Practical consciousness development for humans

Practical consciousness development for humans

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
– C. G. Jung

“Make no mistake about it – enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”
― Adyashanti

Disclaimers

This is not a scientific, religious or even academic publication, but a pragmatic humanistic essay on the nature and functioning of individual consciousness in humans, written as far as possible in neutral and unbiased language. We claim no authority other than that of the consciousness of its author. It is recommended to read the publication slowly, e.g. ten minutes each day, and the reader should not move on until each chapter is understood and integrated.

If the reader wishes to actively grow their consciousness, this volume’s consciousness teachings must be supplemented by awareness practices such as meditation, mindfulness, yoga, feedback groups, retreats and other modalities. More resources are available in the online Academy of Home of One.

For anyone enduring complex suffering, such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, addiction, severe or repressed trauma, self-harm or life-challenging circumstances, you need to also seek professional help in addition to reading on. This publication may still help you towards greater awareness and insight, but consciousness development requires at least a minimum amount of regular peace, time and energy for you to benefit from it. Any of the above mentioned complex conditions have their own inner dynamics that need to be met with particular and professional care that will be too extensive to be treated here. It is however the contention of this publication, that non-consciousness (see definition below) likely will make any of the conditions worse and may in some cases even be the very source of them. The latter happens when an unconscious matter remains untreated for too long, where the suffering can manifest itself in the body and its immediate surroundings.

It is to be expected that any presentation of universal consciousness and the dynamics of consciousness development in the human condition will meet resistance from religions, diverging worldviews, competing practices and hardcore materialists. Please understand that nothing in this presentation is to be considered dogma. Take what you can use, if anything, and leave the rest. Also, it is not required that you adopt a particular belief system, or any belief system for that matter, to benefit from the teachings of consciousness development. And, likewise, you can freely subscribe to any faith or belief system and still benefit from the core concepts of practical consciousness development.

Introduction

This publication is a brief and accessible introduction to consciousness development and the fundamental dynamics that influence your inner life as a human being. By ‘consciousness development’ we simply mean adopting and integrating a fundamental understanding of your true nature as consciousness, while removing everything that stands in the way of accessing and growing your consciousness. This is often referred to as ‘enlightenment’, although we use that word here in a mundane and practical context.

You don’t have consciousness, you are consciousness, and by developing your understanding of that fundamental nature you will be able to access more and more of it. Only by realizing how your mind and emotions work in practice will you see how your awareness is constantly being disturbed by something other than what brings you into contact with life, yourself and your highest purpose in consciousness. You are, in short, trapped in a loop of varying levels of suffering that significantly reduce the potential of your consciousness. But, if approached correctly, the very same suffering is what will help you grow and develop your consciousness.

For the past century, our culture and science has been governed by an all-consuming materialism that defines consciousness solely as a product of matter. Nothing exists but matter and material processes in time and space. Your consciousness arises at the beginning of your life and ends at your death. Before and after you and your consciousness do not exist. Despite the fact that materialism still hasn’t provided convincing scientific evidence for how unconscious brain matter creates human consciousness – known as "the hard problem of consciousness" – we have adopted a materialist belief system that pervades our culture, economy and self-perception, which has led to a devastating human-centric worldview. Materialism prevailed and we didn’t bother to inquire too much into the deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness, despite the fact that it is only with and in consciousness that anyone experiences anything.

This publication is for everyone, as the nature of consciousness is the same for everyone, regardless of their scientific, philosophical and religious points of view. In contrast to materialism, this publication takes an pragmatic idealist position, which states that consciousness is more than just a product of the brain. Instead it is fundamental in and to our universe. In other words, everything else, including the material world around you, arises from consciousness (see Volume II for much more on pragmatic idealism).

It is the teaching of this publication that the more you grow your consciousness the more you will experience and acknowledge that we are far more than just matter. This idea, which has been natural for almost all cultures throughout human history, is now also being adopted by pioneers in the scientific community. It is supported by ancient texts and ideas, the philosophy of metaphysics and mind, as well as the cosmology of mystics, sages and prophets. This development is a much-needed change, as the human-centric and purely materialist belief system, which requires a general state of ‘non-consciousness’ (rejection of consciousness), has caused unprecedented suffering and destruction of Earth. With the proper techniques, patience and an open mind, anyone can experience reality beyond the veil of materiality which at first glance seems to shroud us completely.

Basic definitions

Before we begin, some definitions are required. Don’t worry about learning everything by heart just now, simply glance through them and come back here whenever you need to.

First, let’s define ‘consciousness’ as that which everything can be reduced to and explained in terms of. It is that in which everything is made aware. It’s what you and everyone else fundamentally are. All consciousness, including your individual consciousness, is universal consciousness, which we simply call One.

Second, we define ‘mind’ to mean A) consciousness, and/or B) the mental space related to human brain and bodily experience, i.e. thoughts, sensations and emotions. Our brains do not produce consciousness, they limit it. What we can measure as brain activity is partly a result of conscious experience, i.e. neural correlates. In practice it is often hard to distinguish clearly between consciousness and the brain, but as a general rule of thumb, the brain limits or pollutes our consciousness. To have a clear mind means to have a less dominant or noisy brain.

Third, we define ‘awareness’ as the primary act or state or experience of consciousness. The purer our awareness becomes, e.g. less disturbed by thoughts, the greater our direct access to and experience of consciousness will be.

Fourth, we use ‘beingness’ to mean the quality, state, or condition of having existence. We feel our beingness through awareness and in consciousness.

Fifth, we use ‘subconscious’ to mean everything that exists in our consciousness but is not yet made aware.

Finally, ‘non-conscious’ means the state of rejecting the potential of our consciousness through low-quality awareness, either by virtue of ignorance or rejection. Not to be confused with ‘unconscious’ which means without consciousness, e.g. knocked out.

Consciousness

Consciousness is what we are at our most fundamental level. The human body is a physical vehicle for consciousness to navigate, explore and experience life on Earth through our awareness. But because we are usually distracted by thoughts and emotions, our awareness is rarely able to experience pure consciousness. In addition, our minds and bodies are subconsciously influenced by our ego and accumulated pain experience. Matters are made even worse by the noise of human life in the material realm and the general ignorance in our materialist culture about fundamental human nature. To conclude, with no awareness of the nature of consciousness, we tend to identify with material forms (our body and its possessions) which leave us both vulnerable to suffering and at the same time less equipped to deal with it.

Consciousness development begins with integrating the fundamental understanding that we are not our thoughts and feelings. Instead, we are the one who thinks and the one who feels, sometimes referred to as the quiet observer inside. This is consciousness itself, at the very root level of what you are. As we learn to limit unwanted thoughts and emotions, we gradually attain a state of higher (more pure) awareness. In this state we can connect more directly with the source of unbounded consciousness that lies behind the forms of the physical world, including our own bodies.

Consciousness is something everyone has access to. Even in a completely non-conscious life, it is inevitable that it sometimes moves you, often in flashes, caused e.g. by beautiful nature experiences, extraordinary body sensations, the encounter with great art, life-threatening situations or illness, true love, or the authentic connection with life and other creatures.

When was the last time you had a glimpse of pure consciousness? Do you remember the peace, cohesion and timelessness you experienced? It is because you came in contact with the nature of your own beingness, and through consciousness you were connected to everything around you. Consciousness is the intelligent and infinite force that flows through everything and underlies all that is familiar in the material world of form.

Everyone can learn to find their way deeper into consciousness, without having to depend on random or extraordinary circumstances in our surrounding world. The more you connect with consciousness, the greater abundance and peace you will experience in your life. It is the source of unbounded wealth that far exceeds the generally accepted forms of finite material possessions in our culture.

In our limited human form, we will probably never be able to fully understand all of consciousness and its dynamics. Universal consciousness, One, can’t really be an object of our awareness as it is awareness itself. But fortunately we are able to feel it, and by increasing our awareness we become more and more familiar with it. To live a conscious life means to live in harmony with our true nature, which is our purpose as human beings. Just like any other species on our planet. How true purpose unfolds in each person is as diverse as life itself and it will evolve in the course of your life. But the true purpose of you will often stand in stark contrast to the false or limiting roles we are being dictated by our ego, pain experience or materialist culture.

Living non-consciously

To live non-consciously means to be a slave to a constant tangle of predominantly arbitrary thoughts and feelings. It is a madness that creates colossal suffering. Suffering is understood here as all negative emotions, circumstances and experiences in your life. Can you recognize one or more of these?

• The fear of being alone, being abandoned or not being loved, even among friends and family.

• The feeling that no one really understands you or speaks the same language as you.

• The feeling of never being good enough, no matter how much you try or improve yourself.

• The need to soothe emptiness or discomfort with overconsumption, substances or pleasure.

• Recurrent anxiety, sadness or discomfort seemingly without cause.

• The feeling that happiness is unattainable or vanishes too quickly even if you have achieved many of your goals in life.

• The experience that love is fleeting or not even an option for you.

• The feeling that you are not really living, but just filling out a role. Or that almost everyone else appears to do the same.

Experiences such as these are caused by our identification with material form and the separation from consciousness. This state allows our ego and pain experience to manipulate our minds and emotions and create even more suffering.

The ego

The ego is comparable to a parasite that lives in your mind and has the ability to take over and control you, especially when you are inattentive or challenged by life. You know the ego as the voice that speaks almost incessantly in your head. This voice is not you, you are the one listening to the voice. Much suffering in your life comes from your identification with the voice.

Try to observe the voice now that you have become aware that it is not you. Imagine you wrote down everything it said and showed it to a friend. Your friend would probably recommend that you seek professional help, if it wasn’t for the fact that she or he has a similar voice inside. The ego tries to help but its advice is usually insane and its plans will always just lead to more suffering.

The path to a higher consciousness begins with asking the voice to be silent. You will soon notice how difficult it is, which is because the mind has surrendered too much power to the ego. At the same time, you are caught up in a lifelong habit of listening to the voice as if it were you. As you get better at ignoring or silencing the voice, you will notice how the ego tries to compensate for lost ground with countless different strategies, especially when you least expect it or need it. It can be scary to observe because it's similar to being locked up with a crazy person and having to follow that person's endless stream of thoughts and suggestions.

It is characteristic of the ego that its plans are almost always about the future, and it cuts you off from living in the present when you follow its commandments. Only in the present moment can you grow your consciousness, it is all there is.

There are several techniques to achieve a greater inner silence, especially meditation is a reliable method that anyone can learn. Silence increases your awareness and, thus, your direct access to consciousness.

Pain experience

Pain experience is the sum of your life's pain, both physical and mental. Like the ego, you can consider it an inner actor that constantly influences your thoughts and behavior. In addition to its obvious influence, such as "fire hurts, beware!", the pain experience also acts as a hidden programming in your body and unconsciousness. When you feel strong resentment towards something or someone without being able to explain why, it is often due to your pain experience trying to avoid a pain that is not known to your conscious self. It does this to protect you, and in the case of fire it obviously makes good sense.

The problem with the pain experience is that the body usually does not know when a danger is over, and therefore maintains its alertness long after the danger has passed. At the same time, the body responds just as willingly to thoughts, e.g. anxiety, as it does to real dangers, e.g. a fire. Together, these two less-than-ideal mechanisms can create a vicious circle in which one constantly renews and/or intensifies one's experience of pain without experiencing any real danger. In the case of particularly strong pains, your experience will do everything to not be forgotten, which can create a dependence on the pain in your system. This is sometimes referred to as negative attachment.

A highly potent area of ​​the pain experience is related to your ‘inner child’, a kind of imprint of your childhood experience, where childhood pain and trauma can sustain itself. The early experiences of childhood are special because they have helped create your basic ideas of life. As a child, you are emotionally vulnerable and often unprepared for difficult experiences, which are ideal conditions for creating trauma. A trauma is an emotional wound that has not yet healed. The wound is related to but separate from the situation that caused it as it is your emotional reaction to the situation, not the situation itself. Trauma can be both pain you remember and pain you have forgotten or repressed. But trauma stays with you as a burden throughout life until it is properly dealt with and will draw energy from you to keep its memory intact. Therefore, it is important to become aware of what your inner child is drawing attention to, and work on healing all of its pain experience.

Of course, teenage and adult life can also produce trauma. It often occurs in connection with our close relationships, losses, accidents, war and other challenging life situations. And as if that were not enough, it's important for you to know that trauma also is inherited through DNA. This is done, of course, to protect future generations from danger, but in practice this means that you can be influenced by outdated pain that is not even your own. This pain experience lies deep within your system, but it can be triggered and affect your mind and actions subconsciously.

It is characteristic of the impact of the pain experience that it is almost always about the past and it cuts you off from living in the present when you follow its bidding. Only in the present moment can you grow your consciousness. Remember, the present moment is the only time that actually exists. If you feel you are living too much in either the past or the future, you are likely a victim of your ego and/or pain experience.

Becoming aware of and healing the pain experience is often a long and challenging process that can only be accomplished gradually with large amounts of patience and self-love. The presence and support of a loving and conscious life partner, friend or family member may be necessary to heal certain traumas, especially in relation to past family and relationship patterns.

Often the pain experience allies with the ego, and together they are an almost irresistible force within you, especially when you are at your most vulnerable. In this case the ego will typically use its warped logic to persuade you to take fear-based actions that lead you away from love, towards more suffering.

Increased awareness of these dynamics, as well as a deeper understanding of the specific composition of your pain experience, may over time free you from their negative influence.

Amplifiers

When living a non-conscious life, there are three powerful amplifiers in the mind that make suffering even more unbearable:

• Attachment is dependence on a condition in life that gives you suffering. Your system knows the suffering and finds a misplaced security in it. This prevents you from changing the condition and getting out of the suffering.

• Resistance is a strong reluctance to a negative situation in life, whether the actual situation is current or not. Ironically, the resistance often stands in the way of improving or dissolving the actual situation as most people will resist exposing themselves to the negative emotions caused by the situation again.

• Judgment is a strong reluctance towards a person, idea or situation in life that you do not know. Judgment often creates suffering for others than yourself. By letting judgment dictate the lens we see life through, we simultaneously cut ourselves off from the possibility of changing our life conditions or our attitude towards them.

You can view the amplifiers as part of your ill-suited defense mechanisms, weapons of the ego and your pain experience. Once you start becoming more aware, you can use the amplifiers as indicators of what’s actually going on inside you, e.g. what they are trying to protect or avoid. Whenever you experience an overly emotional response to real life challenges that others may find less problematic, you know it’s time to deconstruct the situation to become even more conscious about yourself.

Surrendering

Surrendering is the way out of suffering. To live with less ego and pain is to live a freer and more conscious life without unnecessary suffering for yourself and others. Often, the various combinations of ego, pain experience and amplifiers are larger than the actual conditions in life to which they attach themselves. By learning to understand and recognize the misguided defense systems, one can avoid the unnecessary extra suffering they cause. But suffering itself escapes no one in life and we’re not supposed to.

Fortunately, there is a way out of suffering, namely through it. It requires that you surrender to what is, which means increasing your consciousness of the actual conditions that cause suffering. Depending on the nature and magnitude of the causes of suffering, it may be the hardest and most courageous thing you have ever had to do. But only through surrendering can you come to terms with life as it actually is, not how you want it to be, and the work towards healing and balance can begin.

The non-conscious alternative to surrendering is bypassing, that is, going around the situation, instead of through it. This is the default mode and an understandable strategy for most people. But over time, this approach will always cause proportionally more pain, hinder your healing, and reduce your potential for consciousness development.

In practice, surrendering is very simple, though rarely easy. Something negative comes up in you, often caused by a specific situation, although it does not always have to be the case. You react more strongly than the situation requires, and often you end up making things worse for yourself or others. The pattern may be familiar to you, as a routine that has followed you throughout your life, or it may be something new. All you need to do now is pause and find peace to relax, and refrain from creating extra resistance or judgment of the reaction. Now feel the emotions behind your reaction. The actual situation itself is often irrelevant, you have to become aware of the emotional cause of your reaction and make it conscious. You do this by feeling it, all of it, while giving yourself the necessary time and care to understand the whole emotional field. Only then will you ever be free from it and its harmful effects. It goes without saying that the bigger and more complex the underlying emotional field is, the longer it will take to disarm it and the hold it has over you.

The method could be called 'accept and let go'. You need to let go of something that you are holding on to, even though it may feel like it is holding on to you. Accept this dynamic instead of hiding behind a victim identity that will only keep the suffering fresh. You're the only one who can do this because the suffering is yours, the feelings are inside you. Whatever prompted them are long gone. This is about you and yours, nothing else. Accept what is, exactly as it is and how it is. Until you let go, and let go of it all, the suffering will continue to hurt you and keep refreshing the emotional trauma of the actual situation that once caused it. It can be something uncomfortable in your childhood or close relationships. Maybe an accident. Maybe something less dramatic.

Even if the cause of your suffering is persistent, such as a negative circumstance in life or your health that you can’t change immediately, the technique is the same: Accept and let go of your negative emotional energy towards the situation. Practice it every day until you see change in your attitude towards the problem. Perhaps you will start seeing how and why things are like they are. You may even feel compassion towards the person or the situation that is causing you problems. With greater awareness comes insight: There are no problems, except your attitude towards the circumstances in life. The circumstances themselves are neutral, you decide if you will meet them with a negative or a positive attitude. When you improve the quality of your awareness the latter becomes gradually easier.

New suffering and the dynamics of your mind

New suffering arises constantly, accept this too however hard that may be. If you don't, the suffering will just impact you even stronger. That’s why a non-conscious person is poorly protected against new suffering. Few people actually face the actual circumstances in their immediate environment directly. This is due, among other things, to the following dynamic factors that make it even easier for new suffering to take up residence in you:

1. Our brains act lightning fast to look for patterns in our surroundings, and automatically repeat old interpretations and action patterns that are performed unconsciously. It is comparable to programming that may be right or wrong, but it happens so fast that we do not have time to detect it. From time to time you discover that you thought you were experiencing something very different than whatever the actual situation was, but most of the time the inconsistency is much more subtle and you may never even become aware of it.

2. Everything around you is usually experienced through a mental and emotional filter that colors the events, i.e. makes them better or worse than they actually are. Living non-consciously we are virtually unable to experience anything in life as it is: neutral, beyond good and evil.

3. Our mind and nervous system are programmed to remember the bad better than the good. We do this to protect ourselves. But it also means that we have an unfortunate tendency to focus on the negative and forget the positive, and that colors the emotional and experiential filters and patterns through which we experience the world.

4. Common habits, your self-perception, as well as others’ perception of you, can further help to keep you in inappropriate patterns that you are most often completely unaware of. You do as you usually do because you have done it before and you do not question it. Maybe you are insecure about doing something new, or you do not know how or what to do differently. Or perhaps you have experienced resistance from others the times where you tried to do something new or different. Typically, your surroundings want to maintain their perception of you and become insecure when you change.

Together, these factors give your ego and pain experience the optimal conditions for their misguided assistance. They are constantly getting new ammunition to reinforce their position. The ego says, “I’m needed! Step aside”, after which its irrational plans or reactions are set in motion. The pain experience says: “Watch out! It's dangerous”, after which it begins to produce fear and negative chemistry in the body, or to perform slightly manic or evasive maneuvers.

We all know the result: We live like pendulums swinging between fierce reluctance and irresistible urge, and our non-consciousness makes the fluctuations unbearably wide. Even when you experience great joy, bliss or excitement, immediately you fear losing it. And once you’ve lost it, which you always will, the pendulum swings even wider towards the negative end of the emotional spectrum. You need to reduce the movement of the pendulum and accept each moment for exactly what it is – no more, no less. The path to finding and maintaining inner peace is becoming conscious of the many inappropriate patterns that reside in you. This is the only sustainable way to avoid continuously strengthening your ego and renewing your pain experience. Then, and only then, may you begin to dissolve the old emotional wounds you carry.

Start small

Frustration is an integral part of any challenging process and that goes for consciousness development as well. It’s best to work on a single aspect of your perceived suffering at a time. Start with something small. Use the space and energy it frees up once dealt with. Your continued learning and increasing capacity of awareness will naturally lead to bigger things. Big suffering, however, is rarely just one thing so it is best eaten in pieces. It can take a long time to figure out how everything is connected. Be patient and compassionate with yourself. Find support where you can. In the case of trauma from e.g. your childhood or a close relationship, it can be a great help, or even a requirement, that you get help from a friend or partner, provided of course that they have the ability and opportunity to make themselves selflessly available for your healing process. It is also advised to seek out relevant communities or professional help that support your healing.

Sometimes it can be difficult to get to the root cause of your suffering. You only feel pain or discomfort, but you have no idea what created it. You may never get the answer. Yet the method is the same. Accept, feel what you can feel and let yourself be consumed with emotion as much as possible. Then let go as best you can. Repeat until you get better. Negative emotions are flags, warning signs, that something needs your attention. Consider them also as road signs, indications of where to go deeper.

The process of letting go of deeply negative emotions is rarely pretty or pleasant. When you are in the thick of it you may expect discomfort, crying and nausea. But as unpleasant as the process is, just as beneficial it will be for you afterwards. You have, in fact, released something that hurt you, sometimes for years. The depth of the process is equal to the depth of the result. With relief comes insight, and that is the purpose of suffering. Use what is difficult, otherwise it uses you. Only then can the worst also become the best that could happen to you.

The purpose of suffering

You are here on Earth to learn and develop your consciousness (see also Volume II). You chose to come here and now. Live every day as if you’ve chosen it, because you have. Remember how you once cried when you didn’t get the ice cream you wanted as a child? You overcame it and grew, now you smile fondly of the suffering that once seized your entire body. Every challenge is a lesson full of growth potential. Cherish each and everyone of them, even the lessons that keep coming back to you until you get it right.

What could be better than persistent suffering to help you grow beyond your wildest imagination? This is how people survive the harshest of conditions and die of old age with a sense of fulfillment and an accomplished smile on their lips. Such joy, such suffering. Remember, they go hand in hand and nothing is final or forever. What once was unbearable becomes trivial. You overcame the situations in life and what they prompted inside of you. You grew from it all, just as intended. Ultimately suffering leads to gratitude once you decide to make the non-conscious conscious.

The purpose of suffering is to make you more aware by inviting you to heal your human condition, which results in expansion of your consciousness. Suffering creates awareness of an imbalance in your life. The suffering will grow until you decide to take care of it. Perhaps you are strong enough to live non-consciously with suffering for many years, maybe until death. It will require all the resistance you can mobilize. Your negative attachment will constantly drain large amounts of your life energy. In addition, one can experience bodily illness over time as a result of unmet suffering. The negative energy of suffering will simply manifest itself stronger and stronger until you see it, just like a few cancer cells are not deadly, but a tumor can be.

If you die without accepting the lesson posed by suffering, chances are you’ll come back for the same lesson in a later incarnation (see Volume II on reincarnation). Why wait? One thing is for sure, and this is a promise: The fear that is keeping you from dealing with your darkness is also keeping you away from the light of consciousness. And non-consciousness will always, guaranteed, cause you much more suffering than what the process of making the darkness conscious will ever entail. Losing out on the positive impact of life with a more developed consciousness goes against nature itself and why you and I are here.

Suffering has the exact same purpose on the collective level, i.e. our global society, communities and natural ecosystem. It is waking us up, pointing to areas of collective life that are against our nature. Social tensions and climate change have grown so great that they can no longer be hidden, ignored or held back. A movement towards equality in society and balance in nature has already begun, but the road ahead is filled with almost insurmountable amounts of negative attachment, resistance and judgment at the collective level. It’s fear! Most of this is caused by materialism, the most inhuman and unnatural worldview we could ever come up with. We’re living in the egoic age and everything is confirming the net effects of our errors. Apparently we need to almost lose everything to appreciate what we had. What we were. And what we are.

At the collective level, it is a disaster that the operating system of human culture identifies almost exclusively with the material world of form. Through centuries of non-consciousnessnes, we have jointly managed to create an unequal and unbalanced world society. The explosive dynamics of inequality and the devastating effects of climate change will continue to grow until the collective consciousness is sufficiently increased to create equality and balance, which is our natural way of being. Stay present in an old forest and you will see that it is true. Nature never rushes, but always gets the job done. No two plants are alike, but they are all perfect. Nothing is superfluous, yet the abundance is overwhelming. Nothing is random, everything is in balance. Why should we not be able to create lives and societies that are based precisely on these qualities? Sure, we have temporarily forgotten that we are also nature and have lost touch with our beingness. But untold suffering is here to wake us up. The deeper the sleep, the louder the alarm must sound. Of course. And when you start growing in consciousness, we all benefit from it. We are One, remember?

Inward purpose and outward purpose

As more and more people opt to raise their awareness worldwide, there will gradually be greater balance and positive momentum in the world. It will not happen right away and the movement will face resistance and condemnation from the non-conscious world. Consciousness development is the only thing that can overcome these subversive forces and thus the only path to positive change, both on an individual and collective scale.

Your inward purpose as a human being is to separate thoughts and feelings from your awareness. Through surrendering, you achieve healing and personal growth. In this way an ever increasing awareness is achieved, whereby you become immersed in greater consciousness. To know your beingness fully means being conscious of and feeling yourself as all that you really are. Then you will also feel your kinship and connection with everyone and everything around you, because the very same beingness also works through them and that.

Our understanding of universal consciousness will continue to evolve as we evolve with it. But you do not need external proof (i.e. form) from science, you only need to create silence in yourself to feel the presence of greater consciousness. Beware, One can never truly be an object in your awareness, because it is awareness itself. Your subjective experience is all the proof you need. Go to your mirror and look deep into your right eye. You are not the seen. You are the seeing through which One experiences itself.

The more you connect with consciousness, your inward purpose, the clearer your outward purpose becomes. You are an indispensable part of nature and you have an important role to play. Again, surrendering becomes your method: Do what your heart is urging you to do, be fearless and playful, and don’t participate in the drama of your ego or the tragedy of materialist society. How to best serve your outward purpose will likely change throughout your life for you to acquire increasingly more valuable skills, but ultimately you can only serve your higher self by serving the greater good. When you are on the right path, you’ll do what fulfills you most, work will feel like play and yet you will be among the best to do what you do – simply by being all of you. Yes, you will get lost along the way, you will stumble, you will fail. But you will also be helped. Whenever in doubt, always seek love. Who knows where it will take you? You will, eventually, and One will be richer for it because nature truly wants you to succeed.

Academy: Further development resources

We hope you found Book of One: Part III useful. Your journey into higher consciousness has begun. There are many modalities, i.e. particular modes of awareness, that will help and guide you along the way. Also, there are a host of teachers and teachings available. For whatever you are facing right now, there’s a method or a teacher waiting to help you. We’re accumulating the best that universal consciousness has to offer in our Academy, freely available.

Editorial note: The Book of One is currently being developed further and will grow to reflect universal consciousness in ever greater detail and accuracy. Home of One grows through open source, get involved.