Religious experience

The Tipping Point

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consciousnessOwen K Waters – Until today, reaching spiritual consciousness has always been a challenge for humanity. The stages of human development range from caveman to cosmic consciousness, starting with six basic stages followed by six spiritual stages.

Today, humanity at large stands in the latter part of stage five of the twelve, which is the mental or intellectual development stage. Meanwhile, every day, people are making the transition into stages six and seven. The Shift is gaining momentum as more and more people move into these stages, both of which are heart-centered in nature.

Stage six is the lower heart phase where community and world awareness awakens and stage seven is the upper heart phase of spiritual awakening. The doorway to spiritual consciousness is through the heart, when the person moves from stage six into stage seven.

Centuries ago, in Eastern cultures, spiritual aspirants would have to dedicate themselves to long hours of daily meditation in order to reach that stage of spiritual awakening. Then, upon reaching it, they would become self-motivated to continue along the path of spiritual unfoldment.

Centuries ago, in Western cultures, the entryway into spiritual development was by adopting religious self-discipline. By limiting the diversion of selfish pursuits and focusing on deity worship, the aspirant could eventually become awakened to higher states of consciousness. Then, upon reaching that stage, they would become self-motivated to continue along the path of spiritual unfoldment.

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Karma

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Eckhart Tolle | NewsletterAugust 2011

consciousnessQ:  You talk about Presence and Being as the keys to enjoying form, and creating positive circumstances, or softening circumstances. How does karma fit into all of that?

ET:  Everybody is born into a certain external environment. Also, everyone is born with certain predispositions – they may be partly genetic, they may be other things. A person is born with certain patterns, in other words. We don’t need to examine where they come from, but the fact is that a human being is born into a certain environment. It may be violent, or it may be relatively peaceful. A person is born with inner patterns that you inherit. Even painbody is partly inherited.

There’s a whole set of conditioning that happens when you come into an environment. The environment conditions you further, and there’s no choice involved – it’s just influences. You find yourself in this world with certain unconscious patterns that have become the conditioning of who the person is. Karma, as I see it, is the unconscious conditioning that runs your life. Karma is partly collective, and partly personal. You can only understand karma not as an abstract subject external to yourself, you can only understand it by observing yourself, and then you know many other things. If you want to understand karma, you need to look at yourself.

I began to understand what karma is when something arose that was not part of karma at all. Here is the key – the arising of consciousness, or Presence, or spiritual awakening, is not part of karma. It is another dimension that breaks into the karmic realm. You do not become awakened by accumulating, as they sometimes say in the East, “good karma”. That’s fine on this level, you can make the walls or furniture in your prison a little more comfortable, but there’s something totally from beyond karma, that can come into your life at any point.

Re-birth is of course part of karma. The deeper meaning of re-birth is identification with form. We don’t need to even believe in transmigration, or whatever, you can look at re-birth in your own life. Every time you identify with a thought that arises, which is form, you are born into that thought. Your identity, your sense of self is in it. That’s karma. Your karma is the unconscious identification with these patterns that you have inherited – the conditioned. It is complete identification of consciousness with the conditioned patterns. Consciousness is dreaming, one could say. That is why we use the word “awakening” in many spiritual traditions. Consciousness is awakening, consciousness is in a dream-like state, when you are identified with the unconscious patterns. Many times a day, you are re-born into an emotional or mental reaction, into thoughts that arise.

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