Timeless Life: Introduction
Timeless Life: The 365 Day Self-improvement Plan
by Clayten W. Tylor
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Astrology/Spirituality/Self-help
Introduction
“A practical occultist learns to replace Time by Eternity, and practices daily to accustom himself to leading the timeless life” (The Tarot by Paul Foster Case).
There are two kinds of love that make up a timeless life, an in-pouring magnetic love that creates our physical body, and an out-pouring radiating love that creates our spiritual body. When both loves are purified of their identification and attachment to creating any kind of body, they get perceived as the four-fold feeling of conjugial love — as the eternal feeling of Divine order.
The eternal feeling of Divine order begins in our body as the feeling of sensual love. The in-pouring feeling of love combines with the outpouring feeling of love to create an ambitious kind of love. This is our inherited love-of-self. It is the lustful tendency to seek love outwardly. Ambitious love is the result of being human. It is neither good nor bad, but veils Divine order.
Sensual love is selfish love. It is an ambitious feeling, which makes us seek love by outer means; whether through relationships or fame and fortune these are our means to feel loved. It is a selfish feeling we can sense when someone brings our love out in us. When we feel loved by others, we are unaware that it is our own love that we are feeling. What we feel, is the selfish aspect of love. Selfish love, turns love into lust. It is our inherited human nature as our ego. It is our propensity to possessiveness.
The other kind of love is an out-pouring feeling of love. It is spiritual and therefore, it is only felt when we are willing love as spiritual good. The feeling of spiritual good, otherwise called mutual love, pours out of us when we will love to others, unselfishly.
The out-pouring feeling of love, can be both compassionate and empathetic. It is always Platonic or unselfish at its core intention. There can be no selfishness in our intention if we want to feel this spiritual kind of mutual love. We tend to not experience it, because we cannot feel it. Yet, it is our inherited destiny to feel loved from within, and to pour it out to others. The secret is: we can only feel it, by willing it, thus, spiritual love, is the out-pouring feeling of love, only when it is being willed.
The in-pouring aspect of love that has created our personality and has attached to our body as our sense of self, is only felt when it gets attached to something that it can identify with as its own. To it, owning or possessing something, is its guarantee of security. Yet, the feeling of owning anything, can only be a temporary feeling.
When our ambitious, selfish personality experiences the loss and pain from its emotional attachment and identification to things that are temporary, it makes it more difficult to re-shape the physical body by the use of our imagination. Yet, we will.
However, the feeling that we still need to experience, to overcome the pain of our psychic body, is the spiritual feeling of being eternal. By feeling eternal, we will discover our perfect weight. This is because the feeling of being eternal is the same feeling as being the perfect weight. Yet, what blocks our perception of being eternal, is the loss of our understanding, of how to become the perfect weight.
We might think that we want our bodies to be different from how they appear, but they appear as they do, only because we are uncomfortable with the feeling of our psychic sense-of-self. By imagining the feeling of being eternal, we transform the memories that are attached to our psychic pain-body, and pass through it into our spiritual body as an out-pouring feeling of love.
When pain is left unhealed in our psychic body, everything becomes more selfish. As love becomes lust it issues an ambition for power. Ambition leads to both success and failure, but also more pain. The word ambition 7 4 2, is an open channel (7) for wisdom (2); which could also be just lies (2). Thus, the spiritual feeling of the word ambition, has to be free from attachment and identification, free from gain; otherwise it is greed and self-interest. If we describe ambition as always getting what we want, then it represents human nature having a selfish intention, which always ends badly.
Yet, the spiritual feeling of ambition, is a freeing, outpouring-sensation. In its purity, it has an innocent love in its intention; therefore it has an eternal aspect to it. The purity of having innocent love in our intention, is spiritual good. In order for the feeling of ambition to be useful as a spiritual power, able to change our body's shape, there can be no selfish intention; for selfishness destroys spiritual good. This means that we need to stay in the feeling of being eternal, to exert a selfish feeling spiritually. Spiritual good acts as a suggestion, because it is not concerned with the end goal. If we truly are eternal, there can be no sense of effort or urgency accompanying our goals. The feeling of effort blocks its manifestation. It is in the calm feeling of a timeless life where goals are made manifest, goals that bring good.
Essentially, we are learning to recognize what is ambitious or temporary, and what is eternal — even with our goals and especially, our love nature. When goals are personal they tend to create temporary feelings. We are learning to love the eternal aspect of what is temporary. Not the temporary thing itself, but the feeling that it causes. In this way we can stay fluid and do not get attached and identify with the temporary feeling, but instead identify with the warmth and light of the spiritual body. This creates the feeling of a timeless life. It is accompanied by goals that are eternal.
Feeling eternal, is being able to perceive all four of our physical, astral, spiritual, and celestial bodies at once. We perceive the astral body by setting up a watcher within to watch our thoughts until silence results and a tingling sensation of love surrounds our body. We begin to perceive the spiritual body when we can will the feeling of love outside ourselves to others as mutual love. Furthermore, we perceive the celestial body when we will-love up and out of ourselves and thereby cause ourselves to feel all four of our bodies as one, in a reciprocal conjugial love experience.
Essentially, we are following our inner “serpent” back in time, back through our memory to what it felt like to be innocent. The serpent represents the sensual principle as our will power, as our desire nature. It is the foundation for each of our other bodies to be sensed. Its influence on our physical body is through the psychic or pain-body, which collects our experiences via our memory, usually pain. Those painful memories are all that most humans ever become. Yet, those memories are only the sensual response to the flow of the serpent through us as a feeling. We must learn to perceive, but not react or identify with the feeling of our psychic body.
Our reaction to the inner “serpent” is an inherited response to the sensual feeling as it flows through us. As the serpent grows and affects the other areas of our astral body it becomes more sensual and even harder to control. Yet, when the feeling-of-self perceives a spiritual influx of love, it raises our reaction; and the sensual sensations of love become spiritual feelings of love that are mutual. Then the pain is gone.
Mutual love, is our response to perceiving the spiritual sphere. Mutual love raises the sensual feeling of love, up to the spiritual sensations of compassion and faith. The sensual feeling of self becomes associated with the spiritual sense-of-self. It still retains the memory of being sexual, and therefore, can return to it, but it is no longer ruled by those selfish desires. To perceive the self as having a selfless love nature, which can still feel the pain and thoughts of others, develops a new spiritual perspective that frees us from identifying with the pain of the astral body.
The spiritual influence of mutual-love on our sensual feeling of self, enables us to appear to radiate, or at least emote a sensual sensation of spiritual love to others. This outpouring spiritual feeling is still sensual, in fact, it is so pleasurable that it encloses us in an aura of both sensual and spiritual delight.
Now, the serpent has been changed. It is the same vibrant sexual magnet it once was, but now it constantly flows out as love. The flow of love has made our intellectual self, act as the release valve. We get to decide when and how far the feeling of love is allowed to flow. It is in equal proportion to the silence we bring to our intellectual self. Our mind-chatter creates our physical reality, just as having no-thoughts, unveils a spiritual reality.
When the serpent gets made silent, it is under the hypnotic flow of the spiritual feeling of love. The serpent returns home to its source, or shall I say, it returns to the vibration of its source. The serpent was born from a vibrating feeling, from the principle of growth through memory. The serpent is only a response to the flow of love through us. Yet, when the serpent is awakened to this false sense-of-self, it is able to return to its source of love at will. Without an attachment to our old feeling-of-self, our new perspective allows our sensual feeling-of-self, to move in and out of the physical body. This movement is outside the range of our physical senses. It is the outpouring celestial feeling of love that was once the “serpent,” which has become wise and has returned home. This is our journey during the Age of Aquarius.
It is a journey into the sensual memory of our separate feeling of self. It is a journey that only the serpent, as our desire nature, can make. The serpent starts the journey as a separate sensual feeling-of-self. It develops a selfish intention, which allows it to move into an outpouring affection of selflessness. Spiritually, we are changing our intention from carnal to human, from desires that seek, to desires that give.
To understand the desire-nature as our feeling of will-power, we need to understand how we have identified and attached ourselves to it. Especially, since it has hidden us from our own spiritual nature, by becoming a carnal power that now rules over us.
If I was to change the spelling of your name, no matter what you are interested in, whether you are a singer or into competitive sports, it is highly probable that all of your interests would also change. If you enjoy skateboarding, and I took away the letter in your name that corresponds to the constant movement, you would also lose your interest in skateboarding. Everything is a vibration, and the “serpent” can be all of them.
All of our instincts, including having sex or wanting children, are all influenced by the vibration created by the spelling of our name. Our name holds the memory of everything that we have ever done and felt. If we could take away our memory, who would we be? We would still exist. Yet, without the good, but also without the bad.
We are in a way doing the same thing. We want to separate our feeling of will-power from our intellectual awareness of self. Then we can re-integrate them again, to see the mind and emotions as two separate areas of ruler-ship. We are training our will-power to respond only to good affections, to good feelings such as the outpouring feeling of spiritual love. We are preparing the mind to not wander off into negative states of mind-chatter. The emotions must just fully feel; and the mind is to be one-pointed or single-minded. We want to recognize our sense-of-self as being an emotional psychic response to the one will-power. Our whole sense of self gets made on a false premise of being the actual flow of will-power itself.
When we can perceive the feeling of our will-power as being separate from our mind or intellect, we can then become aware of our intention. Our intention, is a mixture of feeling and thought. It is unconscious in most humankind. Our sense of self is identified and attached to the feeling of the will-power flowing through us, but our intention determines the force of the flow of will-power. Our emotional response to the feeling of will-power flowing through us, has become our feeling of self. More specifically, our spiritual feeling of love has become distorted as our love-of-self.
The spiritual aspect of our sense-of-self, corresponds to the “Savior” or the “Redeemer.” Thus, our Higher Self, is our feeling-of-self without the emotional response of our personality. The emotional pattern of our personality gets held in our psychic body as the feeling of being separate. It is still unaware of a spiritual self. Yet, we are on the spiritual path to “redeem” it. We want to catch our response; to move the thinking and feeling processes of our personality aside so that we can truly be happy, without having to be fat.
Chapter 1: The Psychic Body
Being overweight is really just the heightened ability to accumulate more psychic feelings than someone who is thin. We want to learn to accumulate the higher spiritual feelings, which are without the lower psychic feelings that cause weight gain. The fact that someone is overweight, means that they can feel the “largess” aspect of the spiritual sphere, while still identifying with the collective pain of the psychic sphere.
Fat, corresponds to good. Yet, to be fat, is not what spiritual good feels like in its purity. Fat is the accumulation of too much good, or too much of the psychic feeling of good. It is not really spiritual good, because it feels bad. We disguise it by pretending to be good, but we cannot feel good, while we feel bad; and we cannot be good, if we are bad. To feel spiritual good, we must be naturally good.
The astral or psychic plane, holds the memory of the collective pain of humanity — the pain that mankind has caused mankind. It is a universal memory of feeling bad. The psychic feeling of self is a receiving station for a mixture of both good and bad feelings. This collective unconscious feeling feeds our psychic body the illusions, insecurities, and other people's thoughts and hallucinations. We each receive and contribute our feelings of greed and selfishness to this collective universal memory. That collective sensation separates us from receiving a spiritual influx of love.
The will-power is the feeling of spiritual good flowing through the psychic plane and causing the psychic body to stir up a memory response. Since humans are selfish in nature, our response is always a reaction, which is really just a bad selfish response to spiritual good. The spiritual feeling of good cannot be perceived from a selfish perspective. When the spiritual feeling of good as will-power, is blocked by a painful memory, it just makes us eat more to feel good. This is a psychic memory-response.
Mostly, we use our psychic feeling when pretending to be good. We use it as outer insulation. It protects us from harm. Yet, those mixed messages are imbued into our fat molecules, which makes seeing spiritually or losing weight even more difficult, because these old “messages” also have to be re-digested as we gain insight.
As an example, in the 1960s I did some hallucinogenics. Ten years later I was fasting, and I was at the exact same weight that I had been during my experimenting with drugs. I was going for lunch with my sister, and we pulled up to a drive-in restaurant that had a huge mural on the side of the building. I started to have an LSD or “acid” flashback and thought the mural was real. In retrospect, it was funny. Yet, it proves that all of our previous consumption comes back to haunt us. This is why it is so difficult when we get sick and begin to hallucinate on our deathbed as the result of the toxins we consumed previously in our life. Toxins are also collective, in that they are reflected in the feeling of our psychic body, which affects others.
The Spiritual Science of Fat
What we eat, has nothing to do with our longevity. Sure, we must eat-right to convince our subconscious mind that we understand the connection between what we take in and what we send-out. Yet, once the suggestion is set into motion, we could eat candles and live to eternity, if we could just believe. The subconscious mind determines our health and our longevity. More importantly, it connects us through our dreams to another kind of love, but we must request it, by suggestion.
The subconscious mind is said to hold the memory of the collective pain of mankind. It also holds the patterns, which repair and replace the old cells in our body. The subconsciousness can even replace the old cells with new cells that are not susceptible to disease. Yet, how do we suggest to our subconsciousness to replace the old cells with new cells that are eternal? It starts with the right selection of food. However, feeling eternal, starts when we can perceive an influx of conjugial love.
The subconscious mind, at the level of the higher self, operates best while we sleep or meditate. It then communicates with the spiritual plane where everything is already perfect. The feeling of perfection gets transformed down into our physical body while we sleep. Transformation gets done by suggestion. It is the process that we are examining as the means to feel eternal. In a sense, it does not matter if you do not believe that you are eternal, as long as you can feel eternal occasionally. It is the feeling of being eternal that acts on the subconsciousness as a suggestion. It begins the transformation that enables us to believe in other spiritual concepts.
The place where we eat our food, is the first suggestion. How we eat our food, by its proper mastication, is the second suggestion. The thoughts we dwell on while we chew and create saliva by the enjoyment of eating, is the third suggestion. Resting afterwards for a few moments is the fourth suggestion. Being receptive to guidance regarding our choices of food is the fifth suggestion. How we respond to the feeling of hunger is the signal to our higher Self, as our sixth suggestion. Therein, the feeling of dwelling in the eternal moment, is our seventh suggestion. Together, these rituals act to suggest to our subconscious mind to grow us a spiritual body. It is able to Will spiritual love, which is the ability to love others as ourselves, to broadcast mutual love.
With these suggestions the food that we eat becomes a chyle substance, which is immediately absorbed into the blood stream while in the upper intestines. It becomes astral light which is mixed with the life-force from the air to form Limitless Light. Without these suggestions, eating becomes the means for us to be tormented by the influence of the mass-mind. When our digestion is poor, food rots in the intestines. Slow digestion causes depression and other negative influences. When the stomach bulges-out when we eat or drink anything it shows a lack of our suggestibility.
We want to hasten and quicken our digestive process through the proper use of suggestion. We want to increase our saliva, and thereby the absorption of the vital life substances, which are contained in the food that we eat. The life-substances become a spiritual essence, which the psychic aspect of our self, sorely despises. This is a battle between the acid and the alkaline substances, whereby increased saliva and proper digestion can control and bring these spiritual essences into balance as astral light.
We want to improve the inner processes, and balance the higher psychic centers. In the Eastern world, these higher centers get called the Chakra system. They are psychic forces that are outside the physical body. We want to improve their functions by better digestion. We want to suggest better absorption of spiritual food to produce an essence that can grow a spiritual body to enable us to feel eternal.
To feel eternal, we must suppress the growth of the acid condition of our psychic body, by quickening the digestive processes. We must control our unconscious cravings for food. It is the psychic feeling of hunger that makes us gulp our food.
Eating is a selfish act. It maintains our sense of separateness. Food is not merely physical but spiritual. Food contains a spiritual substance that may also be extracted. When food is thought of as being spiritual, the logical mind begins to see it as light. Food as light is different from food as nutrition. Food is not really spiritually nutritious until it is perceived as light. Astral light is produced from the psychic energy of the astral body, after it has been purified of its identification and attachment to the pain of the collective suffering that we have personalized as our own.
This is why the psychic body is also called the pain-body. We have identified with the pain as our own, which has attached to our sense-of-self as a contracting feeling. That feeling is false. By detaching from it, without actually analyzing it, the pain becomes transmuted. We are transmuting the entire collective pain of mankind by the proper use of food, because we increase the flow of saliva, when food tastes good.
Think of pain as collective, since we all feel it. Sure, I can cut my hand and feel pain, but that pain is a response pattern. Pain gets held in the collective subconsciousness, just as healing is the opposite response. Healing is the opposite spiritual correspondence to personal pain. We want to feel the essence of our pain. To do that we must first transmute any emotional pain that we feel, by apologizing to the people that we have hurt. Just like with spiritual healing, we must try to forget ever being wounded. Pain has a memory, and so we must think of personal pain, as a memory that is false; whereas healing would be a spiritual memory that is true.
We access the spiritual memory by detaching from the feeling of the psychic body. The feeling of the psychic body, hovers around the physical body; we identify with it, because of the sensations that it causes in us. When we begin to eat food as worship, to feast, it suggests to the subconscious mind that we are more than just a physical body. Yet, we want to suggest to our subconsciousness to grow us a spiritual body. We can do this, by our attitude towards food. Food is what nourishes our physical body; but it also nourishes our interior life, when it grows the spiritual feeling of our soul as astral light.
There are two ways of worshiping food: inwardly or outwardly. If we hold a physical posture such as in yoga, and other people can see us, the subconscious mind thinks those other people are going to perform the miracle that the posture suggests. It waits for those people to do the inner work of alchemical transformation, which never happens. Outer postures only create more mind-chatter and self-importance. A selfish attitude is what is being suggested by any form of outer worship.
Inner worship is when no one else can see us. It creates a relationship on the inner plane between us and our higher self. Even in church, where the stained-glass windows let in the daylight, and we can see other people worshiping, is outer worship. It never brings someone closer to God. It does bring worshipers closer to each other. Yet, we want to establish an inner relationship with the feeling of spiritual love.
Worship done in darkness with just enough candle-light to block out all other people from the ritual, is inner worship. More importantly, inner worship gets done as a suggestion to begin the transformation from darkness to light, from selfish to self-less, from body to spirit. Inner worship changes the cells from “dead” to living, and from temporary to eternal. When the psychic body becomes full of astral light, the pain gets transformed, which releases the physical body from its attachment to memory and self-importance. This is the goal of inner worship.
In regard to eating, there is also an inner worship that is done in darkness. It is done in the darkness of the stomach in conjunction with the saliva that forms the chyle or “mothers milk,” which is the substance that begins to grow a spiritual body made of light. It is the light of our spiritual body that creates the feeling of being eternal.
To make the shift from the astral light of the psychic body, into the feeling of being eternal, requires the additional ingredient of the Prana life-force, which is in the air we breathe. By deep rhythmic breathing, it mixes with the chyle substance to form a new spiritual body.
One of my favorite ways to experience this increased flow of the Prana life-force, is by the retention of the breath for longer and longer periods of time. I imagine someone who swims underwater gets the same sensation as part of their experience of swimming. We also experience it with regular breathing, but just do not notice it unless we can feel it increase. This is why we use deep rhythmic breathing techniques.
Take caution when deep breathing, and know your own limitations. The increased activity of deep breathing is felt as a tingling sensation throughout the entire body. When we associate the tingling as astral light, the subconsciousness accepts it as a suggestion. The subconsciousness then transforms the tingling vibration so that it can be mixed with the chyle substance, which was created by the proper mastication of food. Yet, keep in mind that we are not concerned with physical healing to extend our physical life, we are concerned with spiritual healing to extend our spiritual body's radius as a feeling. This kind of healing is different, it is spiritual, in that the knowledge comes from within. We are never going to find it written anywhere.
Awareness of the Astral Body: Exercise #1
The astral or psychic body is the sensual feeling, which surrounds our physical body. The ego identifies with this invisible corporeal sensual feeling, not realizing it is only the astral or psychic aspect of our Self. The following exercise is to bring this awareness of our astral self, as a tingling sensation all around our physical body.
Step #1
Take a deep breath and raise your hands up over your head. Hold your hands straight up in the air and begin to stretch up, while you breathe deeply. Feel the blood drain out of your fingertips, out of your hands and down your arms. Hold the position for several deep breaths, or as long as it is comfortable.
Step #2
Now, lower your arms and relax. Allow your hands to hang completely down at your sides and relax them fully. Feel the blood rushing back into your arms and down into your hands. Feel your hands pulsate until they grow as big as baseball mitts. Hold this tingling feeling as long as you can. Encourage your hands to pulsate in rhythm with your heartbeat. Use the breath to increase or decrease the rhythm of the tingling feeling.
Step #3
Allow the feeling in your hands to radiate up your arms and fill your whole astral body all the way up to the top of your head. Stay in the present moment, in a fully-present state of being. Hold the mind silent without mind-chatter, and radiate the expanded sensual feeling, up to the top of your head and then out around your entire body. Nurture this sensual feeling of love by acknowledging it, until it becomes conscious.
Awareness of the astral or psychic body is accessed when the mind gets made silent. In fact, the experience in itself quiets the mind and brings healing to the whole physical body. We want full awareness of the present moment, but for that we need to be in the consciousness of the psychic body and without thoughts. We want to feel the astral body radiate out a spiritual essence, which requires silence.
Any thoughts at this level are accepted by the subconsciousness as a suggestion. This is why all thoughts must be eliminated. The greatest benefit of the mind free from all thought is the suggestion that it makes regarding the spiritual transformation from a pain-body into a light body. The subconsciousness produces the transformation. We must first make the suggestion, but then let Her do her work.
Recognizing our Self-love
The feeling of self-love, is our sense of free-will, mixed with the feeling of pride. Self-love separates us from the self-less feelings of spiritual love, which are the sensations of spiritual good that largely pass unnoticed through our body. Self-love is a response to the sensations of spiritual good, which makes us feel separate. The pain of separation eventually encourages spiritual growth, and an awareness of the spiritual dimension, which leads humanity back to being able to feel conjugial love.
The purpose of experiencing the feeling of self-love, is not so that we can do as we please, but to learn to choose spiritual light and life over death and outer darkness. We are not to retreat into the safety of self-love, but to burn-up our ego with its judgmental mind. We do this, by recognizing when our feeling of self acts falsely.
Self-love causes an emotional attachment to take place through our sensual memory to the things we love. It makes us feel as if we own them, which leads to a false feeling of self. The ego is the judgmental aspect of self that pretends to be some guiding self, whereas it is a mere reflection. In a sense, the Divine looked back on Itself to begin creation. We were made on Its image, as the add-on feeling of self-love.
Self-love represents humankind's disconnectedness to the spiritual feeling of love. We unknowingly hurt others because of this feeling that arises from the insecurity of feeling separate from others. Self-love is our feeling of attachment, which distorts the feeling of spiritual love. This distorted perspective leads to power-complexes of fear, self-pity, and hatred. These prideful responses do not come through our senses, but through the memory patterns of our ego, which are the result of self-love. And yet, we arrive at the feeling of spiritual good, because of these painful selfish memories.
We are not really considered “good” yet, not until we can perceive the feeling of spiritual love. Yet, first we have to find it. Our higher self is this spiritual love as the feeling-side of our love nature. It flows through us as spiritual good, which is perceived in our aura if we dwell in the affection of feeling loved. This kind of love is the uniting medium. However, we must prepare to receive it. It is received in equal proportion as our state of love and faith. Without feeling loved first, we are acting from self-love — which is when we regard only our own family and friends.
We must grasp the concept that “evil” is the result of feeling separate. It can only ever come from another separate human. Evil is self-love acting in the world. It is a necessary condition to being human, because feeling separate gives us a sensual memory, which is the ability to recall our past loves. This also means that we are only aware of just one side of our self at first, the intellectual side, the Wisdom.
Yet, once the feeling of Divine order is restored and the masculine and feminine sides of our love-nature are in rhythm, we can begin to perceive an influx of conjugial love. The selfish aspect of our ego, as the insecure state of feeling separate from others, then vanishes. Divine order is restored whenever we recognize self-love by its mind-chatter, and learn to distinguish it from Wisdom, as the Silence of our Higher Self.
It is easier to recognize the feeling of self-love, when we make the mind silent. This is considered to be the work of spiritual regeneration. Recognizing the feeling of self-love as the love of ourselves, is a very subtle, contracting sensation. And from a spiritual perspective, it is more like a self-loathing. Yet, let me explain in another way about the feeling of self-love — through a story.
Years ago, I was in a nightclub and walking down some stairs, when I saw myself reflected in a mirror. Although I felt quite happy that particular night, after I saw my reflection in the mirror, I thought to myself that I actually looked better than I felt. So, when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I continued to hold in my mind's eye that more positive reflection of my self. Surprisingly, my reflection developed into a detached self-less feeling that accompanied me throughout the entire evening.
This is a similar feeling to the term Nirvana, which is the spiritual state of consciousness felt to be about eighteen inches in front of our forehead and up on a forty-five-degree angle. Nirvana is “the Buddhist's state of perfect blessedness achieved by the absorption of the soul into the supreme spirit” (Webster's dictionary).
The spiritual affection of being above the physical body and in a blissful state of attunement with good, gets called “Nirvana” as the self-less sensation of feeling loved. When we act from within this love, we are on the path to a timeless life.
First, we want to be able to recognize when we are in self-love. Then we want to be lifted to the state of consciousness that is beyond time and space, beyond the ego. By a simple technique of recognition, we begin to transition into the sensation of spiritual light. We begin to grow a spiritual light body, by recognizing our love of self. We are re-shaping our feeling-level of being, by the use of astral light at the corporeal level of our being. In this way we are growing our capacity to feel loved always.
How do we know if we are loved? Some might say it is when they win, or when someone buys them nice things or shows them appreciation by honoring them. This kind of love is egotistical. Being honored and appreciated, draws our own love out of us, which is pride. It means that we are still seeking to feel loved, but not to give it yet.
To “hunger,” signifies to desire “good from affection,” which is the affection from giving love. Yet, here is the problem, the ego decides what is good. This is bad, because the ego is a purely selfish perspective, always hungry and thirsty for love. It is untrustworthy when it comes to fairly dispensing the good, from an affection of love.
To hunger, signifies to crave spiritual good. It is the spiritual affection that runs through all four of our bodies. The astral light is the “accumulating” affection of love. The spiritual body is the “radiating” affection of love. The celestial body is the actual “affection” of love as an essence. Being overweight correspond to the celestial body of goodness, after its astral vehicle has been purified of its selfishness. Thus, the selfishness of the ego, when taken to the extreme is famine, which signifies the “evils of life” (A.R.223).
Self-Love is a Mirror Reflection
Spiritual regeneration, begins with the healing of the ego, which requires reviewing, acknowledging and making restitution. Yet, not just physically, it must happen in the spiritual feeling of our self, as well. The ego with its mind-chatter; and the will-power racing through our body, can only be stopped by setting up a position as a “watcher.” Watching our thoughts, stops the thinking process, and then a silence appears between the words. This detached perspective comes after reflection. It leads to confession and making restitution. Yet, let me explain further by another story:
Another shift in consciousness that changed my life for the better, was when I was at home walking through a mirrored hallway from my bedroom to the bathroom. It was broad daylight and as I passed through the hallway I glanced into the mirror and suddenly became my reflection. I was now looking at myself from the perspective of the Other. It was the feeling of my spiritual Self. I was overcome with the worst feeling of guilt that I had ever had. Instantly I knew that everything I had ever done, including the things done in darkness, had been witnessed by an Invisible Presence — in fact — witnessed by everyone. It was as if I had relived my entire life in that split second. I knew then that there can never be any secrets.
The experience, changed me forever. Yet, more importantly, it began twenty years of reliving all of my experiences, but from everyone else's perspective. Everything in my life, was somehow reversed. I saw how everything that I had ever been proud of, had actually hurt others or caused them to be jealous and to feel inadequate. Every simple hurt that I had ever caused someone else, I relived from their perspective by feeling how they felt. I understood that spiritual love is not how many people we love, but how many people allow our love into their hearts.
The process of reliving our memories from a spiritual regeneration perspective can go on for years. It can involve everyone that we have ever known. Looking at myself from a spiritual perspective, I no longer had an enviable life, but was trying to bring alive any real goodness that I could find within myself; and honestly, there was none. Therefore, whether we are depressed and looking back on our self to begin self-examination, or turning within to manifest something good, contemplation, and reflection is the very first step to a spiritual awareness of the feeling of goodness.
Spiritual regeneration can bring moments of awareness if we perceive the movement of the spiritual light as inner goodness. This is evolution, but it is cruel. It is the Life power expanding, after it has been compressed into the physical universe. It is a spiritual substance that has been made to glow. Our goal is to experience the source of its glow. It starts with imprinting our ego with a new self-image. We do this by opening our consciousness to its opposite polarity. This starts as a painful reflection. Yet, even a moment of reflection at the end of each day, can bring the ego into balance and lessen the pain. We are trying to end the feeling of separateness. This results in the “death” of our ego; and we can lessen its pain if we practice moments of reflection. We can come to know our opposite polarity by acting “as if.”
Developing a New Self by Acting “As If”
Our ego, is nothing but the willful sensation of our love-of-self. It causes the feeling of being separate from others, and from God. Our ego will always feel separate from others, until we experience the spiritual feeling of an influx of conjugial love.
Conjugial love is a rhythm as a two-way communication between two motions of give and take. The motion of conjugial love is both a shift in perspective and the means of communicating with the spiritual world. A shift in consciousness is needed to perceive the feeling of an influx of conjugial love.
Let me explain further by another story: In my early twenties, I took some spiritual development classes. One of the first meditations that I had to do was called acting “as if.” I had to act as if I was at a distant location and then open my eyes to bring back proof. In my mind, I chose an emotionally familiar location on a park-bench overlooking the city, about a mile from my home. I would sit in my living room with my eyes closed trying to imagine being there on that park bench. I had no luck. Furthermore, I tried everything for a few months. Then one winter’s night as I was practicing in my living room, the entire room went freezing cold. I gasped, and opened my eyes. There were the city lights, right in my living room! I realized then that we do not actually go anywhere ourselves, but when we act “as if,” it is the feeling that attracts an image as a likeness.
We use our imagination to act out other fantasies. Yet, we are going to use it to feel infinite and eternal. We are going to act “as if,” for everything that we desire. It is the way to change our consciousness and perceive the spiritual feeling of conjugial love.
Essentially, to experience the spiritual essence or love-quality of anything, all we have to do is to find some way to admire and adore it. In this way, we become it as a feeling. Thus, all love, including conjugial love must be received as a substance. We prepare to receive the substance of a spiritual influx of love by being in the feeling of love. We must feel loved, to initiate its reception, to act “as if” we are loved.
Getting in the right head-space, to be receptive, is spiritually acting as if. We are using our will power to transfer ourselves from the selfish feeling of our love-of-self, to the opposite self-less feeling of love, in its essence. It is by experiencing both wave-pulsations of Divine order, as the force and substance qualities of love, which initiates a spiritual influx of conjugial love. The state of Nirvana, otherwise called a Samadhi experience, is being engulfed in the spiraling circles of Limitless Light.
Keep in mind that the feeling that attracts light must be a hunger; and once that “hunger” is spiritual, then a conjunction with the feeling of love, only requires giving consent to receive it. Giving consent by acting as if, initiates the suggestion to the subconscious mind. It begins the cellular transformation that will enable us to perceive an influx of conjugial love as spiritual light. Thus, “Man, when he is elevated from the sensual, comes into a milder light, and at length into celestial light” (N.J. 49).
Transitioning into a Spiritual Light Body
An awareness of our spiritual body is through the feeling of our psychic body after it has been purified of its identity and attachment to our physical body. To perceive our spiritual body we will-love through our astral or psychic body and into our spiritual body. This is why the psychic body must be purified first. When I say of its “identity and attachment,” I mean of its memories and mind-chatter, of its feeling of being separate. The spiritual body is the collective feeling of being as One.
To will-love, is to will spiritual love. It starts as mutual love, which is love to our neighbor. To will-love, is spiritual healing. The ability to will-love through our astral body reduces our falsity to truth. Falsity is the cause of all pain and disease, whereas truth is the cause of all healing and wholeness. To will mutual love, is the ability to love others more than ourselves. To love someone more than ourselves, causes the feeling of heat in our own body, which in itself suggests physical healing.
The feeling of spiritual love, when it causes heat, removes all sense of self. Being separate from others dissolves. Spiritual love, when willed as mutual love to others, encases them in an aura of love, which causes a heat that heals. Mutual love is willing good to another. Willing good is beyond self-interest. Willing good, aligns us with the will-power of Deity. The Divine will of Deity is the will to heal. It flows through everything. Our goal is to feel it as the feeling of conjugial love.
The will of love, when it is sent as spiritual light, is astral light, which then forms into a spiritual essence. It becomes magnetized by the movement of astral light in combination with the heat of spiritual love. The movement of love and light results in heat. And the heat lifts the ego out of its sense of separateness and into the Oneness of All. In that Oneness the self is aligned with the Divine will. It creates a feeling of being eternal. It gets made from the feeling of the heat of love, in combination with the astral light as wisdom, otherwise called the “truths from good.”
The two affections, one of love and the other of wisdom, creates a motion of heat and light in the body that attracts a conjugial love experience. The experience deposits an essence, which begins to grow as a Universal feeling of love. Swedenborg calls it the perception of heaven, as the feeling of the “Grand Man.” It is when our personal thoughts are in correspondence with the One Body, as the feeling of Universal Love.
In the Universal feeling of love is a Self, which we can form a relationship with to guide us on our path of Return. The path leads to the feeling of being infinite and eternal. In that infinite feeling of self, one knows first hand that one can never die. This is survival, the knowledge of being eternal. The experience is the awareness of the spiritual body; the awareness of having a spiritual Life. More importantly, the perception of being infinite and eternal is obtained as a result of the thoughts we think while we eat. When we “worship” our food, it quickens our digestion to create an essence, which can be combined with the breath to create spiritual light.
Conscious Thought is Love as Food
Everything that we eat, no matter how nutritious, has absolutely no power to repair our physical body. Food is the bait used by our higher self to build faith, which is the spiritual food that heals. It is not faith that heals, but a faith in a higher power to heal. Our faith must become love. This is when we can will a Samadhi experience. When we can perceive an influx of spiritual love, the experience acts as a suggestion that heals everything. Spiritual love is an influx that is beyond any physical sensation. The sensations of this kind of love-making are the results of being touched by conjugial love. It makes us feel loved, and thereby healed.
Yet, even eating the right kinds of food can cause indigestion. Yet, right-thinking gets signified by right eating. Thinking right is wisdom as light, which is the result of faith. We want to suggest to the subconsciousness the same spiritual intention, no matter what we eat. Our interpretation of experience is a powerful suggestion. When we first smell and then chew, the process is a pattern that we have previously proposed by believing them to be so. The moment we feel spiritual good, we also see astral light. When we can imagine astral light in our food, the faith acts through our imagination to the subconsciousness, which accepts it as a suggestion and causes our own spiritual regeneration; after-which we are then able to feel an influx of conjugial love.
We are learning to suggest by a feeling, which creates our reality. Spiritual light represents faith. Food signifies what we nourish through love. Therefore, we want to suggest that our “food” becomes the spiritual sensation of conjugial love. Those sensations must come through our subconsciousness. The suggestion, transforms spiritual light into faith, which becomes our love. The light of faith, suggests love; and by imagining spiritual light in our body, attracts the same feeling as conjugial love.
Everything that we do with our life on the physical plane, can only act as a suggestion on our subconsciousness. The subconscious mind is responsible for revealing the memory patterns that will enable us to perceive an influx of conjugial love. Those patterns are brought to life by suggesting to the subconscious mind to re-enact them.
The suggestions are subtle moments of inner light that act to suggest different levels of faith. Spiritual faith begins with the perception of spiritual light. To experience light as faith we must act in agreement with it, which then strengthens our conviction. As our faith develops from natural to spiritual and then celestial, it becomes a living faith, as the feeling of astral light felt throughout our entire body. At first, it becomes a living faith and then a miraculous faith, but each level seems to become brighter with love. The “famine” is over when our food is perceived as having a spiritual use, and we can begin to propose that idea whenever we eat without mind-chatter.
Thus, “the angelic state in heaven is that they neither desire, nor act, and do not even think and speak, from themselves, or from their own proprium” (8495).