Category Archives: B Ch 4

The Time of Testing

B 4 The time of testing

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4 The time of testing 

4.1 The unifying power of karma (below contents).

4.2 Intuition and karma.

4.3 How karma operates.

4.4 Why you are tested.

4.5 The successful outcome of the tests.

4.6 The unconditioned state.

4.1 In what way is reality a unity?

 

We can only understand and live our lives fully when we experience reality as a unity. No one is exempt from this. Anything less is a life unfulfilled, except by illusory satisfaction in transient attainments.

 

It is beyond the scope of this book on implicate technology to guide you along the path to the final stage of enlightenment, the understanding through experience of the unity that is reality. But although this book is primarily aimed at guiding you towards the first stage of enlightenment, the basic skills it teaches, when fully developed under careful guidance, will take you all the way to the final stage of enlightenment. This chapter teaches the unity of reality from a perspective accessible to an ordinary intelligent person.

 

In reality, everything which happens to you, every set of circumstances you experience, forms an infinitesimal part of an inconceivable, unified whole. From the viewpoint of ordinary, everyday awareness, the conditions of life are not experienced as part of an organically unified and meaningful whole. The first step in going beyond the relatively illusory sense of individual separateness is to understand the all-embracing and unifying power of karma.

 

In our late-twentieth-century secular culture, we are well used to analysing everyday situations in terms of seven of the ten conditions already mentioned – physical, emotional, intellectual, moral, social, political and economic. The full teachings on space and time, understood through experience as inseparable parts of a unified whole, lie outside the scope of this book. When you understand through your everyday experience these teachings on karma, you will have gained a new way of realising the inherent richness and unity of your ordinary life.

 

The unified process that is reality, always unfolding now, configures each circumstance of your life with absolute love and compassion. At every moment, you are tested by karma to aid you in your development along the path towards the final enlightenment. Through these tests, karma guides you towards the next step on the path ahead.

 

From the perspective of ordinary day-to-day awareness, reality cannot be experienced as a coherent unity. The machine that is reality devours the works of the component personalities. These personalities operate together, according to the inherent, implacable, implicate laws, to experience the process that is reality. Within each personality this is experienced as the suffering caused by life’s difficulties.

 

In reality, there is only, ever, the here and now. Life is, and each moment contains infinite potential. In reality, your life is infinite in its potential for fulness.

 

 

B 4.2 How is one to develop an understanding of the workings of karma?

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4.2 How is one to develop an understanding of the workings of karma?

 

Karma is one of the ten fundamental conditions influencing every situation you experience in your life. Through the workings of karma, you will come to understand the purpose and meaning of your life. Through the daily practice of meditation, you will develop the ability to harmonise your choices with the direction karma indicates for you

 

One of the fruits of meditation is the development of your intuition or sixth sense. Use this intuitive sense to develop your ability to understand the karmic implications of each situation you experience. This ability is developed through understanding life in the context of your karma.

 

Be clear about this: your day-to-day suffering, your ordinary distress from the pressures and complexities of your life, has meaning and purpose. The purpose of karma is this: once you have learnt the lesson karma is teaching you in each situation you experience, karma will configure the circumstances of your life so that you are able to learn the next lesson. Once you have attained the psychological enlightenment you will have the ability to move in harmony with karma.

 

B 4.3 What are the workings of karma?

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4.3 What are the workings of karma?

 

Karma and unbounded compassion intertwine indistinguishably to shape every moment you experience. This compassion is not apparent within the terms of your personality, although in a religious sense, it is accessible through faith. The unified process which is reality, and each of its component parts, are configured to operate in profound harmony through the workings of karma, all shaped by absolute compassion.

 

Karma embodies the moral force inherent in reality. We are all component parts of the one reality, operating within an infinite framework of actions occurring on many levels of reality simultaneously, yet united in meaning. Each choice you make, each action you take, operates within an implacable moral framework configured so as to direct the growth of understanding of your own nature.

 

All religious or secular moral codes are relatively illusory in the face of the implacable moral force governing every situation you experience. By your actions, you can lie to yourself and other people. Your lies, to yourself and others, are no secret in the face of reality.

 

Any action can be justified within the terms of one moral code or another. In reality, many actions you experience emotionally or morally as valid or necessary can be seen, in a wider context, as self-deceiving. Karma is the process whereby reality structures the circumstances of your life to develop the understanding of your own nature.

 

Reality is experienced, once the first stage of enlightenment is attained, as layer upon layer of meaning, as infinitely expanding layers of context. Actions seen as harmless in one context are understood as selfish in a wider, more enlightened context. Your karma will always direct your awareness to the next context in which you should understand your situation.

 

When you learn the lesson karma is teaching you, at any time in any situation, the causes of your suffering will, in time, cease to occur. When you experience the difficulties of your life as recurring patterns, that is a sign that you have not yet understood the karmic purpose inherent in your situation. When you experience the difficulties of your life as spontaneous occurrences, within a context of enlightened awareness, that is a sign that you are working in harmony with karma.

 

Most of your karma is generated and experienced through personal, social and economic activities. Through the actions you choose to make, the extent to which you understand your own nature is revealed in the face of reality. Reality spontaneously structures your life circumstances to direct you, through the workings of karma, to understand this or that aspect of your nature.

 

Your karma is a result of the choices you make. Creating negative karma results in unhappiness and suffering; creating positive karma results in opportunities to grow in the understanding of your own nature. Reality, the whole machine and its component parts, is an organic self-balancing process occurring simultaneously on many levels.

 

Karma is configured to test you, not you to test karma: be sensitive to the power and direction of karma in your life. Karma is more terrible than anything humanity can devise and more arousing than the gentlest caress of impassioned lovers. Always try to understand each situation you experience in terms of your karma: you are a component of reality – be willing to learn the lesson reality is teaching you at each moment.

 

B 4.4 What is the time of testing?

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4.4 What is the time of testing?

 

Karma tests and guides you at each moment of your life. Every moment of your life is an opportunity to advance further along the path along which reality is guiding you. Committed daily practice of the meditation, together with these teachings, will empower you to understand the truth of this through experience: no belief is necessary, although in the initial stages it may help, according to your nature.

 

The tests, imposed on your life by karma, become more concentrated, more severe, as you approach the first, or psychological, stage of enlightenment. This is experienced as a period of great complexity and difficulty in your life. Committed daily practice of the meditation will empower you to resolve and leave behind the difficulties of this stage.

 

The purpose of this period in your life is to test your capacity to be objective about what you experience. Your primary psychological characteristic, prior to the first stage of enlightenment, is to experience reality through the filter of your emotional and intellectual projections. This emotional and intellectual subjectivity of your ordinary personality becomes understood as self-deceiving and illusory, relative to the post-enlightenment objectivity which you will attain when you have freed yourself from emotional and intellectual limitations.

 

These emotional and intellectual projections are to be understood in the way you see things, as coloured by your own attitudes. Learn to become aware of the reality of situations, independent of your needs and desires. The method of achieving this is committed daily practice of the meditation, understood within the context of your ordinary daily life.

 

Through the workings of karma, you are tested by the circumstances of your life. This is a natural consequence of your awareness moving outside your personality and towards wholeness. The circumstances of your life come together spontaneously to test how far your self-awareness has developed and how capable you are of operating with a sense of detachment from your own needs and desires.

 

You are being tested on your ability to operate at arm’s length from the constraints of your personality. The key to release from the pre-enlightenment tension into a serene objectivity in the midst of conditions lies in gaining detachment from the all-pervasive influence of the emotions. Practical advice on the handling of your emotions is contained in chapter 6.

 

B 4.5 What is the successful outcome of these trials?

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4.5 What is the successful outcome of these trials?

 

In the words of the ancient, pre-Christian, Druidic and Pagan Western Mystery traditions you will have died and been reborn. In the Christian sense of this, your old self will have died to be reborn in the love of Jesus. In the terms of the Jewish Kabbalah, you will have obtained the intermediate state of mind of a benoni.

 

You will be an initiate who has become prepared, by enduring and triumphing over the trials of your life, for the work of developing your understanding, through experience, of the implicate links between your nature and reality. Through this work, you will come to experience that, in reality, all people and things are indivisibly intertwined and enfolded in an inexpressible unity. The function of implicate technology is to provide you with guidance, based on experience, to help you along the way.

 

Within the terms of implicate technology, you will have experienced a shift in consciousness, from an awareness of reality confined by the relatively illusory limitations of your personality, to a clear, serene awareness of reality, quietly rejoicing in the freedom of the transpersonal self. This will be your achievement and yours alone; the responsibility for your attaining enlightenment is yours alone; equally, if you develop unwavering* determination, in the face of reality, to endure and learn through time, there are no hindrances to enlightenment which you cannot overcome. In a psychological sense, you will have realised the unconditioned state.

 

 

 

 

B 4.6 What does it mean to realise the unconditioned state, in a psychological sense?

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4.6 What does it mean to realise the unconditioned state, in a psychological sense?

 

As taught in chapter 3, in reality, every experience of your life is bounded by a specific configuration of the ten conditions. The specific details vary from life to life, and from situation to situation. What remains constant is the influence, on your life, of these ten conditions at every moment.

 

The successful outcome of attaining the psychological stage of enlightenment involves transcending the relatively illusory limitations of your personality. Put simply, you go beyond your emotional and intellectual conditioning. You are able to exist, in your daily life, in a state unconditioned by your previous emotional and intellectual constraints.

 

This is a state of clarity, serenity and quiet joy, where you are centred in the midst of conditions, becoming increasingly free of the thrall of your needs and desires, accepting reality as it unfolds to your awareness. The world is as full as ever of people and things you need and desire; only now you become increasingly freed to react or not, in any situation, according to your intuition. Your life is no longer as constricted by the emotional pressures and intellectual preconceptions of your personality; instead, by a process of natural, spontaneous growth, you are developing an unfolding vision of yourself and others as components bound by implicate laws to the unified process that is reality.

 

From the transpersonal point of view, this is experienced as a great release from life’s burdens; the burdens may still be there and have to be endured, but one’s attitude to them has profoundly altered. Through a growing feeling of reconciliation and harmony with all that happens, one experiences the movement of responsibility for the direction of one’s life to a force both within and outside the self. It is a feeling of free dependence, based on a calm acceptance of the harmony inherent in reality.

 

This free dependence on reality is your birthright. It is yours simply by committed daily practice of the meditation, coupled with sustained effort to understand your life in the context of these teachings. In this way, within a hundred days, it is possible to attain the first, or psychological, stage of enlightenment.