The need for awareness and habits that serve us

 

The parable of the precious stone

A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2006 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

 
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The need for awareness and to develop habits that serve us is reflected in the parable of the precious stone and the subsequent discussion.

Humans have a particular trait that is best described as the ability to have desire. Desire is inherent to our being and we desire things or experiences on all levels of our being. We will have spiritual, mental, emotional and physical desire. Desire itself is neither good nor bad is just is part of the process of creation.

But, more important than the desire is the intention that underlies the desire we have. It is this intention which is the vehicle the causes creation and propels us thought creation. Unless we become aware of our desires and the intentions behind our desires, we will create habits that do not serve us much as described in the story below.

The issue with desire is that desire coupled with the ability of the mind to form habits and the numerous distractions of Creation we tend to loose ourselves in creation. We then think that creation is mysterious as to how it operates when in reality it is only our own internal process that are not understood. The following story characterizes rather well how we live our life in desire and we loose ourselves in our own unlimited creativity.

There is a story about a man who was told there was an extremely precious stone that was carelessly lost on one of the beaches next to a particular sea. This precious stone was rather unique. If an individual just look at the stone, it would look like any other pebble. But, when viewed through sunlight by holding the stone up to the sun and looking inside, the stone revealed a beauty that was indescribable. It was just something that needed to be experienced.

The man, desiring this precious stone, went searching the beaches near this sea for this stone. As you may have suspected, the beaches were full of pebbles which explains why it was lost when it was first dropped. To find the stone, the man had to pickup each and every pebble. He had to hold it up and look up against the sun to find that particular precious stone. As was said, at a distance, it really didn’t look that much different than a pebble. It was only in the light of the sun passing through the stone could one see its exquisite rare beauty.

The man picked up pebble after pebble year after year looking for the particular rare precious stone. He would then thrown each discarded pebble he picked up into the sea next to the beach so that he would only look at each pebble once.

Then one day he picked up a rather normal looking stone but in the beauty of the sunlight he was mystified and in “Ah” with the experience. He had never experienced such beauty in his life. He was entranced with the beauty. His whole being seemed to be transformed by what he saw. But before he could do anything with the stone, he threw it into the sea out of habit.

We too are like than man searching the beach. We form some type of desire in our mind and begin to look for the experience of that desire. However, unless we live life in awareness we will be like the man on the beach and out of habit we discard that for which we have been looking before we realize what we have obtained.

Two particular problems faced the man searching on the beach that resulted in his habit of throwing the stones into the sea. First, which is a problem that we all have, is that the universe is infinite. While incarnated, we each have a limited view of this universe and must experience it one experience at a time. In our story, the man could not look at all the pebbles on the beach simultaneously. He had to look at each an every one, one at a time.

Every moment in time, we are experiencing an infinite number of possible experiences. We may focus on the major experiences and describe a few details but what you are really experiencing is something that is infinite. For example, just sit and look forward with you eyes open. Allow all that is within your peripheral view to be present and all that your body is sensing with all of its senses and be aware of everything external to you and internal to yourself. Then try and describe it all in detail. If you are honest with yourself you will have to admit you have an infinite view and an infinite number of experiences all happening simultaneously and you just can’t describe them all in detail. You have to choose one over all the others.

If you don’t believe what is said here is true, get a pencil and piece of paper and try listing it all and leave nothing out at all. Do forget to include the fact that your are sensing things but unless you place your awareness and attention on what you are sensing you probably not registering the experience in consciousness. For example don’t forget the feeling of your clothes on each portion of the skin.

It is extremely difficult to try and explain the details of the infinite in finite terms. Whenever we attempt to do this, we are presented with what appears as a mystery. In this exercise we know that we can see everything. We explain any one piece in detail. But we just can’t do it all. We don’t have enough time before we are distracted. What need to be understood from this experience, is that each piece of the universe is very describable and explainable. We are very good at describing and explaining the pieces. It is in understanding and viewing the whole simultaneously that we have problems explaining.

The second problem the man faced in the story was that it took time to pick up and look at each stone. Very quickly the man developed a habit. If he was not aware of each stone he picked up, he began to operate out of habit. He may have observed each stone such that he saw the stone he was looking for but he acted out of habit before he could capture that stone and hold onto it.

Realizing that we can describe and look at each part of what we experience in exquisite detail in sequence coupled with the fact that we only have a finite view, our problem in life become much more like taking a particular cup of water from the ocean than looking at pebbles. Look at the experiences you have in life as filling and emptying your cup all the time sampling the ocean. As long as your are content with what is you will be completely fulfilled in filling and emptying your cup with the ocean water as its.

Now assume that you ask for a very specific cup of water. A cup of water with a specific water temperature and a particular salinity with a certain population of organic life and/or nutrients. That desire poses an whole new problem. It may take you eons to find that exact cup of water in an infinite ocean. Yet, if you persist, and hold to what you desire, and move around sampling different points moving in the direction of the parameters that you are seeking, you will find that perfect cup of ocean water that you desire.

Nevertheless, you are puzzled as to why it takes you so long to find that perfect cup. You know it exists in the ocean. But why can’t you just go directly to where conditions of the ocean are exactly what you need? The fact is you can if you understood the currents of the ocean and how the ocean interacts with the life that is in the ocean and how the ocean interacts with itself. The most significant reason why it takes so long is because the way you sample the ocean.

To take cup after cup without paying attention to how the water is different each time you sample you never become aware of the gradients in the ocean. You never become aware that parts of the ocean are very different than other parts. However if you being to pay attention to what you area actually sampling, you can being to find your way rather quickly.

The question is, “How long does it take to find that particular cup of water?” Do we continually apply our attention and awareness on each cup? Do we observe what each cup of water is telling us about the part of the ocean we are sampling. Or, do we lose concentration and not pay attention to the water that we are actually sampling.

There are three things of which we need to become aware if you wish to start removing some of the mystery about ourselves and the world we are experiencing.

  • The first is to learn to become mindful of how we are sampling the ocean and what we are observing with each sample. That is simply become aware of how we are living our life and what we are learning and experiencing as we live life.

  • The second is to hold to our attention to our intention and make sure we don’t fall into the habit of routine as the man searching for the gem on the beach such that when we find what we are looking for we are aware enough to realize it.

  • Third, understand why we have set the intention that we have and whether or not it will give a lasting internal satisfaction or will only be a hollow experience once our intention is achieved. To search for a gem of rare beauty, the man knew that worth of what he was looking for. Yet if you are only looking for a particular cup of water, what will we do with it when you find it?

What needs to be understood and hopefully you will fully come to believe after experiencing this material is that all will be revealed and all will be made available to us. But to find what we are seeking, no matter what it is, there is a process. We must ask to find what we seek. Then we must hold our attention to what we seek with an unwavering focus until we find it. Additionally, while we are doing this, we need to become aware of what we are finding and observing as we seek our intention. It needs to be understood that what we observe will tell us where to look next.

It really doesn’t matter if we believe God creates reality and grants our requests or we believe that we some how create our own reality. We must set the clear intention and tell the universe or God, “This is what I intend.” Both ways of asking will work and do work The only real difference between the two ways of asking will be in how we choose to manage our creative life energy and our power to create our reality after we ask and our request begins to be granted in some way. We will being to lay the foundation for a habit based on how you are choosing to respond.

If we look at the physics of the creation process and the creation and annihilation of process, the Universe, our God, or however we wish to look at what is happening, will rush to meet us and we will find what we seek. But we must listen to Them as they communicated to us. We are the one who has asked and we are the one who will receive the information. Other may be the occasion to supply the information that we seek but we are the cause. We are the one that must actively respond to what the Universe or our God communicates to us. Exactly how They communicate to us is something we each must learn in our own way.

When we find what we seek, the question then becomes, “Is what we find and what we have obtained going to satisfy us or are we going to begin to look and seek again?” What we will eventually have to learn is to start seeking that which will last and endure. Otherwise we will be caught in endless cycle of desire, constantly seeking something new.

Humans are very prey to falling into a trap. Desire is what propels us into creativity and the joyful experience of life. Yet, if we cannot learn to be happy with what is and what we have created as we have created it, we are caught in an endless cycle of desire. Ultimately we need to face the mystery within our own being as to what intention or desire is propelling us forward into life. However, as we face this question and pursue its answer, we are faced with two more fundamental question.

One of these questions is, “What in life will give us the inner satisfaction and the inner joy of being that allows you to be happy with what is as it is, such that in the end it doesn’t really matter if our desire is met or not because you are happy with what is?” For example, the discussion here is about our desire to understand the seeming mystery of Creation. We can ask ourselves what inner satisfaction do we need such that although we desire to understand the mystery that seems to exist in Creation, we would be happy to live in understanding or to live in mystery?” Or, maybe a more appropriate wording of the questions that we face is, “Why can we not be happy with what is, as it is, for this is all there is?”

If we want to know the mystery behind our own desire no matter what it is, or the mystery of creation, we just need to ask to understand and it will be revealed to us in a way that we can understand.

The second question that we are going to be faced with when we look at the origins of our desire is, “Why are we living life at all?” One desire that we all seem to carry is to not die. We desire to live. So why do we desire to live? The Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity material the reason for our life and the experiences we are seeking in life are encoded on our hearts and is the reason why we incarnated on the physical plane.

Ultimately there is a question that we face whenever we successfully obtain any desire that we may have. Whenever we find that particular cup of ocean water in that infinite ocean as in our example above, there is a question. The question is, “What do we do with it when you get it and how are we going to feel about having obtained it?” It is in how we answer these two questions that will determine the future we experience. If you explore the Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity material you will begin to see why the answer to this question will determine your future.

It needs to be realized, before long, no matter how long it takes, we will find what we have been seeking. Assuming we don’t cast what we have been seeking into the ocean before we become aware to what we have found only to have to start looking again, we will have to ask what do we do with what we have found. If we have not somehow obtained an inner satisfaction either from what we have been seeking or from the journey itself, we will being to look again.

There is really no mystery to Creation and what we are here to do. It is only our habits that interfere with us seeing that for which we continually seek is what already is and. that which we always have. We need to become mindful and aware of that for which we are look and why we look. Then we need to be aware so that when we have found that for which we look, we do not discard what it is we sought.

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