The great striving towards higher consciousness is different from other goals we set out to attain. It’s not like wanting to lose weight by going to the gym three or four times a week to burn calories. It’s not like setting aside a certain time each day like you would to pursue a skill in the martial arts, or meditation, or yoga. Rather, it is a gradual but ultimately total consummation of the false by the Real. It becomes a way of life. It’s a moment-to-moment process.
What happens is that our hearts get to a point where experiencing higher consciousness becomes every bit as essential and vital as the air we breathe. Why? Because higher consciousness is Divine Presence. The heart recognizes the Divine Presence as none other than the Divine Beloved – the Christ, the Avatar, the Saheb-e-Zaman, the Buddha, the Ancient One. When that point in higher consciousness arrives, life undergoes a revolutionary shift. Priorities change. And there is no going back.
It is like a pregnant woman. She knows life is developing within her and she is not going to do anything that would be harmful to that life. A bond forms. Love becomes the priority.
As we love, our vibrational level rises. When the vibration of higher consciousness becomes our reality we become attracted to the aspects of life which are more subtle, more beautiful, more refined. Inner experience becomes primary over outer experience. Coarser desires are replaced by higher desires. It’s not like we deny ourselves old desires. The old desires just no longer satisfy us. They fall away.
With higher consciousness comes a more complete alignment with love. And love becomes what we seek. Everything we do in life is motivated by love and is suffused with love. Our actions no longer entangle us in the world, but untangle us.
As we make efforts towards higher consciousness in our lives, the Divine Presence, using its Infinite Intelligence and Infinite Power, paves the way. Metaphorically speaking, we get a car to take us to the journey’s end but how do we get there? And suddenly a road appears where before we saw only jungles and mountains. Doors open and barriers come down. He who finds himself in the presence of the Divine has no idea how he got there. For behind the scenes is the power of an invisible hand — Divine Grace.
In the final analysis, we are not the limited beings we have so long taken ourselves to be. In essence, we are one with the Divine – unlimited and infinite in every way. We are spirit and we don’t have to wait until we are dead to experience it. We can live the life of the spirit every moment. And in that sense, every moment in life is as special as any other moment. For each moment is alive with divine possibilities.
Love is the medium of exchange. The more we love, the less the mind can impose its limits. For it is the mind that gives us our false identity – that we are finite and mortal.
But the heart, unburdened of mind’s limitations, knows otherwise. It knows itself as formless and timeless. And therefore, when we love, we become the vibration of spirit; the eternal soul that has no opposite, no limitation.
This great striving towards higher consciousness is a journey of the false being consumed by the real, of our limited self being consumed in the fire of Divine Love.
