True Awakening Takes Place In The Body

True Awakening Takes Place In The Body

Weekly Message, November 18, 2006
Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

I have transcribed and edited the following message from a talk Ishvara gave on August 6, 2006. - TG.

Ishvara:

People are constantly seeking enlightenment. It is a popular desire. The preference is that it be handed to you, more or less complete. Many people want that. They believe it's possible. Yet when it gets down to doing the work, it is a different story. According to imagination and belief, enlightenment is something you get, and then it is yours. For most, awakening or enlightenment is largely a mental process, something that is sought with the mind, and sort of remains that way. The unknown aspect is that it involves work to keep it. You must do the work, the practice, to sustain yourself.

True enlightenment, true awareness, true awakening takes place in the body. The body must first wake up. The body is what holds the awareness, housing the intelligence that is The Consciousness. Most often in spiritual practices and disciplines, the body is neglected; enlightenment is seen as mainly a mental exercise.

Most of the teaching that is out there is just a pacifier for the mind, a drug, an escape. There are very few people who are willing to do the work. The work is about sorting through the beliefs, the concepts, the conditioning--those things you have inherited from the past that are false and erroneous. That can be work, because on the surface those things sound good. They are attractive. You may think: "Enlightenment will be a good thing." But the real work of enlightenment, awareness, and transformation is dealing with what-Is, not trying to escape it, but embracing what-Is. That can be somewhat of a bitter pill, because things may have been unleashed in your life that you would prefer weren't there. Your preference would be to be beyond them.

In a state of awareness, you are initiated into a more conscious arena. You see, you realize, you feel, you begin to know something, but the next step is the work. The American culture is such that people usually want the easy way: read a book and become enlightened, go to a seminar to be awakened, have it handed to you more or less on a platter, given to you as something you can pick up and own, carry around with you and talk about.

Most of the seekers are simply looking for another form of escape, something to make them feel good. People are attracted to certain spiritual disciplines, certain spiritual practices, but there is a lack of commitment. You want it, but you want it handed to you, you want it easy. Very few are willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work. The work is the real spiritual process. It is in the work that one achieves the transformation, the awareness, and the connections. The intellect comes around only later. After the fact, the intellect says, "Oh, that's what it was. That's how it works."

Much of the Space of true awareness involves dealing with the physical body. The energy in this Space assists the form in the acceleration process. The awareness is to create a body that is healthy, vibrant and energetic, able to be flexible, resilient, able to hold enough energy to maintain a state of transformation. When you start talking about that, when that becomes a focus of the awareness, you will find only a few people who are willing to pursue it.

Many come to the Space for the excitement, hoping to get a new drug that will enable them to feel alright. But what actually occurs in this Space is that you begin to look deeply into the process. When you begin to take an account of what it truly is, you realize you have a lot of sorting to do, sifting through the various beliefs, concepts, wishes, desires, and expectations that have held sway over your life. As you begin to delve into that, you see it is more complicated than you first thought. You begin to recognize that there is work to do: the work on yourself. A lot of the work is about holding the right frame of mind towards the body.

The well-being of the body is dependent on the thoughts you hold. If you hold a belief that the body is a problem, it becomes severely limited, and it will act up. So part of the work is about changing your attitude towards physical form. This involves holding a higher possibility for the body, a more harmonious physical existence.

When the idea comes up that the body is a problem, you can realize that that notion is a consequence of belief, a concept, a condition, a hypnosis, consensus reality. As you analyze that you begin to realize you do not have to obey the thought. You do not have to go along with consensus reality. You can begin to establish your own reality that is pertinent to you, that you resonate with. That is part of the work. The work is holding your own awareness, holding that kind of clarity, in spite of what friends or relatives or spiritual systems might try to tell you. Along with that there is a willingness to make the required sacrifices, to do what is necessary.

(To be continued next week).

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