Emerald Heart School Principal, Tim Dyson, pens another thought-provoking article for the Blog. Are we coming from a position of Lack or Abundance? Read on for the clues..

 

 

From Lack or Abundance

Certain things have been making themselves clearer to me of late about the nature of suffering and how our attempts to relieve ourselves of this condition tend to actually keep us in it. We have all, I’m sure, had periods of time when we feel clear, free in our thoughts and emotions, the inner turmoil has subsided and our confusion has lifted. In this kind of state everything seems simpler and just flows along very nicely. Because we’ve had experiences of feeling good in this kind of way or may even have touched very profound states of deeper realisation, when we inevitably find ourselves again in a more confused troubled state of being we want to find the ‘good’ state again and try to grasp after it. We know attachment and aversion cause us suffering, we’ve all read the teachings but it becomes hard to accept the more difficult state of being when we have experienced feeling happy or even a more awakened state.

I can’t help feeling that we tend to come at this from the wrong place inside of ourselves. Because we have spent most of our lives in ignorance, confusion and suffering we consciously or unconsciously take that to be our normal state and the brief experiences of something more awakened as an aberration to our normal state. Whilst this is true up to a point it misses the crucial point that the more awakened state is actually our true state of being and the confusion and suffering are just what is clouding our experience of this. Perhaps in reality things are actually the other way around than we tend to perceive them. All the great teachers throughout the ages talk of our real nature and the importance of getting in touch with it so surely then if awakened is our real nature we are already full and lacking nothing. From this deeper perspective it is not so much then about changing how we feel, but rather recognising our deeper nature and the struggle to feel good just gets in the way because it is coming from a sense of lacking something. We can’t lack something that we already are, the problem isn’t one of lack at all, it is actually one of recognition.

Of course the troubled state of being feels more real to us because it has been our habitual condition for at least most of our lives. The brief periods of time of experiencing a different way of being, feel less real in comparison because they have tended to be so fleeting. We identify so much more strongly with our troubled and grosser experience of ourselves and life and endlessly search for this elusive state where we feel clear and good. When we do find it, we try to hold onto it and go into panic when we lose it again, creating much drama around this. Often we think we have gone backwards or lost something vital and the panic stems from a belief we will never find those better feelings or more awakened state again. Of course when we come through to the other side of our troubled state and find some happiness and clarity again it all seems like not such a big deal until our emotions and minds are inevitably stirred up again and we become lost in confusion all over again.

This hardly feels like coming from a place of abundance, rather it smacks of lack and desperation. So what if we choose to recognise that parts of us may well always be troubled, but, that although these parts of us exist, there are other aspects to us, other parts of consciousness that are far more enlightened and aligned with our higher self and that they are always there no matter what is happening or whether we are aware of them in that moment or not. We know when we do experience them that these parts are much more subtly attuned to what Universal Consciousness or God wants from us and how he is seeking to guide our life. Perhaps in this aspect we could learn much from the notion of Faith, a word that conjures up many religious connotations. Many of us react to the church with all its manipulations and dogma and I’m not suggesting we should go to church unless we feel to but there’s a lot to be said for an abiding faith that all is well on a fundamental level and that we are being taken care of. We could say that invoking faith is taking a leap of faith into the unknown and unknowable. A position of trust that no matter how hard things maybe I trust that I have the inner resources to cope or that I will be led to the right person to help me find a way through the difficulties. I have faith that the Divine has my back in this way and can work through myself and others to aid me. This is coming from a position of abundance not one of lack and whenever we are coming from an abundant place the Divine can help us more easily. The Law of Attraction can work in our favour for abundance attracts abundance.

Over time we come to recognise that something fundamentally good and full of love is running through everything and that we can trust this. What seems like extreme difficulty often later is revealed as a blessing in disguise. Now I’d be the first to admit that I’m full of fears and find faith a difficult one, but I recognised the need for it and have worked to establish this as a foundational cornerstone of my life. I have a long way to go with this aspect, but I can at least see its vital importance for a spiritual life.

So we have the position of lack, that I am not enough as I am, that I must reject my current sense of reality as being too much to bear and grasp after something different in panic and fear, or we can learn to recognise that there are always parts of us that are not caught up in our dramas and to learn over time to align more with these aspects of self. If we can rest in and express ourselves from these deeper parts of who we are, so it feels like they seem to grow and become fuller as we become more fully them. The troubled and suffering parts of us become less loud and bothersome and we can choose which aspects of our consciousness we want to listen to and to align with.

This then, is coming from a position of abundance as we are approaching ourselves and life from a place of knowing that at least some aspects of our consciousness are not bound up with the dramas and even if we can’t access them in that moment we know they are there and have the faith and trust that they will be revealed again sometime soon when our emotions and minds are quieter. Now of course if we can do something to alleviate our situation then why wouldn’t we and although the Emerald Heart Light is primarily an evolutionary light it will act as a rescuer in those circumstances when we are very lost and will bring us back again very quickly to a better and more balanced place where we can readily grow and evolve from. Sometimes all we need is help to see the truth of what we are struggling with and this unlocks us from the turmoil and we start to feel better straight away. The essences and programmes that we use continue this process and take us further in the unfolding evolution of our consciousness for they are Keys of Transformation, they unlock the door to our growth by opening the heart at deeper and deeper levels.

If we can approach the need for help with a certain maturity and wisdom then we don’t become so lost in the first place and can get back to some kind of even keel much more quickly. Perhaps most importantly we are growing in our awareness through the difficulties and breaking our old patterns of reaction that create much of the panic and fear. By ceasing to make a problem worse through our less than spiritually mature response, we become bigger and able to cope with more and that is reflected to us through the growing brightness of the light we shine.

Love & Blessings,

Tim Dyson

Principle of the Emerald Heart School of Enlightenment

London, England