THE LADDER OF EXPERIENCE

Good Thursday to You!

Today is my day off before starting HLC 2 for five days here in Vista.

After I write this blog, I’ll head to Encinitas for a massage and steam. Then I’ll head home to relax, draw, and take a hike.

THE LADDER OF EXPERIENCE

Those of us with an awareness of the spiritual quest are all experiencing life in different stages of the quest; the spiritual quest may be defined as the quest for ultimate meaning and experience of life in and as love.

Ego-mind is the home of intellect, which is the individual’s faculty of mind; mind operates via the management and expression of ideas.

Ego-mind is the point at which we are “aware” of ourselves as something “other”. There is always a subject-object relationship at this level of experience.

The gift of ego-mind is that it allows love to become tangible as an experience in reality.

Without the ego-mind, there would be nothing to love – no me, no you.

Thought the intellect is powerful enough to build rockets, ipads, and other advanced technological systems, it always operates on the principle of exclusion; to know that “this page is white is to exclude the possibility that this page is black”.

As we evolve spiritually, we naturally come to a point in our lives where we realize that every idea, regardless of how “good” it seems to be, has inherent limitations.

For example, we all know that exercise is good for you, yet we also know that too much of it isn’t good for you.

Most of us with well-developed intellects have studied extensively. With that process, we all come to the point of realizing that all the “experts” don’t agree with each other; we are ultimately left to our own experience of another’s expertise to determine what is or isn’t true for us.

This is the nature of “experience” and experience is the only means of turning knowledge into wisdom.

Through the process of cultivating wisdom, we inherently find out that even seemingly good ideas don’t always work well in particular situations.

When we begin realizing the limitations of our own ideas, we enter into the realm of “awareness”.

Imagination is the process of recombining the idea existent within our ego-minds.

For example, with your imagination, you can create a myriad of ways to use a fork.

Intuition is a process of accessing the Universal Mind.

There, we can gain access to deeper understandings as to how any idea works within (our) reality.

Intuition then, is still a process that acts within and depends upon the principle of duality; the use of this, not that.

Insight goes beyond intuition in that it accesses pure thought or knowledge.

For example, intuition applied to the essential nature of your being can lead you to an awareness that you are an aspect of consciousness.

Insight will bring you to the point of knowing that what you are is even beyond consciousness as the basis of self-identity.

With insight, one can penetrate to the point of union with Self, yet Self is still an experience dependent upon the ego-mind’s perception.

When I experience “my” Self, I’m experiencing “my Self”, not “your Self” to the degree that it is my own individual perception.

Insight will afford the experience that what is beyond “my Self” is the “I AM”, but this “I” isn’t an individual “I”.

It isn’t even the Universal “I”, because the universe as you know it is still something tangible to the ego-mind’s perceptual faculties.

Insight brings pure knowledge. For example, when we know through insight that water in the ocean and waves in the ocean are one, we have pure knowledge.

That understanding doesn’t depend upon any other’s opinion. You can come to that awareness sitting in a boat on the ocean.

Through insight then, we can penetrate to the very core of our potential experience.

We can determine that what we ultimately are isn’t something that can be spoken about as this, or that.

We can experience the Absolute, and we can realize that we need our intuition, awareness, and our individual faculty of mind to harvest that experience and choose to alter our beliefs based on our own insight, which becomes our deepest sense of “knowing”.

Meditation is the process of experiencing this ladder of experience.

Once we climb this ladder, we are given a chance to relax and “know” that all is Perfect, Beautiful, Good and True.

The rest is just a means of coming to the point of enjoying what is.

It is my hope that you will climb your personal ladder of awareness and insight so that you experience the Perfect, Beautiful, Good and True in your own life as LOVE!

Have fun with the process!

Love and chi,
Paul Chek