There is a rich, nougat filling at our core. The work for each one of us is to know that, underneath it all, this is who we are…What we’re looking for is a very specific feeling that is outside our usual rainbow of feelings that tops out at love…It’s so rare, it has no name. For lack of something better, we could call it ‘that cosmic feeling’…
Just imagine what it would be like to have the total absence of fear. For many of us, we’re so unaware of all our fears and so used to them—it’s like we’re a fish and they’re the water we’re swimming in—it doesn’t occur to us there could be life beyond our fears…So in this state, there can be no worry or anxiety; nothing makes us feel restless…
This is an experience that’s at once spiritual and emotional as well as mental and physical; it envelops a whole person. And there are four keys that make it possible to attain:
- REALIZE CAUSE AND EFFECT
We need to get the cart and horse in the right order in our lives…Now, we’re creating negatively; we could just as well be creating positively. Instead of following the will of our little ego that thrives on vanity, greed, laziness and dishonesty, we could be letting God express through us, creating honest-to-God beautiful things…
We have to uncover the negative creator inside ourselves. We have to see clearly what outer manifestations came from which inner intentions. All the stuff we deplore and complain about, waiting for a miracle to take it away, or the stuff we’ve given up on and have instead settled on deprivation and frustration as our unnecessary daily plight—all this points to the work we have to do.
- FEEL ALL OUR FEELINGS
We’ve got to learn to handle our feelings. All of them, not just the ones we like…And the only way to get beyond them is by going through them…It’s weird, but when we are able to accept and feel our pain, we expand our ability to sustain pleasure…There is no feeling that is so bad we can’t air it out and flip its expression back to its positive configuration.
The only thing stopping us from feeling our pain or our rage is our dishonest vanity—we want to appear other than how we really are…Also, it’s not true that if we go into our pain we will perish. It won’t kill us and we won’t become lost in it. Pain is just stagnant, stuck energy that is waiting to be released, re-enlivened and healed.
- CONVERT TO POSITIVE INTENTIONALITY
The impetus for developing a positive intention can’t be to comply with some rules; it’s got to come from the core. We have to want love and truth for its own sake…We can find our negative intention in the answers to the questions: Where am I still unhappy? Where am I anxious? Where do I have ‘issues’?
- MEDITATE
We must learn to listen within, quieting the busy outer mind so we can be receptive…We need to watch out for how the ego wants to cut us off from our own feelings, and from our own heart. Thoughts and doubts are tricks of the ego to keep our attention wandering.
If we see ourselves doubting, we can doubt our doubt, and expand into new possibilities. Only then will we deeply know that these teachings are telling us the truth.
Listen and learn more.
Gems, Chapter 11: Four Avenues for Reaching the Cosmic Nougat at our Core
