The term New Age has been used a lot. Some people have used it with the correct understanding, others have managed to turn it into a cliché. This is unavoidable. It happens with truthful concepts due to people’s tendency to be lazy and glib. They use a label so they don’t have to feel the reality of a certain truth. But for those who can avoid this trap, they should not give up altogether on using a term that conveys a true idea. It is due to this tendency that different words these teachings use different words to express the same truth.
Also, from time to time, the true meaning of a particular word is given in an effort to keep its true concept alive. As far as the New Age is concerned, it has been stated already that at various intervals in history, our world is swept with a new influx that comes streaming in. When this happens, it is because humanity has grown enough to be ready for it. This is what is happening now.
“Blessings, my dearly beloved friends. God’s light envelops you all. This light contains all you need. Try to perceive it, try to feel its reality. It is always there for you, and to the degree you refine your inner being through the purification process, you cannot help being aware of this light that flows through all the universe, through all of creation. Those of God’s children who have chosen to make the very best of their lives through such a path are especially blessed. For with this opportunity to purify themselves and serve God, they fulfill a great need in the Plan of Salvation.”
–The Pathwork Guide
As we enter fully into this new era, the consciousness of the Christ spirit is now permeating this world. It is attempting to penetrate each person’s consciousness to a greater and greater degree. When this powerful new influx arrives, it is accompanied by certain things that may not be pleasant, agreeable, welcome or even constructive. Events happening on Earth right now that most people consider to be downright undesirable are a direct result of the influx of this energy. But in truth, without this, the expansion and growth in consciousness inherent in this new era couldn’t happen.
Our minds are still very much geared to the immediate future. We believe that what is right and good in this moment will also be right and good in the ultimate end. If something appears right now to be evil, it must also be evil in the long run. This, however, is seldom the case. Sometimes, what appears to be an outright negative manifestation was actually needed for full development to happen. This applies to each person as equally as it applies to humanity as a whole. Or to put it another way, to the entity that is Earth.
Communication
There are some specific things that accompany this new influx. One of them is communication, which develops as a consciousness evolves. To the extent a spiritual being has grown, there will also be an ability to communicate. This includes the ability to listen and to express ourselves appropriately and adequately. If our development is impaired, our ability to communicate will be limited.
So it is that we see many people who cannot or will not even try to express in words what they are thinking and feeling. Such individuals either have too much pride, or they demand that others understand them without their having to make an effort to be understood. For making ourselves understandable does require some labor. But everyone can and will learn the art of communication. Doing so will ask us to cooperate, using our goodwill and positive intentionality.
Let’s examine this some more, starting at the outermost level. It’s not a coincidence that a major outcome of today’s technology is communication. Even if this level of communication only applies to outer events, it still has a big impact on the inner levels of our souls. First off, it brings us much closer together. In bygone eras, there was a much greater sense of separation because of how far apart people were. Their inability to communicate created the illusion that other people were inherently different—alien. Enemies, therefore, were not to be trusted. But when we discover that, regarding the basics of life—suffering and longing, living and dying—others are just like us, then much of the fear goes away. Then the illusion and the enmity go away. This contributes greatly to humanity’s growing movement toward unity.
Our spiritual growth accelerates by our knowledge of what is happening in the world. In the past, our isolation and separateness made the world seem vast—too vast for us to take it in. Our personal tragedies seemed unique, so we had no sense of sisterhood or brotherhood. Today, even the most unspiritual people are able to experience the whole world in a different way. The planet doesn’t seem so foreign or strange. Just knowing about the events happening in other parts of the world right now creates an expanded overall awareness, and that has an impact on the development of a soul.
Technology, then, is not in opposition to living a spiritual life or to developing spiritually. Too often though, because people misdirect and abuse it, we view it as being an obstacle to our spirituality. Once again we can see how everything on Earth and in the universe is an expression of divine will. This is how creation can and does serve the great plan. It’s not possible to create something here that doesn’t have roots in the Spirit World. All evil—all demonic manifestations—can only be misused divine creations. They are always distortions and can never be self-creative.
We now have the ability to witness the events happening for brothers and sisters around the globe, and our ability to share their experiences with them has an important impact on us. Plus, our ability to move fairly quickly from one corner of the world to another allows us to approach the laws of the world of spirit, where movement is one with thought and therefore simultaneous.
Communication is indeed a highly important byproduct of becoming more spiritually advanced. As we grow, we also improve our ability to communicate on more subtle levels. We can follow psychological approaches that enhance our awareness of ourselves, and when we understand ourselves better, we can communicate better. For as long as we’re in the dark about our own feelings, needs and true reactions—not to mention clueless about what is going on in someone else—it’s not possible to create a bridge with them in any significant way.
It’s essentially the same for a child who, when very young, doesn’t really know that it is lonely or hurting. A child doesn’t know that what it needs is more love, or attention, or understanding. If the child could articulate all this, it would only be a small step to sharing these feelings with someone. So without adequate communication, we remain in the dark, living in a fog of confusion and cut off from others. The spirit of Christ represents the opposite of this. It ushers in the light of awareness, of brotherhood and sisterhood, and of communication.
Clearly, to have true communication with another, we must be able to communicate with ourselves. We must be able to access inner levels we couldn’t reach before. So self-knowing is the foundation, the groundwork. For how can we communicate something we don’t know? This is why this spiritual path focuses primarily on self-knowledge and self-exploration. But we must not stop there. Self-knowing is only the first part of the path.
From here we will organically learn to take the next step into the art of communication. We will have to give up the state of being half-awake, and opt instead to think, practice and observe ourselves. It will no longer work to assume anyone should just know how we feel. We will need to make an effort to lovingly reach out, explain, and patiently search through the mazes of misunderstanding.
The more we practice doing this, the more spontaneous our communication will be. We will automatically be able to outwardly be what, in the past, we were only secretly and inwardly able to be. Imagine what enormous difference such a shift could make in our communications. Isn’t it true we often think someone is being mean when, in reality, the other person fears us and is using coldness as a defense? If we know this, it removes our own fear, anger and false pride. If we know this, we might be able to meet this person in a whole new way. This in turn can help them dissolve their negative defenses that are alienating us.
This is how communication works to bring souls together. It dismantles the wall of fear that creates hate between people. Communication, then, is an integral part of a good life.
Learning the Art of Communication
All of that said, attempting to explain ourselves is not enough. The way we reveal ourselves is what makes communication an art. If we communicate our explanation in a way that accuses and blames, we will only build a bigger wall. But if, instead, we focus on simply telling the other what we feel and what we need, sharing our assumptions and impressions in an open, questioning spirit—without an insistence that our perceptions are in truth—then we will be able to find true understanding. We can communicate in a way that establishes truth while being clear and standing in the light. By practicing communicating, we learn the skill of communicating well, and in this way we foster unity and love.
If we don’t have any bridges connecting us to others, how can we stop feeling lonely? If we don’t overcome the misconception that others are our enemy, how can we lose our fear of people? The only way to get what we want is to go through the trouble of exploring ourselves adequately so we know what we really feel.
Often we believe we feel one way, yet that’s not at all what’s really going on. We need to try to explain ourselves, and this will feel like we are taking a risk. Also, we can seldom do this in a single stroke. We must enter into an ongoing dialogue, using all the goodwill we can muster to let go of blame and shed our pride. This, at an emotional level, is what effective communication involves.
This is how we can work together to establish the great oneness among all people. This is how we will free ourselves from hate and fear, which are nothing but war on every level. In other words, it will be through communication that we will help bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth.
In addition, there is a deeper level of communication we’ve been ignoring. Now, it is obscure, but once we turn the lens of our attention toward it, it will show itself clearly to us. For every human interaction will ultimately help us reach our final goal: love, understanding, truth, brotherhood, oneness. In the end, even our most negative and challenging interactions serve this aim.
Whenever two entities—they can be individuals or collective groups—get tangled up in a negative interaction, they are fulfilling a deeper purpose. This is the case even when the outcome is unpleasant. For the Higher Self of each person is always involved and working hard. It’s not quite right to say the Higher Self created the negative interaction, but it is able to use what is already there—which is negativity—for the purpose of dissolving the negativity.
The only way to dissolve and transform the negative material is by first allowing it to fully manifest. So even if both parties are completely in the dark about how they are contributing to the struggle, and even if they are locked in self-righteousness and one-sidedness, nonetheless, these things are serving a higher purpose. Exposing the untruth, which is currently hiding from their view, will be significant when they recognize the whole truth of the difficult interaction.
So when there is a conflict, there is a Higher Self exchange simultaneously happening below the Lower Self exchange. This is important for us to take in and contemplate.
If we imagine two people or groups of people fighting, a war is taking place on the surface. The two accuse each other and hate each other. They only wish to see the worst in each other, and they want to harm each other. But at the same time—on another deeper level—these two entities agree. In their deeper selves, they are aware that whatever happens on the surface, it is serving a common good. And our common good is always serving truth, love and unity.
On this spiritual path, when two people are at odds and are able to work deeply to reach the truth, there is often a wonderful reconciliation in which the two unite in love. These are the same two people who were just hating and blaming each other. We can witness the sequential way—in time—that conciliation happens on this plane of existence. First the hate, then the search to find truth, then unity and love. On the deeper levels of our being, such sequences don’t exist. In our deep consciousness, truth, unity and love all exist simultaneously.
Going forward, we need to take this into account. Doing so will help us perceive that in every situation—regardless how negative it seems and how hopelessly confused we have become—the conflict also simultaneously holds inner truth, inner unity and inner love. By understanding this, we will be able to move through difficult interactions with greater ease on the level of sequential time. Then hate/search/truth/unity/love will follow each other in quick succession. Or at least quicker.
This influx of the Christ consciousness is bringing more laws and spiritual values to planet Earth. Many spiritual laws and values are known by many through religions. But not many truly understand them and experience them in their depth. Fewer still live them on their innermost levels. Humanity continues to take these laws and, in distorting and confusing them, cause people to reject them. For when they are in distortion, they don’t make sense. So then people either disregard them altogether, or they hypocritically obey them on a surface level that does not reach their core.
The more we humans grow, the greater can this influx of the light of Christ be. With this light, we will be able to weave true spiritual values into the fabric of our collective human consciousness.
We began this teaching talking about the law of brotherhood and sisterhood. Without brotherhood and sisterhood, we cannot have love. And without love, we cannot have brotherhood and sisterhood. Whereas love is union, hate is isolation, dissension and being split. Love, on the other hand, means mutual understanding.
But in order for understanding to grow and increase, we will need to have goodwill and we will need to make an effort. Love then doesn’t happen by magic. It’s not a miracle, nor is union. We are not able to experience union with God as long as we are unable to experience union with our sisters and brothers—even those we now think of as our enemies.
It’s possible that on the surface level, we are not going to become friends with them. Because for that to happen, both sides have to really desire to be in union and truth. But it’s still possible for us to become consciously connected with their Higher Self on the inner level.
Don’t forget, love—which is union with God and others—is what results from communication. And communication can only result from serious effort. Our work is to commit to focusing our energy and our attention to making ourselves understood in the best way possible, and to also understand the other.
For any of this to happen, we will need to empty our mind of all the preconceived ideas our Lower Self has invested in. We will have to set down our distrust and hateful feelings. And we will need to open our inner ears and learn to listen. In addition, we will need to help others see our goodwill and our desire to be in truth. And we will need to step into maturity, realizing that other people don’t know what we’re thinking, feeling, meaning, wanting.
We need to explain ourselves in the deepest and most sincere way we can. If we walk in the world like this, we’ll be able to resolve all the problems between ourselves and others. From this will come deep self-esteem and great strength.
But first, we must become willing to sacrifice our stubbornness. We must give up our pride and our pleasure in building a case against someone. We must let go of the fear we’ll find out we are bad and wrong. All this we must be willing to put aside. This is how we will contribute to an ever-increasing flow of information that is unprecedented in the history of humankind. This is the way to herald a key aspect of the Christ consciousness—using our own selves and inviting our brothers and sisters to join us. When we do this, we are truly working as a servant to God’s plan.
We must resist the temptation to keep ourselves locked up in isolation and resentment. Also, we must resist the temptation to blame and accuse. We must make ourselves neutral—at least for a time—until we’ve had the chance to sort things out and find the truth. Don’t fear truth. It truly holds the key for setting ourselves free.
The truth will let us off the hook of our secret self-accusations and in doing so free others from our accusations. We may well uncover imperfections in them and in us, but when we start seeing our faults in a new light, this new connotation will free us from the need to hurt and shame anyone, anymore—ourselves included.
Group Consciousness
This new influx of Christ consciousness is sweeping through our planet with fantastic force, yet we don’t always see how it is manifesting. It starts by first reaching the inner consciousness of humanity. Wherever there is even the slightest crack, the light gets in. Then consciousness starts to change, even if ever so barely at first. Perhaps we will have a new way of thinking about life. Maybe we will want to start understanding ourselves and our life in a more profound way.
Even people who aren’t as ready and not so well developed can lend a hand to the Great Plan, although perhaps unwittingly. They become instruments, even if they only tune their instrument to negativity. Through their actions, they affect those around them, and this then conspires to bring about new conditions. It is their Higher Self, as already said, working in concert with the Plan, allowing their outer negative will to contribute something positive to the bigger picture.
This new influx began with the dawning of the New Age. In the new era we are now entering, this energy will affect outer events, often in the most obscure way. We will see that something that appears entirely undesirable—a negative occurrence—is, in reality, a necessary event. It is what will move us to establish new values and reestablish life in a way that is based on the spiritual premises of truth and love. Another way to say this is that destructiveness has advanced so far it can no longer be molded, changed or transformed. It needs to be destroyed before we can build a new and better structure.
It’s like this with many destructive events of this kind on Earth. We need to sort out the difference between events that are flat-out unnecessary since they oppose life—these are expressions of evil—and those that are in the category just described. The distinction isn’t always clear. But as we train our inner vision and see how creation really works, we’ll see everything more clearly.
If we look around, we may see that these values are springing up all over, laboriously working their way through our thickets of old, obsolete values. Those are our destructive attitudes that we inflict on life. The new values are just sprouting, so they are new and delicate plants. We can nurture them with our courage, with our commitment to a larger cause, and with our much needed self-honesty, all of which fosters our development and therefore expands our consciousness. The more we tend to what is trying to grow, the stronger these new plants will become on our planet.
This process—which is based on a cellular structure—begins with a single cell. This is the individual consciousness that is needing to change. But this change can’t happen in the vacuum of isolation. It always works in conjunction with others. For individual consciousness nests within the greater consciousness, the collective whole.
The way for us to measure our development and individual values is by looking at our interactions with others. Through communication, our interactions can be improved and healed until there is no more separation. The more each cell of consciousness purifies, becoming more and more aligned with divine will, the more we affect all of the earth entity. The cells meld together and form one structure, although each will continue its individual life.
Many of us feel a lot of ambivalence about this melding. On one hand, we fear giving up what we call our individuality. We believe our uniqueness—our particular manifestation of the divine—depends on our separation. We assume—falsely—that if we become one with the whole, we will give up what makes us unique. In reality, it works the other way around.
So we are all struggling against the inherent fate of all created beings—the push toward oneness. We fight and we resist, much to our chagrin. For we will never relieve our longing to experience oneness until we achieve oneness. This longing in our soul is desperate, and the pain of not fulfilling our longing is excruciating. But to not know of this longing and to not feel this pain is even worse. Our confusion, apathy and lack of aliveness then become a secondary pain. We can never understand this state, because it’s the result of long, winding chain reactions that originated from the precise pain of denying oneness.
The Aquarian Age we are now in, which we can also call the New Age, has brought about the formation of groups and therefore the emergence of group consciousness. This is the first time such a process has existed. Of course we could say humanity as a whole is a group on a large scale, and our societies couldn’t exist without at least some degree of group consciousness. But until now people have been primarily concerned with their own interests, even if this self-concern negatively affects the rest of the world.
It’s not that this attitude is now gone. Far from it. But now there is a new, growing awareness that if we pursue nothing but our own self-interest—to the downfall of others—we are going way past the point of violating spiritual laws, values and morals. We are starting to see that we are the ones who must eventually suffer. By adopting a self-serving attitude, we will suffer as much if not more than those we disregard with our selfish shortsightedness.
Our human family cannot exist without a group spirit. But most of the world’s societies have not yet put adequate emphasis on spiritual values. So people are not aware of this new influx, and they plunge ahead with old values and standards. But these are based on shortsighted goals and a desire for immediate results.
It’s not a coincidence that in recent decades new groups of all sorts have sprung up, and many of them are misguided. Evil spirits and their destructive forces are influencing them. It can’t be any other way than it is, on this plane of existence. Anywhere there is a divine influx, the demonic forces send out their cavalry to influence and corrupt those who are not yet purified. They do this by tempting them. Their goal is to destroy them.
At the same time, new communities representing new values must spread, and this does not change that fact. These new communities will become the models for new ways of life. The point is we must be wakeful, and we must not neglect to do our work of self-purification. This is our key to safety. If we keep painstakingly doing our work—working in a spirit of glad service to the will of God—then the evil forces will not be able to confuse us. We will find answers and we will stay clean, even if our Lower Self breaks out into the open now and then.
Exposure
There is another important thing arriving with this new influx: exposure. Once again we can see this aspect showing up in both individuals and in the collective. It’s so obvious, it would be hard to miss this one. Through the developments in psychology and more recently, through people doing profound spiritual work, exposure of the self has gone to depths never before seen. The exceptions are the small number of initiates who have been forming small groups of followers in different cultures all along.
Now we are ready to expose deeper levels of ourselves than we have done before, by a large margin. Even those with the least amount of self-knowing have achieved a certain amount of awareness, such that these deeper levels can now help determine their lives. Many of us may at this time take this for granted, but it has by no means always been this way.
It is through the combination of communication and exposure that we now have a greater ability to explore ourselves. Our willingness to explore is what opens doors to communication and our ability to communicate leads to oneness—to align with the great force of Christ spirit that is sweeping through our world.
It’s clear that our refusal to expose our inner selves leads to isolation. And so the resistance to exposure persists. What does it mean when we refuse exposure? It is always a sign we have a stake in propping up a rotten structure—a structure that needs to be torn down and replaced. In our unwillingness lies a clear wish to keep living a lie. What’s the way out? Dedicating ourselves to the truth. This is what will bring us the courage we need to expose and change.
If we don’t do it willingly, it will be done for us, as secret matters will be exposed by means of outside forces. A crisis will occur that will bring them to the surface. Once the new influx is set into motion, the force of it cannot be halted. The more opposition it runs into, the more painful will the crisis be.
We can now clearly observe this in public life. In recent times, we are seeing hidden destructiveness being exposed and then communicated with the public. Again it is obvious that something new is happening. We have never seen it happen to the same degree before, or in the same way. And it is continuing. We can see that something new has been set into motion. Through a combination of communication and exposure, the entire world now knows of political misdeeds that would have been kept secret in the past.
As group consciousness evolves, there is a great interaction and interplay unfolding that is allowing all of humanity to join the drama of development. It’s important we start to view world events through this lens. This is exactly the process we follow as we do our personal work of self-development: we expose our Lower Self, we share what we have found, and then we communicate this to others. Is there any better way to establish close connections that build trust and generate love?
Over and over we have been looking at the parallels between developing ourselves as individuals and developing the planet. Everything we learn to apply to ourselves also applies in some way on the level of the collective. Exposure has never existed here like this before. As masks are starting to crumble, Lower Self aspects are beginning to show through with less ability to be concealed than in the past. So now we can see events and intentions for what they actually are, without all the camouflage of lies that causes such tremendous suffering and confusion.
So we can see then that exposure—a direct result of the Christ consciousness sweeping our planet—is very much part of the new influx. If we hope to develop spiritually without exposure, our half-measures will eventually lead to stalemate. At the same time, if exposure isn’t infused with love, our work will be self-defeating. The ones who deserve our respect are the ones with the courage to do it willingly. We must not allow the ones who refuse to do it willingly to destroy their environment and to use concealment to influence events.
It is our inner conviction to serve a larger cause that gives us the strength and courage we need to bring what needs to be exposed out in the light, and to do so in an appropriate way. In other words, we need to work in a loving way. As we expose more and more of ourselves to ourselves—and then subsequently also to others—the more will we discover our true inherent worth. And we will know it is our Higher Self—the part of us that is already developed—that is the part making the exposure possible.
It’s the same with the entity of the planet. It is the Higher Self of Earth that is orchestrating all the exposure we now see on the political front. We should not think of the New Age as some vague, generic force. It is, in itself, a consciousness. As the need arises, specific aspects manifest in various parts of the world.
As with all kinds of consciousness, the consciousness of this new era is made up of many aspects that create one harmonious whole. We have just been looking at three of its aspects: communication, group consciousness and exposure. In addition, we looked at the intrinsic parallels between the way these particular aspects manifest at the levels of the collective and the individual.
Those of us who have been working with the teachings of this spiritual path—or another like it—are well versed in the individual level. This has been our focus all along. While we may still have some resistance to work with and some obstacles to get through, we are on board in principle with how this process works. We understand its value and see why it is needed. When we are able to observe the same process occurring at the collective level, our individual work will deepen.
“Look at this beautiful world with the eyes that see the whole, that comprehend the Lord’s working behind all that is. Let your hearts be filled with the freshness of life’s healing power that flows from the Source that encompasses all that ever was created and ever will be created. This Source resides right in your own center, even when you are unable to connect with it or to experience its reality through your confusions and your momentary suffering. It is always there.
You are all surrounded by the great force that flows with such renewed vigor through your universe. Be blessed, my beloved ones. Pursue your commitment to the end, never let up in your devotion to serve God.”
–The Pathwork Guide
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