What
Spiritual Realizations are possible? How does Spiritual Realization relate to
ordinary views of human potential? What is the ultimate Spiritual Realization?
Is there such a thing? And if the ultimate Spiritual Realization is our aim, it
is very good to know the final destination before setting out, both in order to
choose a vessel capable of getting us there, and to avoid sidetracks (leading
to lesser Realizations) that prolong the journey, even indefinitely.
And
so, by way of comparison, we will first sample some conventional
views of human potential and destiny, and then lay out the Ultimate
Destiny that is possible for us.
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Realization
also involves a deepening in self-understanding and self-transcendence
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Shift in identity goes hand in hand with greater self-understanding,
since it is the unconscious activity of self-contraction that
is keeping one locked into one's currently limited identity.
One's identity, one's sense of "self", will never
change unless one understands how one is artificially (and unnecessarily)
creating the sense of self through the activity of self-contraction.
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Realization
involves discriminating, in feeling, between "God" and (the
activity of) "self" —
We could never discover the activity of self-contraction (that
creates our limited sense of self) without the contrasting Presence
of the Divine Self. It is only by way of that contrast, between
Bright and dark, between the Limitless and the limited, between
the Happy and the un-Happy, that we discover, first, the incredible
limit that "self" represents on the scale of our ultimate potential;
second,
the capacity to feel to, through, and beyond the "self" sensations
to God; and third, the nature of self as activity that can be
transcended.
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