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APPLICATION
14 STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
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on lower levels, - and in the next our awareness propels us high above these narrow bounds and enables us to imperviously observe them from a distant and uninvolved perspective.
The key to stabilizing the sixth stage of development is our decision to expand beyond our emotional attachment to limiting themes of life. The initial euphoric feeling when we entered this level marks the spot (the emotion) where to direct our attention to further disentangle our consciousness from the confining material experiences it is surrounded by.
If we experience just once how the sixth stage feels like - even if only for a short time - we become able to reach it deliberately. Whenever we confront limiting emotional attachments to the lower levels, we now can consciously decide whether to keep on experiencing the familiar, cherished painful feelings or to rise to stage six.
This is not renunciation, but rather the conscious decision to remain on a higher level of understanding. We do not give up our material conditions. We do not try to remove the factors that 'produced' our attachment to lower levels, we only extract our awareness from these confining bounds. We simply choose to orient towards far more attractive, sovereign and serene dimensions within us. We let go of our emotional attachment to some parts of the material world because we recognize how much they constrain our consciousness.
The restricting conditions might well continue to exist, - but only on a lower level that now hardly holds our attention. Since we invest no further energy in them, they completely cease to engage our attention after some time.?
7 One example: Most of us probably know the hurt we feel when a per
son we are in love with does not return our affections. When this hurt is triggered, it often overshadows all our emotions and severely distracts our mind. Once we rise to the sixth level, we see this hurt as a minor cloud that overshadows only a small area of our consciousness - which we now perceive as far larger than on level five.
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