The Call of Higher Consciousness

The Call of Higher Consciousness

We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be. — Etty Hillesum

Without a deeper understanding of my various and changing states of consciousness, and without a better understanding of what is possible, I am trapped in a cycle of pursuing worldly things – things that don’t return happiness, things that confuse me, things that produce a false sense of value, things that are false in so many senses of the word. Without self-remembering I am asleep.

Yesterday was Father’s Day in the U.S., which I celebrated with my son, and I also called my father to wish him well. My son gave me a gift, a bear bell to attach to my backpack so that when I hike this summer, I will make noise to startle bears away if we were to be in their vicinity. Very scary, but practical!

It dawned on me that what I also need is a higher consciousness bell, and from one perspective I already have it – the bell is the Work. From my experience, sometimes my internal efforts ring such a bell and sometimes it rings by itself. The higher beckons itself. In either case, the true Self is present.

This capacity for a higher state of consciousness is self-remembering or the third state, as we call it in the Fourth Way. It’s a state of self-awareness, a state in which we have a cleaner and clearer understanding of our place in the greater surroundings. It’s simple. It’s quiet. It’s unpretentious. It brings a sense of detachment without being uninterested. This feeling of separation is like a pause button on a television in which the show is still there and running, but we’ve somehow stepped aside from it. We see ourselves watching the program.

Our higher parts have emerged, and we receive the world unclouded. Many religions talk about lifting the veil or clearing the fog of sleep. Unveiled, this is the state in which we see more deeply. We don’t judge the world. We feel love more genuinely and we want harmony. Such a realization of harmony and living in Presence is a higher state of consciousness. In this state, I don’t want to change anything externally. I don’t expect anything to be different. I accept and I love it as it is. I see the world more objectively, and a sense of curiosity and love permeates me – the observer – and its observations.

I am as simple as “the growing corn or the falling rain.” I am . . . if I can only keep it.

How can you and I encourage self-remembering in our daily lives? Do you wonder whether it is possible to sustain this state of just being?

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Rembrandt van Rijn, The Mill