In our true being, we are one with all that is. We’re not separate or fragmented—we’re peas in a pod with God, each one of us expressing different facets of the same Oneness. But as human beings in our current state of development, we often think one thing, feel something else, send our will in another direction and then act in some other way. It is terribly painful to be so fragmented and confused.
The cure? We’ve got to work our way to the middle, where the eternal presence of God hangs out. In fact, there is a rich, nougat filling at the center of each one us. Our work is to realize this. To remember this. To know that, underneath it all, this is who we are. But wherever we’re blocked from our center, we feel pain and suffering.
The more we clear our mental cobwebs and overcome our inner obstacles, the more we realize the truth of who we are. Inner channels open and we increasingly receive wisdom and ideas that resolve all our problems; no loose ends remain. New creative juices bubble up that bring forth self-expression and joy; these are immediately available to us. We discover all is well and there is nothing to fear. We sense the power of healing and of our wholeness.
Ah, such nice words. And for so many of us, that’s all they are—nice words. We have to actually work through an obstacle or two to experience our true identity. Until that happens, we don’t even know what it is we’re looking for. And believe it or not, experiencing our true identity surpasses all those Really Nice Words. We could, indeed, get a blinding glimpse of our true identity and if we’re not prepared for what it looks like, we might reject the magnificence of it by trying to shoehorn it into the mold of a typical human experience. That would effectively destroy it and make its reappearance even more scarce.
So let’s shed some light on this. What we’re looking for is a very specific feeling that is outside our usual rainbow of feelings that tops out at love. Yes, the feeling we’re talking about here is beyond love. It’s so rare that only those people who are fully self-realized have experienced it; it’s so rare, it has no name.
For lack of something better, we could call it ‘that cosmic feeling.’ This isn’t a mental construct about theoretically understanding creation or the cosmos. It’s 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.
Before we get to those keys, let’s talk about this cosmic feeling some more. And note, even if this information can only plant seeds for now about experiences that will come only later, everyone can be helped by identifying where we currently are on our spiritual path and by seeing the direction to head.
When we’re in the throws of the cosmic feeling, we will have the experience of thinking and feeling as one: they will no longer be split. This isn’t easy to imagine for the average guy or gal. In that moment, we comprehend all of life’s mysteries, we get a taste of all-encompassing love, and we know all is well and that there’s nothing to fear. Dang.
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.
We get mixed up, thinking what’s real is false and vice versa. We think our illusions are ironclad facts, and then think aspects of the universe that are real don’t actually exist. With the cosmic feeling, everything lands in the right bucket. This makes us feel safe and releases energy that was tied up in worry. We feel relaxed and excited at the same time. Peace and pleasure become one and the same, instead of mutually exclusive opposites. We feel our own oneness in every cell of our body.
It is our restlessness, in fact, which comes from our urge to seek the truth, that often sends us careening in the wrong direction and heading further away from our innermost selves. But this restless energy serves a purpose—it pulls us in the direction of having a personal experience of God within.
When we touch this place within, it can be shocking. Literally. It’s an incredibly powerful presence and the good feeling it creates electrifies us, as though an electric shock runs through us. In fact, our ego must be strong enough and healthy enough to bear the high vibrations that will stream through us as the inner presence of God emanates into our outer body and being.
But that very feeling is our true identity. It’s what we’ve always been but lost touch with; it’s gotten covered over by our Lower Self. We can pray in this very moment to have a palpable experience of it. We can sense how we fear this feeling—even as we long for it—causing us to close ourselves up to it.
And don’t fall for the ego’s trick of doubting its existence, flattering ourselves that our doubting attitude is smart because it shows we’re not gullible. We need to open up the discriminating mind and get a better sense of what’s real and what’s fake. We need to evaluate our feelings and intuition, using the beans in our noggins. If our feelings are functioning well, the discriminating mind will stop trying to be the master and become the servant it’s supposed to be.
For those who can’t honestly admit fearing this cosmic feeling, don’t sweat it. We can calmly set about clearing the obstacles that will now be identified as the keys to finding it and becoming strong enough to bear it. This power current has wisdom and love embedded right in it, and it is ready to flow out of us—right now.
Here are the four keys for coming to realize the full cosmic feeling:
- REALIZE CAUSE AND EFFECT
We need to get the cart and horse in the right order in our lives. Once we can connect the dots between our concepts, intentions and attitudes with our life circumstances, we can start to create something different. But when we don’t see how we create—when we create unconsciously—we are powerless. Better said, we don’t realize our own power, and get tripped up in creating problematic chain reactions based on error. Then we blame someone or something else for our misery. We point fingers and feel like we’re a victim. We then use this to justify our hate and resentment, so we can enjoy the thrill of getting revenge.
This business of feeling helpless and powerless makes us dependent on others. Since they can never fulfill our unrealistic expectations, we fear and resent them, all the while ignoring how we have created our misery ourselves because we’d rather blame and wait for a salvation that will never come. At least not this way.
Salvation comes from realizing our inborn ability—indeed, our birthright—to create. 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.
But as long as we’re involved in the cat-and-mouse game of hiding from ourselves how we have set all our experiences in motion through our free will and attitudes, it will be impossible to change the course. We wait, in vain, for some other power to swoop in and take over, making us meanwhile miserable and hopeless. Then we deny our hopelessness and ignore that there could be a way out—which, matter of fact, is in exactly the other direction from the way we are heading.
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.
Missing out on our own life makes us very unhappy. We need to uncover our vague sense of futility that makes us fear our life is slipping through our fingers; we’re not getting to enjoy the goodies of its beauty and creative essence. Sometimes we do the necessary work but will only go so far—we won’t open up all the way. Then despair remains.
We concoct explanations for why we’re special and should indulge our resistance. We delude ourselves that we can get all the way there—through to the other side of our issues—without looking at every speck of resistance. But we can never be truly secure as long we don’t hook up cause with effect. We must see the reason we continue to struggle.
Our work is always to look at what is right in front of us, staring us in the face. Where are we unhappy today? Where do we feel unfulfilled? We aren’t going to find answers just by looking in the mirror. We’ve been doing that our whole life and are regularly fooled by the erroneous thoughts we don’t even think to challenge. So we need to work with someone who can help us see our blind spots. And we all have them. We also have a hidden negative intention to receive more from life than we wish to give. We need to find and explore where this lives in us.
Let’s not kid ourselves—this is hard to do. And it’s painful. We prefer to cling to the illusion that we are innocent victims. But that gig is up. It’s an illusion that buys us nothing other than continued unhappiness. We need to have an honest look at ourselves, fully seeing and understanding the negative creations that we have produced. Whatever hidden thoughts are driving the bus, they will have less power to create once we get a good look at them.
This is a tough row to hoe, but if we let overwhelming guilt dissuade us, we’re falling for yet another trick of the ego: ‘Oh woe is me, I’m so bad.’ This line of thinking will prevent us from doing the one true thing that will save us from our misery: expose what’s ugly inside us. We shouldn’t make too much of our guilt, cowering in its presence, nor should we belittle it. Just feel the pain of the guilt about what we do to ourselves and others. This might sting a little. But awareness of it will also motivate us to alter our ways and create something good for a change.
For example, if we hold ourselves back, we believe we are empty and have nothing to give; for the one who feels empty gives nothing. At the same time, we can only feel rich and full when we have a desire to give. So we need to look for where we are dishonest and withholding, and where we honestly want to give our best. It may take some time to reverse our course, possibly even a few years, but once we do, our positive creations will go on endlessly and can forever grow.
There’s no magic to linking up cause and effect and gradually becoming whole. We have within us the divine power to create by changing our thinking and changing the direction of our intention from negatively withholding to positively giving. And we can always call on the power of God inside us for help.
- FEEL ALL OUR FEELINGS
We’ve got to learn to handle our feelings. All of them, not just the ones we like. Keep in mind, if we have any unpleasant feelings in our life, it’s because, along the way, we created them. 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. When we honestly and humbly admit we hate and move hate out of ourselves in a constructive way—that is, not by spewing hate at others but by working it out with a counselor or therapist—our capacity for love springs open. When we feel our fear, we find security.
This is so because here in the land of duality, feelings that are apparently opposites are actually comprised of one and the same current of energy; they are just showing up in a different frequency and level of condensation. The vibration changes as we experience the opposite of any feeling. But the more we avoid feelings—as we do with the unpleasant ones—the less we can experience their polar opposite.
So which feeling is of the highest frequency? That cosmic feeling. But if we’re sitting on any of our ordinary feelings, still unable to manage them, the cosmic feeling will be too strong for us to bear.
Shying away from any feeling creates an inner wall, behind which hides an enemy: a Very Bad Feeling. Now we become afraid of the feeling. This means we fear our fear; we hate our hate; we’re pained about our pain. This double-whammy widens the split inside us until we cry ‘Uncle,’ and start groping in the dark to find our way back.
There is no feeling that is so bad we can’t air it out and flip its expression back to its positive configuration. This includes hate and cruelty as well as anger and rage, along with their Bad Byproducts of envy, jealousy, greed and dishonesty. The first step in making them once-again beautiful is to stop pretending. Take a risk to be in truth and expose what’s seems so darned ugly.
Be careful here though, and don’t get stuck in a trick of the ego which is to turn over stones and then lament how this means ‘I am dirt.’ We need to have courage to expose what needs discovering, and trust that there is good to be found. We need to not take pride in getting past our shame, and we need to pray for guidance. This is the way to experience the powerful energy held in the feelings we’ve been hiding.
We need this energy—it contains our life force; we can’t expand and create feelings of joy and pleasure without it. It’s good stuff, at its core. In the last analysis, whenever we feel tired or listless, it’s because part of our vital energy is locked up in feelings we’re running away from. No hate, fear or pain is ever permanent; they are but frozen energy—consciousness that has gotten distorted. The real permanent conditions include love, pleasure, peace and security.
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. But we can’t be other than who we are by pretending these feelings don’t exist in us. 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.
There’s a whole rainbow of feelings we can enjoy, but we’ve got to work with the negative vibes if we want to frolic with the positive. Too often, we get a taste of sweetness and clam up against its goodness, pointing us in the direction of unrecognized, unaccepted, and unexpressed bad feelings. If we’re smart, we’ll use this as the gauge it is. Eventually we’ll warm up enough to feel and sustain the cosmic feeling. When that happens, we’ll realize that love is a mild shadow of this whopper feeling that holds everything.
- 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. Deep down, we’ve got to continually unearth our dishonesty and negative intention towards life. These are, after all, the real cause of our unhappiness.
Like negative feelings that flip over to the positive on the fly, our intentions will take a turn for the better once we start exploring the reasons for our holding on and holding out. Then there will be love. And love is a vital ingredient for experiencing the cosmic feeling.
Every day, we need to re-up our commitment for a fair exchange with life: I’m willing to give as much as I want to receive. We need to search our inner hidden recesses to find where negative intention lingers, and deliberately reverse it by stating our Yes to giving to life. 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’?
Sure, we can vent all day long about everyone else’s contributions to our problems, but nevertheless, there must be something in us we overlook. There is no more reliable gauge for the existence of an inner disturbance than our own disharmony. Once we see our struggles clearly, we can search for their source. Of course, no one can uncover their own darkness all by themselves; we each need help in finding and exposing what lurks in the deep.
Once we begin looking inside regarding any and every aspect of life, seeking ever-deeper and richer fulfillment and happiness, we’ll start to see cause and effect as though it’s a simple diagram drawn with the simplest stroke. When we look at things this way, life isn’t that much of a mystery.
- MEDITATE
Just as we can’t do this transformative work alone—we must work with someone who has gone down this path ahead of us—we can’t do it without contacting our divine nucleus. We must learn to listen within, quieting the busy outer mind so we can be receptive. By focusing lightly on our deep nucleus of inner presence, we can listen, with no ‘I must experience it now.’ Just calm waiting.
When we relax inwardly, we can feel our rushing and grasping and driving. Observe it, and then slowly begin to stop it. If pain arises from this, we can feel the pain without resistance. This is the great art of tuning in, and we can ask God to help us learn it. We’ll need to persevere and be patient in developing this practice. And we’ll need to have made some headway on the first three steps before we can move the meter via meditation.
Then one day, our channel will open up and faculties we haven’t experienced yet will wake up. Our inner ear will begin to hear God inside; our inner eye will see symbolic forms or pictures in which seeing is knowing; with our inner power, we’ll have new perceptions, and seeing will turn to understanding on the level of the conscious ego. This is not our imagination.
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.
Return to Gems Contents
Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #200 The Cosmic Feeling
Read How to pray and meditate
