possible to overcome the ego by fighting it head on because whilst our soul is centered in the first triad we are the ego, so it would be like punching our self in the face. The only way to overcome the ego is to transcend it; to move up to the second triad and become our soul. In order to achieve this (enlightenment) we must:
1. Disassociate our self from our ego (first triad or lower self) by actively putting the needs of others ahead of our own.
2. Identify our self with our soul (second triad or higher self) by mediation, contemplation, visualization, aspiration to unity and the development of virtuous qualities.
This dual-pronged approach gradually tips the balance of power in favor of our higher self and helps it gain control over the egotistical lower self.
We are born into this world with nothing and we can take nothing with us when we die, so what is the use in acquiring a whole load of material possessions in the middle? The only possession we can, and do, take with us at the end of an incarnation is our consciousness. So it follows that the only thing worth acquiring in life is a higher level of consciousness – nothing else matters. Getting an education, holding down a good job, being rich and famous, getting married and having children are not our primary goals; they are just secondary factors that facilitate life on Earth. None of these factors directly contribute to our primary goal – the development of consciousness.
The average person believes their persona is their "self". They therefore live to satisfy the persona’s desires and consequently make little progress with the evolution of their soul. They say "you only live once" and feel they must accomplish and acquire all they can before they die – to them there is no meaning of life. That kind of thinking dominates the vast majority of our human incarnations, which is why our progress is so slow. But eventually we grow tired of life on the merry-go-round and start looking for something more. That is the time when we need to know the meaning of life, because without knowing what we have to achieve; how can we achieve it? Once we focus on our goal we can begin to make some real progress.
Every individual is a unique character with a unique set of life experiences, and most people’s mission in life is simply to gain more experience – gaining experience to take back to the soul so that it can be used to create a better "persona" next time around. Life is just a sequence of scenarios and situations which our consciousness can use for its development:
Qualitative development – the refining of consciousness towards emotional, intellectual, moral and spiritual perfection.
Quantitative development – increasing the quantity and power of refined conscious energy. It is essential to increase the quality before increasing the quantity or else the power is likely to corrupt the persona.
To give our lives meaning we need to make the most of the opportunities that confront us. We need to remember that everything in life is an opportunity for our consciousness to develop. We must not squander those opportunities or waste our lives on meaningless activities or get overly caught up in emotionality of life. Life is a long series of present moments that can only be experienced in the "now". So don’t waste your present moments agonizing over past moments or worrying over what you might experience in future moments.
Life is cyclic in nature and involves a lot of repetition, but human beings are generally slow learners. We may incarnate into human form a hundred thousand times yet no two lives will be the same, each will (hopefully) be a slight improvement on the last, drawing on the lessons previously learned. The same applies to all existence; each manifestation is slightly more ordered and less chaotic than the one that preceded it. The ultimate goal of existence is the omniscience, omnipotence and liberation of all souls. As always, there are those who surge ahead, those who go with the flow and those who lag behind. None of these paths is any better or worse than the others, because all paths lead to the same goal and all will eventually achieve that goal.
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