Submitted by Open
I can feel a shift going on in the 'matrix' at this moment. Although it's a very positive shift, it's also very painful, dragging up much debris from the ancient past. Before we come into the bright lights of the new paradigm, we must venture through the darkness. So those on the path, are dredging up much density which is being unwound and released. It's painful yes. It seeps into our thoughts and emotions yes. But the only way out is through. So how do we sail through the stormy waters with the clearest possible foresight? How might we minimise any undue suffering?…

The Akashic Records

The Akashic records contain elementals of consciousness relating to everything that has ever been and existed. They are not in themselves a direct record of what took place, because what took place was like everything else - a shift of energy, a movement of consciousness. And since there is only ever one moment of now, the past is continually moving through the moment and being rearranged. We're left with elements and influences, but not the past itself.

Imagine it like this: the universe is as one vast, amorphous jelly fish, moving through space time continuum. When it moves, all of it moves. Not one part remains the same. So in the moment of now, there are parts of the jellyfish as it once was a moment ago, and already aspects of the new form beginning to take shape for the moment that is to come. There is only ever one moment, but when you plot the course of the jellyfish, because it's form has a pattern, a flow and a sense of movement, then it looks like there is past, present and future. There isn't, it just looks that way.

"What we do in life, Echoes in Eternity!"
Marcus Aurelius
(so it does, but they are only the echoes!)

So when you access the highest levels of consciousness - the least disturbed by time - you get the closest picture of what has gone before. It feels like you're looking into the past. From this vantage point, I've had many deeply profound reminiscences of the early hours of existence.

The earliest distortions

I've spoken before of some of the earliest 'distortions'. These are where unity consciousness as the soul 'forgets' itself. Instead of always expressing the memory of the original condition of oneness (it's sole purpose), there's an identification with the separation consciousness, with materiality. In a human sense, Adam is getting lost in the taste of the apple. There is 'lack of self-realisation'. The soul is not 'self-realised'. Amongst other key ones, there's a fundamental distortion that I believe many will encounter on the road of Enlightenment. I call it the "Pain of Existence".

You've expanded out of the density and disharmony of this physical plain. The mind and emotions have quietened. There's much less struggle. Internal body chemistry slows to a gentle pace. Brain wave patterns are theta. In this state, consciousness expands outwards and 'upwards' (actually inwards) through the dimensions. It'll keep hitting resistances where there are levels of identification and karma to process for example. But then you may start getting close to the sense of unity consciousness nearest the source - an infinite sense of connection. The quietest peace. A deepening sense of bliss. You're on the verge of the void itself. Finally the bubble bursts. You drop into pure presence. You're in the void of existence - the absolute Seer of all things.

Yet even here a realisation must dawn: if you are presence, infinite potential, if you are the absolute 'all that is', who is here experiencing it? How can there be an experience at all? Experience presupposes relativity and with relativity comes separation - multiplicity of form once more. You come to realise that indeed duality still does exist. This is where we need to discover how to hold multiple truths simultaneously in the mind: everything is one and reality is an illusion; separation and form is an illusion; yet it's a very real illusion because it's perceived as real. So because there is perception, then there is awareness, consciousness, energy, light and therefore form. Both conditions of being and not-being exist simultaneously.

The Pain of Existence

In this dynamic of being/not-being, you may come to sense and feel that way back when, there was infinite stillness. Peace. Indescribable completeness. No disharmony whatsoever. Absolute crystal clear clarity. Then you may have the thought that you - as an experience, as a soul - can never get back to that point. Not completely, because if you did, then you'd cease to exist. To me when I touched it first, it felt tragic. A sense of intense loss. I realised you could never again experience absolute silence. It felt like 'the pond' could never again be still.

When I experienced this in the Akashic Records, I could see it was one of the defining experiences of existence itself. And this had shaped all manner of distorted form in order for souls to be able to rationalise and come to terms with this fundamental truth.

In my perspective, many people on Earth today are unknowingly living out this original "Pain of Existence". To me, that's what has precipitated the ever spiralling need for entertainment, for comfort eating and distraction, for the anti-depressants that so many people in the world today are taking (nearly one in four of American women aged 40-59). It spawns conditions like self loathing, self harm, ADD, ADHD and also suicidal tendencies. Indeed to me, it has manifested a key element of the Opposing Consciousness in the field all around us. It's what I call the "grey consciousness" - entities that keep the ego locked in limiting spirals: never ending thought streams and uncontrollable emotional outbursts.

There is a solution!

Have you ever wondered why science is an art? It's because it is open to interpretation. How ever rational, how ever logical, it is still open to intuition. That's why some of the greatest scientists (like Einstein) were spiritual people too. There comes a point when we need to depart the logical conclusion. There comes a point when we simply need to let go... experience. This is what happened for me.

As I sat in the well of despair that my realisation has caused, I realised there's a point, very close to infinity, where there's an infinitesimally small experience and nearly infinite potential. Experience totally dissolves at infinity, but somewhere down the curve, there's an experience that is so close to infinite potential, it might as well be one and the same. In effect you have reached nirvana - an experience of infinite potential. You have your cake and can eat it too. It's what the scientists call the 'fudge factor' (and very tasty it is!).

So here's the point: you can have your experience, and no matter how painful, how challenging, you can 'tunnel your way through it' into an experience of pure peace. There will be a way…

The other day, I went out onto a beautiful, golden Florida beach, invited by a friend I was visiting. He often likes to sit in meditation on this particular beach at the sunset. The view and sense of peace was indeed magnificent as the golden sunlight shone across the gently rippling ocean. But I was not guided to sit in the relative peace of the beach itself. I was guided instead to sit on the edge of the car park overlooking the beach. Curious.

People were still sitting in their cars watching the sun go down, engines on, presumably so that the Air Conditioning would still function. It was a painful noise, a sense of disrespecting Mother Earth and not really tuning into what our divine Gaia has to offer. Nevertheless, I followed the pull and sat with the noise of humming motors in my ears and field.

I focused on the sun, and its beams of light shining across the surface of the ocean. Because I'm short sighted (what a blessing), the images were all blurry and so as they often do, took off into their own multidimensional dance. It was simply divine. Yet still the motors hummed and I knew they wouldn't go away. Instead I penetrated the sound (found 'worm holes' through) and touched the sun with my consciousness. I knew not to depart, to go out-of-body, because I felt to ground this consciousness.

So whilst connected to reality, exactly as it was, I visualised the light penetrating all. Now I know that visualisations are really only working on the intellectual plain. If you're not careful you get lost in them and they bear no relationship to reality. It's the same as trying to imagine the pain doesn't exist - you only create a shadow identity avoiding it. Instead, together with the visualisation, I felt the feeling of the pain inside myself, but just a small part of myself, enveloped in light. It was awesome. Beautiful. I allowed the light to expand me way out beyond the sound yet encompassing the sound. The sound was there, but I was not it. The pain of existence was still there, but it was not me…

Synchronistically, after completing this, I came across this wonderful piece of writing...

An aging master grew tired of his apprentice’s complaints. One morning, he sent him to get some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master told him to mix a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it.
“How does it taste?” the master asked.
“Bitter,” said the apprentice...

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.”
As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the master asked, “How does it taste?”
“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.
“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.
“No,” said the young man. At this the master sat beside this serious young man, and explained softly,
“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

To be and not to be

So there is a place where there is nothing. Infinite stillness. Peace. It's a non-experience now dispersed throughout the universe, within the experience. You can be in this void, but as long as you still exist, you as an individual can no longer turn off the noise, not completely. And when you penetrate really deeply, through all layers of the cosmos, you might even taste the sense of bliss as an irritation!

But in the penetration of it, of the irritation, a sense of 'nirvana' can still be found through, above, below and around it. Then interestingly, if you stay connected to reality, then you can 'be' and 'not be' all at the same time. And when you're in this place, the very grounding of your beingness, just might change the physical material circumstances to something more favourable too. As long as you're not attached that is, as long as you don't need it.

To me, this Pain of Existence will never go away, but I'm able to work with it so it feels less and less like pain. You can become awesomely okay with it.

from my heart to yours

Open
(on behalf of Openhand)

- See more at: http://www.openhandweb.org/Enlightenment_and_the_Pain_of_Existence