The Door to Our Good
"Ascension is the master key to open us to our Good."
"It is only our active attention that keeps the door locked on our Good."
"Words cannot describe how important regular Ascension is. It is the universal key to the Door of Everything."
MSI
It is so simple. What we focus on grows. If it is our inner growth, then our universe rises to fulfill our request. Opportunities arise to show us more of the Truth. If it is the vagaries of the world, the self-contradicting desire streams, then we shall have that. If it is to sit at the crossroads wanting to go one way but still clinging on to another, then we shall have that. There is no judgement of right or wrong, simply what we put our attention on.
Our attention is the captain of the ship. And the captain has the power and the authority to direct the ship into safe havens or tumultuous seas. To continue to limit ourselves and keep the light of consciousness out of sight requires a lot of energy and our active attention on the limiting beliefs and past experiences. That is also why rising beyond these barriers is not really so difficult after all. It is a minute shift in the awareness, simply directing the attention toward growth and the Good that is inside of us. Simply Ascending and not compromising that with the pull to the opposite direction that only creates stagnation and suffering.
Our universe is waiting clear one-pointed directions so it can rush to serve its master. Imagine how confused and chaotic the big ship would be if the captain started mopping the floors of the engine room and forgot that he was the one to give the direction and know where the ship is going. Perhaps one look at the world as it is now is enough to give an idea.
Our active attention moves very easily about and outward and without an anchor point inside the mind becomes distracted in this world. With regular Ascension one can anchor the awareness to its Source and then there will be no more doors locked on our own Good. Without the tools of Ascension it would be a more difficult task but we are fortunate in this time. We have the means to naturally and easily direct our active attention to the Source of All by simply thinking an Ascension Attitude. By simply replacing our habitual thinking with upward directed wholly beneficial Attitudes of Ascending.
It does take some practice and some discipline to direct our attention more consciously. For the most part we have been conditioned to let our attention drift into the shimmers and glimmers of the world. And of course needless to say, there is a lot of that around and more is coming. The more that we realize just how much our world is created through our thinking and enlivened by our attention, the more we will see the importance of what we do with our active attention. It is the Door to our Good and by our choosing it is open or remains closed.
Nataraja Ishaya
The Door of Everything
Beneath the ever-changing tumult of the physical world lies a vast sea of non-changing peace. If we identify with the constantly rising and falling waves of the physical world, we will alternately enjoy and suffer and we will surely die. But fortunately it is possible - and obviously very desirable - to identify more strongly with the ever-peaceful depths of the ocean of life than with the hurricane-torn surface of the sea of change.
Infinite stability, endless peace, permanent inner calmness is the result of this shift of our identification-awareness. This is not to say that a passive life is more desirable than an active one! The monk is no more likely to realize enlightenment than is the householder. The difference between a life of ignorance and a life of conscious realization of Inner Truth is not based on anything on the outside. Rigid vows are not required. Being permanently established in the Ascendant means that no activity, regardless how dynamic, can overshadow the Infinite silence and permanent peaceful stability of inner wakefulness. In this state, it becomes truly possible to be effective in life.
Before this change occurs, we are buffeted by the winds of life, blown here and there by the stresses of change, like a leaf before the gales of autumn. There is little peace, less stability. Our lives are lived in reaction to others' lives and actions, not truly creative, not established in the freedom and choice that living in the present provides. When we are enlightened, we do not react. We act. Free from self-destructive behavior patterns, beliefs or judgements, we act, creating flawlessly from the direct perception of the need of the moment. This is freedom; this is impeccably correct action. This is life in the present instant: the mind is no longer caught by regret for the past or worry about the future.
MSI, Ascension!
Pada II Sutra 5
Ignorance is the perception of the transient as the Eternal, impurity as purity, suffering as happiness and not-self as the Self.
Mistaking the ephemeral and constantly changing for the never-changing causes every aspect of life to be distorted. The Waking State becomes a race for subsistent survival: growth is stunted, there is little happiness, meager meaning. Mistaking the Eternal for the temporal leads to identification with the ever-changing body rather than the never-changing spirit. This leads to greater impurity in habit, in the mind, in the heart, in the body. This in turn leads to greater and greater confusion about exactly what is and what is not the individual self and therefore inevitably to suffering.
Ignorance means that values are built on the ephemeral - the body, possessions, cherished beliefs - and not on the experience of the unchanging Absolute. Since this is so, suffering becomes certain, for if our treasure is stored where moth eats and rust decays, we will weep our lost idols in the end, for these will eventually pass away. Only the Ascendant endures forever, if the Ascendant is our prime focus, if the Ascendant is our treasure, then life will be lived in purity, in joy, in love, in health.
This is a simple choice, but we don't commonly realize it. We don't feel responsible if we pretend we just didn't know. This is true throughout the belief structure of the ego. "ignorance is bliss" is a common way of viewing the Universe, if it is recognized as such or not. The deep, internal attraction to maintaining the belief structure exactly as it is will be more thoroughly discussed in the ninth sutra on obstinacy. But this simple stating of the split between what is True and Real and what is not can be a great relief to a thirsty soul. If the root of ignorance is so simple as mistaking black for white, can it be difficult to change our mind and heal it instantly? No, but first stubbornness must be transformed.
MSI, Enlightenment!
Pada I Sutra 45
The ever increasing subtlety of objects culminates in the unmanifest.
If the object of attention continues to become increasingly subtle during Ascension, and if one does not fall asleep, the experience will lead to the Unmanifest, the Absolute. This is so because the Ascendant pervades everything, it underlies everything.
"Unmanifest," alinga, can also be translated, "without sign, mark, token or characteristic." There are no qualities in the Infinite: it is beyond every division of space, time or thought. The very last stages of even the subtlest reality of the vehicle must fall away to experience Ascendant consciousness. The Ascendant lies beyond. For this reason, it has been commonly thought that it also lies beyond the capability of the human to experience, but this is not so. The consciousness of the human is sufficiently flexible to stretch to Infinity. This is true because the consciousness of the human is nothing other than the Infinite Self. The Universal Divine Consciousness already shines within everyone, always; it is only necessary to stop blocking it to experience it fully.
MSI, Enlightenment!
Attention and Worship
I would say that attention is the only true thing a human being owns. Everything else actually belongs to God. But God gave the human free will - each human can give their attention to anything they please. They can think any thought as long as they like, often without other people knowing.
To take it one step further, what a person gives their attention to and begins to depend upon, is worship. David Foster Wallace said, "You get to decide what to worship.,..Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship...." When we place our dependence and attention on money, things, power, our body and beauty, we are worshipping them. David Foster Wallace goes on to say, "The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're sinful or evil; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into , day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on you default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustrations and craving and the worship of self."
Jyoti Ishaya
Freedom
A person addicted to cigarettes can not be said to be free to smoke. Being truly free would mean that one is able to choose equally between smoking and not smoking. Most anyone who has tried to quit smoking will tell you that some freedom to stop has been lost somewhere along the way and that there is some discipline involved in becoming free once again not to smoke.
In a similar manner our beliefs, thoughts, and habits keep us from being free to experience right now as it is. The Now, as Echart Tolle so clearly points out, is beyond thought. The only reason you are not free, not enlightened right now is that your mind has a habit of doing something else. It's that simple. If you could go beyond thinking you would be free to experience the fullness of now.
What the mind usually does with a statement like that is to try to think of a way to do it. Not helpful. While it's true that thought is a normal and natural part of life, most of us are so caught in the trap of our constant and compulsive thinking that we need some way to go beyond it.
This is both easier and more difficult than it may seem. It's actually as natural as breathing. We all have experienced at least the beginning of awareness beyond thought. Sometimes all it takes is a beautiful sunset. Everything else drops away in that moment of appreciation. At that moment we may experience gratitude toward the maker of sunsets or even begin to know the Source of it all. The difficulty for most of us comes when we move on to the cares of daily living and get caught up in thinking again. What is needed is a way to drop into the state of presence at will, no matter what we're doing.
Ascension is a way to learn to do this.
Imagine if you will that the nervous system is like a large bell that has been set aside and perhaps forgotten. Maybe it has collected a coating of dirt and mud over the years. Using an Ascension Attitude is a bit like striking it with a mallet. A clean bell would ring true. A bell caked in mud will ring only a little or maybe just thud. But some of the mud gets shaken off. Using the Ascension Attitudes repeatedly over time will free it once again to ring true.
The Ascension Attitudes are direct statements of truth. They are statements of the enlightened mind straight from the Source with no distortion, from a completely clear bell so to speak. Using them regularly retrains the mind to align itself with the Reality of what Truly Is. If we let go of the old, our new experience will brush aside of all the useless stuff we have built up over a lifetime and open for us a direct path to the Door of Everything.
Sankara Ishaya
Sacrifice
Looking up sacrifice in the Thesaurus, I found the words, “give up, forgo, forfeit, let go, and surrender.”
True sacrifice can only be made by replacing one thing with something greater – the Ascendant. A thought of “I hate myself” can be replaced with another thought – “I love myself”. All that is occurring is replacing one groove or stress with another groove or stress. There is still an impression within the system. Now if you replace the thought “I hate myself” with the Ascendant or the Ascension Attitudes which lead you directly to the Ascendant, the thought is replaced by something that isn’t a groove, stress or an impression. It is replaced by the infinite.
Each time you think the Ascension Attitude, you have to “give up” or “let go” of what is currently in the mind in order to think the Ascension Attitude. This is very easy if you want to let go of what is currently in the mind. There is no struggle, no conflict. Letting go can become difficult if you want what is currently in the mind more than you want the Ascension Attitude or Ascendant.
Some will do anything to keep a certain experience going rather than sacrificing or “forfeiting” it for a greater experience. It is very hard to imagine a more expanded state of consciousness – it is hard to imagine a truly greater experience. It can seem like you have to give up the greatest thing only to get nothing. Luckily, this isn’t true – it is only one excuse in a long line of excuses that keeps the mind holding hard to its current level of experience.
True sacrifice is absolute joy. Why wouldn’t being filled with the infinite source, the source of all love, all energy, all things be absolutely joy?
Althea Ishaya
Thought and Character
The aphorism, "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he," not only embraces the whole of a man's being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being he complete sum of all his thoughts.
As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called "spontaneous" and "unpremeditated" as to those which are deliberately executed.
Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruit; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry.
Man is a growth by law, and not a creation by artifice, and cause and effect are as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. A noble and God-like character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with God-like thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harboring of groveling thoughts.
Man is made or unmade by himself. In the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the divine perfection. By the abuse and wrong application of thought he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master.
Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this--that man is the master of thought, the molder of character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny.
As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills.
Man is always the master, even in his weakest and most abandoned state. But in his weakness and degradation he is foolish master who misgoverns his "household." When he begins to reflect upon his condition and search diligently for the law upon which his being is established, he then becomes the wise master, directing his energies with intelligence and fashioning his thoughts to fruitful issues. Such is the conscious master, and man can only thus become by discovering within himself the laws of thought. This discovery is totally a matter of application, self-analysis and experience.
James Allen
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This is the 19th edition of the Ishaya Foundation newsletter.
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