Book Title: Unlimited Horizons
Author(s): Hermann Kuhn
Publisher: Crosswind Publishing Germany
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/007526/1

JAIN EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL FOR PRIVATE AND PERSONAL USE ONLY
Page #1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Unlimited Horizons Hermann Kuhn Page #2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Unlimited Horizons This book was created with utmost care. Nevertheless the author and the publisher disclaim any liability for any direct, or indirect or consequential damages related to any statement or opinion published in this book. Visit our website unlimited - horizons.de - information - forum - meeting place - Email publisher: crosswind@unlimited-horizons.de Email author: author@unlimited-horizons.de Crosswind Publishing PO Box 2210 31505 Wunstorf, Germany Fax: 0049 - (0)5033 - 911 045 Artwork: Tanja Lohmann, Germany German title: Hermann Kuhn - Unbekannte Horizonte All rights reserved - Printed in Germany Copyright © 2007 Crosswind Publishing, Wunstorf, Germany ISBN 978-3-9811466-9-1 Page #3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Contents CONTENTS WHAT's Your REALITY ?..... A ROADMAP ... ................ 33 .. 41 42 65 THE MAP STAGE 1 - Entanglement. STAGE 2 - Downfall.............. STAGE 3 - Fragile indecision .. STAGE 4 - First clarity ............... STAGE 5 - First focused activities .............. STAGE 6 - Freedom from pain STAGE 7 - Acceleration ......... STAGE 8 - New inner powers.................... STAGE 9 - Expansion of Self... STAGE 10 - Free from all addiction .................. STAGE 11 - First glimpse of real power ......... STAGE 12 - Unobstructed perception ............ STAGE 13 - Total knowledge .......... STAGE 14 - Last restrictions end Sovereignty / Freedom ......... Diagram of all 14 Stages........................... ..... ..... 71 ............... 72 75 77 79 Page #4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Unlimited Horizons CHALLENGES HOW TO DISSOLVE CHALLENGES 1- To Understand What Life Is All About, and How to Handle It Efficiently 2 Error / Confusion - 3 - Joy of Life 4- Aggression / Anger 5- Being Attractive 6- Pride / Arrogance 7- Status and Recognition 8- Deception / Manipulation 9 - Fear, Worry, Boredom, Insecurity, Disgust... 10- Addiction / Greed OBSTACLES Hunger, thirst, heat, coldness, insects etc. ...... Illness, pain Craving for stability. Sitting on soft cushions Fading Insults, slander, abuse Difficulties Unwillingness to accept necessary help or to ask for support 89 101 105 114 124 134 145 149 158 162 173 185 197 198 198 200 201 201 202 203 204 Page #5 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Contents .... 205 208 ........ Failure to obtain help Lack of sincerity .......... 206 Vanity because of 'great' learning ... Lack of knowledge, ignorance ..... .. 209 Spiritual Communism ... 210 Disappointment because we fail to gain supernatural powers 211 Aimless actionism .................................. ... 213 Waiting-mode ......... 213 .............. .................... DEAD-SURE INVESTMENT 215 How to BEGIN 221 MANY ARE CALLED, BUT WHO IS CHOOSING ? - A PERSONAL NOTE - ... ......... 231 THERE'S NO COPYRIGHT ON CONSCIOUSNESS ..... .. ....... 236 Page #6 --------------------------------------------------------------------------  Page #7 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ You reached a limit. You start to think life should be more, - that this can't possibly be everything - So why not look at this second opinion how the world functions. • It gives you insight how the whole game works. • It tells you of unknown abilities hidden deep inside you. • It shows you where to find the new horizons you've been longing for. Take a look, - what can you lose. You sometimes feel like waking up, - a flash of great clarity that's gone in a second? And you remember vividly you felt the same three weeks ago? Page #8 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Unlimited Horizons And you ignore these flashes since no-one ever talks about it? These flashes are glimpses of deeper functions of your mind. They are part of an ongoing process that makes your life expand. Being aware of this process opens life for a far wider range of experiences. It gives you control over your fate. It makes interaction with others more efficient. It rids you of all boredom and brings back fascination and excitement. Life is and becomes what we believe and think possible. As long as we believe the world is flat, we never try to discover new continents (America, Australia etc.). As long as we believe man couldn't fly, we never build airplanes or spaceships to explore new worlds. Yet exactly such beliefs are active is us NOW. We've been told that inner dimensions don't exist - and thus never try to discover the unknown continents within us, - what life is all about, and what we really are supposed to do with it. This book shows layers of your life you aren't aware of. Page #9 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality? What's Your Reality? Many of today's people would probably spontaneously reply: 'Reality? That's working, eating, drinking, sleeping, recreation, family, friends, television and vacations. What's the point of your question?' - 9 And they are perfectly right: What they describe is their reality. It's one of the many possible answers. But what about the following situation? Every second billions and billions of stimuli meet our senses - the color and structure of the walls, the hardness of the chair we are sitting on, the different scents we smell, the sounds we hear around us, the dry taste in our mouth, some vague uncomfortable sensation inside our body, worries and thoughts that zip through our mind and heart, some unrest, emotion so fleeting that we are unable to assign it to any concrete experience - all this and much more reaches our inner and outer sense-organs. And how do we react to this? We close out this whole universe and direct our entire attention towards the rows of black letters on white paper in front of us and - Page #10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 10 actually not even towards the printed words, but to a meaning that kind of surfs on top of the black letters and just happens to stimulate our mind. Unlimited Horizons So now where's our reality of working, eating, drinking, sleeping etc.? Out of the billions of impulses presented to us second after second, we select a minute amount of material we allow to get through to us, to our awareness. We couldn't possibly attend to all the rest because it would overwhelm our consciousness and block us completely. We have to select. And this selectionprocess is so subtle, so automatic we hardly ever notice it. Only sometimes, when we abruptly come out of a state of deep concentration, do we become aware how much we closed out our surroundings. Now, we might think that this kind of selection is something we handle quite well, for example when we decide to read a book, to drive a car or to attend a lecture, - undoubtedly activities that require focused attention, a certain presence of mind. But let's see what our consciousness is really doing with us and how little we control this process. • How often while reading a book did we have to go over one particular paragraph again and again because our attention was drifting to some other subject? We wanted to read, but our selection process directed our attention towards something entirely different. Certainly, the words reached our eyes, but they didn't get through to our awareness. Something was closing the book to our attention, even though we didn't want to. - Page #11 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality ? • How often do we drive a car with our thoughts here, there, anywhere, but definitely not on the road? Did we ever ask ourselves who actually is steering the car? How often did we attend lectures - just remember school, - and our awareness wandered far from what the speaker was presenting? - Who or what made us leave the speaker's words and let us drift into a different world? Certainly not something we could control. And these are only rather trivial examples. How often did we reject our intuition though it was yelling at us and later proved it was dead right? How often did we follow our intuition? But who or what made that pro or con decision in each single instance? What makes us draw back from risk, - or go for it? What motivates us to do things we do not want to do? What makes us see a glass as half full, or half empty? Who or what made all these myriad decisions that brought us to our present state? - Was it really the 'I' we seem so familiar with? But what about those two, three important decisions in our life where we knowingly chose one particular path over so many others, - did we really have as much control as we assumed we did? Let's just look at the motive that really moved us at our time of decision, the real motive we wouldn't dare tell others, the real motive that was the true emotional cause for our determination to go for a career, an adventure, a partner, for security, responsibility, for challenge or for boredom. Let's just once - briefly - forget all those nice official reasons that so perfectly rationalize our decisions and let's look a little deeper than might be comfortable Page #12 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 12 Unlimited Horizons Was it the desire to impress the father - to gain his attention, his love, his respect, his admiration? Or was it the mother, the elder brother, the friend, or the old enemy? Was it the fear of poverty, destruction, of loneliness, of losing something? Was it the hope of meeting girls, boys, others, because we had little opportunity for that before? Was it the enthusiasm to achieve a certain goal - and who or what had caused that enthusiasm? Or did we only want to show others how brave we could be? - Were we really aware of all this when we made these important decisions? Were we really clear about everything that went on beneath the polished surface? No, let's not fool ourselves, - it's not us who select what reality to live in, it's the selection process that controls us. We are ruled by some unknown mechanism that makes thoughts, meanings, emotions and impulses for actions appear in our awareness. And we can only follow. We have no alternative, no concept how life could be without this automatic mechanism, can not observe this process from any outside point of view. - We have no idea what sometimes presents us the ever same painful events that keep tearing up our insides. None of the modern material concepts of the world gives us a key to this mechanism. Our personal reality - that what we vividly experience within ourselves and in our environment - is influenced by more than mere laws of matter. So - if we want to free ourselves from uncomfortable conditions and random events, if we want to steer our life on our own, then it is worth the effort to find out what really. WORKS in our life, - to find out what controls our selection process and how to take full charge of our fate. Page #13 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality ? And if we feel hemmed in by our present reality, then it's high time to ask how to break out of these limits, - and where to find new and broader dimensions that fascinate us again. Because of all these practical reasons, - never for mere theoretical pondering - it's worth to find out what kind of reality we currently experience, and how it truly works. So What Really Is Reality ? When life confronts us with crucial, personal problems, the current matter-oriented scientific explanation how the world works is utterly incapable of helping us, since it doesn't address anything that really moves us inside - fears, hopes, uncertainty, motivations, feelings. What Works ? What really works in our life is far more than just matter. • That what gives us motivation, drive and the energy to carry through with our ideas • what selects what we perceive, think and feel - and thus influences all our activities and our life's happiness • that what again and again confronts us with themes of life we are so tired of - all this is as real to our life as all the matter that surrounds us. Thus the following alternative model of reality sets OUR VERY PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS Page #14 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 14 Unlimited Horizons into the center, - just as we experience it now and all the time. It shows how to control the mechanisms that really steer our life, - it shows how to access innate, fantastic abilities we are entirely unaware of, - and it provides an unerring compass to locate where we are going and how to get there. Consciousness is the foundation that enables us to experience things, relationships and emotions in the first place. All our thoughts, and states like happiness, pain etc. relate to this center within us. We all use consciousness directly and intuitively. We handle this ability so expertly, we hardly ever think about it. Our consciousness is indestructible. It identifies with the form of the body we currently occupy. Thus when we enter a dream, we smoothly adopt our dreambody as carrier of our consciousness. - And as nimbly do we change back to our material body once we wake up. Even when we die, we only change our outer form - in a similar way as we leave the material body when starting to dream. Our I, our Self, our essence with all our experiences and insights stays intact, - we never lose it. We also take with us the abundance of experiences gained, all the sagacity, maturity, sovereignty we accumulated within. We might even choose to carry detailed memories to our next life, but this is rare. Most favor to keep new lives unencumbered by any recollection of past events. Our consciousness commands a number of extraordinary abilities of which we presently know and use only a minor part. These hidden powers activate automatically once we direct Page #15 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality ? 15 attention towards them. We only need to identify where and how they manifest in our life already now. Matter, Space and Time form the (material) environment of our consciousness. • Matter - is well known to us. It is the substance of all kinds of bodies, constantly moving because of its inherent qualities of attraction and repulsion and composed of energy-elements of extremely small dimensions. Space - enables material representation, expansion and contraction of the other elements. Time - enables the experience of consecutive events. In the West we picture time as a uniform line that comes from an infinite past to run into an equally infinite future. In these gigantic masses of past and future the present appears to play such minute part, it seems almost a miracle that we perceive it at all. Sure, it's easy to fix appointments with this time-line model, yet the time we encounter in our very personal life is far more elastic and has little to do with rigid.. constant intervals: - The minutes we wait for a root-canal treatment at the dentist's appear to us like hours, and hours spent with a person we deeply love seem mere minutes in the end. For our very personal life we judge time by the mood and intensity of what we experience, not by what watches count. Page #16 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 16 Unlimited Horizons We undertake enormous efforts to avoid times considered uncomfortable; - and even greater efforts to extend or bring about times we deem exciting. We base countless important decisions on this entirely personal, intuitive valuation what mood time triggers in us and how lively we feel while experiencing it. The conventional 'time-line' idea completely ignores this inner valuation and its enormous effect on us. Yet - even if it seems hard to picture a different model - the current 'line-of-time-concept' is not a law of nature; - it's only one of many possible ways to interpret what we experience. So - how do we really interact with time? Everything we do, all we experience, all we ever confront happens only in the PRESENT. . We take what we currently (want to remember and define it as 'THE PAST - - yet what fraction of this 'PAST' appears accessible to us at any given moment, and whether we see it in a positive or negative light, depends entirely on our current mood . We take our expectations, hopes and dreads and define this as 'THE FUTURE'. - yet what we deem possible for our 'FUTURE' may also change with every one of our moods. Page #17 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality ? 17 • What remains we either interpret as 'PRESENT', - or discard it because we don't know where to put it. Practically seen our life is only what we feel and experience NOW. - Even when we think of 'the past' or plan 'the future', we do this only in the present. Thus - if we want to change reality - to alter what we experience, - only what we do NOW - in the present - has an effect. Dreaming of better futures only, or waiting for some starting signal, or reminiscing bygone triumphs never moves anything. The PRESENT is THE ONLY time in which we access reality. As trivial as this may sound, few people are aware how much they ignore this fact. Most like to dream how they would like the world to be, without doing much to make this happen, and without ever trying something genuinely new and unknown. Time-slices Certainly, we experience time in small consecutive slices, - but not always. When we are learning something, - a sequence of movements, a new task, handling an unfamiliar emotion, facing a new challenge, - time presents us the respective events like in slow motion. We experience such episodes as sequences of outdrawn, lingering moments, - as if seen through a magnifying glass. Page #18 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 18 Unlimited Horizons This 'extending' of events - to show us a wider range of details, - is the main function of time. Once the learning is done, we automatically condense the newly acquired skills into one holistic experience, which we - from then onwards - do not experience as time-slices any more. One example: As a toddler we needed all our concentration to place our feet in such a way as to move forward without falling over. As a grown up we never even think of the complex mind-body coordination required to walk along a floor, run after a ball, or just to fill a glass of water without spilling. Another example: While learning how to drive a car, each single function, every single lever of the machine requires our deliberate conscious attention to operate. Yet once we got used to this process, we only think of our destination, of the road, of the task ahead, of a person we love etc. without much being aware that we are steering heavy machinery at considerable speed through often quite unpredictable surroundings. The fact that we keep on experiencing time-slices just means that we still are in a process of learning, only that our attention shifted to more complex tasks. We might not be aware that we are learning something, yet this doesn't mean that we don't. - It pays to identify what major themes engage our attention so intensely that time seems to expand while we experience them. Western science currently concerns itself only with matter, space and the timeline model. Page #19 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality ? Yet There's MORE to It All our actions, thoughts and feelings (our consciousness) continuously influence the three other elements - matter, space and time, - which again affect us in return. These interactions and the consequences we experience as a result are also crucial to our reality. Yet 'consciousness', 'matter', 'space' and 'time' alone do not explain these interactions well enough for us to fundamentally prevent negative experiences. We also need to know • how matter, space and time manage to dominate us - our consciousness - as intensely as we experience it now • why our awareness gets so attached to matter, space and time that we can't even conceive of an alternative state • how we dissolve and control this overpowering association between our consciousness and the three other elements, and • what we experience once our awareness becomes independent of matter, space and time How matter, space and time manage to dominate our awareness We currently focus almost exclusively on matter. This originates in a deep longing of ours to experience the state of embodiment. As long as we desire to encounter in bodily form all the values, ideals and dreams we feel within, we will experience a material environment. Page #20 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 20 Unlimited Horizons The activities of our body, speech and mind link our consciousness to matter etc. This is what allows us to experience the state of embodiment in the first place. There is no point to regard our body and its experiences as something base, bad or less evolved, as many religions do. And it is also of no use to deem valid only activities directed towards spiritual goals. As long as we desire bodily experiences, we have the natural right to shape this state in such a way that we can realize the values, ideals and dreams we feel within. Obstacles, resistance and problems we meet during the manifestation of our ideas only serve to correct flawed concepts of reality and to break up situations that lead to dead ends. It is our own will and our own awareness which cause both - positive as well as negative - experiences. We experience growth when we complete the themes of our current stage of development. This automatically triggers longing for new, more comprehensive, 'higher' states. We reach higher states faster, when we intentionally conclude themes that retain our awareness on lower levels. Our seemingly solid attachment to matter, space and time Our activities do not automatically attach us to matter, space and time. Yet if we react to an event with strong - positive or negative - emotions, this indicates that we want to engage again in this type of experience. Page #21 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality ? 21 This renewed emotional engagement creates a cycle that makes us experience the same type of events time and again. We then easily get the impression that we can't disentangle ourselves from these restrictive themes, that we are unable to experience something different. While trapped in this state, we cannot even imagine not to be firmly linked to our material environment. But - we do have the power and the right to choose which themes of life we want to be attracted to. Since it's only our. own - positive as well as negative - EMOTIONAL engagement that causes certain themes of life to confront us time and again, we are at liberty to dissolve (or intensify) this emotional bond at any time we want. Dissolving the link between our consciousness and undesired events It is not difficult to fundamentally free ourselves from unpleasant events and influences. We only need to neutralize our - negative or positive - emotional attachment to such themes. This is the only effective mechanism. Changing only the material circumstances never removes the very cause of a problem. As long as our emotions remain attached to a certain theme of life, we'll always feel drawn towards situations that make us experience this particular theme until we learned what we intended to learn by it. Rejecting a problem has exactly the same attaching effect as desiring a certain situation. Examples: If we want to escape our problems by moving to a far-away country, we always take the inner, emotional cause of Page #22 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 22 Unlimited Horizons our problems with us. We'll inevitably meet our problems there again, - only in different guises. Similarly we cannot escape fear by avoiding situations we believe will produce fear. This merely directs this negative emotion towards other situations, persons or objects. Only by courageously confronting our fears and thus realizing how unnecessary they are, will we be free of them. How to get rid of unwanted events Again this is easier than most people think. The key moment is the very moment our attention confronts an event or a stimulus for the first time. This is the brief initial period where we become aware of the stimulus, but our emotions are not yet triggered. At this particular point in time we often can freely decide how to respond to a stimulation. As long as we feel no emotional reaction to the event, we are not yet bound to its theme. If we now decide to follow a different (positive) line of impulses or thoughts, or refrain from reinforcing a negative emotional reaction, we detach ourselves from this type of situation. During this brief period when everything is still open, we have the power to end unwanted events for good. One practical example: We persistently feel irritated in the presence of a particular person. Yet at the very start of each meeting with him or her, there always is that brief initial period during which we are not yet irritated. If we - at this point in time - decide to maintain distance and equanimity, Page #23 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality? chances are great that our irritation will either not rise at all, or at least be significantly less intense. For future encounters we then have established a new pattern of behavior that will eventually free us completely from our previous involuntary reaction. more Certainly, this conscious steering takes energy, energy than falling into familiar irritation, - but this is only a small price to pay for freeing us from an automatic reaction that in the long run will cost us far more energy. What we experience once our awareness becomes free of all restrictions 23 - What do we feel once matter, space and time cease to limit our perception? Well, - we feel as if waking up from a long, intense dream. We regain command of the vastness of our consciousness, - a breathtaking depth of knowledge, energy, abilities and bliss. We experience such sovereignty, freedom and power as it appears unfathomable now. We reach this sovereignty on a self-determined path that frees us from our entanglement in mechanisms that blocked the unrestricted use of our awareness. The process is gradual. The more we dissolve these blockades, the more we experience our full inner majesty. Page #24 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 24 Unlimited Horizons The Purpose of our Reality is to enable us to physically experience our ideas, ideals, desires and fears (the themes of our life) until we gained optimal insight from them, and until the (completed) themes cease to engage our interest and emotions. It is not purpose of this reality to give permanence to material components that may accompany our actions. On the contrary - our reality continuously opens doors to ever new experiences that widen our understanding. What we experience is basically an exquisitely tailored, individual growth-process that enriches us immensely. The better we know how this process works, the more we can steer it, and the easier it becomes to end unpleasant experiences. Then we are free to enjoy the physical manifestation of our innermost desires in its entire depth and fascination. One Final Word This new picture of reality sets YOUR consciousness, YOUR perception in its center - as you experience it all the time. Yet the description only conveys a very first impression. If you desire a practical alternative to current materialistic ideas, - if you want real know-how that gives you power to truly steer your life, - then - Test the new concept ! Access it through your own personal experience. This is the central key to really comprehending it. Page #25 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What's Your Reality ? 25 Do not try to fit the new consciousness-concept into the old matter-based model. First of all - it doesn't fit in there, and second - you'll miss the core of the new model Take it as a plan what lies ahead, - as a roadmap to hidden regions of your mind. Direct attention towards flash-insights that already now show you how higher stages feel like. Experiment with new ways of action and break up entrenched emotional reactions. YOU can experience all abilities and inner dimensions mentioned in this book. Yet there's no point in theoretically discussing it as long as practical experience is lacking. And - don't be afraid to uphold both models for a while - the world won't come to a standstill. Page #26 --------------------------------------------------------------------------  Page #27 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ A Roadmap ... 27 A ROADMAP To UNKNOWN REGIONS OF OUR MIND ... Our consciousness is built like a multi-story palace. The higher the floor, the more we see of the surrounding scenery. On the roof we have full view of the entire panorama and unobstructed access to the sky. Yet in the present situation of the world almost everyone lives in the basement with no windows to the outside. Why ? Easy - the world simply forgot that higher levels of. consciousness exist. This is the only reason for this restriction, everyone is capable of living on any of the higher floors at any time he or she chooses. This book shows how to gain access to these forgotten layers of our consciousness. Page #28 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 28 Unlimited Horizons How to go about it ? Like in many adventures, it is a long lost map that shows the road to unknown regions of our mind. This map surfaced in an ancient Indian manuscript originating far beyond recorded history. It supplies a detailed chart how our consciousness is built. The scripture meticulously describes 14 stages human beings experience while exploring higher levels of awareness, - stages as accessible now as at the time the manuscript was written. How do these higher stages feel like ? And how can we access them? STEP ONE - Identifying the stage we presently experience Each of the 14 stages makes us experience a number of mechanisms (themes) that are unique to that level. Once we detect these themes and mechanisms in our life, we can easily identify what stage we focus on at present. A kind advice to everyone reading these lines the first time: - Be safe to assume that you spend most your time in STAGE 1 - no matter how spiritually active you are, how long you practice yoga, meditate etc. Discovering more fascinating levels of our existence is infinitely easier, if we do not imagine our starting point to be a stage where we would like to be, but which we really haven't reached (yet). Once we know where we are, we can easily identify and end all - uncomfortable - themes of life (dissolve the corresponding Page #29 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ A Roadmap ... 29 desires and fears) that retain our focus on our present level - if this is what we desire. STEP Two - Finding out which higher stages we have insights in already now We all experience brief, intense moments in which our awareness all of a sudden shifts to a radically different mode of operation - irrespective of the level we currently focus on. These are moments of extraordinary clarity during which we seem to wake up from the constant hustle-bustle of daily life. These moments are very brief, but usually highly agreeable and we mostly also remember that we experienced them 3 to 6 weeks ago as well. Flashes of this kind occur quite often, yet nobody ever talks about them, and so we generally ignore them and continue with our usual activities as if they never happened. Yet as fleeting as these experiences may be, they nevertheless • give us a taste how higher stages feel like • they prove that we are definitely CAPABLE of experiencing higher stages • and they show that our awareness spontaneously tends to activate higher functions. We only need to recognize, amplify and stabilize this natural ability. Being aware of the characteristics of higher stages enables us to identify which stages open up during our flash-insights. Page #30 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 30 Unlimited Horizons Dynamic moves How we reach higher regions is specified in detail for each stage in the following section. All that is required is willingness to comprehend and to invest energy into this venture. We don't need outside help, - no guru, nor any kind of organization, nor any special preparation. The mechanisms we employ differ fundamentally from stage to stage. The way we e.g. progress from STAGE 1 to STAGE 4 will not give access to STAGE 5 as well. We do not have to 'climb' the 14 stages one after the other. There's no need to 'complete' one stage first before we progress to a higher one. Flash-insights into higher stages inform us how previously unknown regions of our consciousness feel like. They show us what to expect on broader and deeper levels. They inspire us to seek out these areas again. Moves between distant stages (upward as well as downward) accelerate our development - if we recognize and put attention to this mechanism. We do not gain access to higher stages by 'accumulating knowledge' on the level we currently experience. The mechanism is entirely different: Once we completed the themes one particular level offers, our interest in this level dissolves. Our attention then all by itself shifts to a higher stage - like we grew out of small children's games into the far vaster world of a grown-up. Only STAGE 1 and 4 permit an indefinite duration of stay. All other stages last limited time. Page #31 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ A Roadmap ... 31 ALL stages make up the fabric of our personality Never discount anyone who presently experiences a 'lower' stage. In the end it is the experience of all stages that makes up the fabric of our character we are building during bodily manifestations. While on a higher stage we may recognize the - temporary - experience of a lower stage as being essential for further growth, and then voluntarily immerse ourselves into the greater emotional density and lesser comprehension of the lower stage just for this very purpose. The more we know how consciousness unfolds, the more sympathy we feel for all the paths this process triggers. Practical Tips • Let go of the idea that expanding your awareness is complicated, tedious, difficult, and may require renunciation or some kind of 'special technique'. Our consciousness unfolds as naturally, easily and automatic as we grew from a newborn child into our present form - if we only allow it to happen. • Get familiar with the functions and characteristics of the 14 Stages - i.e. with the very mechanism of your life • Determine which stage you mainly focus on at present • Identify the stages you access during flash-insights • Be certain that you truly experience higher stages during your flash-insights Page #32 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 32 • · Unlimited Horizons Identify which desires (and dreads) retain your focus on your current stage Finalize those themes of life (neutralize those desires and dreads) that block access to higher functions of your consciousness On all stages above STAGE 1, we clearly recognize who is on our present stage - and who focuses on lower ones. We may or may not be able to identify someone on higher levels, depending on how far we open ourselves to this perception. There is one rule however: - Whoever claims to focus on a higher level, for sure is not there. The urge to impress others with one's superior status exists only in STAGE 1. On all higher stages we realize the utter irrelevancy of trying to impress others by boasting, and clearly see through any such self-flattery of STAGE 1. We simply won't waste time on vanity because real expansion is far more fascinating. - Or - more poetic - Never battle narrow ideas - spread your wings to soar to the infinity of your own being.. Page #33 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 33 The Map Page #34 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 34 Unlimited Horizons Stage 1 - Entanglement Theme: Deeply absorbed by emotions, events, activity Subject to violent emotional storms Duration: unlimited STAGE 1 presents us an unending chain of situations we are deeply involved in. Utterly captivated by activities we initiate and by events the world confronts us with, we feel an almost inescapable compulsion to react to these events. We spontaneously evaluate situations either as positive (good), if they bring us pleasure, - negative (bad), if they bring us distress, - or as irrelevant, if they don't trigger feelings. Typical for this stage are unexpected, abrupt swings from highly positive to intensely negative feelings - and vice versa. While in this stage we are deeply convinced to be in complete control of our life. But a closer and deeper look reveals a drastically different picture: • How often do we feel victimized by events we hardly are able to bear, let alone control? Page #35 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 35 • How often are we really satisfied with our current situa tion and by the things we do and feel - and how long does this satisfaction usually last? • How often do our emotions tumble us from highest happi ness to deepest misery (and vice versa) in one single second without us having any influence on this process? How often is our attention arbitrarily drifting from object to object against our will - like a butterfly in the wind? • How often do we become so deeply involved in one particular idea, emotion or event that we cease to notice almost all the world outside this dense envelope? How often do we experience that any stability we worked so hard to achieve either breaks down in the end, - or solidifies our life so thoroughly that nothing is capable of moving us any more? A Dense Cocoon Surrounds Us We may feel perfectly normal, clear and in command in this environment, - but this is merely due to the fact that we neither know more gratifying and less arbitrary patterns of life nor even deem them possible. We identify completely with the limited portion of our. consciousness we are familiar with. Hardly ever do we become aware that we live in a cocoon of dense emotions which e.g. manifests in form of the 'endless. running commentary' with which our mind incessantly accompanies the banalities of daily life. We only need to recall our Page #36 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 36 Unlimited Horizons continuous inner comments on other drivers' styles when we steer our car. We only need to remember social meetings where we can hardly wait to talk of our own experiences - without ever hearing what others say. Intense shocks sometimes alert us to this condition, but we have no idea how to extract our attention from this almost hypnotic state. None of the goals we pursue on this level lead to the stable experience of higher stages. All convictions, opinions and viewpoint, all philosophies and belief systems we found our life on - irrespective if we developed them on our own or accepted them from others - retain us on this stage. Even if presented with information that might lead out of this, we either are incapable of recognizing it, take it for false, reject it because it irritates us, or deem our current ideas far superior. Yet it is easy to find the way out of this stage. We only need to grasp growth-opportunities we previously rejected. We only need to courageously try out new avenues that make us break out of the known circle of our life. We only need to physically manifest all those ideas we only dreamt about so far. Without this sense of adventure we remain subjected to the inertia, the arbitrariness and the emotional chaos of STAGE 1 till our life ends. How to Shift to a Higher Stage Would it be known how easy it is to permanently shift focus to higher stages, far more would go for it. Everyone has this ability. Page #37 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 37 There is no precondition, no need for outside guidance or assistance, no special knowledge, abilities, locations or guru to seek out, no preparation other than playfully acting on this basic information. The more we progress, the more we discover how it works. Everything we'll ever need for this endeavor already is within us. This is how it works: We all experience brief, intense moments in which our consciousness all of a sudden shifts to a radically different mode of perception. These are moments of extraordinary clarity during which we wake up from the constant hustle-bustle that surrounds us. These moments are very brief, but highly agreeable and we usually also remember that we experienced them three to six weeks before as well. Nobody ever told us how to interpret these fleeting flashes, and so we rub our eyes, choose to ignore them and continue with our usual activities as if they never occurred. Yet these moments are very precious. They are brief, spontaneous excursions of our consciousness into STAGE 4. They give us a feeling how the extraordinary clarity of higher stages tastes like. They provide a reference how to identify future occurrences of this experience. How to make these moments more permanent? Simple - OUR LIFE IS WHERE OUR ATTENTION IS Page #38 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 38 Unlimited Horizons Whatever we focus on, that part of our life becomes vivid. We all know this mechanism well. When we think of a task we intensely dislike, or a person we deeply love, that focus easily engages our entire being. Exactly this same mechanism we can also use to deliberately activate higher functions of our awareness. Once we start directing attention towards our moments of awakening as they occur, the higher stage shifts to the forefront of our awareness - as does any other theme of life that gets attention. Merely DIRECTING ATTENTION opens the door to new modes of operation of our consciousness. This simple mechanism is entirely sufficient to stimulate hitherto unknown abilities within us. Directly to STAGE 4 In STAGE 1 we spontaneously rise to a higher stage. These brief excursions occur naturally every three to six weeks; we don't need to stimulate them by any particular activity. The frequency and duration of these insights increase, once we direct attention towards them. Some may think to never have flash-insights. But often it is merely the label we assign these sudden 'bizarre' occurrences that prevents us from recognizing them, - we don't even know what to call them. Since nobody ever talks about these instances, we naturally assume that others do not experience them. Therefore we also do not talk about them and thus neglect to accept them as part of our life. Page #39 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 39 Yet everyone experiences these flashes. Give yourself two months to watch out for them, - to watch out for extraordinary, short-lived happenings in mind and perception. Being aware that moments like this occur, makes it far easier to identify them. When leaving STAGE 1 (in our moments of extraordinary clarity), we directly experience STAGE 4 without passing STAGE 2 and 3. Is It Dangerous To Shift Awareness ? One of the greatest barriers to experiencing higher functions of our consciousness is worry that this might destabilize life as we know it. Now - everything unfamiliar tends to trigger apprehension within us, whether it's a new job, an unfamiliar road, or the first approach to someone we fell in love with. Thus there's nothing unusual in feeling uneasy with activating new functions of consciousness. We simply are unfamiliar with our higher abilities. We simply don't know where this process may lead us. Yet shifting awareness is an entirely normal experience: • Just remember being a child, and then consider what you are now - didn't you enormously enlarge your inner and outer scope of life? From childhood onward our consciousness continuously expanded to embrace ever broader comprehension. The child we once were couldn't even imagine the abilities we would command as an adult. Page #40 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 40 Unlimited Horizons And the child continues to exist within us; - its experiences constitute a small, but indispensable part of our present awareness. • Just remember falling asleep. As dreams start, our awareness drifts into a totally different mode. We suddenly are able to fly, manifest things out of thin air, and expertly handle the most extraordinary abilities of ours, - all without a bit of anxiety. But most important - when shifting into a dream, we never lose our identity, our feeling of 'I', our sense of who we are, and the feeling of acting sensibly within our current (dream-)context. We Never Lose Our Identity When we consciously shift focus to a higher mode, exactly the same thing happens. Our consciousness soon embraces the new state without us ever losing identity or our sense of 'I'. Higher dimensions of consciousness are innate to everyone. The higher we go, the more we activate these inborn abilities and the better we can steer our life. Our identity never dissolves in this process. On the contrary - it expands into the magnificent being we deeply sense within. (If you read this the first time, it is recommended to continue with STAGE 4 now.) Page #41 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Stage 2 - Downfall Theme: The Map Duration: Transitory stage on our way down Clarity of STAGE 4 only a vague memory Few seconds 41 STAGE 2 is a brief interim level we transit while our focus shifts down from STAGE 3 to STAGE 1. The clear understanding we still could have regained in STAGE 3 is already lost with only a vague memory remaining. As we feel clarity slipping away, a notion of helpless regret briefly passes our emotions. More and more the hypnotic emotional cocoon of STAGE 1 takes hold of our awareness. Flawed impressions of what is real and what is not intensify. With pride and smugness rising we begin to regard our confining views as the only valid ones. The time spent in this stage lasts only seconds. Page #42 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 42 Unlimited Horizons Stage 3 - Fragile Indecision Theme: Learning how to decide for growth Clarity mixed with the pull towards the emotional density of STAGE 1 Duration: 2-3 min (max. 48 min) In STAGE 3 we experience the clarity of STAGE 4 and the pull towards the emotional involvement of Stage 1 simultaneously. Initially we are unable to perceive this stage. As long as our flash-insights into STAGE 4 remain fleeting, our descent to STAGE 1 happens too fast for any intermediary stage to leave impressions. Yet once these insights become longer and more intense (once we direct attention towards them), we begin to perceive the clear understanding of STAGE 4 and the emotional cocoon of STAGE 1 simultaneously. We experience this transitional state after we lost our hold on the clarity of STAGE 4 and are about to slip back to the familiar emotional cocoon of STAGE 1. Page #43 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 43 A State of Ambivalence This feels like a strange balance during which we neither want to regain the clear understanding of STAGE 4, nor to give in to the pull of the familiar hypnotic envelope of STAGE 1. With unseeing eyes we look at nothing in particular and mainly feel our indecisiveness inside. We are unable to act in this ambivalence. Rarely do we remain longer than 2-3 minutes in STAGE 3. The maximum time we can stay here is 48 minutes. As soon as this equilibrium gets disturbed and a tendency towards clear understanding or dense emotions emerges, we either regain STAGE 4 or fall down to STAGE 1. How to employ STAGE 3 Though we stay only briefly in STAGE 3, we should not disregard its impact. Here an important process takes place that stabilizes our access to higher regions. When we experience the vacillating ambivalence of this stage, we know for sure that we are in the process of falling down to STAGE 1. If at this time we make a conscious effort to regain clarity, we create a momentum that ultimately will shift our focus permanently to STAGE 4 irrespective whether each single effort is successful or not. - Page #44 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 44 Unlimited Horizons Stage 4 - First Clarity Theme: Directing our THOUGHTS towards freedom First clear insight how reality works Duration: PHASE 1 - 1 sec to max. 48 min PHASE 2 - limited duration PHASE 3 - unlimited duration Our first experience of STAGE 4 feels as if we suddenly wake up from a deep day-dream the hustle-bustle of life permanently weaves around our awareness. These are brief, delightful flashes of clarity, during which our focus spontaneously shifts to the world OUTSIDE the dense hypnotic envelope of STAGE 1. During these flashes we momentarily experience the first phase of STAGE 4. Unfortunately these flashes are highly fleeting. After a brief second we lose our grip on this level and fall back to the familiar worry- and desire-driven cocoon of STAGE 1. How to Stabilize This Fleeting Experience Nobody ever told us how to interpret these fleeting flashes. So we usually rub our eyes, choose to ignore them and continue with our regular activities as if they never occurred. Page #45 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 45 As long as we keep ignoring these moments of awakening. they will continue to be fleeting and only leave a vague memory. Yet once we start to focus on these insights as they arise, they soon lose their transitory character. They first expand to several seconds, then to minutes. Eventually we exceed the maximum time we can stay in this first phase and automatically advance to PHASE 2. This usually happens three to six months after we began directing_ attention towards these flashes of awakening. STAGE 4 - PHASE 2 - Getting Used to Clarity In this second phase all cravings, dreads, preoccupations and prejudices that trapped us on lower stages gradually cease to engage our attention. As we stop refueling these yearnings with energy and attention, - they consequently stop influencing us. This automatically lengthens the periods during which we are free from the hypnotic envelope that dulls us on STAGE 1. Sporadic Setbacks Yet some desires and dreads still linger on within us. Once they activate, they pull us down to STAGE 1. We thus lose our newfound clarity from time to time. We then easily forget the clarity of STAGE 4 or think it irrelevant, and get fully entangled in ceaseless action and overwhelming emotions again. This entanglement may last for long periods. Yet we have the power to shorten or to prevent this renewed preoccupation. As we get pulled back to STAGE 1, we now begin to perceive the strange indecision and ambivalence of Page #46 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Unlimited Horizons STAGE 3. If at this time we make a conscious effort to regain. the clarity of STAGE 4, we create a momentum that ultimately will shift our focus permanently to STAGE 4 - irrespective whether each single effort is successful or not. Eventually our interest in the hypnotic density of the lower stages dissolves completely and we enter the third phase of STAGE 4. STAGE 4 - PHASE 3 - Stability Once we reach this stable phase of STAGE 4, we are forever free of the hypnotic envelope that so many times compulsively turned our life into undesired, uncomfortable directions. Now none of the dense emotions of STAGE 1 attract us strongly enough to make us lose our clarity of perception. Any remaining attachment to the dense themes of STAGE 1, 2 or 3 dissipate in this third phase without manifesting much of. an effect. From now on we NEVER AGAIN fall down to Stage 1 to 3. The Gradual Dawning of PHASE 3 No special experience marks our transition from PHASE 2 to PHASE 3. Since we already experienced long stretches of inner clarity towards the end of PHASE 2, we barely notice that we entirely ceased to fall back to STAGE 1. Yet during this almost imperceptible transition our impartial self within awakens, the 'silver lining of awareness at the horizon of our consciousness never goes out again' - from now on inner clarity stays with us forever. Page #47 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 47 The more we listen to this awakening part of ourselves, and the more we transform our new insights into action, the faster we progress to higher stages. One Year to the Stability of PHASE 3 Most people reach this stable phase in ten to twelve months. How long it takes in a specific case depends on the intensity of our desire to explore higher levels and how much energy we invest to really experience this. The Static Character of STAGE 4 The stable third phase of STAGE 4 is highly static. Here we get easily trapped in a complacency that blocks all access to higher levels. This often manifests • as smug, self-satisfied contentment with the continuity with which we seem to grow as the stubborn conviction that we are progressing well on our path to real sovereignty as a preference for ritual and (spiritual) techniques instead of investing energy in gaining real understanding as a tendency to lean back in a supposedly 'detached' way and to observe, - rather than actively shaping our life along the new possibilities at our disposal now and facing the corresponding (possibly uncomfortable) challenges as a reluctance to define real higher goals for us, and Page #48 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 48 Unlimited Horizons • as an adherence to well-known, established paths instead of actively and intelligently confronting inner and outer conflicts. Yet in reality all this is stagnancy. What is lacking are the sweeping breakthroughs, the dynamic opening of higher stages, the distinct transition to superior dimensions of our being. We know precisely what emotions and activities we need to change to progress further, yet we DECLINE to transfer these insights into ACTION. - And this exactly holds us back. Without raising this extra energy, we never gain STAGE 5. Practical Tips • Directing attention towards flash-insights means to observe them with special alertness while they occur, - and to value them as genuine insights into STAGE 4. This soon causes the contrast between our flashes of STAGE 4 and the hypnotic envelope of STAGE 1 to become less pronounced. We get a feeling as if our insights become weaker and occur less often. Yet this is what really happens: - Our focus is shifting into a higher mode of operation and begins to accept this as its normal state. Once we get used to our new clarity, the contrast between STAGE 1 and 4 diminishes. When this begins to happen, we thus shouldn't continue to expect the 'ecstatic' feeling that up to now accompanied our insights into STAGE 4, but to shift focus to the clarity the higher stage offers. Page #49 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 49 From STAGE 4 onwards violent emotions like rage, arrogance, greed etc. are unable to overwhelm us completely. Yet at times their lesser intensities still considerably narrow our vision of life. Though we experience a pronouncedly different mode of functioning, we still doubt from time to time whether higher perception exists at all. - Simply ignore this doubt. How to Proceed to STAGE 5 ACTIVITY is the key that opens access to further (broader) regions. The leaden stagnation of the third phase of Stage 4 breaks up automatically when we act on our insights of what needs changing Page #50 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 50 Stage 5 - First Focused Activities Theme: Unlimited Horizons Duration: Directing our ACTIONS towards freedom First transfer of our insights into activity limited The rise to STAGE 5 may possibly be the hardest thing we ever do in this life. STAGE 4 brought us clear mental insight into the functioning of the world and our personal goals. In STAGE 5 we use this clarity to consciously direct our action towards ultimate freedom. Starting Needs Energy The transition from STAGE 4 to STAGE 5 can be compared to the beginning of a 'Jogging' -program. We know exactly that we need to do something for our body. Yet though we intend to start the program, we always put this off to 'tomorrow'. Eventually we take heart and really begin, but for some days experience only effort without enjoying it. We need to raise considerable energy to carry through. Page #51 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 51 - This initial phase corresponds to our experience of STAGE 4; - we somehow do something for our growth, but are not successful enough to gain more energy than we invest. - Then - after ten to twelve days - we notice changes within us. We feel more energetic, dynamic and radiate a distinctly stronger bodily presence. Our jogging runs automatic now and we begin to enjoy it. Transiting to STAGE 5 In a similar way we experience the transition from STAGE 4 to STAGE 5. At first it feels unfamiliar and strenuous to direct activities towards expansion. Yet once we get first positive results, we feel encouraged and notice that we now steer life far more efficiently than ever before - • We realize with growing clarity what is true and what is not, and what kind of action makes us expand • Our compassion and understanding of others intensifies. We become aware of issues that escaped us before • We begin to notice how much nature supports our growth • We sense something magnificent unfold within us In all this we are carried by an additional energy that amplifies all our efforts. We already know this additional dynamism from projects that inspire us intensely. Though working for these projects might mentally and physically exhaust us, the inspiration fuels us far beyond our usual limits of energy and ability. Page #52 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 52 Unlimited Horizons The Challenge As we enter STAGE 5 we fully recognize what lines of action lead to greater freedom, but initially REJECT to transfer this insight into action. We know exactly what activities and emotions we need to start or change, but we don't act accordingly. We hesitate - • because we fear new attitudes and lines of action may change our life too deeply and too fast for our taste • because we are far too complacent to raise the neces sary energy, or • we simply lack courage. We find uncounted reasons to rationalize our procrastination. Yet there's no starting gun. We alone need to decide when to start acting on our insights. Nothing will ever change or expand in our life, if we don't start with it. Without going for something new, we'll keep experiencing the same old themes in endless repetition. As we tire of this monotony and boredom, we find the courage to begin. This means to actively engage in situations - agreeable as well as difficult ones - that are emotionally charged. This means to actively seek confrontation with persons or situations of whose (domineering) influence we want to free our life. It means to purposely create conditions in which long-unfulfilled desires, dreams, ideas (and possibly also dreads) become real. The more energy we invest into manifesting these uncompleted themes, the faster more fascinating dimensions open up to us. Page #53 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 53 Real Inner Freedom There is no reason why any conscious confrontation should only be loaded with negative emotions. One example: Though we tend to feel burdened or timid when heading for a clash with someone whose power we fear, there's no compulsion to focus only on the tensions that might accompany the confrontation. If - instead - we see it as the decisive step towards freedom from the dreaded influence, this reinforces us with immense additional motivation, energy and dynamism. Any anxiety we may experience during the dispute lasts only for this meeting, while the outcome can easily open a new sovereign, unencumbered and independent life for us. And - no matter what the result of this confrontation may be - we always profit from it. We in any case experience new freedom because we now know how courageous we are. We realized that we do carry out what we set ourselves to do. And we released the pressures that accompany such unresolved issues. Unfulfilled Desires All aspirations, desires, hopes we forever keep postponing, for whose realization we never mustered sufficient courage, attach us to exactly these desires. As long as we avoid creating a reality in which these dreams can manifest, we'll always feel an urge to express them. Even if this itch appears to fade during the course of our life, this never dissolves the original bond. Unfulfilled aspirations are the main cause for further incarnations. We will always be drawn to new embodiments as long as longings for physical experiences remain unfulfilled within. Page #54 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 54 Unlimited Horizons Practical Tips • Even on STAGE 5 intense negative emotions may still dominate our actions and mood at times. Though we are aware of this emotional shadow, we can barely control our behavior and purposely steer our life during these outbreaks. This may disrupt the continuity of our growth once and again. Patience, understanding and perseverance help to overcome such temporary outbursts. The more we separate our emotions from material objects and worries, the more inner and outer freedom we experience. The more we recognize that progress depends entirely on how much energy we invest into acting on our insights, the more our environment supports our actions. Being Afraid of Our Fear Deliberate confrontation with situations whose outcome is uncertain and unforeseeable easily triggers initial fear or apprehension. Yet this fear and disquiet are an integral part of. the situation we intend to dissolve. Intentionally confronting touchy situations requires courage, but is highly effective. A successful conclusion becomes far more likely if we also prepare for strong emotional reactions WITHIN US and reserve additional energy for neutralizing our possible fears - apart from setting strong goals for the encounter. Page #55 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 55 Being afraid of the 'initial fear itself doesn't make sense. As long as fear is a theme of our life we cannot escape it by trying to avoid fear. By avoiding situations we believe will produce fear, we merely transfer this negative emotion to other situations, persons or objects. Only by intentionally confronting our fear - by realizing how irrelevant it really is - do we remove fear's original cause. How to Access STAGE 6 Roughly three months after we started acting on our insights, a surge of additional energy enhances our growth. During the three month following that, our new sovereignty stabilizes. The burden of touchy situations and unfulfilled desires diminishes. The basis for our first ecstatic breakthrough to STAGE 6 is established. The breakthrough happens after we completed manifesting our major desires, so our focus is not detracted by this any more. It is not necessary to physically experience all our desires and we also don't need to realize all minor details. It mostly is sufficient to manifest our two, three major dreams or challenges. On the basis of the new sovereignty gained we then evaluate our remaining desires from a new perspective. This often dissolves our emotional attachment to unresolved themes without us needing to manifest them. Page #56 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 56 Stage 6 - Freedom From Pain Theme: Unlimited Horizons Duration: Freedom from emotional pain Freedom from patterns of the past PHASE 1 PHASE 2 max 48 min - limited duration Reaching STAGE 6 moves us beyond emotional pain. Up to STAGE 5 we deem life only interesting when we feel a strange mixture of sensual and emotional excitement, apprehension and mild worry. In this state of thrill, we balance between excitement and emotional pain, - a state slightly out of the ordinary with heightened awareness of all our surroundings and feelings. One example: We only need to remember times when we soon had to leave someone we dearly loved. Though still together with our beloved, we already felt the pangs of loss. This strange mixture of ache and joy is what characterizes 'interesting times' in STAGE 1 to 5. On STAGE 6 we now move beyond this type of luscious pain. Ecstatic First Experience The first experience of this stage feels highly ecstatic. Immense relief sweeps all our being, dissolving all our worries Page #57 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 57 and fears. For the first time in life we are beyond the up and down of our feelings that so often made us swing between emotional ice and heat. Unknown heights of serenity, sovereignty and elation open up within us. It is as if an inner light has been switched on. This breakthrough gives us the ultimate solid confirmation that we really are entering regions of our life we were entirely unable to imagine on lower stages. Dissolving Patterns of the Past We realize how severely the thought- and emotional patterns of our past and the expectations (and dreads) we project onto the future limit our perception of the present. We recognize these deep-rooted patterns with such clarity that we can easily break free from their restrictive influence. One by one preconceptions, beliefs, emotions and prejudices that up to this moment locked our hopes and expectations into narrow limits, fall off like superfluous crusts. The tight band of events we previously felt and thought was our only conceivable path, now seems like a confining tube in which our life ran from a restrictive past into an equally restricting future. Our awareness begins to perceive the huge world outside this tube. For the first time we become aware that our real personality is far greater than the small part we perceive of it within the frame of our incarnations. We now are free to choose entirely new lines of thoughts and actions independent of previous mental and emotional patterns. A feeling of universal love rises within us, unconstrained by egoistic expectation and demand. In the beginning we feel like intoxicated as this immense potential opens up for our life. Page #58 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 58 Unlimited Horizons Instability Yet our superior experience is not stable. We drift in and out of this state. One moment we are deeply shaken by worries and fears that challenge us on lower levels, - and in the next our awareness propels us high above these narrow bounds and empowers us to imperviously observe them from a distant, uninvolved perspective. The Key to Stabilizing this Stage Consciously rising above the emotional attachment to lower themes of life is the essential key to stabilizing STAGE 6. This is how it's done: If we experience just once how STAGE 6 feels like - even if only for a short time - we become able to reach it deliberately. The euphoria we experience when entering this stage the very first time is our anchor. This unmistakable, intense feeling of serenity and inner peace tells us where to direct our emotions. Whenever a lower level entangles us (again) in confining emotional or material circumstances, we now can deliberately choose to either keep on experiencing the familiar painful feelings or to rise above them to the serenity of STAGE 6. To rise above we only need to shift our awareness to the anchor point - to how we felt on the higher stage, - then all painful feelings dissipate immediately. Our very decision to keep on focusing on the higher stage is what causes our ascent. Page #59 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 59 We do not try to remove factors that produced' our attachment to lower levels, we do not 'renounce' material condition, we only extract our focus from these confining bounds. We simply choose to orient towards far more attractive, sovereign dimensions within us. We let go our attachment to some parts of the material world because we recognize how much they constrain the bandwidth of our awareness. The restricting conditions might well continue to exist, - but only on a lower stage that now hardly holds our attention. Since we invest no further energy in them, they completely cease to engage our attention after some time. A Period of Lessening Excitement As we orient towards this higher understanding, we sometimes miss the thrill the lower stages evoked. We feel as if life suddenly lacks in excitement, - as if we lost something vital. Such experience gets triggered by reminiscing of heady, fast-moving, but bygone activities. The feeling of loss can be intense and may occur repeatedly. Yet these encounters last only limited time. They pass faster when we purposely direct our life towards the expansive future opening up before us now. Inner expansion provides far greater fascination than any mixture of thrill and pain could ever offer. From Now On WE Are In Command From STAGE 6 onwards access to higher levels becomes a conscious decision. If we decline to reach for more expansive dimensions, we continue to stay in lower stages; if we decide for higher experience, we ascend. We now have the power to Page #60 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 60 Unlimited Horizons direct our focus exactly where we want to - thus our expansion becomes exclusively our own responsibility. One example: We all know the hurt when a loved person does not return our affections. When this hurt gets triggered, it easily overshadows all our emotions and distracts our mind. Once we decide to rise to STAGE 6, we recognize this hurt as a mere minor cloud that overshadows only a small area of our awareness - an awareness far larger than perceived on STAGE 5. Practical Tips • Limiting themes still manifest in our life, but they now surface as mere temporary distractions. • The more our focus on STAGE 6 stabilizes, the more trying emotional challenges we face when we get pulled down to lower stages. These are caused by unfulfilled desires and deep attachment to emotions that can only be experienced on lower levels. To get rid of these challenges, we need to experience them one last time, - which means to go back to the emotional density and turbulence of lower stages. Patience, perseverance and the conviction that we will ascend again always help to gain back STAGE 6. The greater our courage to let go of deep egoistic motivations, the faster our consciousness expands again. The shift back to the emotional confusion of lower stages may sometimes trigger despair and fear that our life is not expanding, - or that 'mistakes' committed on lower stages prevent us from reaching higher ones. Page #61 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 61 Well, - no 'mistake' ever has the power to retain us on lower stages. Experiences we interpret as 'negative' simply inform us what works and what doesn't in our life. Once we completed a particular lesson, our focus automatically shifts to higher levels, - as we experienced it many times while growing up. Confused feelings arise out of the considerable contrast between STAGE 6 and lower ones. They tell us that we are shedding obstructive emotions and attachments by re-experiencing them briefly one last time. Brief feelings of this kind are characteristic at this particular stage. Being aware of this mechanism shortens such times. Yet even without this approach these negative emotions always dissipate after a short time. • We recognize that we waste valuable energy when we allow ourselves to get distracted by irrelevant themes - often manifesting in form of pointless gossip or the 'endless running commentary' with which our mind incessantly accompanies the banalities of daily life. We observe how this detains us (and others) on lower levels. (Small talk definitely has its purpose. It represents an outer shell of contact - while the real social and emotional fine-tuning of relationships happens on a deeper - non-verbal - level.) Yet during a major unfolding of our consciousness talk about irrelevant themes significantly interferes with our expansion. It is recommended to avoid this. Page #62 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 62 Unlimited Horizons STAGE 6 - PHASE 2 - Our Key to STAGE 7 After some time our focus shifts fully to STAGE 6 with the emotional turmoil of lower levels hardly ever touching us any more. We now enter Phase 2. Yet this second phase is as instable as PHASE 1. As we enter PHASE 2 we begin to oscillate between STAGE 6 and 7 until we become sufficiently familiar with the far higher energies and broader perceptions of STAGE 7 to proceed further. This instability concerns only our inner perception, not our material environment. • It may e.g. show as an impulse to act, - while one second later we realize that the intended action would only yield irrelevant results and thus become pointless. • It may show as the impulse to teach; - immediately followed by the realization that no-one on a lower level is capable of understanding the real meaning of what we say. Yet these oscillations are signs of our attuning to the high energies of STAGE 7. As we stabilize these energies, • our desire for teaching e.g. begins to manifest in form of radiating knowledge rather than verbal instruction. • Our desire for action e.g. becomes an intuitive flow. rather than manifesting through effort. Page #63 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 63 • Our desire for knowledge opens deeper layers of. understanding within us, far beyond formal learning and the accumulation of data-bits and pieces Growing sovereignty, inner peace and increasing detachment from irrelevant themes accompany this inner expansion. Getting Familiar with Higher Stages Stages we experience more permanently soon start to feel entirely normal while memories of lower levels fade. This happens in ALL stages. The time we passed on lower levels we now regard as a less developed state that hardly influences our present - similarly as the games of our childhood have little bearing on us now. Changes within us If we want to find out how far we progressed, we only need to recall any earlier deep immersion in irritating feelings and events, - and how sovereign we now steer our life. As we contrast our current actions and ideas to those of friends and relatives whose lives did not expand, we can't help noticing how different the themes are that now attract our focus. Ecstasy Ecstatic experiences arise from the contrast between our predominant stage and a (temporary) insight into a higher level. Ecstasy is usually highly volatile. It gets easily disturbed by longing for the familiar lower stages. As we steadily dissolve Page #64 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 64 Unlimited Horizons these desires, our experiences automatically become more stable. Yet once we PERMANENTLY experience a higher stage, it matures into the NORMAL state while the feeling of ecstasy fades. Expectation of supernatural experiences Many expect supernatural light, massive expansions of space, ethereal bliss etc. as they rise to higher inner dimensions. Experiences of this kind are certainly possible but will become steady only from Stage 7 onwards. Yet by expecting grandiose visions, ecstasy etc. we severely restrict our perceptions to only what we want to encounter. Thus we easily deprive ourselves of many other expansive experiences that do not match our expectations. The (stable) experience of higher stages is not necessarily coupled with ecstasy. While hoping for a massive 'supernatural' breakthrough - which rarely occurs in lower stages - we easily miss the less spectacular but nevertheless genuine higher insights daily life continuously offers. These everyday openings (sudden insight into our situation from a superior perspective, moments of wider comprehension, impulses for activities that broaden our life etc.) are the very keys to a stable perception of higher dimensions of our consciousness - if we only pursue and amplify these impulses. Page #65 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Stage 7 - Acceleration Theme: Duration: The Map We begin to perceive the true majesty of our awareness Desires and fears cease to overshadow us PHASE 1 PHASE 2 - max 48 min ALTERNATIVE 1 unlimited cycles during which we experience STAGE 7 to 11, yet which always lead back to STAGE 7 ALTERNATIVE 2 after some cycles breakthrough to STAGE 12 65 From STAGE 7 onward our focus turns towards the true majesty of our consciousness. With ever greater clarity we perceive what was hidden within us for so long. Halftime As we transit from the first to the second phase of STAGE 7 we enter the second half of the 14 Stages. Page #66 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 66 Unlimited Horizons At this very point we experience an incredible acceleration in comprehension and perception. (This compares to an e-curve which after a long starting-phase with very little change - rapidly increases in dynamic to lead to unimaginable heights only a brief time later.) The point where the curve turns upwards to ever greater velocity corresponds to this current acceleration of our expansion. We experience STAGE 7 in two Phases PHASE 1 stabilizes the perception of our sovereign higher self that began to unfold during STAGE 6. This phase is characterized by rapid oscillations between STAGE 6 and STAGE 7. For a maximum of 48 minutes we experience STAGE 7 and then fall back to STAGE 6. Here we also stay only briefly, before we ascend again. We experience this as frequent alternation between joyous excitement for the new dimensions opening up within us and doubt and worry that hold us back. Our excitement draws us up, while doubt and worry (i.e. our attachment to familiar themes of lower levels) pull us down. After some time we become familiar with the perception of our higher, sovereign self and adjust to the increased energies and new meanings this brings to our life. Our oscillations diminish. We begin to perceive how our emotions, desires and ideas magnetically attract the exact conditions in which we can Page #67 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 67 physically experience these longings. We now use this insight to actively structure perfect circumstances for growth. We can accelerate this process by sustaining our superior, peaceful perception of Stage 7 instead of succumbing to the limiting emotional attachments that characterize lower levels. While in Phase 1, we have no insights into higher stages. Worry about the reactions of our fellow people Anxiety whether we'd still be able to act 'normal' after a substantial expansion of our awareness, and worry how our social environment would react to major changes within us, are residues of past attachments that soon dissolve completely. The higher the dimensions we discover within us, the more our fears dissolve. The more we reassume our inborn, natural freedom, the more our confidence, inner security and comprehension grow. The purpose of reality is to enable the physical experience of all our desires (and fears). We can be sure that our reality will manifest exactly the security or the adventure or the drama for which we long. If we want to experience security at this particular point, we just create this safe environment. As we shift to PHASE 2 of STAGE 7 we are caught in a sweeping current that pulls our awareness up into ever wider perception and comprehension. Where before we needed effort to reach higher levels, we now are carried by a surge of boundless energy and inspiration. Page #68 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 68 The transition between the first and second phase happens in three short steps: • · Unlimited Horizons · During the first step we reduce the intensity of the main negative emotions - anger, arrogance (pride), dishonesty, addiction (greed) - to their minimum. We realize that these emotions always affect only a limited area of our life. We recognize e.g. that anger we feel towards a particular person or situation needs not necessarily spoil our entire feeling of life. We identify the subject our anger is focused on, reduce the irritation to its really relevant (i.e. limited) range, evaluate it dispassionately and then leave it behind by consciously rising above it. During the second step we experience an incredible_ acceleration of our thoughts. Thousands upon thousands of thinking hours become compressed to mere seconds, to mere flashes of mental images. Thinking and intuition merge into one. Towering consequences build on each other in our awareness, but with a precise grasp on reality as clear as never before. Within minutes we gain access to dimensions of consciousness entirely unimaginable on lower levels. The higher we go, the more natural and comfortably we handle the fantastic features of our consciousness that now become reality. Step 3 - As we rapidly extend the scope of our comprehension, we recognize the real origin of any restricting Page #69 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 69 circumstances within us and comprehend why they attract us again and again. We dissolve all bonds that obstruct our upward path. We extract our focus from those parts of reality that restrict us. Once this is complete, the second phase of Stage 7 reveals itself. PHASE 2 of STAGE 7 offers TWO alternatives for further progress: PHASE 2 - ALTERNATIVE 1 TEMPORARILY DEACTIVATING our remaining desires On this path we render most our remaining desires inactive (but do not dissolve them). This deactivating of our desires enables us to ascend up to Stage 11. We do not have to experience STAGE 7 to 11 sequentially. We may e.g. choose to directly access STAGE 11 to receive the special insight available on this level. We may later go back at will to explore the stages we sidestepped. Yet we are unable to retain our focus on STAGE 11 and soon fall back to lower levels. We cannot rise beyond STAGE 11 as long as inactive (yet unfulfilled) desires block further progress. Only by choosing ALTERNATIVE 2 will we advance beyond STAGE 11. Page #70 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 70 Unlimited Horizons PHASE 2 ALTERNATIVE 2 COMPLETELY DISSOLVING our remaining desires This second alternative bypasses STAGE 11. It leads via STAGE 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 to STAGE 14 and then to ultimate freedom. Initially till all residual desires for lower levels are dissolved - this second alternative also only takes us up to STAGE 11. Yet once these longings are completely satisfied, we break through to STAGE 12. By choosing the second alternative we decide irrevocably to regain the full freedom and grandeur of our (higher) self. We leave behind the dream-like regions that up until now restricted our awareness to very narrow limits. At this stage none of our previous desires remain unfulfilled. We experienced each and every material constellation we wanted to experience and even any (nostalgic) longing for continual re-runs is fully satisfied. Pleasure and Pain In STAGE 7 and above pleasure and pain still manifest as we knew it on lower levels. Yet this type of experience now hardly attracts our attention. Our awareness is far more drawn towards perceiving our sublime, eternal nature we could not recognize while entangled in matter. With intense joy we feel radiant bliss nearby that attracts us far more than any pleasure or pain lower stages may offer. Page #71 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 71 71 Stage 8 - New Inner Powers Theme: Discovering new, unknown abilities Duration: limited In STAGE 8 our comprehension expands into a whole new class of thoughts. Entirely new abilities of cognition and of steering our material reality open up. We become real busy in identifying deep-seated desires and fears that were inaccessible before, and deactivating or neutralizing them. Though mild negative emotions still arise, we experience immense delight in either dissolving them or checking their consequences. Advance to STAGE 9 Shortly before ascending STAGE 9, we shed obstructive moods that distort our perception of reality: - worry, - fear and insecurity, - boredom, dissatisfaction, exhaustion, - disgust, indignation, aversion, - gloating, - the urge to constantly seek (new) sexual partners. Once we shed these mechanisms, we proceed to STAGE 9. Page #72 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 72 Unlimited Horizons Stage 9 - Expansion of Self Theme: In everyone we see, we recognize ourselves Duration: limited Up to STAGE 8 we focus on differences when we meet other people (to confirm 'how much 'better' WE are'). While growing into STAGE 9 these differences lose all importance. Our focus now shifts to similarities - to what is identical within us and others Like superfluous skin we strip off emotions and thoughts directed towards differences. As we advance, only emotions and thoughts subtle enough to persist on higher levels remain in our perception. Their content focuses on what is identical, - which is immensely broader and reaches far deeper than any dissimilarity. Where before we only knew our 'small', forever selfcentered, self-contemplating, individual 'I', - our awareness now widens to encompass all human beings within sight. In all human beings we see, we perceive ourselves. We share in their experiences as if we gained them ourselves. We partake in all their insights. And we feel deep compassion for their particular paths. Page #73 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 73 This is no philosophical statement, but a most intense experience that massively widens all our concepts how this world functions. If this radical expansion of reality exhausts us, we may at will return to lower stages to 'catch our breath'. Yet after some time we become familiar with this expanded perception and consciously shift to STAGE 9 again. Difficult Communication Though we would like to, we are unable to communicate our expanded awareness to others. We directly experience what is identical in them and us. We actually PERCEIVE that we are ONE with them. Yet 'these other parts of us' - those below STAGE 9 - remain focused on differences. They cannot understand our experience, because they only want to see what fits into their (limiting) ideas. We only can inspire them to start their own expansion of awareness. Vibrant Sleep From STAGE 9 onwards sleep and tiredness diminish. This brings the entirely new experience of 'vibrant sleep'. Vibrant sleep is a lucid wakefulness of our mind while our body stays in a state of deep rest. The experience is agreeable. In the beginning we might mistake it for sleeplessness since we do not feel the accustomed oblivion of dream or deep sleep and our consciousness does not blank out of our body. Yet in the morning we feel totally rested though we were alert all during the time this state lasted. Vibrant sleep usually happens while we rest at night. Page #74 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 74 Unlimited Horizons When we confront this phenomenon the first time we may worry why we don't 'fall asleep' as we are accustomed to. Here it is recommended to remain unperturbed, allow our body to stay in deep rest and watch our thoughts drift by. After some nights we notice that body and mind are rested deeper than ever before and full of vibrant energy. Even in less advanced stages sleep and deep sleep may cease to block us for some time so that we experience vibrant sleep. 'Vibrant sleep' is easy to distinguish from sleeplessness. Sleeplessness is not caused by the transition to a higher stage, but originates in continued overtaxing of our physical and nonphysical senses. Furthermore - after a 'sleepless' night we are dead tired and not filled with vibrant energy. How to access STAGE 10 Briefly before we ascend to Stage 10 we end • anger (impatience) • arrogance (pride) • manipulation (the impulse to deceive others) Though these three obstructive tendencies merely surface as mild emotions in Stage 9, their ever so slight egoistic urge blocks further progress. By dissolving anger, arrogance and manipulation we rid ourselves of three of the four main mechanisms that up till now prevented us to perceive reality with unimpeded clarity. Terminating the fourth and last obstructing mechanism - addiction (greed) - is the main theme of Stage 10. Page #75 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Stage 10 - Free of All Addiction Theme: Duration: unlimited The Map Suspending or dissolving the most subtle forms of greed and addiction The theme of STAGE 10 is neutralizing the last great obstacle to unimpeded clear perception of reality: - addiction and greed. · We already dissolved all stronger intensities of this egoistic urge in lower stages, yet its more subtle forms reach up to this high stage. Greed in its subtlest form may manifest as impatience • as the desire to re-enact situations or emotions we already experienced many times before • as the desire that others should recognize our special path to freedom • 75 as longing for a great number of disciples As long as we give in to this urge, we value one small sector of our environment so disproportionately important that we are incapable of perceiving the whole world as 'our creation'. Towards the end of STAGE 10 we perceive with great clarity that energy needs to flow freely throughout our reality. We Page #76 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 76 Unlimited Horizons recognize that by concentrating it at specific points - no matter what noble goals motivate us - we cause distortions. Access to STAGE 11 Shortly before we access STAGE 11 we deactivate the last subtle influence greed and addiction hold over us. Thus we neutralize the last of the four main mechanisms that prevented our unrestricted clear perception of reality (the other three - anger, arrogance, manipulation - were neutralized in STAGE 9). In STAGE 11 we - for the first time - see the world (and us) without these restrictions. How to Access STAGE 12 If we decided to totally dissolve our remaining desires, we skip STAGE 11. Towards the end of STAGE 10 we end greed and addiction completely. This removes the last factor that still obstructed our perception of reality. Now the path to total sovereignty and freedom is open. Page #77 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 77 Stage 11 - First Glimpse of Real Power Theme: First glimpse of the real power and majesty of our consciousness Duration: limited In STAGE 11 we get a first glimpse of the real splendor and majesty of our consciousness beyond the limits of this universe. While on this stage we experience our existence inside the limited material frame of the body as only a small part of our being, - like a puppet-master who directs his figurines through an animated performance, but for himself commands an immeasurably greater, cosmic understanding that extends far beyond all meaning of the enacted play. Our eyes look upon the activities of the corporeal part of our self with boundless loving understanding and in infinite peace and certainty that all paths our embodied self may choose will bring it to the desired goal, - irrespective of how much our 'small' self in bodily form understands this process, or how troubled it is by the events it confronts. We recognize the real nature of our existence, because all desires that previously prevented this perception are currently deactivated. As we briefly extricate our consciousness from all Page #78 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 78 Unlimited Horizons limiting influences, we get a first glimpse of the total freedom of our greater Self. Informed Decision This temporary insight into our real, magnificent character enables us to consciously decide when to dissolve our last emotional attachment to limiting ideas. We now do not blindly enter an unknown, mysterious state, but know exactly where we go, when we choose to regain ultimate freedom. At the end of our stay on STAGE 11 the desires we disabled to obtain this vision activate again. Our longing for further experiences within material limits again takes over our awareness and we go back to STAGE 7, 8, 9 or 10. From there we may ascend again. Once we choose the complete dissolution of our remaining desires (see STAGE 7 - ALTERNATIVE 2), we skip this stage and proceed directly from STAGE 10 to STAGE 12. Page #79 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 79 Stage 12 - Unobstructed Perception Theme: Unrestricted clear perception of reality Duration: limited We reach STAGE 12 as soon as we completely dissolved all desires and dreads of lower stages (ALTERNATIVE 2). On this path we skip STAGE 11. In STAGE 12 we separate from all factors that produce delusion, cause obstructions and block knowledge and intuition. Shortly before reaching Stage 13, sleep and deep sleep end completely. Our consciousness reaches clarity unknown. We now cease to be at the mercy of uncontrollable forces, but are master of our life. Reaching ultimate freedom is ensured. Page #80 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 80 Stage 13 - Total Knowledge Theme: Unlimited Horizons Duration: Expanding our awareness to encompass the totality of knowledge limited - either brief - or teaching for a longer period IN STAGE 13 our awareness expands to encompass the totality of knowledge and all its features and manifestations in past, present and future. This expansion happens automatically as soon as desires, dreads and limiting ideas cease to restrict our consciousness. Though we still are encased in our material (bodily) environment, this now does not affect the vastness of our consciousness any more. Once we intentionally reach this state, we never lose it again. We Are Familiar With This State Though 'the totality of knowledge' seems far from our present reality, we often receive a taste of this ability. These are the strange seconds or even minutes between dream and waking when we are still within our dream, but just become aware of the waking state. Page #81 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 81 In this 'in-between' state we often command immensely complex, multidimensional knowledge that would solve all riddles of the world if we could only take it with us. Even if after waking up completely we shake our head with incredulity and discard the experience because we can't explain it, that whiff of multidimensional insight nevertheless was real for us as long as it lasted. We definitely felt it, however fleeting it was. It is not less authentic only because we didn't experience it during our waking state. This whiff gives us an idea how naturally, comfortable, inspired and entirely without awe we handle this vast perception. It shows multidimensional insight to be much less alien and far more accessible than ever thought. Practical Tips • All-comprehensive perception is not triggered by any external means. It is the complete unfolding of our consciousness by its own inherent powers. We do not experience this state through our mind, since the mind cannot handle a multitude of events and objects simultaneously. (To process multiple parallel events our mind rapidly switches between perceptions.) What we experience is the direct perception of our entire consciousness - unencumbered by any of the preconceptions and beliefs our mind usually maintains. As long as time still influences us, we experience the world as a chain of events that lead us to ever deeper and more comprehensive insights. While focusing on Page #82 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 82 Unlimited Horizons STAGE 1 to 12 new insights appear to us like the endresult of a sequence of events. Yet a time of emergence of an insight exists only in these (lower) stages. In the state of all-comprehensive knowledge our consciousness ceases to be influenced by time. Concepts like 'consecutive', simultaneous' or sequence' now do not apply to us any more. There is no 'evolution of insights as we know it presently. In this state we perceive all elements of this universe and their features and manifestations in past, present and future simultaneously. Knowledge vs. Data Our present time believes it impossible to carry the totality of knowledge within. Knowing how much effort it takes to gain insight into a limited field alone, the sheer volume of exponentially growing information makes it appear impossible to be in command of all the data of this world. Yet this amassing external data is not what is meant here. The mass of external data we generally interpret as 'knowledge' is at best raw material. It has no impact on us as long as we do not actively integrate it into our consciousness. Information recorded in books or other storage media tends to stay in the books when we need it most. We experience this e.g. at the time of exams, when to our horror knowledge we studied for months or even years suddenly is blanked from our consciousness. This drastically demonstrates that formal data all by itself does not produce knowledge. Page #83 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 83 Access to real knowledge deeply ingrained in our consciousness is instantaneous, spontaneous and comprehensive. We are able to retrieve it at the spur of any moment, - and do this all the time. In STAGE 13 this type of immediate, effortless access broadens to encompass the totality of knowledge. Teaching in Stage 13 If we desire to teach in this stage, we transfer our know-how to others. Once this wish is completed, we continue to STAGE 14. Without this tendency, we stay only briefly. Activity is the only influence we are still subjected to. This last bond we dissolve in STAGE 14. Page #84 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 84 Unlimited Horizons Stage 14 - Last Restrictions End Theme: Last stage before ultimate freedom We dissolve all remaining limits of our consciousness Duration: brief STAGE 14 immediately precedes ultimate freedom and sovereignty. Here we separate our consciousness from status, emotions, body, limited duration of life and all restrictive association with matter. Free from the entire strata of bodily existence we regain full command of our greater, majestic self, - immensely enriched by our experiences in the restricted, separated circumstances we voluntarily and consciously subjected ourselves to. Page #85 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 85 Sovereignty / Freedom Theme: Defined by ourselves Blissful experience of our true majestic being beyond matter, space and time Duration: no longer subjected to time The moment we reach ultimate freedom we again assume what was never really lost to us - pure unrestricted consciousness. An enlightened being we now fully experience our inherent majestic nature - unlimited cognition, love, knowledge, power, bliss ... ... and then a new chapter begins - beyond time, space and matter, - whose meaning and purpose are beyond anything we could speculate about as long as we are still subject to the limits of our present universe. The next two pages show a visual representation of all 14 stages. Page #86 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 86 Unlimited Horizons SOVEREIGNTY 14 Last Restrictions End 13 Total Knowledge 12 Unobstructed Perception 11 First Glimpse of Real Power 10 Free from All Addiction 9 Expansion of Self 8 New Inner Powers 7 Accelleration 6 Freedom from Pain 5 First Focused Activities 4 First Clarity 3 Fragile Indecision 2 Downfall 1 Entanglement Stage 14 Stage 13 Stage 12 e n Stage 11 Stage 10 Stage 9 Stage 8 Phase 1 Stage 6 H Stage 5 Phase 1 Stage 4 Stage 3 Stage 2 Stage 1 Page #87 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The Map 87 FREEDOM Stage 14 Stage 13 Stage 12 Stage 11 Stage 10 Stage 9 Stage 8 Phase 2 Alternative 1 Alternative 2 Stage 7 Stage 7 Phase 1 Stage 7 1 Phase 2 Stage 6 Stage 5 Phase 3 Phase 2 Stage 4 Stage 4 Stage 3 Stage 1 UNLIMITED HORIZONS - Copyright © 2007 Crosswind Publishing. Wunstorf, Germany Page #88 --------------------------------------------------------------------------  Page #89 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Challenges 89 Challenges Each of the 14 stages confronts us with a particular set of challenges we need to face and neutralize. Challenges are nothing other than unresolved themes of our. life. The number of challenges in each stage is limited. Their number differs in every stage. Generally we meet more challenges on lower stages than in higher ones. The lower the level we focus on, the more we tend to feel like victims of the themes that manifest in our life. The more we shift our focus to higher levels, the better we can steer how challenges manifest, with what intensity they influence us and how long they last. What kind of challenges we face is highly individual. We only confront those challenges (themes of life) we attach positive or negative emotions to, all others do not affect us. Positive and Negative Challenges The theme of a challenge may appear positively or negatively charged, or both. Page #90 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 90 Unlimited Horizons Yet there is no compulsion to perceive a certain challenge as negative or positive only. This evaluation depends entirely on our current attitude towards it. While interacting with a particular challenge our perception may easily change from negative to positive and vice versa. • Positively charged challenges are easy to identify. We desire specific situations that trigger joy, satisfaction, acceptance etc. · When we dislike, detest, hate etc, a situation, person or object, we confront negatively charged challenges. NOT WANTING something to occur does NOT remove the challenge. On the contrary - this kind of rejecting emotion is a sure way to attract the exact situation we want to avoid. And further there exists a strange mixture of negative. and positive emotions we only experience in stages 1 to 5. This is a state of thrill in which we balance precariously between excitement and apprehension, mild worry and sometimes even physical pain, - a condition slightly out of the ordinary that heightens awareness of surroundings and feelings. While in Stage 1 to 5 we consider these kind of situations 'interesting' or 'thrilling'. Example: We are about to leave someone we dearly love. Though we still are together with the beloved, we often feel a kind of melancholy that mixes ache with joy. Concluded challenges are perceived as neutral. They do not trigger emotional reactions within us and thus hardly affect our life. Page #91 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ What Makes Challenges Enter Our Life? Challenges activate automatically once supportive conditions arise in our life. - Yet we can also trigger them intentionally. Supportive Conditions Supportive conditions enter our life Challenges • when we confront situations, persons or emotions that disrupt our habitual routines, - and/or • when we feel a sudden motivation or drive for new activities or for finishing unresolved projects. Supportive conditions may occur at any given time. They often activate challenges unexpectedly and in times of trouble, when the additional load seems just one burden too many. 91 Supportive conditions may set off more than one challenge at a time. We can prevent these accumulative, often chaotic bottlenecks by intentionally triggering challenges in 'convenient' times to neutralize them - before they may upset our life. · Intentionally Triggered Challenges To fundamentally get rid of a specific theme of life, we can trigger the respective challenge intentionally. Challenges become active when we • · physically enter a situation or actively engage in a particular theme of life prepare for action or corresponding events provoke events or situations relating to a challenge or Page #92 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 92 Unlimited Horizons • silently assent to an action or situation relating to the theme of a challenge Each one of these mechanisms sets off sequences of events that provide opportunities for neutralizing the corresponding theme. Intentionally triggered challenges often provoke a flood of powerful and passionate events that may thoroughly upset our current social consensus and propel us into a completely different frame of life. Yet it gives us a fair chance to free ourselves from burdensome influences that otherwise might overshadow our life for unforeseeable more time. More often than not it takes considerable courage to enter this route. Yet in the long run this is a sure and rapid way to become the strong, sovereign being we deeply feel within us. How deeply a challenge affects our life depends entirely on the intensity of our EMOTIONAL engagement in it, never on how directly (or remotely) we participate in the respective activities. Indirect involvement or silent assent born out of fierce passionate agreement subjects our life to the respective challenge with the exact same intensity we feel. The mere fact that an emotional response gets triggered within us, indicates that we have not neutralized the respective theme yet. Challenges we could not fully experience or neutralize, perceive as failed, or ran out of time while engaging in it, do not automatically expire at the end of our life. We get all the chances to learn what we want to learn. In our next life (lives) Page #93 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Challenges we will automatically find ourselves in a body and environment well suited for experiencing the particular themes of life we were unable to complete before. 93 The Law Concerning Egoistic Challenges We have the perfect right to engage in challenges that focus on egoistic themes of life. Egoistic means to disregard the needs and rights of others in the pursuit of our own particular goals. Yet there is a law concerning egoistic challenges we should be aware of before we engage in them: in With every egoistic challenge we involve ourselves directly, indirectly or silently assenting - we enter a contract to experience the same theme. from the RECEIVING end as well. · Example: Once we choose to cheat somebody, we program for our future to get cheated to the same extent. This does not mean that we get cheated e.g. of the same amount of money, or by the same person we tricked. This means that we will experience an emotional reaction equal in intensity, duration and consequence to the reaction we caused. Should this effect not manifest in our current life, we can be sure that we'll experience it in a future life when it is as inconvenient to us as it was to the person we cheated. Most negative situations we confront in this life, where we don't understand what caused them, why we had to experience them and where we feel treated unjustly, are nothing other than the second - neglected - part of egoistic actions we de Page #94 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 94 Unlimited Horizons cided for in previous lives and which we now experience from the receiving end. This is not any kind of punishment, but a learning process that makes us more and more aware of all the consequences of our actions. As long as there exists a tendency for egoistic action within us, we need to experience it from both sides until we grow out of this particular impulse within us. How to React to Challenges Challenges occur whether we like it or not. Yet with skilful action we can neutralize negative challenges and prevent them from ever marring our joy of life again. However - merely 'thinking about emotionally loaded situations, or 'wishing them to cease' does not make them go away. To neutralize our attachment to a challenge we often need to re-experience a certain 'trying' situation or re-enter an 'irritating' action. If during this (last) manifestation we consciously monitor our inner emotional reaction, objectively judge it as irrelevant or petty as it really is, and discard any likes or dislikes that would renew our attachment, we become free of this theme. Even if the theme re-occurs again, - as it often happens - it will dissolve without much of an effect, if we don't engage in it emotionally. After some time, we do not even perceive it any more, and then it is neutralized. Example: We easily observe this process in someone who just quit smoking. Though he decided to be abstinent, his longing for a drag gets triggered each time someone in his vicinity lights Page #95 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Challenges up. He has a latent readiness to react to this stimulus, which often manifests in form of intense aggression towards the one who dares to smoke. The emotional attachment still present in the new 'non-smoker' breaks out as soon as supportive conditions arise. In contrast to this a 'real' non-smoker may feel annoyed at the infringement on his quality of breathing, but the smell of a lit cigarette would never prompt him to light up as well. He has no latent attachment to this kind of theme and thus the stimulus passes without initiating any kind of action or emotion. • 95 Positive Challenges In a similar way we deal with challenges we feel positive towards. We keep on attracting the respective situations as long as we react emotionally to the corresponding themes of life. Our attachment to positive challenges dissolves, • once other themes begin to interest us more or ⚫ when we shift to a higher stage. once we experienced them so often that we get bored by them Here it often happens that the theme of life (e.g. a longing for ever deeper insight) does not fall away, but reveals itself in a new, more fascinating form or dimension. What Challenges Are Active in Us NOW? That's easy to find out: Whenever we notice appreciation or rejection within us, love or hatred, longing, or disappointment Page #96 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 96 Unlimited Horizons towards a certain situation or person, that corresponding theme of life is active within us. Yet don't expect this to always manifest in form of clearcut, intense, prolonged feelings. More often than not challenges surface in the disguise of trivial matter in the daily hustlebustle - which makes out the major part of our life. • It is the minor, insignificant situations, where we e.g. prefer to speak with the one person that confirms our opinions, - rather than with another who may confront us with unfamiliar, uncomfortable views. • They are the small opportunities to do something positive, like at the supermarket checkout allowing a person with only one item to go ahead of us, before we start putting our many purchases on the belt. • It is the impulse to do something precise, to execute an action as thorough as possible - instead of choosing carelessness and doing only some casual window-dressing. It is these small, barely noticed situations in which we are challenged to grow or to stagnate, to help or to be petty, to open or to close our heart, to learn something new or to deem this far beneath us, to be as good as the magnificent person we feel we really are inside, or to remain our current limited self. It is the sum-total of these minute decision that makes our life grow or stagnate, fascinating or boring, inspiring or a burden. The magnificent we feel within us, here is its very beginning, here is the starting point from where to turn our life to wholly different horizons. These deceptively 'trivial' matters are a major key, - it pays to watch them far more closely. Page #97 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Challenges 97 How to Neutralize Challenges Neutralizing is different for each single challenge. The next chapter deals with their specific mechanisms. Yet three basic strategies apply to all challenges: 1 - Knowing the Game To dissolve a challenge we often only need to know that this particular theme is active in our life. Once we become aware how unwittingly we engage in ever the same (annoying) events, we can easily end our automatic response. This can be compared to a magic trick that fascinates us each time for as long as we are unaware how it is done. Yet once we know the trick, our automatic fascinated reaction dispels completely. Example: When we stumble over a brick in our path and get hurt, we impulsively tend to blame the brick, the person or the circumstances that put the obstacle there. Yet it is basically our own inattention that made us experience pain. As long as we continue to blame outside factors, we lay the ground for innumerable further negative experiences of this kind. Yet once we realize that it is us that needs to be more careful, we fundamentally free ourselves from this blind mechanism. 2 - Direct Confrontation Other challenges are not as easily dissolved and require courage in a confrontation. Here it pays to plan well and define clearly what we aim for. Example: If building up courage is a theme of life for us, this does not mean that after neutralizing the challenge we are Page #98 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 98 Unlimited Horizons entirely fearless. Certain situations may still make us quite anxious, but this will not intimidate or distract us from what we intend to do. Dealing with the challenge gave us sufficient confidence and knowledge how to effectively counter our fear with courage and decisiveness. Instead of waiting for some fearlessness that never might arise, we now can turn to other themes of life. 3 - Shifting to a Higher Stage Entire groups of challenges fall off when we permanently shift focus to a higher stage. The broader and more comprehensive understanding of the new level automatically dissolves all emotional attachment to lower themes of life, which then dissipate without manifesting much of an effect. This sounds like magic, yet is nothing other than what we experience while growing up. Example: Tasks that needed all our energy and attention when we were in the playing pen - like putting three wooden blocks on top of each other - cease to occupy our attention once we grow out of them. Though we could build far better towers now, we'd never invest all our energy in doing so. This same mechanism we can intentionally use to accelerate inner expansion. If - instead of 'battling' annoying and limiting themes of life on the stage where they occur - we concentrate on shifting our attention to higher levels, these themes will dissipate in the same automatic way as did the themes of our playing pen. Page #99 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Challenges 99 The Usefulness of Spiritual Techniques Spiritual techniques - no matter how 'holy' or effective they claim to be - are unable to neutralize challenges. This does not mean that these techniques serve no purpose. They usually are first probing attempts to explore the world beyond material limits and are often capable of easing strains the confrontation of challenges may produce. Yet no formal repetition of mantras, routinely performing religious rituals, the handling of mystic symbols etc. - i.e. the use of activities whose mechanism we do not fully understand - can free us from obstructive themes of life that only dissolve when we confront them in an intelligent way. The sole accumulation of metal parts, rubber, plastic and gasoline or the arranging of all these components without real technical understanding will never produce a functioning engine. Similarly the mere presence of spiritual or religious components without real comprehension how they work and how effective they are, will never bring freedom from limiting influences. Even the meticulous but perfunctory observance of instructions received from spiritual or religious leaders can not replace the confrontation of our very own individual challenges - irrespective of the sincerity and devotion with which the leader's teachings are given or followed. A Deep Belief in Repetition The widespread belief in the effectiveness of spiritual techniques is misleading. The heart of all such techniques is QUANTITATIVE repetition. Mantras, prayers, yoga postures, rituals, cleansings Page #100 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 100 Unlimited Horizons etc., all are to be repeated a specific number of times, for a fixed period, or at recurring intervals. Many enthusiasts believe the more regular they perform their technique, the faster their progress. Sure, many of the techniques make us 'feel good', more relaxed and calmer, but 'feeling good, relaxed and calm' all by itself does not yet constitute inner growth. Real Growth is an Increase in QUALITY Real inner expansion is always an increase in quality. It is a sudden boost of our capacities, a sweeping breakthrough to higher stages, to more insight, superior understanding, more focused activities and greater command of life. Of course it is everyone's own decision how much time and energy he or she wants to devote to spiritual techniques. Yet it is recommended to evaluate impartially if the experienced results tally with promises and expectations; - and whether entirely different strategies might not do better and faster justice to our vast potential. Page #101 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 101 How to Dissolve Challenges This section describes how to neutralize the diverse challenges. Since dissolving challenges is a highly individual process, it is impossible to list each and every situation that may occur. Yet it is possible to group those themes of life that handle in a similar way. Take the following as suggestions and ideas how to design your own path. And - as perplexing as the listed suggestions may appear to you at first reading, - they all proved highly effective in application. Practical Tips • Life is not designed to make us happy, - nor is it designed to make us unhappy. - nor is it supposed to present us a balanced version of these two poles. Page #102 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 102 Unlimited Horizons Life and reality are designed TO REACT to what we invest in it. Life and reality are designed to make us experience how our ideas, our concepts and our energy look in physical form. It pays to be creative in this process. • Only reading about higher levels can't tell us how they really feel like. • We access higher stages by sudden insight, which arises automatically once the themes of the lower level - temporarily or permanently - cease to hold our attention. Sudden insights arise because challenges are not active all the time. This can be compared to an overcast sky where the clouds suddenly open up to reveal the sky beyond the cloud-ceiling. Something similar may happen anytime during periods of 'quietness', when no challenges engage our attention and our mind thus spontaneously shifts focus to a higher stage. How long these sudden insights last depends on how intensely the higher stage fascinates us, - and how fast our emotions draw us back to the themes of the stage we came from. Even if we lose our insight only a short time later, it still anchors us in the higher stage - we now know how it feels like, - we get an orientation where we are heading, - and we receive plenty of motivation to start moving. Page #103 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ • · · How to Dissolve Challenges · 103 To stabilize our insights we only need to neutralize the remaining unsolved challenges of the lower level. Once this is completed, our focus automatically shifts to the higher stage. There exists no special activity with which to shift our awareness directly and stably to higher levels - neither praying, repeating magical mantras, yoga-exercises, visiting holy places, drugs etc. can ever achieve that. Effective are only actions that neutralize the challenges of our current level. This enables our attraction to detach from this (lower) stage. The shift to higher stages then happens automatically. We do have the right and the ability to change situations we don't agree with - irrespective of how strongly others object to it or what they do to frustrate our efforts. The crucial step in this process takes place in our awareness. Others are unable to influence this inner, highly private plane - unless we empower them to do so. • Each challenge requires a different approach for neutralizing it. We do have the power to change everything in our life into anything we prefer - at any time we want. Our future becomes an unaltered continuation of our past only if we don't choose new paths. When we are through with the challenges of one stage, the next stage automatically opens up - in the same Page #104 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 104 Unlimited Horizons natural way as we advanced from toddler to playing-pen, to school, adolescence and grown-up. Once we understand how this game works, we can considerably shorten the time necessary to experience and dissolve a particular challenge. This is what we have our intelligence for: To identify what challenges manifest in our life, how they work and then to interact with them in such a way that they get neutralized in shortest possible time. Page #105 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 105 1 - To understand what life is all about, and how to handle it efficiently Challenge: To really understand how our life works To know how to achieve objectives the fastest possible way To become wise To get orientation in the vast mass of current data Range: STAGE 1 to 12 At life's crucial crossroads emotions often pull us fiercely in one direction while reasons urge us to choose the exact opposite. Both paths look equally enticing or disastrous, dreary, strange and unknown to us. This is the time when we crave real orientation, real insight, real know-how what we're supposed to do with this world, how we're supposed to act. We sense that there's a purpose, that there are answers to these questions, that someone would exist who knows. But we are unsure where to look for this information, don't even know exactly what we're searching for. Page #106 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 106 Unlimited Horizons Well, - 'who knows?' is easy to answer. In all this huge world there's one person who has all the answers, and only one person we'd also trust enough to accept them - and that is WE OURSELVES. All other sources we distrust, suspect hidden motives, and know that they won't take responsibility for their advice. Yet deep within ourselves is everything we ever want to know. Within ourselves we carry a vast ocean of knowledge, of wisdom, of comprehension that opens unknown breadths of life. Deep within ourselves we find answers that convince us. This knowledge is with us now. We were born with it. The door is open - we can access it at any time we want. How to Access This Untapped Wisdom Now - we are trained to believe that knowledge is separate from us, something we need to gain laboriously through study, research, experience or deliberation. Yet real understanding, real wisdom has nothing to do with learning, or thinking, or with obtaining certain information. We experience this at times of exams, when to our horror everything we studied months or years suddenly blanks from our mind. Then it gets through to us that merely cramming data into memory doesn't create comprehension. The mass of data stored in books and other media is at best raw material. At worst it gives us an illusion of knowing that forestalls all efforts to go for real comprehension. We open our treasure-trove of wisdom not by any current learning method, nor by accumulating formal data, but by expanding our ability to understand, - by shifting attention to broader levels of comprehension. Page #107 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 107 The Challenge So far - so good. If it's that easy, why aren't we all enlightened, why don't we use this method all the time? Well - there's one mechanism that blinds us to this kind of expansion: It's our tendency to accept only those insights and mation that fit our ideas how this world works - and to reject everything else. Out of the billions of stimuli that constantly bombard our senses and mind, we reject everything that does not suit our ideas. We subconsciously blank out everything beyond what we deem possible. Take the idea of a limited flat earth. For centuries it blocked the discovery of new continents (America, Australia). The narrow circle drawn around the known lands forestalled all thoughts that something else might even exist. Yet exactly these types of concepts are active in us NOW. And in precisely the same way they prevent the discovery of the unknown continents within us. Our mental filters prevent that even a tendency towards. something new arises in the first place. They stop us from perceiving entire parts of reality, - parts that certainly exist, but never reach our attention. To become aware of these restrictive ideas and to discard them is the first part of the challenge. To open our mind for new concepts and to explore them in our life is the second part. Page #108 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 108 Unlimited Horizons Opening Our Mind Opening ourselves to new concepts is far harder than we think. It does not mean to kindly listen to new ideas, consider them sympathetically and then - like a benevolent judge - decide whether to accept them or not. To open ourselves to new ideas and concepts means • to not instantly oppose new, uncomfortable ideas - before they even have a chance of influencing us • to swallow our pride when someone we deem beneath our status presents a better idea than we had • to overcome the complacency that makes us cling to outdated concepts - and then to discard these concepts - even if all this takes energy, makes us feel uncomfortable, and requires a complete re-thinking of our world. It's Easy to find the Starting points Whenever (new) concepts or ideas provoke strong passionate. feelings within us - irritation, anger, repulsion, spite, or the passionate, aggressive defense of our entrenched ideas, - then it is worth the effort to examine these (new) ideas more closely. Exactly these passionate emotions chain us to old concepts, - and thus bar us from experiencing anything new. And even if giving up opinions and positions we resolutely committed ourselves to may hurt our pride and makes us feel awkward or embarrassed, this process unfailingly guides us to ever deeper answers, - it is the path that leads outside the narrow circle of our known life. Page #109 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 109 It's not relevant to prove that we are right. What's relevant is to advance. We never access deeper levels of insight if we expect or demand that these new levels agree with old concepts we are familiar with The Moment We Gain Access we experience sudden, intense understanding. With crystal clarity we recognize what blocked our consciousness just seconds ago. It feels as if we step into the light, are finally able to see. Vast freedom floods our heart, - we are electrified by insights eluding us before. No physical condition changed, yet our outlook is completely altered. We make out new paths, detect new meanings, cast dread and worry from our heart. A sense of future expansion rises within us, - and an excited certainty that further, deeper insights will also be revealed. This type of inner comprehension requires no prior knowledge, no special training or ritual. It rises naturally as we remove the inner blocks that barred us from perceiving it. Once we stop clinging to restrictive concepts, comprehension. automatically expands. The answers we get from within are highly personal. Everyone perceives his life's themes in an entirely individual, original way. Thus insights can hardly ever be generalized or cast into rules that may apply to all. What is enlightening to one person may make others only shrug. Page #110 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 110 Unlimited Horizons Our Intuitive Channel Now - we are programmed to accept as 'real', as relevant only what we perceive with our senses, - we deeply suspect knowledge arising from within. We distrust insights that bypass accepted, time-honored paths like schools or books, or were not certified by 'higher' authorities like science, religion etc. And we take us for logical beings who think and plan and analyze before we commit ourselves to action. Intuition is something we wouldn't use to steer our life with. Yet our life is far less rational than we believe. In daily life we use fantastic mechanisms we hardly ever are aware of: - With lightning speed we judge extremely complex, multilayered situations for which intellectual analysis would be by far too slow. We handle this ability with dreamlike certainty, though mostly entirely unaware how complex this really is. A simple example: We want to cross a street. A car approaches that intersects our intended path. In one brief moment - before we either step onto the road or not - we judge the totality of the situation in all its multiplicity. We register the car's speed, width of the street and the driver's leeway to avoid us. We take in visibility, road condition and if the car's velocity would be too fast for all these factors. We assess our strength to safely reach the other side - and also our capacity to speed up should we have misjudged. We consider whether we need to cross before the car, i.e. how far we may be pressed by time, - an assessment that opens even more intricate psychological dimensions. Page #111 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 111 All this and much more we take in within the fraction of a second, weigh it against each other and decide with lightning speed and dreamlike surety. Certainly - some get it wrong, - but we definitely succeeded in reaching here and now, and this tells us how expertly we operate this nearly supernatural ability. So - since we already use this fast, intuitive channel with great proficiency, why not do it more consciously? - Why not using our inner knowledge with the same confidence, speed and precision with which we cross a street, adjust our tactics in a heated discussion, and handle a multitude of other complex situations. What Meaning We See in Life Depends on The Stage We Currently Focus On STAGE 1 almost always presents us one single, highly personal motive as the main theme towards which we orient our life - career, providing for old age, increase of status, gaining the love of another person, building a house etc. In STAGE 2 to 8 we recognize more and more that our character is built by us experiencing a whole variety of themes. In STAGE 9 to 13 we depart from themes that are limited by individual perception and turn our awareness towards far broader comprehension. Page #112 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 112 Unlimited Horizons In STAGE 14 we shed our last individually focused orientation - to recognize (beyond this stage) that our personality is far more majestic than the entirety of this currently perceived universe. Practical Tips • Direct ATTENTION towards your flash-insights ! This is THE central method to stabilize access to inner wisdom. As trivial as this may sound, as important it is. Without directing attention towards new, unknown experiences, we'll never leave the limits of our current life. Accept your insights as YOUR VERY OWN ACHIEVEMENT! All insight we have is entirely our own. No teacher or guru, no religion or philosophy may ever claim to have caused it. All our insights originate only within ourselves, - from our strife and effort to remove barriers that blocked our perception, - from our courage with which we reach for deeper levels. No outside agency or person can ever bring about this our very own personal comprehension. So give yourself the credit you deserve. Don't attribute your growing wisdom to any outside agency. Never think that you are small and that all greatness in your life just has to come from somewhere else. Page #113 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 113 • Opening your inner treasure-trove is an intuitive process. Don't interrupt it by analyzing it while it happens. To analyze new experiences certainly has value, but do it after you fully explored your insights. The longer inner perception lasts, the clearer and deeper gets our comprehension. We intensify our access · by acting on our insights - by concluding restrictive themes of life - by breaking away from people who steal our energy or divert attention towards trivial issues - by getting rid of objects whose maintenance costs too much time or effort etc. • Deeper insight may also get triggered - by shocks, accidents, deep disappointments, intense love, great pain etc. which shake us from our hypnotic envelope. - This often presents a radically new perspective on life's real purpose. - when we meet people who focus on higher stages. Page #114 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 114 Unlimited Horizons 2 - Error | Confusion Challenge: To identify how error manifests in our life without us being aware of it To dissolve error before it influences us To remove this obstacle to expansion once and for all Range: Stage 1 to 6 What Is Error? • We experience error when we cease to orient towards growth. • We experience error when our ideas how things work do not agree with reality. • We experience error when we strongly want to perceive something that does not correspond with reality. There's no security in numbers. Error stays error, even if it is socially acceptable or mandated by the government. Entire societies, entire nations and the population of the world as a whole can be under the sway of error. Page #115 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 115 Who Causes Error? We cause error ourselves and only by ourselves - either • by creating flawed ideas within us or • by accepting (believing in, learning) concepts, teachings and belief-systems that do not correspond with reality and/or are not directed towards growth. Both causes equally prevent us from finding more satisfying levels of existence. Error never comes from the outside! It is our very personal responsibility to examine the beliefs, ideas and dogmas we base our life on, whether they support the unfoldment of our inner and outer abilities, or just solidify a convenient emotional or social stalemate. It is irrelevant whether these ideas originated within ourselves or we adopted them from others. If our ideas and beliefs are flawed and we suffer in consequence, there is no point in blaming others. No matter how much we'd love to transfer this responsibility away from us - we are the ones who experience the penalty for error, - and thus we need to do something about it, if we intend to stop it. Blaming others never removes the real cause for error! Blaming others only complicates matters because it denies us access to the error's actual source. Blaming others is seeking the cause where it never is and was. Example: If we stumble over a brick and get hurt, we tend to blame the brick, the person or the circumstances that put the Page #116 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 116 Unlimited Horizons obstacle there (" That stupid brick!). Yet it is basically our own inattention that made us stumble. As long as we continue blaming outside factors, we lay the ground for countless further negative experiences. Yet if we take on responsibility for our errors, we really can do something about it to avert future occurrences of the same kind. How to Detect Error Error doesn't carry a special tag saying 'CAUTION - FLAWED ITEM !' - On the contrary, - like a chameleon it hides behind kaleidoscopic many forms. More often than not it is presented with huge conviction, charisma and social pressure as 'the only truth'. This force of persuasion may be so great that we deem ourselves incapable of escaping its overwhelming strength. Yet exactly this gives us a vital clue how to identify error before it can spoil our life! When the presentation of an idea aims mostly at bowling over all our objections, criticism and caution, a gut-feeling usually warns us that something is amiss. It pays to listen to this faint feeling, especially if we are pressured to ignore this early warning sign. Sleep over it, think it over, find out more details, ask others (critics) for their experiences, observe the protagonists more closely - use any appropriate method to find out why your gut warned you. This might prevent a plethora of problems. Page #117 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 117 What About Error Already Influencing Us NOW ? Here again our inner senses provide the clue. Error triggers impressions that things (projects, partnerships, work, life etc.) do not work out. They set off feelings of misfortune, of not being accepted, of loneliness, of being worthless or of life being pointless. These emotions are warning signs. We feel unhappy because flawed convictions frustrate all natural growth within us. Yet the emotions are not the cause, but just the mechanism that shows us that we have a problem, - as pain identifies that part of our body that needs attention. These feelings mean to prompt us to examine our life for primary forms of error. If we detect any of the following emotions or attitudes within us (or within others), primary forms of error are at work: • The firm conviction that only We are right This is the firm conviction that only our own ideas are correct and everyone else is wrong, - even if reality shows an entirely different picture. Example: The idea that life got generated by the mixing of material substances in the surf of the oceans is totally unproven. Yet this model is so widely believed in that it seems almost blasphemous to point out that it is just a vague, unfounded suggestion. Just look at the reaction this triggers - either within those confronted with this statement, or within you: - A brusque rebuff that this idea is absolutely right and that whoever contests it must be totally out of his mind. Discussing the underlying facts is categorically denied - Page #118 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 118 Unlimited Horizons not only because those defending it don't have the facts, but also because they like to continue believing this doctrine. The characteristics of this reaction • dogmatic belief - passionate denial though facts are not known • social pressure to accept it - one-sided selection of data - the lack of sovereignty etc. are solid indications that error is at work. And just for the record: This does not mean that therefore another model currently in vogue must be the true one. The fact that one model is recognized as flawed does not imply that an opposing model must be accurate by default. Confusion Confusion mistakes cause for effect or assumes wrong causes. Example: - Many believe that outside influences cause anger (that anger gets triggered by irritating persons, situations or objects). Reality is that we produce anger by our willingness to engage in this negative emotion - which we then arbitrarily ascribe to any object or person conveniently at hand. At other times, when we are not keen to feel this type of irritation, the same objects or person may trigger entirely different emotions within us. Page #119 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 119 • Doubt, skepticism, uncertainty We use doubt and skepticism to reject impulses to reorient ideas and actions before they can stimulate us. Doubt and skepticism are mostly copied from 'rolemodels' we imitate - parents, teachers, leaders, friends, actors, politicians, priests etc. These 'role-models' often pressurize us more or less subtly not to violate established opinions or taboos, and to obey conventional behavior. We succumb to this pressure because we shy away from endangering our position in society. Yet subconsciously we sense what treacherous ground we tread on if we adopt personal motives and opinions from others without thoroughly examining them first. The deep, hidden insecurity this causes within us makes us impulsively use doubt and skepticism to reject new ideas which challenge our compliance and complacency. Yet this only cements the error(s) that rob us our very joy of life. • Carelessness / Indifference We display carelessness and indifference to demonstrate aloofness and superiority - to preemptively reject any possible critique of us. Yet this only further deepens any error we are subjected to and keeps us within the range of negative feelings. - Carelessness is lack of interest in everything that furthers growth. We disregard the many opportunities nature presents, because we feel these chances should always exist. Page #120 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 120 Unlimited Horizons This certainly is true, but our rejection programs within us a mounting inability to RECOGNIZE these openings. Indifference is laziness. We feel an impulse to reevaluate our habitual behavior, or to try out a new type of action, or to discard flawed beliefs, but are unwilling to raise the additional energy new ideas always require. We might firmly believe all these feelings to be a fixed part of existence. Yet it is easy to completely remove error and error-driven emotions from our life. How To Remove Error Simple. - Start orienting towards growth. This automatically breaks any dead end error might have trapped us in and gets life flowing again. We remove error by leaving the bounds of our current concepts. Ideas and concepts based on flawed assumptions often appear surprisingly logical. As long as we remain trapped in this logic, we are unable to recognize the flaws in their basic construction. Our perception is locked into the frame set by the erroneous idea. Escape becomes possible only when we start challenging the whole system from the outside. Yet this confronts us with a deep-seated, involuntary mechanism of censorship: - Our attachment to flawed concepts makes Page #121 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 121 us check (subconsciously) whether experiences, situations and events fit into our misleading model. Facts not agreeing with the old concept are ignored, interpreted as unimportant, forgotten or not even perceived - without us being able to control this process. To start growing again, we need to cast off this automatic reaction. Fortunately it's easy to detect this automatism in our life: Whenever a (new) idea provokes strong feelings within us - repulsion, infuriation, stubbornness and even anger, but also fervent justification of our old models, - then we know for sure that error influences us. True, solid, integrated insight never produces this kind of tensed emotion. True insight always produces sovereignty instead of arrogance, - inspiration instead of fanaticism, - openness instead of the fortress-mentality of flawed ideas. We neutralize this mechanism by opening our life to new influences. This means • to give up the aggression with which we impulsively oppose new, uncomfortable ideas • to really make the effort to review and discard worn-out and limiting beliefs and • to become aware how much the clinging to old concepts restricts our scope of life even if all this makes us feel uncomfortable, takes energy and might require a complete re-thinking of the world. Page #122 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 122 Unlimited Horizons Error Manifests Differently In Different Stages While focusing on STAGE 1 and 2 our life can be totally misdirected by error and its consequences. These are the only two stages where all intensities and variations of this challenge can influence us. In STAGE 3 we experience a strange mixture of error and clear perception of reality. While in this state of ambivalence we are incapable of acting. With unseeing eyes we look at nothing in particular and mainly feel indecision whether to succumb to error or to raise the energy to regain clear comprehension and inner growth. As soon as this fragile equilibrium gets disturbed and a tendency towards clear understanding or dense emotions emerges, we either regain STAGE 4 or fall down to STAGE 1. This ambivalence hardly ever lasts longer than two to three minutes. Up to STAGE 6 our awareness may sporadically get clouded by error-driven emotions. The higher the stage we focus on, the clearer we perceive what causes these emotions within us and the easier it becomes to neutralize them. Page #123 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 123 Practical Tips • We cannot fundamentally eradicate error by thoroughly checking all facts and data. As effective this might be in partial areas, as little does it help us to break from comprehensive error-driven concepts. We eliminate error fundamentally by expanding continuously. This sharpens our intuition to such high degree that we instantly identify error - even if the person presenting it is utterly convinced of its truth. It currently is fashionable to psychologically scrutinize the past to find out what's wrong with our present. Yet this at best re-arranges our known patterns of behavior. It fails to open insights how to access higher dimensions. • We never proceed to new levels of insight if we expect or demand that these new levels agree with old concepts we are familiar with. Page #124 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 124 Unlimited Horizons 3 - Joy of Life Challenge: To increase happiness and fascination in life To minimize periods of lesser joy Stage 1 to 14 Range: We take it as a self-understood natural fact that disagreeable experiences should end quickly. Yet any similar limitation of positive circumstances we wouldn't even like to consider. We regard it as our inalienable, fundamental right that agreeable life-conditions continue forever. And with this we have exactly the right notion. We sense - consciously or subconsciously - a state of existence where nothing restricts the immense abilities we deeply sense within. To directly access the vast dimensions of fascination and zest for life that constitute the very basis of our existence, is theme of this challenge. How to start? Where Our Feelings Originate From earliest childhood on we've been taught that feelings are caused by external events. Yet this association is entirely Page #125 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 125 arbitrary and leads astray. It bars us from influencing one of the main factors of our life's happiness. Pleasant and unpleasant emotions have no original connection to the physical events we usually take as their very cause. All our feelings originate in desires (and dreads) we carry within. Once these themes of life get triggered, they color our present emotional state in a positive or negative mood. This explains why activities or events we usually experience with joy, sometimes for no apparent reason are marred by negative or indifferent feelings. In this case a different feeling got activated than the one we were 'accustomed' to. If we now attempt to influence the event or its assumed cause to reinstate the joy we used to feel, we usually fail. As long as we expect certain events to 'produce' always the same emotions, we block all access to the real mechanism that makes annoying feelings persistently recur. It pays to give up these expectations and to look deeper what the event - and our emotions - are trying to tell us. This is the first step to effectively prevent undesirable feelings and events from ever rising again. Negative Experiences Negative experiences are always and exclusively the result of our own actions and attitudes. Uncomfortable life-circumstances, problems, lack of recognition etc. are nothing other than signs that now or at an earlier time we ourselves created the basis for this problematic environment or harmful feeling by attaching emotions to themes that restrict growth. Page #126 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 126 Unlimited Horizons Though all negative experiences are limited in time, they have the troublesome tendency to lay the ground for new unpleasant events of the same type When something obstructive manifests in our life, we often react with irritation and other intense emotions. Yet these very emotions only renew our attachment to this same theme, which again programs similar events for our future. To break this chain of endlessly repetitive experiences we first need to become aware that this particular mechanism exists in the first place. How to Get Rid of Recurring Problematic Experiences Negative experiences inform us that a certain theme of life is not completed yet, - similarly as pain points out which part of our body needs attention. Since unresolved themes doggedly recur until we neutralize them, there's no point in trying to ignore their presence. Each negative event directs our focus towards one particular theme of life. More often than not the accompanying emotions seem so embarrassing and uncomfortable that we'd love to ignore them. Yet these very feelings show us precisely what theme we need to neutralize. Only when we identify the very theme that interferes with our life can we home in and dissolve the exact emotions that attach us to the event - and thus prevent their future occurrence. We e.g. need to become aware that it's our readiness to get irritated that interferes with our joy of life, not the long Page #127 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 127 queue at the supermarket check-out, or the 'slow' car driving in front of us etc. To fundamentally end negative themes of life, it helps to dispassionately examine whether we are not arbitrarily ascribing negative feelings to events, persons or objects that have no real connection to them to realize that all emotions - even those we don't like - originate within US, - and that this gives us the precious chance to change or to neutralize them • to find out what an event wants to tell us to consider the ultimate consequences if we'd really act on our negative impulses - and whether the prompting event is worth that price • to ask ourselves whether we need to react to a 'negative event in the first place, and • to decide to follow an entirely different - positive - line of thought or action A poised, neutral attitude at the occurrence of uncomfortable feelings and experiences generally prevents an automatic negative emotional reaction of ours - which would only attach us to similar events in the future. This may not always be easy. It takes a major effort to give up swift blame of others and to stop an habitual animosity towards specific outside factors. Specially in the beginning it requires real honesty to admit to ourselves that our own prejudices triggered our unpleasant emotion. It takes considerably more energy to build this new understanding than to succumb to well-known, familiar irritation. Yet Page #128 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 128 Unlimited Horizons this is only a small price for freedom from an automatic reaction that in the long run would cost us far more energy. Each single block, restriction, effort and obstacle we confront is a vital tutorial element of our present existence. Once we stop regarding these difficulties as insurmountable barriers, but rather interpret them as challenges to grow and to test our inherent abilities, we are well on our way to a far broader and more fascinating scope of life. Positive Experiences Positive experiences are also always the result of our own actions and attitudes. Comfortable conditions of life, friends, affluence, high status etc. indicate that now or at an earlier time we ourselves created the basis for this agreeable environment. And we certainly have the right to enjoy this. However - one aspect of this situation is somewhat problematic: All positive physical experiences - as well as negative ones - are limited in time. Sooner or later they all come to an end. We usually see two ways to deal with this: • either we enjoy the agreeable situation till it ends - and try to regain the positive conditions we got accustomed to once negative or dull influences start to increase • or we assign some part of our present means to generate sufficient positive influence in advance so our agreeable condition will continue. In both cases we merely react to influences instead of intentionally structuring them. This keeps us on a low level of Page #129 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 129 experience which only seems attractive because we are unaware of more advanced ones. Yet there is a third way Dormant within us there exist immense depths of knowledge, love, power, abilities and joy. We can access these regions and experience these qualities directly without being hampered by old desires and dreads. This third alternative is always open, though sometimes we block access to it through restrictive attitudes, actions, longings and fears. Yet even then we often get a glimpse of it. It's entirely our own responsibility if and how we use these opportunities. Going for this third alternative not only unfolds our inherent potential, but also generates an abundance of positive energies for future growth. Acceleration We can accelerate our progress. Impulses for compassion, charity, forgiveness, helping others etc. make us break out of egoistic mechanisms and widen our understanding. Yet only spontaneous impulses matter. Charity for mere formal reasons has no effect on our growth. - Each time we e.g. feel an urge to help others, - a tendency to reconcile, an impulse for compassion etc. - we are offered a Iway out of the dense, hypnotic veil emotions and activities weave around us on STAGE 1. Yet impulses of this kind last only seconds. If we don't act on them spontaneously, but decide to do it later or postpone Page #130 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 130 Unlimited Horizons our decision, this almost always prevents the inspired action. Most gateways to new activities open only fleetingly - as our flash-excursions to higher stages do. Remembering afterwards how we missed the impulse usually leaves a sense of deep regret. Yet when we spontaneously follow the impulse, this always regales us with deep satisfying elation, harmony, happiness and an inspired outlook for our future. Example: We know the situation: Driving at rush-hour, the traffic is moving slow, so slow that we get irritated. And then that one car off a side-lane wants to move in in front of us. Now the impulse pops up: 'Just let him in, ten seconds more won't make a difference'. How do we react? - Allow our anger to get the upper hand? Close up the space so he can't possibly squeeze in, decide for selfishness, against compassion and understanding? - If we could only see our face now. Already full of impatience, anger, irritation, we just added disappointment at ourselves, regret for a chance forever lost and remorse however hidden. We feel ugly, and that annoys us even further. - Or do we stop, one friendly gesture with our hand and he moves in, relieved that someone took pity? - Just look at the reward. - We feel good. Our anger, our impatience, our irritation is somehow diminished and some new, positive energy mysteriously reached heart and mind. It seems unexplainable, but it is there. Page #131 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 131 Why the 'Bad' Ones seem to Have More Fun Our present world easily gives the impression that people acting ruthlessly - 'bad' - have far more fun than those restricting themselves to 'good' behavior. Actions perceived as 'good' often seem boring, fettered by duty, governed by rigid rules and prompted by intellectual accord rather than gut-feeling. And further these kind of actions more often than not remain unrecognized - except by a type of dull and uncreative people who define adherence to firm rules as major purpose of their life - and try to motivate or force others to conform to this belief as well. In stark contrast to this many actions we regard as 'bad' carry the thrill of the forbidden and are inspired by excitement, daring and creativity. When we engage in 'bad', 'forbidden' action, we often experience heightened intensity of life, substantially more energy, and in the end attain a high degree of satisfaction - irrespective if we were successful or not. And this gut-feeling is basically right. Excitement and the exploration of unknown (forbidden) areas of life are generally far more intense and satisfying than the performance of any socially 'correct', formal duty could ever be. But the conclusion is not that we should choose 'bad' actions because they just seem more rewarding, - the conclusion is to take THE BOREDOM out of 'good' action. As long as we perform 'good' actions only because we follow mere formal, religious or social motives, or because we want to please someone advocating the boring kind of 'good' behavior, we'll always envy those having 'fun' with their 'bad' actions - even though we might outwardly condemn them - and even Page #132 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 132 Unlimited Horizons though we may take high pride in how much 'good' we supposedly accumulate by sticking to boring rules. Yet this purely formal pursuit of 'the good' without real inner understanding, without real inner engagement and conviction only attaches us to ever more boredom, rigidity and negative emotions (resentment) against the 'bad' guys who seem to have all the fun. We need to fundamentally understand why we are performing 'good' actions that further our and others' growth. We need to realize that exploring higher dimensions of consciousness is infinitely more exciting, vibrant and rewarding than any 'bad' - i.e. selfishly motivated - action governed by greed, deception, anger, pride, carelessness, obsession or laziness could ever be. Only with inspiration deeply rooted in our emotions will our 'positive' activities produce the sovereignty and freedom from persistently recurring uncomfortable and frustrating situations and emotions. We also need to discard the misleading idea that 'good' actions necessarily have to be in harmony with commonly accepted views of society. Mahatma Gandhi's life excellently demonstrates that positive action can be adventurous, daring, exciting, highly creative, powerful and much more, yet he certainly upset all established opinions and disrupted much of the prevalent social consensus of his time. To seriously go for higher dimensions takes far more courage, steadfastness and strength than adhering to the accepted, egoistic views of a society which essentially only wants to preserve its current stagnant status-quo. Page #133 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 133 Practical Tips • That what supports inner growth, what removes obstacles, error etc. from our path to sovereignty and freedom, what helps us perceive our original radiant nature, generally produces an agreeable, happy feeling that is not brought about at others' cost. That what obstructs us to experience this agreeable feeling, what blocks growth and impedes the perception of our original, radiant nature, generally produces feelings of discontent, unhappiness etc. • Any passionate - positive or negative - reaction to an event tells us that the respective theme of life is still active, and that we - consciously or subconsciously - want further confrontation with this theme. Attempts to ignore disagreeable experiences do not remove the irritation. This only shifts our inevitable confrontation with the respective theme into the future. • We certainly can keep on believing that an 'inescapable force of nature' causes distressing events we cannot possibly prevent. Yet this easily creates feelings of helplessness and anger towards this (unfair) world. It doesn't really help the dissolution of unpleasant experiences if we add these feelings of weakness on top. As long as we assign negative circumstances to outside causes, we block all access to its real origin. Giving up this belief opens our eyes for ways to stop recurring unpleasant experiences and feelings once and for all. Page #134 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 134 Unlimited Horizons 4 - Aggression | Anger Challenge: To completely remove anger and aggression from our life To convince others to cooperate with us without us needing to show anger To rid ourselves of our readiness to flare up Range: Anger, aggression etc. challenge us from STAGE 1 to STAGE 9 This challenge manifests in different intensities depending on the stage we focus on: STAGE 1 - Totally overshadowing (rage) STAGE 2 to 4 - Partially overshadowing STAGE 5 to 8 - Restricting our scope of life STAGE 9 - Subtle Anger, aggression and violence etc. seem such general part of our society that we permanently maintain a state of readiness to counter any possible eruption of it. We know no alternative (relaxed) state. Thus we are unaware how much of our life's energy we reserve for defending against anger - and for manifesting it towards others 'to get things done'. If we could free this Page #135 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 135 energy for more creative purposes, we could quite literally fly. To get an idea how much power gets wasted, we only need to realize what enormous energies get manifested in a bout of rage. Yet though anger seems all-pervasive, there's no law that we have to be in its path. It is quite possible to go through life without ever encountering anger or aggression, - and without needing to employ it to make others comply with our demands. And all this while we direct the saved energies towards far more enjoyable activities. This section describes how to reach this state. How Anger Manifests in Our Lives We typically differentiate neatly between two types of aggression: the one directed TOWARDS US. - which we mostly consider unwarranted, arbitrary and entirely unjustified, and • the one we employ towards OTHERS, - where we feel perfectly justified to 'motivate' them in this fashion to get our way. Yet for the purpose of eliminating this negative feature from our life, this distinction simply doesn't work. As long as We are willing to send out aggression to achieve our goals, we create a resonance within us that automatically makes us the target of anger and aggression others direct towards us to achieve their goals. Page #136 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 136 Unlimited Horizons Few people ever notice that they employ bursts of aggression to get their way in life. Yet how often are we gruff, unwilling, snippy, curt or impolite towards others. It is the way we put down children, reject inquiries of coworkers, patronize waiters and sales-people, react with irritation towards other drivers on the road etc. - the list could easily continue. We use these subtle forms of anger in a matter-of-fact way to 'advance' our goals and status. We consider these seemingly 'minor' varieties of anger trivial, or take them as quite normal behavior. Yet they cause intense reactions in those towards whom we direct them, and are the very cause for us to remain the TARGET of anger. What Is Anger? Anger - and its variations aggression, violence, rage etc. - project our own point of view so energetically into our environment that it completely blocks our very own capacity of reasoning and understanding. • Anger renders us incapable of accepting new or outside information and to consider it realistically • It distorts our judgment of what is right or wrong, proper or inappropriate • It detaches us from the cooperation of other beings • It disables our critical inner voice Once this challenge activates within us, all our thoughts and feelings appear extremely logical to us. Yet when we dispassionately analyze them afterwards, we always recognize that they presented us a grossly distorted picture of reality. Page #137 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 137 It is irrelevant whether we project our anger onto others or keep it smoldering inside. In both cases all channels through which we could gain new insights that may dissolve our anger - are blocked. Anger wastes immense energy on fiercely MAINTAINING our present blockages. It thus stops us from freeing our life from exactly the restrictions we feel angry about. What Causes Anger? Anger occurs because of our readiness to engage in this type. of emotion, - NEVER BECAUSE OF A SPECIFIC EVENT! No physical event ever compels us to react in an angry mode only. Events that e.g. trigger rage (or love) in one person will not engage this kind of reaction in others. Events have no absolute connection to the emotions we feel while we experience them. There is no cosmic law that we always have to get angry when the car in front of us drives slower than we would like to go. Events trigger feelings that exist dormant within us. Events make these dormant feelings resonate in our consciousness much as a glass resonates when a certain sound is struck. They then activate and push into the forefront of our awareness - just like a sound that comes to our attention. If no latent feelings of anger lay dormant within us, there is no resonance and no event will ever trigger anger. And this is the very key to once and for all eliminate anger and aggression from our life - dealing it out as well as being its target: Page #138 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 138 Unlimited Horizons By separating physical events from our emotional reaction to them, we gain control over these feelings - and become able to dispel them. The key is - to understand that we are the only one responsible for our (angry) feelings, never any outside cause. Certainly - this concept is far from our current understanding. Deeply programmed to accept external events as the only cause for anger, we might even get 'angry' at the suggestion that our own emotional reaction may be the very source of it - that we are responsible for it - and that can't possibly be. Unfortunately the prevalent view that events cause anger doesn't offer effective mechanisms to fundamentally stop these irritations. We know that removing the physical cause of one particular annoyance does little to prevent future occurrences of similar events. It would take loads of money to eliminate all possible physical causes for all possible irritations, - only to notice that this strategy restricts our life to a severely limited, sterile environment. To really stop anger and aggression from upsetting us ever again, we need a new concept, - one that works. The new - consciousness-centered - model provides exactly this opening. By neutralizing our dormant feelings of anger we effectively remove ourselves from any active as well as passive manifestation of anger and violence - without having to invest enormous effort into controlling all our environment. If we don't carry aggression within us, we also do not meet. it in our outer life. Page #139 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 139 What to Do Once Anger Activates in Our Life • The main mechanism: At any emergence of anger or rage within us there always is a time when our awareness ceases to be totally dominated by it. At this point we usually see the absurdity of our reaction, but still are under the sway of strong negative emotions like jealousy, pride etc. If at this time we make a conscious effort to regain our equanimity - even though it hurts our pride etc. - we build up a dynamic momentum that eventually enables us to control any manifestation of this challenge. Regaining equanimity means to swallow our pride, to overcome displeasure, irritation, feelings of being unjustly treated, of having been insulted etc. In essence it means to consciously decide NOT TO. PROLONG this negative emotion. It means to intentionally decide for more understanding, for a broader (possibly less comfortable) view, for compassion instead of egoism. Though this may take enormous effort of will and/or considerable self-denial, it ultimately frees us from an automatic reaction that in the long run would cost us far more energy. Wait! Be patient with someone unable to master himself - instead of responding in kind. Be aware that his capacity for reasoning is fully blocked for some time, - that he is under a cloud that Page #140 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 140 Unlimited Horizons needs to dissipate before he can become 'his true self' again. Wait. You can't do anything else. Don't seek the confrontation. Don't try to argue your point of view. You have no access to him during this phase, no matter what you say or do. Politely leave the room or react unexpectedly friendly, understanding, neutral. Prevent - if possible - to fuel his rage. The energy of an outbreak of rage always dissipates after a short while. Give him time to end this phase. This may not always be successful, but helps in most cases. • Becoming aware how others react when WE subject them to our will To gauge how our anger affects others is quite easy: Once we become the target of anger - we experience exactly how others feel when we treat them this way. By watching how hysterical, incompetent, immature, overreacting and unattractive others look when they direct their anger towards us, - we see exactly how dumb we look when we succumb to this challenge instead of mastering it. Spoil-Sports Certain people purposely use irritation to harvest energy from us. They like to make us angry. They feel satisfaction when others get overwhelmed by negative emotions. During adolescence these people are called spoil-sports. Page #141 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 141 Once we react the way they desire, our day is ruined, while they bask in all the negative energy they gleaned from us. Yet there are alternative ways of dealing with these characters: Laugh at them - kiss them - make a joke of their attempt - ask them playfully what they want your energy for. Use imagination to call their bluff in a nonaggressive, joking way. This totally deflates the spoil-sports' strategy. Whatever energy they spent to prime our angry reaction dissolves into nothingness without yielding results. Yet without our anger reinforcing their energy, they soon run out of power. They'll try again, - if not now, then later - but after a few attempts usually give up trying to leech us (mostly with the feeling that we just are too stupid to even recognize how angry they are with us, and that we don't merit their precious attention). If we stop our angry reaction at its very source within us, the very moment we feel it, we eventually remove all dormant. anger within us. This automatically eliminates each and any manifestation of anger and violence from our life. - Yet - we need to try out this concept. Intellectual reasoning alone can never prove its validity. Page #142 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 142 Unlimited Horizons Anger Manifests in Different Intensities Depending on the Stage We Focus On IN STAGE 1 all intensities and varieties of this challenge may influence us. This is the only stage where we can get completely overwhelmed by mindless rage. IN STAGE 1 we think it perfectly normal to aggressively flare up when something irritates us intensely (i.e. when we don't get our way). As long as we permit anger and rage to run unchecked, we automatically lay the seed for further - active as well as passive experiences of similar intensity. Rage and all its negative effects remain a theme of our life for as long as we don't stop this automatism. The only effective way to remove totally overshadowing rage is to shift focus to STAGE 4. Though in the higher stage anger may still occur, it ceases to block us completely. This enables us to reduce our willingness to reinforce this violent emotion, which in turn diminishes its effects on our life. Fully overshadowing anger (rage) and violence can manifest in our life only as long as we stay focused on STAGE 1. In STAGE 2 to 4 anger ceases to overshadow us. If - every time this challenge activates - we make a conscious effort to stop this destructive emotion, we create a momentum that will ultimately free us Page #143 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 143 from this challenge - irrespective whether each single effort is successful or not. In STAGE 5 to 8 we only sporadically get captured by negative emotions, which make us focus on egoistic, narrow themes of life. We are barely capable of purposefully steering our life during these outbreaks. Patience, perseverance and being aware of this mechanism help to overcome such temporary eruptions. The higher the stage we focus on, the clearer we perceive what causes anger within us and the easier it becomes to neutralize it. In STAGE 9 anger merely surfaces as mild emotion. Yet its ever so slight egoistic urge blocks further progress. At this stage we easily identify and neutralize any manifestation of this challenge. Practical Tips • All anger and aggression we allow to run unchecked automatically lays the seed for new anger in the future. • Blaming others, ('Roger made me angry. ) removes us from control of our anger and hands it 'Roger'. Page #144 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 144 Unlimited Horizons We subconsciously maintain a state of readiness to counter any possible eruption of anger. This alerts us instantly once aggression flares up in our environment. The media scrupulously exploit this readiness to make money off us. They hijack our attention by showing much carnage and violence - only to trick us into watching commercials for dog food and soap-suds. This endless inflated focus on violence feeds deeply back into society. It conveys aggression and violence to be a means to achieve fame. When we are violent enough, we become 'news'. There's only one effective way to neutralize this destructive influence: - rigorously remove all such media from your environment. There's aggressive energy inherent in all new creation - inventions, works of art, styles, more efficient ways of organizing etc. This 'natural aggression' gives 'The New' a chance to succeed against 'The Old and Established'. The difference between this natural aggression that accompanies everything new, - and anger and hostility on the other side is the mood we feel inside. Creative, new things are driven by inspiration, while anger is always driven by a distortion of inner judgment. To distinguish between these two types of energy is also part of this challenge. Page #145 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 145 5 - Being Attractive Challenge: To be attractive to others To have an attractive body To be accepted To avoid ugliness and lack of appeal - now and as we get older - Range: Stage 1 to 13 What impression we give others has little to do with cosmetics, clothing, hairstyle, accessories, fluency of expression or the kind of car we drive. Our current appeal - or lack of it - is the visual and tactile mirror of all our desires, dreads, ideals, attitudes and also of the energy we use to project them into action. Our physical body - its radiance, dynamism, abilities, potential and strengths - is essentially formed by how we think, feel, act and speak right now, which - in a nutshell - also mirrors everything we ever did before. Attempts to camouflage embarrassing traits or previous conduct only deceive the simplest of our fellow people. Even the intention to hide something invariably shows up in our facial Page #146 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 146 Unlimited Horizons expression, in our bearing and the manner of our speech - and is consciously or subconsciously picked up by everyone. It's easy to find examples of this mechanism: People whose faces looked fresh, sheen and attractive in their youth, but whose lives revolved mainly around indulgences and excess, often show early traits of decadence in their faces. The longer they maintain this lifestyle, the more their appearance deteriorates. - Others who strive for harmony, equanimity and inner growth often radiate inner beauty and growing attraction throughout their life though their outer appearance never complies with any current beauty ideal. Transparent Insight Into Life's Direction The bodily form and facial features of others inform us subtly about their inner attitudes. We intuitively perceive certain facial and bodily features as agreeable or disagreeable and instinctively react with attraction or rejection. • An ugly and depraved face warns us to shun the attitudes and behavior we recognize behind it - so we will not manifest this unattractive form in our own life. Genuine beauty on the other hand may inspire us to strive for a similar magnetic appeal. A neutral or indifferent reaction tells us that we already completed the lesson a particular form repre sents. This information - certainly - is more intense, if our own body causes affection or rejection. Thus the appearance and Page #147 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 147 features of our own body - and how others react to it - inform us unerringly what inner attitudes we still need to attend to. The general mechanism: If a particular form prompts emotional reactions like attraction or rejection, this always indicates that the theme this form represents is actively challenging us now. Accelerated Comprehension This learning-mechanism is highly effective, but often takes long time to complete its lesson. As long as we are unaware of the informative function this challenge presents, we typically try to counteract lack of attractiveness by fashionable dress, cosmetics, diet, working out etc. - only to notice that the effect is highly fleeting at best and hardly ever impresses those special people whose approval we really crave. Once we understand the basic mechanism of this challenge, we become able to effectively improve our appearance and attractiveness - if this is our intention. The Challenge If we are unhappy with our present appearance, we may at any time influence our bodily form and its radiation by simply changing our desires, attitudes and actions. Each change in our longings, feelings, fears and the intensity with which we project them into activity (or block them) invariably also alters our bodily form and attractiveness. The point in time this change becomes visible depends on how deeply our previous undesired attitude still lodges within Page #148 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 148 Unlimited Horizons us, whether we really are willing to give it up, how intensely we long for change and how much energy we invest into this venture. Yet this may not necessarily take long. Any genuine departure from e.g. a negative or obstructive attitude is usually immediately recognized and wholeheartedly appreciated by our social environment. Beyond Form The more we neutralize this challenge, the less outer appearances do influence our feeling of life. We then cease to judge bodily forms whether they correspond to current ideas of beauty, but take in the inner values we recognize behind the outer shell as part of the comprehensive sovereign vision of our life. Page #149 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 149 6 - Pride | Arrogance . Challenge: To assert our natural strength and pride To prevent arrogance from obstructing our communication and cooperation with others To prevent being treated with disrespect Range: Arrogance, haughtiness, pride etc. challenge us from STAGE 1 to STAGE 9 This challenge manifests in different intensities depending on the stage we focus on: STAGE 1 - Totally overshadowing STAGE 2 to 4 - Partially overshadowing STAGE 5 to 8 - Restricting our scope of life STAGE 9 - Subtle Pride We need natural pride to survive the current mood of our world. Without sound self-esteem and strength of character the egoistic motives of others may far too easily turn our life into unwanted directions. We don't need to generate natural pride. We were born with it. Everyone - even the biggest coward - showed enormous cour Page #150 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 150 Unlimited Horizons age when he immersed himself into these overpowering material surroundings to face his scariest nightmares, desires, challenges and dreads in physical form. Yet as chaotic this may look at times, what we experience is a learning process to which we committed ourselves willingly and in total freedom of choice. It gives us insights into emotional depths of our character and essence more gentle environments cannot provide. Thus courage and confidence are an indelible part of our existence. These ancient powers enable us to experience this world in the first place. Nobody can ever take this sense of inner worth and selfrespect from us. And when confronted with challenges and tribulations we only need to claim this indestructible part of our very existence, we only need to evoke our fundamental courage and with its archaic power face all troubles. Arrogance Arrogance - however - is something different. Arrogance, haughtiness, aloofness, self-importance etc. always indicate the exact opposite : - deep LACK of confidence and sovereignty. More often than not it only tries to gloss over gross lack of knowledge and understanding, deep insecurity, and uncertainty of one's social position and acceptance. For lack of personality it overvalues the importance of money, status, power and trinkets. Page #151 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 151 Arrogance and its variants produce grave drawbacks for those exhibiting it - • Arrogance gives one's own point of view such exalted importance that it discards all other beings, experiences, judgments, activities and viewpoints as far less significant or deeply beneath consideration. Yet the viewpoints and experiences of others offer insight into wisdom and skills we could not (yet) gain ourselves. Disdain for others' insights is mostly caused by fear that new viewpoints may violate our prestige. Yet such behavior only solidifies this subconscious angst and insecurity, and intensifies the vulnerability of our position and opinion. Arrogance erects unnecessary barriers between ourselves and others. It excludes us from the benign cooperation and interchange with other people. Arrogant people hardly ever notice that they are left out. To their face they are paid lip-service that corroborates their aloofness, but behind their backs they are called idiots while their behavior is violently objected. The more aloof we parade our possessions, status, beliefs etc., the more we reduce our scope of life. Page #152 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 152 Unlimited Horizons It's Easy to Deflate Arrogance Most people feel hurt when treated arrogantly, yet it's quite easy to deflate all types of arrogance. Arrogance, aloofness, haughtiness etc. run into emptiness if we simply ignore them. Arrogance affects us only if We accept the game. If we ignore it, it has no effect and cannot hurt us. So it's basically our decision whether we want to back another person's arrogance, - or whether it wouldn't be better to simply ignore such antics and turn to less narrow themes. Be aware that opposing someone's arrogance also costs our energy - possibly as much as when we silently suffer by it. How to Find Out If This Challenge Is Active in OUR Life Arrogance is easily recognized in others, but it's quite a test to realize and accept that we ourselves are under its sway. A number of simple signs tell us if this obstructive mechanism is active in our life - • Do we need to feel important, - and do we crave others to continually bolster this feeling? • Do differing views irritate us? • Do we only accept people who confirm our importance - and flatter us in our presumed supremacy? • Do we communicate with others as if we grant an audience to subjects? Page #153 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 153 • Do we acknowledge that more advanced people might exist, - but certainly not in our immediate environment? This challenge is also active • when we feel hurt if brushed off haughtily or treated with disdain, and • when it irritates us to watch others being put down arrogantly and with contempt. And further - the fact that we chose bodily existence in this time of pervasive egoistic conduct makes it most likely that this challenge is active in us now. How to Neutralize Arrogance We cannot remove this blockage by opposing, battling, suppressing or repenting it. Any kind of energy we put towards this attitude - no matter if we accept or fight it - only attaches our emotions to this same theme. Yet this inevitably programs similar experiences for our future. How can we neutralize arrogant behavior while retaining the natural pride and self-respect we need for survival? • If we are secure in our knowledge, self-respect and inner worth, there's no need for aloofness to get respect from our fellow people. It is accorded naturally. Rising disdain and aloofness are warning signs that our life is narrowing. It pays to stop this attitude before it paralyzes our life completely. Page #154 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 154 Unlimited Horizons • Decide if feeling self-important is more valuable than inner growth. • Remembering how hurt we felt when others treated us with arrogance and haughtiness (e.g. during childhood), - why then make others feel this way? Certainly - We are the pride of creation no-one will ever reach and of which there can be only one. Sure. - Unfortunately we'll hardly find others to endorse this, since everyone else also feels to be the crown of creation. So let's scale it down a bit - in the huge emotional space beyond the region of arrogance we'll find inner sovereignty entirely independent of others recognizing or confirming it. • Open up to new ideas and concepts from every source that is presenting them. • Realize that you are not enlightened yet - otherwise why would you be reading this text. So why not ask others for assistance if this enables you to reach higher spheres faster. And if arrogant treatment hurts you, you can easily remove this from your life. Just stop dealing it out to those 'beneath' you (children, subordinates, trainees, students etc.). Dealing it out inevitably programs you to experience this problematic emotion from the receiving end as well. Stop this vicious circle before it even begins. Page #155 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 155 Arrogance Manifests in Different Intensities - Depending on the Stage We Focus On In STAGE 1 all intensities and varieties of this challenge can influence us. This is the only stage where we may block all our growth by showing haughtiness and senseless self-importance. In STAGE 1 it feels normal to put down others haughtily - while a minute later feeling hurt when we get treated this way. As long as we allow our arrogant behavior to run unchecked, we automatically lay the seed for further - active as well as passive - experiences of similar intensity. Arrogance and all its negative effects remain a theme of our life for as long as we don't stop this mechanism. The only effective way to neutralize this challenge completely is to shift focus to STAGE 4. In STAGE 2 to 4 we start to wonder if aloof behavior is such a good thing. Our stance softens a bit. If - each time this challenge activates - we make a conscious effort to stop this obstructing emotion, we create a momentum that will ultimately free us from this challenge - irrespective whether each single effort is successful or not. From STAGE 5 to 8 we more and more realize the total uselessness of this emotion. Yet sometimes we still succumb to its sway. Patience, perseverance and being aware of this mechanism help to overcome such temporary eruptions. Page #156 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 156 Unlimited Horizons The higher the stage we focus on, the clearer we perceive what causes arrogance within us and how to neutralize it. In STAGE 9 arrogance merely surfaces as mild emotion. Yet its ever so slight egoistic urge stops further expansion. At this stage we easily identify and neutralize any manifestation of this challenge. Practical Tips • It's irrelevant whether everyone bows to your point of view. What matters is to advance to higher stages. Leave the sphere where you're always right. Wanting to always be right only rivets you to your present level. Cherish new clues from anyone providing them - even from those deemed far beneath your status. • Positions defended by pride and arrogance are not based on better arguments, but solely on the projection of negative energy (aggression, unwillingness etc.). Battling them restricts you to their narrow scope. Simply ignore them, they won't help you grow in any case. • The more arrogant an opinion gets presented, the more narrow-minded it is. • The more sovereign and secure we are in our knowledge, the more we tolerate or accept the views of others. Page #157 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ · · How to Dissolve Challenges Some people enjoy others stoop before them, - and never care what's talked behind their back. Yet most often they only experience one limited theme in all their life: their ascent to highest heights and then a deep fall into oblivion. They are poor people confined to tight boundaries till their days end. It's our decision whether we want to play their narrow game fighting it, or getting irritated by it; - or whether we wouldn't prefer to direct our precious time and energy towards more expansive themes. - 157 Holding fast onto aloof behavior solidifies life into unmoving static that's easily mistaken for stability. - Do you sometimes - when you are all alone - feel your life run into emptiness, - that you are unable to grasp something important, something too subtle to apprehend, something nobody tells you? Then try welcoming fresh ideas and the experiences of others. This leads out of your isolation. • And if you are famous now, and others give you all the recognition you crave, - enjoy, - but also look inside: - being recognized doesn't make you enlightened; it only satisfies some rather naïve longing. Page #158 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 158 Unlimited Horizons 7 - Status and Recognition Challenge: To gain recognition and high status To recognize and avoid flawed status To be independent of the opinions of others Range: STAGE 1 to 5 - Irritation by low status possible - Natural high status STAGE 1 to 14 Recognition is a major motivation in human life. We take positive recognition - high or increasing status - as confirmation that our way of life is right. Low status or lack of recognition on the other hand often triggers enormous efforts to correct this situation. Two main approaches lead to higher status. One is worth going, the other one isn't. How NOT To Reach Status All direct attempts to reach high status are flawed. Artificial applause, deception, pressurizing or bribing for the purpose of getting honored etc. generally produces the exact opposite effect. Page #159 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 159 Either our fellow people identify self-praise, boasting, defaming others etc. for what they really are: - a major flaw of character, and react with disregard, mockery and insincere applause. Or we attract only the simple-minded, whose adoration hardly makes us progress; what good does it to see a million ants bow down to us? Direct strife for status always indicates a limited mind. The media-stars and vainglory politicians of our times demonstrate this blatantly. Sure, we can try direct ways to recognition. But this makes us experience how hollow this forced status feels, - how insincere others react to our efforts, - how they laugh at us behind our back, or loath us with all their heart while showing smiling faces. · TRUE Recognition True recognition, true love and true affection are never gained by any specific action. True recognition is always and only given for free. Truly high status is given when we genuinely help others · sincerely recognize their merits • enable them to unfold their inborn abilities etc. while not expecting an immediate response, gratitude or use it for self-praise etc. True recognition comes automatically and with the same inevitability as the flaws of forced status are experienced. But it might not come when or how we expect it. Page #160 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 160 Moving BEYOND Status Status - no matter if high or low - has one fundamental flaw: it makes us dependent on the opinions of others. And these others might have ulterior motives when granting us recognition. They might give or withhold respect to subtly coax us into their direction, or lead us onto paths we would not want to go. Craving for status throws us open to this sly blackmail. And · the blinder we are to its signs, the more effective this strategy is. - Practical Tips Once we move beyond the addiction to outside praise, we free ourselves from all this scheming. This gives us real independence, sovereignty and control of our life. As long as the reactions of others still carry clout, we have not reached this genuine freedom yet. · Unlimited Horizons · If hunger for status suddenly pops up in your - emotions - regard it as a passing, limited theme of life maintain equanimity until the attack has passed, and remember that your inner magnificent being doesn't need any outside praise. If you go for direct status and recognition because the desire is just too strong - try to impress those more advanced than you, - those (few) hard to convince. This accelerates your progress far more than only playing to the crowd. Page #161 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 161 • And if you find yourself to be famous - - enjoy it! And be aware that this is testing you. Stay free of deceptive feelings of superiority, aloofness and arrogance. Break the cycle that otherwise will make you suffer the same self-importance you show now from the receiving end in lives ahead. Use your prominence to further growth in others. This transforms your fleeting fame into natural high status which never leaves you. Low status can influence our life (irritate us) as long as we focus on STAGE 1 to 5. Natural high status we may enjoy in all 14 stages. Page #162 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 162 Unlimited Horizons 8 - Deception / Manipulation Challenge: To stop being subject of manipulation, deception and dishonest schemes Range: To become able to differentiate between truth and deception To find ever expanding truth in our life Manipulation and deception challenge us from Stage 1 to 9 This challenge manifests in different intensities depending on the stage we focus on: STAGE 1 STAGE 2 to 4 STAGE 5 to 8 STAGE 9 - Totally misleading - Partially misleading - Restricting our scope of life Subtle - This challenge is not about 'honesty' or 'always tell the truth' as we were told by our parents. This challenge is about activating a deep hidden ability that makes us find our way out of the all-pervasive deception and manipulation that surrounds us pretty much wherever we are. Page #163 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ · How to Dissolve Challenges State of Deception Being born in this particular day and age subjects us to massive and wholesale deception and manipulation. This affects us directly, but in a much bigger way subconsciously. • 163 Much of what our parents told us, they received by word of mouth from their parents, which again came from their grandparents and so on, without anyone ever checking if it was true. We got imprinted with these advices, opinions, prejudices etc. when we were very young and impressionable. Many of our present opinions, behavior and fixations go back to this early programming. And even if we did the exact opposite of what our parents told us, we only reversed polarity, but didn't create our own individual path. • Much what we were taught in school has long been disproven, but still schoolbooks get reprinted with all their ancient mistakes. Example: Many parents convey to their children that people of different skin-color, language, faith, nationality, fashion of dress, eating habits, - those living in other countries or continents, with less money, lesser paid jobs, less freedom etc., also have less worth. When we observe tourists in other - exotic countries, we know this to be true. Everything governments tell us intends to keep us quiet, never to make us well-informed. Political spin, disinformation, propaganda, outright lies, - entire nations get brutally destroyed by this intentional deception. Page #164 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 164 Unlimited Horizons And politicians only want (re-)election, they'd never tell us an uncomfortable truth. • Most of what the media show us is highly selective, mani pulative, over-dramatized, and has no other purpose than make us buy products we don't need. All this and much more embeds us in a sea of deception. Subjected to much outright, persistent manipulation we lack a lifeline to find truth. But the problem runs even deeper. Getting clarity about material factors is often merely a matter of research and asking pestering questions. Yet once we start venturing into new (higher) dimensions, we are in uncharted territory. Any prejudice, opinion and cherished, but flawed belief may make us waste time and energy on cumbersome detours. It's easy to find examples: The widespread belief that spiritual techniques would make us grow, - the conviction that gurus, priests, holy persons etc. are able to enlighten us, and that it's just a matter of finding (and paying) the right one to do exactly this, - the idea that certain places would be conducive to inner progress, and that we just need to sit on one of these magic spots (stone-cycles, ancient temples, enchanted mountains, vortices etc.) to get enlightened without much effort, - - all this does nothing to make us expand. Page #165 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 165 How to Find the Red Line How to find orientation in the infinite opportunities and paths life spreads before us? How to find that one red line leading from our present state to ever expanding dimensions, insights, abilities, sovereignty and happiness? External information from books or teachers can't do this job. Even books like this one can only sketch the blueprint, the schematics, the mechanisms of progress. Great care was taken not to pre-program a particular path so you may shape your way in your very own individual fashion, yet this book can only outline where and how you'll find it yourself. And furthermore, - with everything we take from external sources there's always the chance of error or misunderstanding, even if it happens unwittingly. Where and how to find truth? - And how to recognize and act on it once we are face to face with it? We find truth when we begin to 'see' with the eyes of our intuition, - when we reactivate our inner incorruptible sense of what is true and what is not. That's our only reliable guide. But this ability doesn't rise automatically, or without real effort, or without altering essential behavior and ideas what life is all about. To break from blanket deception and manipulation we need to grow beyond it. We find our inner red line only if we really desire expansion. The deep longing • to find the truth about ourselves - why we have life, and what we're supposed to do with it - Page #166 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 166 Unlimited Horizons • to become greater than we are now - • to see dormant abilities become reality for us - - all this has to be there at the start. Without it, we'll continue drifting blindly, led by blind men who only pretend to know. Yet we already know our red line well, it guided us many times before. - It's the excitement for a new path of action, - the thrill of being close to that one special person, - a sudden insight how a particular situation works, - the clear notion that life intensifies if we pursue one certain goal. Exactly this is where our red line starts. If we decide to follow it, we'll expand. At first not every intuitive insight is precise. We need to train this skill to make it accurate. Failures and successes make us hone in to ever subtler and more detailed insights. Initial setbacks shouldn't dishearten us. No-one can save us from this learning process; - no-one can do it for us; - no-one can magically bestow this skill; - and no amount of theoretical musing will ever replace direct experience. This is something we only can do on our own. In the end we recognize deception as clearly as if perceiving material objects. And we'll see what challenges we need to meet, neutralize and grow by, - the obstacles to be dispelled, and how much energy this takes, - we sense the magnificent being within us with ever greater clarity, - and use these precious insights confidently to orient our life. Nothing will ever guide us as precisely and impartially as this inner sense. Page #167 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 167 How to Enhance Intuition Eliminating Self-Deception We enhance intuition when we stop deceiving OURSELVES. • Many things we want to see in a particular way, or like to believe that they should work a certain way - though reality is totally different. Identify these irrational beliefs - and discard them. This also means to change your life accordingly. Example: We may want to believe that medicine cures all sickness. In reality we only retain our health if we treat our body well and watch what we put into it. - A smoker trying to cure his cough with pills while continuing to smoke, never addresses the root-problem. In many areas we pretend to be greater than we really are. Become aware how YOU want OTHERS to see YOU - then check impartially whether you fulfill this inner picture or if there is a discrepancy. Everything we hide and all our pretenses others see far clearer than we think. We cannot fool this perception of others except for a very short time. To enhance our intuition we either can become what we'd really like to be, - or scale down the propaganda. Both methods work equally well for this purpose. What doesn't work is maintaining our pretense. Practical Tip: To find out how others see us, just look at yourself from behind - the one view we never see in a Page #168 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 168 • • Unlimited Horizons · mirror. But that's how everyone else perceives us half the time. And don't be too shocked. Identify comfortable, but flawed general opinions you express only because you don't want to upset your social consensus and position, - then stop voicing them. Ceasing All Manipulation We enhance intuition when we stop manipulating OTHERS. Manipulation creates an aura around us that makes us target of this kind of behavior. If we attempt deception, this inevitably comes back to us with similar intensity, similar results and in as inconvenient a time, - even if we were unsuccessful. Deception of ours produces further negative effects: Example: Paying health insurance safeguards health is quite a common belief. - In actuality only we can protect our health by taking care not to get sick. Whoever manipulates loses his ability to discriminate between right and wrong. We become unable to discern what action leads to success and satisfaction. - Decisions of ours lead us astray and make us waste energy on pointless projects. • It keeps us in the illusion that certain - ineffective - actions would be supportive for our growth. • It produces inability to perform or complete activities. Others detest manipulation as much as we do. Relinquishing this intention makes us intuitively recognize all such attempts, Page #169 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 169 which keeps us clear of their negative effects. This opens our life for more subtle perceptions. Desiring Reality We enhance intuition when we want to see what's REAL in our life. Deep DESIRE for truth stimulates an inner perception that alerts us to manipulation and deceit, even if it originates_ WITHIN US. It makes us aware of deeply hidden inclinations, bias and prejudices that influence us subconsciously. When we pursue this longing for truth, we recognize with ever increasing clarity who we truly are and why we really want to experience this world. This challenge is about reactivating an archaic inner sense how to intuitively find our way to greater dimensions, the knowledge of which was lost millennia ago. Deception Influences Us In Different Intensities - Depending on the Stage We Focus On In STAGE 1 this challenge influences us with all its overpowering strength. Here deception may lead us totally astray. In STAGE 1 we ignore or suppress truth if it inconveniences us while at the same time complaining when others cheat us. As long as we manipulate and deceive, we program further - active as well as passive - experiences of similar intensity for Page #170 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 170 Unlimited Horizons our life. Deception, the inability to distinguish between truth and lies, and failure to recognize the red line to higher states remain a theme of our life for as long as we don't stop this mechanism within us. This challenge starts to get fundamentally neutralized when we shift focus to STAGE 4. In STAGE 2 to 4 a yearning for truth, for genuine, solid information, for clear perception how to reach real insight begins to take hold of us. Our search for deeper knowledge begins. From STAGE 5 to 8 we perceive truth as a red line leading from disorientation towards ever increasing freedom and sovereignty. We stop disseminating rumors, misleading information and vague statements, because we recognize that this leads others - and in return us again - astray. We realize that living and communicating truth creates an aura of clarity around us that makes us intuitively select from the many alternatives of daily life our individual, optimal path of expansion In STAGE 9 we become aware that even our most subtle egoistic impulses influence others and disturb their natural flow of insight. Yet at this stage we easily identify and neutralize any manifestation of this challenge. Page #171 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 171 Up until STAGE 9 we see our red line as a 'rope' along which we climb hand over hand towards higher dimensions. In troubled times we hold fast onto that support like to a lifesaver. From STAGE 9 onward the true breadth and majesty of our inner being begins to reveal itself. We sense immense bliss, greatness, knowledge nearby. From now on our life unfolds through inspiration, which leads us to ever more fascinating dimensions. Practical Tips • Truth carries immense power. The higher a truth we express, the greater energy it carries, the more effect it has. • Communicating truth inspires others to trust us in return. - It also stimulates them to offer us knowledge - without us needing to ask for it. • We perceive the statements of others with the same clarity we send out. Yet this does not mean that we are obliged to always voice our opinion. • Intention to deceive shows clearly in the face. Anyone who only dares to look will recognize it. • And then there are those who elaborately try to convince us that this path can't possibly succeed. Yet this is merely another attempt at manipulating us. Our unusual views and actions remind these people of Page #172 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 172 Unlimited Horizons their own inner abilities - and of the fact that they let them run idle. To conceal this they intend to discourage all further progress in this direction. Discard this kind of 'advice'. Neither have these people seriously investigated this path, nor have they experienced it well enough to state an opinion. They only voice deep-rooted prejudices to force us back into the narrow life they deem comfortable. • Allow intuition to excite you with the path it sees. The more you cooperate with it, the more it fascinates you. Page #173 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 173 9 - Fear, Worry, Boredom, Insecurity, Disgust ... Challenge: To rid ourselves of impeding moods that make life miserable Range: Stage 1 to 8 Fear, worry, boredom, insecurity, disgust - as well as dissatisfaction, exhaustion, indignation, aversion, and gloating, - are oppressive moods that make life miserable. They are mere moods - i.e. emotional patterns - we drape onto an otherwise trouble-free reality. Impeding moods can ruin long stretches of our life by casting dark clouds above it, - though there's no physical cause to bring this about. They impede growth by diverting substantial energy to pointless issues. Oppressive moods influence our life with less intensity than anger, arrogance, deception and addiction. Yet most annoyingly they attach to ever different subjects right after we escaped their influence in one particular area of our life. They challenge us because they pop up again and again with ever new worries, fears, dissatisfaction etc. Impeding moods never originate in the physical causes we usually associate them with. Yet we can not dissipate them by Page #174 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 174 Unlimited Horizons simply changing our attitude (as we do when neutralizing obstacles). Since every impeding mood works in a different way, we first need to understand how they manage to hijack our emotions so thoroughly. Only then can we completely remove them from our life. Fear / Worry / Insecurity Nearly ALL fears and worries are purely imaginary and - given time - fade all by themselves. We only need to remember our many bygone fears to realize how superfluous they were. Insecurity is never caused by inborn weakness. It mostly is brought about by long endured fear. Fears arise when we encounter situations we never dealt with before. Almost automatically our mind assumes worst case scenarios and our emotions willingly follow its lead. Yet this programs us to experience exactly what we dread. Example: At times of exams we easily fear failure. Our fright may get so strong that all our ability to think gets paralyzed. Failure thus becomes a real possibility. Yet there's no compulsion to only feel fear at an exam (or other critical situations). We are utterly free to choose the exact emotions we want to accompany our experiences. Instead of selecting fear, we can as easily choose 'I've succeeded before, I'll now succeed as well.' Switching into this kind of 'SURE MODE' emotion supports our endeavors far better than anticipating failure. Page #175 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 175 Fear and worry are surefire ways to spoil an otherwise trouble-free life. We cannot escape fear by avoiding situations we believe will produce fear. This merely shifts this negative emotion to other situations, persons or objects. How to neutralize: Courageously confront your fears and worries and realize how unnecessary they are. Boredom Boredom is nothing other than lack of inner growth. Feelings of boredom inform us that we've grown out of one particular job or a limiting situation. Certainly - it might feel more comfortable to cling to the current (stagnant) circumstances, yet this doesn't make life interesting again. Boredom certainly ends when this particular life ends. We then get new chances to change to more exciting experiences. Yet if we decide to hang on to stagnant conditions till we leave our body, a long time of tedious monotony might be ahead of us. On the other hand it's perfectly 'legal' to explore boredom. Deeply entrenched ennui often comes from past turbulent experiences where we intensely craved stability and steadiness. Yet we sought it in the permanence of our (material) surroundings - instead of in continuous growth, as nature shows us. Our current present now shows us this (material) stability, but also the immovability and stagnancy it subjects us to. Page #176 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 176 Unlimited Horizons Unfortunately boredom is not a particularly attractive emotion. Thus - once we fully understood this lesson, - it's advisable to switch back to inner growth. If boredom clouds our life, it's high time to check if what we live for does justice to our higher aspirations, - and whether discarding our ideals is not immobilizing life into monotony. As long as we seek ever new and broader horizons, we never experience boredom. How to neutralize: The only sure way to break up boredom permanently is to start growing (again). Disgust / Indignation / Aversion Disgust, indignation and aversion are derivates of boredom. We 'insist' that our reality should 'behave itself' within highly limiting conditions. We are convinced that life is only acceptable and worth living if the standards we set are met (political or religious imperatives, luxury, privileges, certain social conduct of others, etc.). Yet this locks the bandwidth of our experiences into extremely narrow bounds. If our demands are not met, disgust and indignation veils our emotions. We strive to stay clear of 'undesired' (unfitting, unforeseen, uncomfortable) events and steer our life along known, controlled and sealed-off paths. We don't like to encounter anything we cannot imagine or control. Yet what we are able to imagine and control is only a minute part of all the kaleidoscopic, colorful existence around us. The focus and energy we direct towards monitoring, filtering and Page #177 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 177 controlling our environment prevents broader dimensions from ever opening up. Disgust, indignation and aversion end for sure when our current incarnation ends. For our next embodiment we may then decide whether it's worth to waste another life on this paralyzing mood, or if we not better choose a more open, more flexible attitude. We'll be challenged by this rejecting mood again and again until we dissolve it for good. So - why then not deal with it in this present life. How to neutralize: Disgust, indignation etc. stop automatically as we focus on something new and exciting that lets us grow. True commitment to expansion makes any impeding mood fall off all by itself. Exhaustion Activities that inspire are never tiring. Fascination with what we do even makes our energy rise far beyond our usual limits. Sure, - dealing with challenges may exhaust us bodily and emotionally. Since going for expansion means to always be on the alert to rise above limits, this sometimes lets us deeply crave rest and ease of life. To alleviate these tensions we automatically experience periods where we are less active, - similarly as sleep and waking rotate to regenerate mind and body. The equanimity we feel during such rest-periods may easily look so attractive that we are tempted to hold on to it. Yet as unable as we are to extend sleep and dream, as little can we prolong these times of regeneration. Page #178 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 178 Unlimited Horizons And if we try, and reject everything that may imperil this momentary stability, we reduce our life to mere routine, which again increases boredom and tiredness. We need to remove the root cause of our exhaustion. Weariness only dissolves when our life stops being tedious and lame. Exhaustion vanishes all by itself once life starts fascinating us (again). How to neutralize: If our job tires us, it might have gotten reduced to mere making money, which doesn't inspire us any more. We feel there should be more to life, - that real life passes us by, - that we are losing, no matter how much money we get paid. And this is what exhausts us. One solution may be to just quit the job and look for more interesting work, - or to start up a company on our own, - or to find what causes our lack of inspiration and change it into something more exciting. The negative alternative is to continue with our exhaustion. Practical Tip: Much exhaustion is caused by the sheer mountain of unfinished business we push ahead of us. - The phone-calls we forever dodge, - the heap of junk-mail in which important papers drown, - the burned-out light-bulb that makes accessing the attic hazardous; - the list could easily continue. To keep all this in check takes far more energy than its completion ever requires. Concluding these open issues effectively removes this cause for exhaustion. It lifts 'a load off our soul', - it frees considerable energies to deal with far more vital themes. Page #179 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 179 How to go about it? - Simple. - Complete all unfinished business as swiftly as possible. Devote sufficient time, energy and precision to this task so they won't pop up again. - And be aware that this also means to remove unwanted influences from your life. Dissatisfaction There are two types of dissatisfaction: • Constructive dissatisfaction arises from the fact that we grew out of a situation, but are still entangled in it. This prompts us to seek environments that further growth rather than stifling it, - to look for more progressive partners and friends, for associates that satisfy higher standards, precision, clarity etc. • Damaging dissatisfaction means complaining, grumbling, whining, feeling negative towards each and everything, seeing only the 'bad' side of issues etc. This challenge is about neutralizing the damaging type of dissatisfaction, the other one is not an obstructive mood. Dissatisfaction hinders us to reach goals and to realize our wishes. It prevents us from feeling fulfilled after we achieved an objective. It makes us feel dissatisfied even though we were highly motivated and attained the material success we desired. Once destructive dissatisfaction manifests in our life, it's futile to increase efforts or to influence events, desires and intentions. The cause for this deficiency is not lack of intention or effort. Page #180 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 180 Unlimited Horizons We experience this type of dissatisfaction because we do (or did) not allow OTHERS to reach the satisfaction they desire, or obstruct(ed) their endeavors. It's our attitude of obstruction - however subtle it may be - that causes this negative mood within us. When we block others, we always also block ourselves in a subliminal way. By giving up this meddling and by allowing others to unfold their life in their very own fashion we neutralize this challenge. Now it may happen that after changing our attitude, we do not feel an effect. This is caused by a subconscious reluctance to let go all - even the subtlest - control of others' lives. - We know that we have neutralized this challenge when our actions start bringing us the longed for satisfaction (again). Variations Damaging dissatisfaction may also manifest as • an attempt to get attention. - We want to attract others' energy (i.e. attention) because we do not generate enough on our own. Yet this is highly counterproductive. Complaining is so unattractive that others would not want to share this dull emotion, - and start avoiding us. It works exactly the other way round: - We most likely get more attention when we stop showing dissatisfaction, and contribute a positive attitude. an attempt to show 'strength' and 'superiority'. - By being belligerent, dissatisfied, quarrelsome, difficult we want to demonstrate how strong we are. Yet what really happens is this: - We pull others down instead of reaching a HIGHER (stronger) level of energy. Page #181 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 181 Such behaviour is often caused by dissatisfaction with our own low level of energy, freedom and sovereignty. Everyone with more energy and independence inadvertently reminds us of our weakness, - and also of our unwillingness to raise more energy on our own. Showing off this kind of 'strength' makes everyone suffer. To solve this problem we simply have to make the effort to become what we want others to perceive in us. How to neutralize: Change what you are dissatisfied with, - or let it go, - or come to like it, - or build a better version; - but never whine about it. Give up obstructive attitudes and allow others to unfold vitality and capabilities in their very own fashion. This effectively neutralizes this challenge. Gloating Gloating means getting pleasure out of the misfortune of others. Gloating always signals poverty of imagination, - and unwillingness to invest positive energy into creating happiness - our own and other's. Yet laughing at the misfortune of others, or ridiculing them makes us target of the same derision in our future, when it upsets us to a similar degree. How to neutralize: Never create happiness at the expense of others. Simply reorient towards a more positive attitude. Page #182 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 182 Unlimited Horizons Emotional Cycles Intense emotions we attach to persons, objects or events, always tell us that we want to experience the entire scope of insight they offer. And this always includes 'the other side of. the coin' as well. When we direct impeding moods towards others, we program this very moment to also experience how our emotions feel from the 'receiving' end. When we e.g. feel bored or discontented, we easily envy those whose lives are happy. If this prompts us to diminish or ruin the happiness of others (to not be alone in our misery), we not only program the same gloom we feel now for our future, but over and above that that our joy of life gets ruined with similar intensity. This is not some kind of 'supernatural revenge', but a highly precise, incorruptible process destined to make us aware of the exact effect our actions have on others. The Forgotten Cause Our 'contract' to also experience 'the other side of the coin' activates automatically as conducive conditions arise in our life. Yet much time may pass between our original engagement in an (egoistic) action and our chance to experience it from the receiving end'. We thus may not recall that we ourselves caused the (possibly uncomfortable) situation we are confronted with. If we then again react with negative feelings, we maintain an endless circle that - actively and passively - manifests ever the same intense emotions. Page #183 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges To break this circle, it helps to be aware of this mechanism and then to consciously forego emotions like triumph or revenge, disdain or timidity, insatiability or loss the very moment they arise. Practical Tips · • 183 Forgiving others and OURSELVES - any real or imagined injustices or mistakes releases our attachment to past events that cannot be changed anyway. Forgiveness neutralizes impeding moods like revenge, jealousy, insecurity etc. • Fear of a name is often greater than fear of the thing itself. Nowadays much fear is caused by paper (bills, tax forms, letters, news etc.), - which mostly also only concerns paper - i.e. payment of banknotes. Such fears never threaten our life, survival or security. Sure, money is seen as means to comfort, and less money is generally equated with less comfort. Yet comfort isn't everything. - Neutralize (pay) paper with paper, - you can't hold onto it forever anyway, - but never get disturbed by flimsy slips of foolscap. - You feel that it's entirely impossible to complete all unfinished business because always more crops up than what you end. Page #184 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 184 Unlimited Horizons Well, - simply decide what is important and what is not. Give up all unimportant matters and deal swiftly with the rest, then at one certain time you are free of it all. There's that old Indian saying: 'Doing, doing - DONE.' Few people know how real freedom feels, when no-one claims time and energy, and nothing needs to be done; - a state of immense power with a vibrant, thrilling NOW stretching towards infinity. A state where EVERYTHING is possible. In real freedom we shape our life along our very own ideas and abilities. It's worth the effort to experience this. Page #185 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 185 185 10 - Addiction / Greed Challenge: To be free of addiction To prevent greed from disturbing or restricting our expansion Range: Addiction and greed challenge us from STAGE 1 to 10 The challenge manifests in four intensities: STAGE 1 - Totally overshadowing STAGE 2 to 4 - Partially overshadowing Stage 5 to 9 - Restricting our scope of life STAGE 10 - Subtle What Is Greed? Greed is an egoistic compulsion to amass material or nonmaterial components that far exceed our needs. It also manifests in form of avarice, impatience and the desire to reenact or re-live situations or emotions we already experienced many times before. Page #186 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 186 Unlimited Horizons Anyone challenged by this type of affliction is typically so intensely fascinated • by the mere act of accumulating (material objects, status, security etc.), or_ • by the attempt to bring back bygone experiences (power, recognition, the affection of others, the experi ence of falling in love, physical highs etc.) that he has neither time nor energy for inner growth. Greed originates in disorientation. It makes a ridiculously. small part of our life appear so extremely important that all the 'rest' seems irrelevant. Greed disables all consideration for others, and ultimately prevents us from recognizing the entire world as 'our own'. This disorientation remains a theme of our life as long as we keep on senselessly accumulating ever more matter, power etc. - and as long as we disregard or brush aside the needs and rights of others. If - on the other hand - we have neutralized this challenge, the greed and inconsiderateness of others are unable to touch US The Limited Effect of Material Possessions Few things truly give us the pleasure modern advertising suggests. After our initial 'high' of buying wears off, more often than not we are quite disappointed how little joy a purchase brings us. All too soon an unfulfilled craving forces us to again seek novel objects and experiences. Page #187 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 187 People able to fulfill all their material desires, but lacking orientation beyond this, easily lose themselves in activities that do not advance growth: - charity without real inner engagement, accumulating over-priced artifacts, partaking in social circles for appearances only etc. The emptiness and boredom such people emanate should tell us that accumulation of money, objects, land, power and the 'security' of material wealth is far less interesting and stimulating than first impressions suggest. Material Wealth is Unimportant for Inner Growth The higher we go, the more we recognize matter as only a partial aspect of life. Its influence on us continually diminishes as our perception widens. Material factors attract us less, because the new and subtle we discover fascinates us far more. Yet this process doesn't work the other way round! RENOUNCING our possessions does NOT advance us to higher levels. Only after we have risen to a more advanced stage, - i.e. when we experience it continuously, - will material 'matters' begin to affect us less. Renunciation is the Wrong Track It's simply wrong to assume that higher stages will unfold only if we renounce material possessions. Dynamic growth has nothing to do with sacrifice or giving up the world. On the contrary - such feelings not only hamper growth, but block it altogether. Page #188 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 188 Unlimited Horizons Renunciation, sacrifice etc. are mere negative attachments to objects and situations denied. They do not free us in any way. As hate just indicates a negative attachment to the hated person, so also self-denial etc. only reveals a negative fixation to the renounced objects, never independence of them. As long as something we want to be free of still plays a role in our life - even a negative one, - we'll continue to be bound by it. And further - denial always only recalls past experiences. It forever looks BACK to atone for deeds, emotions or thoughts long gone by. It never inspires dynamic impulses towards future progress. As long as we only strive for freedom from something, rather than aspiring freedom to do something, we haven't found true freedom yet. Real sovereignty is never reached by sacrificing elements of our life, but only by attaining new, broader, more fascinating dimensions. We rise to higher states because they attract us. more than lower ones. That the old state becomes obsolete in this process and falls away, is a side-effect, not the main aim. Example: When we switch from a radio station with 'boring' music to a more interesting program, we never see this as "renouncing the boring music', but rather as a nice change for the better Page #189 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 189 Wanting to Re-enact Well-known Situations and Emotions Again and again This originates in the belief that our present life would be the only one we ever get, - and that - if we miss anything here - we'll never get another chance. Yet though this is just an unfounded, fictitious idea, it significantly narrows many people's scope of life. - For as long as we believe there's only one life, we try to get as much physical pleasure out of it as possible. This tendency usually spills over into the more mature phases of our life without us ever questioning it. Thus we attempt to re-enact - with lessening success - exciting experiences of our youth, instead of realizing the limits of material enjoyment and progressing to more advanced dimensions. At the end of our life we then look back in frustration and with the unspoken question what this was all about. Never allow irrational beliefs to push you into this dead end. Choose true sovereign behavior, not unproven, habitual presumptions to guide your life. Addiction Addiction is a serious word. So serious that we relegate it to people far distant from our usual social circles. For 'minor' addictions closer to us (smoking, medical drugs, drinking etc.) - we use 'dependence' or 'habit' or 'problem' to separate us from the more threatening meaning. Page #190 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 190 Unlimited Horizons Yet - no matter how we call it - all addiction severely distorts perception: • It makes us react highly aggressive when our addiction is challenged or discussed, - even when we are offered a way out of it • It makes us use any - even the most absurd, unfounded - argument to justify our craving It makes our whole life rotate around our addiction, - and thus prevent a different orientation • It makes us abhor speaking about our weakness - to the point that we avoid people who could help us • It lets us wear blinders we aren't aware of. These mechanisms run automatically. We cannot control them as long as we are fully under their sway. And there's no point in admonishing an addicted person to give it up. It's a theme of life he chose to experience. He has to live through it, - has to learn how to handle the emotions caused by it, - he has to find his own way out of it, even if it takes this lifetime and beyond. There is no 'magic' salvation from addiction, no spiritual 'wand-waving', no whitewashing, window-dressing, no explaining away. None of this ever helps to solve the problem, or lessen its effects, no matter how much we'd like the world to be gentler. The world is here to show us what's real within us. And that includes the full breadth of all possible experiences. Whoever chose addiction as a theme needs to deal with his craving alone. If he wants out, only he himself can find the inner switch that makes him stop, - only he himself can raise Page #191 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges the strength that makes him break free, to then after he succeeded - be in command of immense inner power he or she couldn't have gained any other way. One indication tells us that we want out: the notion that something else exists beyond our fixation, a sense of greater freedom outside the small box we live in. - 191 - Once we feel this within us, - and if we're ready and willing to change, then there's a method to beat any addiction: Focus on something more attractive If we find something (new) that motivates us more, this always shows that we are tired of addiction. When our interest shifts to different themes, this always offers us sufficient spirit to raise the energy and discipline that stop addiction. It's our choice whether to seize this opportunity - or not. - And Deeper Addiction Yet - when we examine the characteristics of addiction, won't we find them in our very life as well, even though none of the common cravings dominate us? Isn't it that we so deeply crave to feel, see, taste, smell, hear, touch and interact with this material world that we can't even conceive of a different state. Don't we abhor the very idea of leaving this world, shun thoughts of not having our daily dose of it, and go to great lengths to avoid even considering this a possibility, to discuss this with others, and get aggressive if someone mentions it. Isn't this exactly how addiction feels to deem it entirely normal to crave something, - to take for granted to be of this Page #192 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 192 Unlimited Horizons physical world, - to regard matter as the only relevant thing, - to intensely reject every suggestion that living, perceiving, experiencing some other - greater - reality might even be possible? Why do we always come back to the same small playing field that doesn't do justice to the abilities and magnificent greatness we deeply sense within. - Certainly, - the current materialistic model provides an excellent excuse for not thinking about all this. If we just are a mass of swirling chemicals, and our awareness a mere minor cosmic accident - as renowned experts suggest, - then we won't need to think about it. - Sure. - Yet weren't there startlingly many wise people ever since history started, who told us that there is more to life than matter, and charted numerous paths to break our material fixation? And aren't these the most honored persons throughout all history? Shouldn't this be indication enough that it's worthwhile to investigate how to get rid of our most basic addiction? How To Go About It? A simple, daily mechanisms provides the clue how to break our attachment, how to see beyond the veil that's over our eyes: - We never crave this world for long. We hardly ever stay here more than sixteen hours. Then our addiction wanes all by itself: - No matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want to stay awake, no matter how engaged we are in its activities, - nothing 'physical' can hold our attention intensely Page #193 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 193 enough to keep us here. We simply have to seek a resting place, cover the body, close our eyes and drift to an entirely different state. This is what radically stops all our attraction to this material world. so - 'to tire' is the main mechanism that dissolves addiction. And it's easy to find signs of this in our life. - We definitely are dead tired of experiencing always the same, uncomfortable, repetitive, boring events, persons and objects. - Sure, we also have joyful moments, - but how long till we again complain of boredom, of being thwarted, of being restricted in our abilities, freedom, advancement, growth, of not being honored for what we are and are able to do, - and even - of not being able to buy something real pleasurable with all our money any more. We sense this can't be everything, that there's more to it, though we barely can say exactly what, and where, and how to find it. Yet we don't even have to leave this world to shake off its hypnotic sway. We only need to break its mesmerizing effect on us - and that surely is fair. We only need to understand what limits and distorts our perception - and then marshal sufficient energy to rise above this domination. We do have the right to free us of this monopolizing, hypnotic power. We do have the right and ability to taste the unending freedom real independence from addiction brings. It's worth the effort to go for this objective. Page #194 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 194 Unlimited Horizons Addiction and Greed Influence Us in Different Intensities - Depending on the Stage We Focus On In Stage 1 this challenge easily overpowers us completely and may lead our entire life astray. In STAGE 1 we eagerly grab the belongings of others, - while at the same time complaining when we are forced to part with ours. We recklessly pursue our pleasure without care if we disturb others, - yet violently object if this happens to us. This disorientation impedes us as long as we accumulate ever more matter, - and as long as we disregard the needs and rights of others, or deem them less relevant than ours. This challenge starts to neutralize when we shift focus to STAGE 4 In STAGE 2 to 4 doubts start, whether material possessions really bring the happiness we are programmed to expect. Yet still we direct much energy towards acquiring, polishing and parading them, - and towards ever higher status. From STAGE 5 to 9 we realize that all energy and time we use for managing unneeded possessions is actually lacking for our growth. We notice that buying superfluous things doesn't give us the pleasure it used to bring. Advertisement ceases to influence us. Page #195 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Dissolve Challenges 195 We examine which gear we really need, and enjoy freedom from the compulsion to perpetually buy new things. We become aware that we are offered abundant (growth-) opportunities in our immediate environment, - and that all our needs and desires are taken care of in the most wondrous fashion. In STAGE 10 We experience the subtlest form of greed. Even here we block the free flow of our expansion by focusing on only one small part of our environment. Towards the end of Stage 10 we completely neutralize this challenge - and perceive the whole world as 'our creation'. Practical Tips • Matter never confines us. It is our attachment to it, and the energy and time we invest in it that restricts us. We may possess all money of the world, - if we are free of it in mind and emotions, it has no power over us and can't restrict us. Focus on money alone reduces life to a pathetically small meaning. Life has greater worth and higher goals than 'shareholder value', 'return on investment' or 'dying with the greatest hoard of money in the world'. Page #196 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 196 Unlimited Horizons • All business follows one simpleminded, crude rule: Buy. something - sell it more expensively. Stripping away the hype dealers and managers surround their dealings with to make them look sophisticated, one always ends up with this naive game. Don't be too mesmerized by its pretense and glamour. • Never waste energy on fighting old conditions. Explore new, more attractive levels of life instead. The shedding of old conditions and behavior then happens automatically, without any forcing. And never believe anyone who says you'd need to relinquish belongings to experience higher dimensions. Most likely he's the one who'd love to receive them. Page #197 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles Obstacles 197 As we begin exploring higher levels, obstacles may impede our progress. These obstacles may arise, they do not need to occur. They are mentioned so we can recognize their mechanisms and disperse them, instead of wasting energy on them. Obstacles are unhelpful emotional attitudes. They make situations appear in a negative or depressing light. They induce feelings of misery, gloominess or despair and divert attention towards irrelevant feelings that block expansion. Obstacles have nothing to do with challenges. Though they also trigger intense emotions, obstacles can be dissolved instantly and so thoroughly that they never disturb us again - if we so desire. All obstacles are instantly neutralized if we change our attitude towards them. It further helps to be patient once they occur and to wait for their foreseeable dispersal while we continue to expand. Page #198 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 198 Unlimited Horizons Hunger, thirst, heat, coldness, annoyance by insects etc. Physical discomforts of this type may irritate us so intensely that we allocate substantial energy and time to avoid or remedy them. This energy is lost for our expansion. Changed attitude: We decide to what extent we allow these factors to disturb the unfoldment of our life. If we choose to take our mind off them, we do not get distracted. Practical Tip: The more inner expansion fascinates us, the less will external irritating factors engage our attention. Illness, pain Sickness and pain seem more serious obstacles than hunger, coldness etc. because the discomfort they produce requires more energy to manage. This may substantially reduce our drive for inner expansion. Yet again we are the ones who decide to what extent we allow these factors to interfere with our intentions. If we choose to focus on more fascinating themes, illness or pain become less able to detract us. Changed attitude: When we experience pain or sickness, we easily allow the accompanying sensations to overwhelm all our being. Yet almost always only one (small) part of our body is affected. Page #199 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles 199 Consciously limit these sensations to the impaired part. Compartmentalize the pain. Encapsulate it. Recognize that the rest of your body as a whole still works fine. Don't permit pain and sickness to dominate your entire attention. Allocate some part of your energy to manage this compartmentalization, and direct all other - free - energy towards more productive purposes. It also helps to judge impartially WHY we experience a certain disability of our body, and what we want to learn from this, - to quickly and purposefully conclude the lesson. This might just be the crucial step towards a fundamental healing. Practical Tip: And never underestimate how attractive pain and painful feelings can be for you, though most people would probably vehemently deny this. Yet how often do we enjoy telling others of our sicknesses and hardships or show great interest in their misfortunes and troubles. How often do we dwell on hurt feelings like 'They'll see how little they accomplish without me!, or heroic sadness like 'They never notice how much I am doing for them!'. Pain is a stimulant ! If we lack positive experiences or stimulation, dwelling on pain and illness may just infuse our life with the very excitement and drama we crave. An entire movie and news industry is making huge money off this exact craving. Yet dwelling on pain or sickness neither removes their original cause, nor does it help us to find a way out of our predicament. Page #200 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 200 Unlimited Horizons Craving for - material and emotional - stability It is not a primary purpose of reality to stabilize material circumstances that may accompany our actions. On the contrary - reality incessantly confronts us with ever new experiences to make us grow out of limiting conditions and ideas. Any stability we laboriously achieved inevitably will break up. - latest when we leave our present bodily form. Changed attitude: Accept that reality (your life) is working this way. Direct attention and energy towards the growth-process - instead of scrambling for an illusionary, fleeting constancy in your material environment. Interpret inner and outer change as an alignment towards something fresh and new, even if these changes feel strange at first. Practical Tip: We do not reach emotional stability by creating a sheltered material environment. As long as we still experience emotional storms, we will always destroy any outward stability, or die a slow - emotional - death in its boredom and stagnancy. The mechanism works exactly the other way round! Once our emotions are stable, we take all that surrounds us and everything we experience as essential for our expansion. No matter how much and how often reality disrupts a settled (stagnant) state of ours, - once we recognize the power of growth behind it, we'll heartily welcome it whenever it happens. Emotional stability dawns automatically as we shift focus to higher - more sovereign, emotionally less chaotic - stages. Page #201 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles 201 Sitting on soft cushions Comfort and luxury mostly boils down to 'sitting on soft. cushions'. It's the springiness of seat and suspension in the car we drive. It's the leg- and moving space in the aircraft we travel in. It's the sponginess of the sofa we are watching TV from, the quality of a hotel bed's mattress, the padded beach-chair we are paying extra for. The softer the cushion, the higher its price. Nothing wrong with that. Yet too easily we get addicted to this upholstery - and divert immense resources, energy and time towards its ease. Changed attitude: Venturing to higher regions of our existence almost always means to get out of a cozy, settled position. Don't miss inner expansion because you can't get out of a cushy seat. Fading of our intention to grow. We feel perfectly content within the situation and environment we currently experience. Why disturb all this just to expand life? How could it ever get better? - Well - congratulation - enjoy it as long as it lasts. Yet if there's the tiniest doubt or hesitation about this state of mind, consider this: Page #202 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 202 Unlimited Horizons Changed attitude: How would you feel if your current situation would carry on to the very end of your life - another twenty, thirty, fifty or more years. Will you be happy, or do you feel there should be more to life than this? If you have any kind of doubt now - use all your creativity and energy - everything you got - to find a way out of this treacherous complacency. Otherwise you'll only experience ever increasing shallowness, boredom and discontent that life passes you by. Engage in helping others! Support their growth with your current affluence! Learn new abilities! - Do everything possible to break out of this very dead end. - Engaging in truly helping others makes your life breathe again. Practical Tip: Don't just drift blindly through a present time of comfort, - it ends earlier than you expect. Use the prosperity and time at your disposal now to move towards whole new horizons, - and share this chance with others. Insults, slander, abuse It's impossible to insult someone who doesn't agree to be insulted. An insult always needs assent of the one supposed to get hurt. Otherwise insults merely reveal the disoriented emotional state of the OFFENDER. They never are statements about the person towards whom the malice is directed. Example: We easily call someone 'stupid' whose views and actions we deem inferior to ours. Yet this only testifies that Page #203 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles 203 we are not intelligent enough to comprehend the other's views in his very own context and development. It further tells us that we permit harmful emotions to disturb our joy of life. Changed attitude: Agree to disagree Others need to accept our views as little as we want to be forced to accept theirs. To recognize diverging positions does not mean to adopt them, to think they are good, or to promote them. It only means to understand that someone else's history prompted him to come to different conclusions than we did. Insulting someone or feeling insulted because of a difference in opinion only demonstrates an inability to interact effectively with others. Assenting to an insult and to permit the respective bad feelings to mar our joy of life, is equally unintelligent. Difficulties One essential task of our material existence is to train our abilities and talents by testing them with obstacles and opposi tion. Difficulties are hurdles we need to overcome. They show us with greatest possible precision which ones of our current ideas, presumptions and ideals do limit our life, which ones allow free, open expansion, and how much energy we need to reach objectives. Page #204 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 204 Unlimited Horizons A world without problems looks nice in imagination. Yet probably it's rather boring since nothing in it stimulates growth. - Why should it? - It's already perfect! And besides - as beautiful as this ideal world might ever be - we definitely do not live in it now. Changed attitude: Take problems as signs that you haven't mastered the respective theme yet. And - as problems enter your life - never waste energy on negative feelings. Bad feelings don't help you in the least to overcome an obstacle. Practical Tip: Are you aware of the difference between hobby-programmers and professionals? - A hobby-programmer always hopes his program will work after he corrected a bug. - Professionals know: - Programs never work as long they are on their screens; - except once, at the very end. Errors are mere information what still needs working on. As long as we experience this present reality, difficulties simply tell us what areas are not completed yet. To 'wish away' these hints, or to ignore them, or to give up our objectives doesn't help finding a solution. Unwillingness to accept necessary help, or to ask for support Certainly - while wheeling and dealing in the material sphere we didn't need help, or paid for it. Sure. - Page #205 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles 205 But now that we are growing out of this sphere, there are mightier laws than money and pride in self-made wealth and elbowing our way. Shift focus! The purpose of human beings is to assist each other. We all are vital parts of a huge network of mutual support we hardly ever are aware of. As we base our life on the abilities of others, - (we didn't build from scratch the house we live in, the chair we sit on, the food we eat, the skills we learned) - so do others rely on our talents for shaping their existence. It's a give and take that's always perfectly balanced, even if we doubt this at times. Changed attitude: So don't upset this precious balance by rejecting crucial assistance. Don't block the force of your expansion only because of pride in a supposed 'self-sufficiency'. Your inner growth inspires others as much as it excites you. Keep up this inspiration with any proper means available now, - even if this means asking for and accepting help. Failure to obtain help may easily convince us that our path is not supported and that we should give up expanding. Changed attitude: Consider that NOT obtaining desired help may just be the very assistance you need. Page #206 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 206 Unlimited Horizons Take lack of support as an incentive to reassess the particular project you intend to go for - it might lead into a wrong direction or towards too narrow a goal. Practical Tip: Nature always informs us about possible failures in advance. It pays to listen to these hints, - even if this means to give up ventures we attached heart and reputation to and even though we already invested considerable resources into them. Lack of sincerity It has become chic nowadays to be 'spiritually' active, to do the 'fun mystic thing'. The 'search for our Self' - a kind of casual evolvement into a higher being - grew into a 'must' of modern society, - into a 'recreational spiritual path' that has become high fashion. These are the people running from guru to guru, from astrologer to astrologer, from seminar to seminar, - always looking for some mystic person to tell them time and again what fantastically advanced spiritual beings they are. And because they are so highly evolved, they needn't work up real sweat about their inner growth. - Why should they? - They're privileged, aren't they? Once their time has come, some higher being - probably with noble face, long, flowing garments - will single them out, touch their forehead - that famous 'third eye' - and the light will flow through them and then enlightenment has come. So they think. So they hope. That's how they picture spiritual progress. Luxurious, relaxing, easy, safe - and never too unsettling. Page #207 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles 207 And so they never get going themselves. They wait to be lifted from that big mass of people around them that certainly is not on their level. They smile at you and think: 'Why can't he see, how far advanced I am?' They forever crave compliments on their attempts alone, even if they yield little or no results. What these poor people don't realize is that their pride, their lack of commitment, their very idea of a 'recreational spiritual path' bars them from any progress. They don't know that all they expect, all they project is exactly what they are getting: A casual 'spiritual' stroll through nice, natural scenery - maybe accompanied by some similarly attuned souls, basking in all kinds of good vibrations, - but - nothing more. Changed attitude: This book describes a different path. It alerts us to prejudices and attachments that stop us from becoming the magnificent being we deeply feel within, - it makes us aware of the corresponding restrictive emotions we usually ignore. - It shows how to arrange the familiar components of our life so wisely that they lead us into a wide-open, more exciting, expansive, blissful and-above all - far vaster universe. Addiction to comfort and smooth environment locks our awareness into the narrow limits in which these tendencies are able to manifest. Practical Tip: The world doesn't survive on a good try. A pilot who crashed his plane in the attempt to land can't find excuse in telling 'but take-off and cruising was quite all right, wasn't it?' Go for results, - not for pretence, nor self-deception, nor for applause. Page #208 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 208 Vanity because of 'great' learning It's easy to identify this type of pomposity if it confronts us directly. Yet its subconscious, indirect influence is much harder to detect as it considerably reduces our enthusiasm to access higher regions. Unlimited Horizons Direct Everyone who uses formal knowledge to impress others totally misunderstands the real function of knowledge. - Knowledge we actively use to expand our range of experience quickly becomes a natural part of our life. The more we employ it to evaluate and change our attitudes and activities, the faster it transforms into genuine insight that soon ceases to be new or special and usually also does not give cause for vanity or arrogance. Without this natural integration knowledge remains foreign and separate to us. Persons thirsting for high social status tend to display this formal, dead knowledge with vanity and in arrogant disdain for the 'less learned'. Convinced of their 'superiority' they define 'knowledge' as the stiff data they accumulated and with this totally block their own ability to comprehend it. Their fellow people easily recognize this vanity for what it really is - a flaw of personality, but unfortunately still get negatively influenced in a subconscious way: - - Indirect Though we see through the game of the 'learned ones', we subconsciously equate 'knowledge' with the stagnancy and boredom these people emanate. We associate 'learning' with their pathetic and arrogant behavior and do not want similar attitudes to breed within us. Page #209 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles 209 This easily programs us against any kind of learning after we quit school, college or vocational training; - an entirely unnecessary blockage that often kills all our thirst for genuine insight and our natural enthusiasm for expansion. Changed attitude: Ignore those who display vanity because of their supposed 'great learning' - no matter how high their status. The data they memorized is dead. It does not further inner growth - neither within them, nor within you. Don't invest your life's precious time and energy only to experience the same stagnancy in the end. Those of real wisdom and insight communicate it without disdain or arrogance. Lack of knowledge, ignorance We feel we have too little knowledge to really experience higher levels. Yet this feeling is wrong! At any time and at any place we are surrounded by an abundance of factors that can make us aware of the immense wisdom dormant within us. We already use this treasure extensively, but mostly in an unaware fashion. Systematic access to this treasure-trove opens when we progress on the path itself, - never through mere book-reading or any kind of preliminary training that only moves our start further and further into the future and carries the danger of losing ourselves in endless, superfluous preparation. Page #210 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 210 Changed attitude: Unlimited Horizons DIRECT EXPERIENCE is the only key to all real insights. The path to ultimate freedom exists - but only to the extent WE OURSELVES begin with it. Spiritual Communism Though our present society displays emphatic openness towards phenomena of consciousness, we personally believe any real expansion of OUR consciousness entirely impossible. Even the many books describing higher states cannot convince us that we ourselves will ever experience something similar fantastic. But it is only social programming that causes this pointless attitude. We comply with a tacit mandate that no one is to rise above the mass of people who might not have these kind of insights or do not want them in the first place. Changed attitude: No matter how deep this indoctrination is programmed in - it does not in the least invalidate our innate ability to experience higher insights. If you want progress, fundamentally discard all programs of this kind and take care of your own expansion. The more you progress, the better you recognize who wants to grow as well, and who doesn't. Page #211 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles 211 Disappointment because we fail to gain supernatural powers Supernatural powers are highly overrated. They are more an impediment to growth than furthering it. • Being able to see future, past and potential of everyone around us is rather depressing. It mainly reveals the immense inner and outer restrictions so many people inadvertently subject themselves to. Being able to see what's in other peoples' mind is mostly so dull and uninspiring that we'd rather not look - lest it infects us too. • Being able to walk through walls puts us at odds with privacy. As we wouldn't like other people to emerge from of our walls, as little would they like us to suddenly appear in their rooms. Being able to levitate makes us a circus-attraction rather than superman. Levitation is highly unpractical for long distance travel. (Just picture yourself - suitcase in one hand, umbrella in the other - hovering across the Atlantic three feet above the water ...) Telepathy is highly effective for transmitting complex contents in shortest possible time. Yet hardly anyone knows that telepathy requires a willing recipient as much as a sender. Currently few people are able to raise and maintain the energy sys tematic communication of this type requires. Supernatural powers are fun and thrilling as long as we only pretend to have them to impress others. We bask in their Page #212 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 212 Unlimited Horizons adoration without also perceiving the jealousy, gullibility and simplemindedness hiding behind their smiling faces. Demonstrating supernatural powers publicly makes others first take you for a conjurer. Then a media blitz showers you with the attention of people whose focus you really do not want. And then too easily you might get classified as freak. All this diverts us completely from expansion - apart from being pointless. - What could this possibly accomplish? If supernatural powers really dawn within us, they soon transform into a natural feature of our life. And - we'll notice fast that being able to switch them off at will becomes far more important than exercising them. Changed attitude: • Supernatural powers are never a yardstick of growth. • Real expansion may or may not manifest these powers, yet is entirely independent of their occurrence. • Trying to attain them diverts energy towards irrelevant areas. • Using these powers to impress others is pointless. • If super-natural abilities dawn within you, regard it as a side-effect and keep on growing into higher regions. Practical Tip: Using these abilities to stimulate the desire for growth in others almost never produces the desired effect. They forever will ask you to repeat your little miracles', but never take this as incentive to expand their own inner abilities. Page #213 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Obstacles 213 Aimless Actionism Widely used for avoiding deeper questions, challenges, or searching for answers in new directions. Tries to gloss over disorientation and lack of incentive. Aimless actionism defines activities as 'vitally important' which in reality are irrelevant. Someone afflicted by this likes to declare himself too busy for anything 'less relevant'. • If you feel an urge to emphasize how much you 'accom plished' during the past day, week, month or year - • If you look down on those who 'accomplished less', or even lead 'pointless' lives according to your definition - • If you engage in formal social functions that trigger only boredom, - within yourself and others, - but are unwilling to give this up - • If you are far too busy for new activities or projects - then you do suffer from aimless actionism. Changed attitude: If you want progress, simply stop wasting precious time on pointless chores and aimless people. Discard all antics of this kind. Re-evaluate aim and direction of your life. Map a way how to get there. Then go for expansion. Practical Tip: Don't do anything 'relevant for a while - just relax - and think. Waiting-mode We are waiting for someone or something - preferably of supernatural origin - to tell us exactly when to start growing. Page #214 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 214 Unlimited Horizons Or we feel all alone with the idea of inner expansion, - none of our friends or family respond to this theme. So we hesitate to start all by ourselves and keep on delaying infinitely. Yet there's no starting gun, and there NEVER will be one. for as long as we decide to keep up our waiting mode. There is a simple reason: - As long as we maintain this mood, we ignore each and every sign an abundant nature presents us permanently. As long as we decide to wait, WE completely block our ability to recognize these signs. And no-one can possibly reverse this - our - decision - except we ourselves. Changed attitude: Start now! - Decide to get out of your waiting mode and start growing NOW - TODAY! And if nobody accompanies you, - then go ahead alone, even if it feels lonely at the beginning. After some time those also on this path will recognize you, - and become friends for life. Practical Tip: And if you don't know what to do? .. ... Then start by making a list of everything you'd like to do or to become. Define that colorful part of yourself you haven't manifested yet. Note down your aspirations, hopes, fantasies, ideals, dreams, everything that comes to your mind, even if it seems utterly absurd and doesn't lead into a spiritual direction. Make this list NOW! Then DO whatever is necessary to playfully realize all these ideas, desires, fantasies and aspirations. - Become all you always really wanted to be! This gets you out of any kind of waiting once and for all. Page #215 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Dead-Sure Investment 215 Dead-Sure Investment Death is a highly overrated experience. Neither is it as final as religions want us to believe, nor is this an unknown sensation. Death is nothing other than our consciousness leaving our current body. We do this at least once every day, - when we fall asleep and our consciousness shifts into dream. It feels entirely natural to not take our physical body with us on this venture. As it stays behind in bed, we slip into a 'dream-body' that feels as real to us as our material form. And even while dreaming we often shift into other 'dream-bodies' without wasting a thought about it. Now - we may take dreaming for just a peculiar variant of our overall material reality, - a slightly altered state, during which we mentally recapitulate bygone activities. Sure - this is the common view, - but be aware that this is just an hypothesis, a hazy idea, - and a bad one at that. Without the slightest proof it just labels this state as irrelevant, but does not even try to find out what really happens while we sleep. Page #216 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 216 Unlimited Horizons This common view has no clue why sometimes dreams give us solutions to problems by offering utterly novel perspectives, - or why they inspire inventions and works of art, as inventors and artists often describe. It doesn't explain the many extraordinary abilities we have in our dreams - how we are able to fly, to manifest objects from 'thin air', or why - after taking that deep plunge at the end of many dreams - we always wake up in another body within an altogether different (dream-) environment. It doesn't explain why we always take our 'I', our identity, our entire awareness with all its abilities, insights and feelings with us when we leave our physical body to enter a dream. Yet exactly this same mechanism we experience when at the time of death we permanently leave our present 'materiali body. - In death we also take with us all our consciousness, all our knowledge, all our abilities and emotions, and certainly all our distinct uniqueness, - that center of all our perceptions. 'Dying' just means not to return to an environment we currently are familiar with. Dying means to break up all dead ends, stagnation and impossible situations we might have got entangled in in our present life. It means to start out with a new young body in a fresh environment. Our consciousness neither becomes 'nothingness' nor does it get annihilated, nor do we enter eternal 'heaven', 'hell', or any faceless nirvana. As long as we desire to see our ideas and longings manifest in physical, material form, for as long will we get chances to experience them. And then - once this desire is utterly satisfied - we again become the magnificent, sovereign being each one of us feels deeply inside, - immensely enriched Page #217 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Dead-Sure Investment 217 by the material circumstances we voluntarily subjected ourselves to. We don't fear death What we are afraid of is not death. What troubles us is dying, - is the dread of pain and anguish and the great nameless unknown at our end. Yet here again our dreams show us a different picture. When we die in dreams in violent ways - like falling from great heights - we always shift out of the body before it hits the ground, - we always remove our consciousness, our identity, our 'I' from the doomed body before it is destructed. This same mechanism also applies to any physical form our consciousness takes on. When we experience too great a pain or shock, we faint, fall unconscious to this world, while our 'I' enters an altogether different layer to perceive a far more peaceful mode of being. There are abundant reports of this type of encounter Yet few people ever die a violent death. Most people peacefully shift out while they are sleeping. The current widespread fear of pain and violence is mostly caused by garish media-hype. And as for feeling anguish and fear of the mysterious unknown towards our end, - why not become familiar with a more practical concept than what religions propagate. Why not know exactly where we are going once we leave our present body and environment for good? Why not invest a bit of time to get familiar with how our consciousness really works, especially during exceptional mo Page #218 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 218 Unlimited Horizons ments - instead of leaving this to our very last half hour when it's too late to change something substantial. Even some little knowledge of this kind relieves of great fear. Dead-Sure Investment Before investing money in a new company we carefully investigate if it is profitable. Yet in 'death' we invest everything - all we own, all our status and standing in society, even our very dear life - into some business we know nothing about, into a business that with dead certainty fundamentally alters all our being, - into an undertaking we are not sure will even give us a return. So why not think a bit further ahead than just our current body and environment. Why not understand the entire game! To know exactly where we are heading. - This gives us priceless insight which ones of our current goals and strategies will be effective in the very long run - and what we need to change while there's still time. • We know that it's impossible to take belongings (houses, money, valuables) with us - neither to our dreams, nor when we leave this physical reality for good - - yet we keep on amassing toys and property as if we could transfer it all. • We know that rank and titles cease at our death - - yet we keep going for ever grander status only to lose all in the end. Page #219 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Dead-Sure Investment 219 • And certainly we sense that egoistic pressure always reverts to its originator - - yet we keep dominating others only to suffer the same kind of suppression in our next life(s). It pays to know what really we can take with us ... ... real love we give and receive, - all insights we really live, - all genuinely integrated abilities, - the deep desire to master a certain task. It pays to know what types of action will cause more comfortable future life(s) ... ... manifesting now our innermost ideas and inspirations, though this takes effort and may seem uncomfortable at first. And it pays to know how to extract our awareness from its current incessant shifting from dreams to physical reality and back ... ... the longing to again become that sovereign, majestic being we sense within, - and confronting our remaining challenges to access ever higher levels until we reach that goal. All this not only enriches any far future, but all our present life as well. You want to know if this is true? - Try it out, - mere theoretical discussing will never get your there. Page #220 --------------------------------------------------------------------------  Page #221 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Begin 221 How to Begin Now you may ask: - 'How can I personally access my dormant inner dimensions?' - 'How can I experience all this myself?' - Well, - first of all, - don't see it as grave obligation or a heavy load. Take it as an adventure, - a romantic quest into a new and fascinating world, - a thrilling voyage of discovery, - as an exciting game. There's no reason not to enjoy your venture. Being grave, solemn or glum won't help at all in discovering higher dimensions. Play with it, - and get enchanted while you discover undreamt-of, fantastic abilities within yourself. What to do? - Well, - acquaint yourself with the (14) stages ahead of you, then try out the following five suggestions, - the full breadth of your awareness will open almost by itself. Page #222 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 222 1 - Unlimited Horizons Become aware of the many higher insights you already have now Start valuing your 'strange moments of clarity', even if they are brief and fleeting. Realize that these flashes grant insight into hidden layers of your consciousness. Become aware of these messages from deep within yourself. And then recall how you felt during these insights, reawaken the corresponding emotions, focus on them. This activates the more advanced modes of your awareness. 2 - Always go for the highest If you can choose between a comfortable and an uncomfortable path, take the uncomfortable one, that's the right one. Why? - See, you already know the comfortable path, - otherwise how could you possibly know that it is easier. The familiar always feels more comfortable. It's the unknown that makes us uneasy and awkward. Facing the unknown always takes more energy than the familiar. Choose the uncomfortable path. It leads you out of the known circle of your life. It makes you break your boundaries. It enables you to find something new in the first place. Page #223 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Begin 223 3 - Really Do what you intend to do Start living what you wanted to experience all along. Confront the challenges you always wanted to meet. Try out the new paths you long for deep inside. Change now all factors of your life you felt need changing for a long time. Don't procrastinate. Don't lose yourself in endless, pointless preparation. Learn what to do by doing it. And don't seek too much advise. Advise from wellmeaning friends and relatives is the main cause why new ventures fail. Especially people close to you more often than not have not the slightest intention to really understand and encourage what you are reaching for. You shape your very own, individual path according to your own desires. If you are serious about it, you're highly sure in what you do, - you don't need council or approval from those heading into entirely different directions. And if you don't know what to do? - If nothing comes to your mind how to find your path to inner expansion, then ... 4 - Make a list Make a list of all the things you'd like to do or to become. Write down your aspirations, hopes, fantasies, ideals and dreams, everything that comes to your mind, even if it seems utterly absurd and doesn't lead into a spiritual direction. • Write down the things you want to learn, to master, to apply Page #224 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 224 Unlimited Horizons Write down the situations you want to encounter, the places to visit, - what kind of people you want to meet, and what you'd like to experience with them Write down the honors you desire, the money you'd like to have, - and what you'll do with it once you attained it all • Write down the challenges you want to meet - and how much excitement they should bring to your life • Write down the adventures you want to prove yourself in, - and how much risk you are prepared to face on these ventures without known outcome. Never censure your thoughts while you are writing, - never judge if your desires are feasible or not, whether they look comfortable or not, whether society accepts them, or whether you're afraid of them. Do not even put them in any sequence - like what to do first, what takes priority, what is most or least feasible. All this comes later. During this first step just define that colorful part of yourself you haven't manifested yet. And never regard this list closed. This is only your very first list, add more items at any time you like. Now arrange this list according to your preferences. Then Do whatever is necessary to playfully realize all your ideas, desires, fantasies and aspirations. - BECOME all you always really wanted to be! Page #225 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 5 • This gives you assuredness, charisma and power It shows you entirely new areas of life • It alerts you to ways dreams manifest • • It broadens your inner perception • It intensifies your life and It frees you from dormant desires. • How to Begin Enjoy it! - And at one sure point in time you'll notice that you became all you ever wanted to be and to experience. Now your emotions and mind are free to explore higher stages. Now you perceive the higher horizons that previously were clouded by dormant desires you did release through action. 225 There is no need to hasten this process, but start_ RIGHT NOW and keep at it steadily. · -Be courageous don't fear And finally be courageous in your quest into the unknown. Nearly all our fears are wholly imaginary and in time fade by themselves. Just recall some of these bygone dreads to realize how totally redundant they were. - - - Sure, all intentional confronting of situations whose outcome we can't foresee may cause initial fear or apprehension. But don't be afraid of this 'initial fear' itself. Don't permit fears to run your life. Page #226 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 226 Unlimited Horizons You cannot escape fear by avoiding situations you believe will produce fear. This merely shifts this negative emotion to other situations, persons or objects. Courageously confront your fears, realize how unnecessary they are, and then be free of them. Pericles - Greek admiral and statesman (495-429 BC) successfully defended Athens against huge outside aggression and brought about its highest bloom. His stance is as vital today as it was at his times - 'Knoweth - the secret of happiness is FREEDOM, but freedom's secret is COURAGE.' Page #227 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Begin 227 227 Practical Tips • LIVE instead of watching TV Stop watching TV if you want inner growth. TV takes all your creativity and focus and dumps it into triviality. It gives you nothing in return. You may think - as billions others do - you only watch little and then only select programs of high cultural value. But - don't kid yourself. Your TV runs all the time. And though it grabs your focus only now and then, it still blunts all perception what lines of action lead to inner growth and which don't. Extract yourself fully from this debilitating power. Get rid of these machines, - throw them away. Live vegetarian Switching to vegetarian food promotes subtle insights. There is not scientific proof, but ample first-hand experience of many people. So - give it a try. Stop eating meat or fish in any form for two whole months. Four to six weeks after the switch you'll experience first results - clarity of mind, a feeling of lightness in your body and ease of comprehension. Then decide whether you prefer this clarity to the brief taste of meat or fish. But - if you go for this test - eat 100% vegetarian for the entire time. Don't break it once, not even for a party or any other reason. Otherwise you won't feel any effect. Page #228 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 228 Unlimited Horizons • Complete all unfinished business Keeping unfinished business in check takes far more time and energy than just completing it. Free yourself from this burden. Conclude all unfinished matters. Once you accomplished this, your life switches into a new, far more intense mode. Transfer activities others can perform better or derive more joy from. Positions and objects you have outgrown easily turn into obstacles that block all progress. Let go such (limiting) factors. This makes you aware of bigger tasks, - this lets you recognize paths to expansion previously closed to you. And you give others opportunity to prove themselves at tasks you already concluded. Transferring activities means to give up objects, power, influence etc. to those who (initially) might show far less skill and experience in these tasks than you do. This is only for YOU! This book was written for YOU, and only concerns YOU. Never read it with the question in mind whether your neighbor, or the plumber down the road, or someone of a different country or culture may understand it as well, or if it could have helped people in the past. Don't make your understanding dependent on whether other people may comprehend it as well. Just test this Page #229 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ How to Begin 229 approach if it can give you insight how to steer your life now, - this helps others more than you may think. • Go 'Prime-Time' If life looks dull with nothing really attracting you, - then do what you're doing NOW as best as you can. We tend to perform 'routine-work' mechanically, as fast as possible and often thoughtlessly. Yet this degrades large chunks of our life as uninteresting, as 'second-rate'. The more we do this, the less we live 'Prime-Time' and the more we feel victim to petty, boring events, - till in the end life as a whole looks dull. Yet there's a simple remedy against this type of monotony: Do everything you do with the same precision and focus you use for 'important' events. Initially this might feel strange or even ridiculous, - but very soon all areas of your life get filled with vibrant vividness - and then you always live 'Prime-Time'. Page #230 --------------------------------------------------------------------------  Page #231 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Many Are Called ... 231 Many Are Called, But Who Is Choosing ? - A Personal Note - You must have heard this saying - 'Many are called, but few are chosen'. - Its from a holy book and usually doesn't make sense to anyone. - What does it mean 'to be called', - who does the choosing, - why are there few only, what happens to all others .... ? - Lots of questions and no hard answers. Well, here's an explanation. Being Called 'Being called' means nothing other than getting inspired, enchanted, to become convinced that deep within us there's something so much greater than we are now; that deep within us something is able to clearly understand how this world works, - knows how to find what's beneath it, above it, beyond it, - and how to reach there. And that's fascinating, exulting, intoxicating, - far more interesting than always playing in only one, small playing field. It lets us create our own reality along everything we ever Page #232 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 232 Unlimited Horizons dreamt of, and then - once we are done experiencing all this - to move on to higher, even more fantastic levels. Well, that's what 'BEING CALLED' means, - to sense what's possible, and to know deeply within that we can really reach it. Okay, but who is doing it - the 'CALLING'? What happens, if nobody calls us, - or we just aren't in the right spot when calling takes place, - or we are called and never hear it? Relax, - it's much easier. - When we are ready, someone for sure will call us - don't worry. And if nobody is around, just call yourself. And if you hesitate to call yourself, - because you ask yourself - who am I - small I, - and who gave me authority to do this? Well, then let me do the calling. So, - for everyone reading or hearing this, NOW is the time. - NOW I AM CALLING YOU! - EXACTLY NOW. From now into all future - consider yourself called. Consider yourself officially asked to go for 'The Magnificent within you', with everything you have; - go all-out for everything you deeply feel within you, - everything you never dared to look, or lacked the courage for, or didn't know that it was there; - go for that splendid part of yourself that's long been waiting to share your present reality. Now you are called. And this really means YOU PERSONALLY. - If you were interested enough to read this book up to this point, then you are called. Full stop. Never ever doubt this. Page #233 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Many Are Called ... 233 Choosing Okay. - Called. - And what about being CHOSEN ? - Wasn't that part of the deal? First the calling, then being chosen, - who wouldn't like to be a chosen one? Who wouldn't like to be taken into the inner circle and be assured of fast progress and certainty of reaching the highest? So, who's doing the second part - THE CHOOSING. Who could possibly do that? - Again the author of this book? - Well, I'd rather not. I'd have to consider each single one of you: - is he or she worthy to be accepted or not - a huge job if you want me to be thorough - and that's the least you'd expect of me. It's very time-consuming and I wouldn't be too happy if I'd got stuck with it. But let's just assume I accept this task. How would I decide? How could I possibly decide? - For sure I'd choose all. of you, each single one, because you all have that potential. But then the sentence should read - 'Many are called and all those are chosen', - which it doesn't. Out of the many only a few are specially selected. - See, I am the wrong guy for the job, I'm far too generous. Who else may choose? - Gurus? Priests? - Well, at best these guys are also called - but are they chosen? - Can someone not chosen do the choosing? How would we know they have authority to choose in the first place? What if they tell you they had authority, but actually don't. What if you pay them big money to ensure being chosen, and then they can't do it, though they told you they could? Well - better safe than sorry - let's just leave the holy ones out of the choosing game, too many strange things have happened around these guys. Let's rather see who else is there. Page #234 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 234 Unlimited Horizons God? - Wouldn't God be perfect, impartial, best suited? But - wouldn't He face the same problem as all other judges'? - How does He discriminate, along which criteria does He select? - And what if He selected not you - but someone you don't like, - wouldn't you be angry, sad, sorry, left out, feeling unjustly treated, rejected? - Would God do such thing? Wouldn't He also choose all - to not hurt all others? - No, God can't do that - choose only a few and reject everyone else. Who else is there? Some other - even higher - being? Some GOD of Gods? Some body or thing that is above all? - Too far away from this present reality. It's far easier; and don't be surprised: YOU YOURSELF do the choosing. You yourself are the only one capable of doing it in the first place. Because only you know best how far you progressed and how ready you are. And how do you do this choosing? - Simple. - Act ! - Follow that inner path you deeply sense inside, that path you feel attracted to, - the path that triggers that special thrill whenever you only think about it. - Never doubt you have this path! - Remember, you are called, so you do have it inside of you. So what to do now? - What's a chosen one supposed to do? - Again easy. - Make that special effort to get out of your present cloud of whatever you are entangled in now. Make the effort to become what you only dreamt of so far, - and do it even if you are afraid of it, or if it seems impossible. Only you know what you'd really like to be, - only you know what it takes to bring this out, - only you decide to start. If you really begin something new, if you really start on your path, Page #235 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Many Are Called ... 235 235 that's how you do the choosing. That's how you become a CHOSEN one. That's how you choose yourself. And Again But - once is never enough. - You have to do it again and again, this choosing yourself, - you have to decide anew each time you come to a crossroads. You cannot lay back and say 'Well, I am chosen, enlightenment is ensured - nothing else to do today, let's go to the beach.' Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You need to choose anew all the time, - and you need to choose growth over that well known, easy and comfortable path that doesn't challenge you. You have to decide again and again to become more, better, greater, wiser, - only then you are and will stay chosen. And this costs energy at first, then more energy as your see clearer what restricted circumstances you are entangled in, and you put in effort after effort and nothing seems brighter, and you are tempted to give up ten thousand times. And then one day it's done, then it dawns. Then you see through the game and know what works, - how your life works, how really to steer it. And then you find yourself showing this to others, - like I do now, - showing others what you were shown long time ago. And then you wonder - How did I ever get here, - I really didn't do much - except that I now know how it works. LIFE IS WHAT WE INVEST IN IT Page #236 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Where To Go From Here Once you start steering life from an awareness higher than Stage One, your vision of the world - your world - will change, - what you experience will change, - and how you perceive your friends will change. Here it helps to connect to others with similar insights. Together it's far easier to grow, to reach higher stages, to manifest dreams. Together power and expansion multiply. It's easy to find others: - Once you focus on higher stages, you intuitively identify each other, - in the same way as people able to see effortlessly locate each other amongst thousands of blind. Thus - look out for others also intent on discovering new inner dimensions, - who aim to explore the full breadth of their being, - who long to experience what's beyond the limits of the known circle of life. Our website unlimited-horizons.de offers a first meeting place for sharing experiences and exchanging know-how. Here we publish further information and scriptures as they become available. And if this project inspires you, - then start your own site on this subject - in your own language, tailored to the society you live in, in the style you prefer. - Life always gives back the energy YOU invest in it. Page #237 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Hermann Kuhn Where Nothing Seems To Be A message from an ancient past endowed with extraordinary powers - enlivening a hidden, forgotten layer of your being A message the orthodox church suppressed for nearly two millennia because it feared its might A message that may fundamentally alter your life Where Nothing Seems To Be ISBN 978-3-9811466-1-5 Paperback 31 pages US$ 2,90 Order from: www.unlimited-horizons.de Hermann Kuhn Crosswind Publishing Page #238 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ There's No Copyright on CONSCIOUSNESS The prime purpose of a book is to share knowledge with others and to inspire. It is not its major purpose to make money for corporate shareholders. Knowledge and experiences we share help others to grow and to expand their scope of life - as our development was helped by the insights of others. This process shouldn't be blocked in any way, or only be available to those with money. We also don't subscribe to the idea of posting a sample chapter to whet your appetite and then blackmail you into buying the rest of the book. Thus we present the entire book in electronic form. If you like it - then - buy the book - for yourself or for a friend, - or send a donation, whatever you feel it's worth. This enables the author to continue writing, and us to maintain this website and forum. And it also tells us how much this theme interests you. And if you don't have money, or don't want to spend it, then - enjoy the wisdom, - and recommend it to others so they may enjoy it as well. You may copy the pdf-file and share it with others provided it is for free. You are not allowed to charge for the book, or use it for any commercial purpose without prior written permission by the publisher. The formal copyright remains with the publisher