You can listen to the Audio recording here:
https://healthylife.net/RadioShow/archiveVS.htm
or here
I’m on the mountain slope and at the rocky platform which I often use to go up to the Upper World and I see the thread, the pathway, the beam, that I travel up alongside, and that helps me up go upward to the Spirit Realm of the Upper World.
It’s daylight at the moment and I’ve actually wrapped my arms and legs around the beam, but the beam is very thin, its like the thickness of a rope.
So I’m not actually touching the beam and I’m going up alongside it .
I’m putting out my request to the Spirits to meet me in the Upper World, and out of their compassion, and their wisdom and their love, that they take me to, or show me a very interesting and useful area in the Upper World that would be important to talk about on the Schapera radio show.
I soon find myself in a very green and very lush jungle setting.
I’m not sure if I should continue walking through this jungle, but it seems as if this is where I have been directed to be, and I don’t see any of my Spirit Teachers of the Upper World at the moment, whom I could ask.
I don’t see anything in animal form either.
I keep walking through the jungle, and then see I’ve come to the edge of the jungle, and I’m looking out over a pan, or a dry lake which is quite strange and unexpected.
It doesn’t seem to fit that I was in the jungle one moment and now I’m in this much drier pan area.
I understand from this, that I’m being shown that there is this great diversity of scenery in the Upper World – you can have things that are very different – and I’m choosing to go back into the jungle area, and I find myself in a clearing that is quite familiar as I usually meet my Spirit Teachers here.
I call out to the Spirits – I put out my request to please be shown or taken to a very interesting, useful and important area.
Then one of my Spirit Teachers arrives who unusually for the Upper World, manifests in Animal form. I get on its back and again I request to see and experience an important area in the Upper World.
Now we’re going back up into the sky again, and it’s quite dark.
We’re going up and up and I know not to ask where we are going – I’ll find out when we get there.
We’re actually right in outer space beyond our Galaxy somewhere, and the Spirit says that from here you can’t really even see the Earth.
From where we are, it’s as if the Earth has disappeared.
There is such a vastness of space and the Earth is so minuscule, and that with this perspective, everything that preoccupies our minds about our daily lives could all just disappear and that when it disappears, what’s left is one’s own consciousness, our awareness.
We usually think about ourselves so much in relation to other people and the places we’re in, and all the activities and interactions we are involved in. Our awareness is overwhelmed and overloaded, with our thoughts about our lives.
The Spirits are showing me that from the perspective of outer space, all of that clutter is gone, and we’re not left with any of our Earthly pre-occupations as something to relate to.
I think what the Spirit is saying to me is, consider who you are without a familiar earth World around you, in which you’ve got a context.
So who are you without a context? – I think that’s what it boils down to.
Who are we without the place, without the people, without the family, without the work, without the news, without the entertainment?
If we’re just floating in space and everything, and everything in space, is far away, very distant. So we can’t even put much context to what’s around us in space because its as if everything has disappeared, and we are left with an experience of emptiness.
The Spirits say we can’t even have a context of memories, if all we have is the here and now of Being without a context.
We are of course usually actually on the Earth, and we’ve got this very rich and pervasive context.
But we should, and it would be very useful, be aware of our own awareness where we have no context of place and memory.
It’s something like just pure Being awareness. They say it’s hard for us to imagine this.
But here, they are showing me being out in space, without any context of place. And they say one could be without memory, and they say one could even be without body, where there is only awareness.
This is what the Spirits are saying: consider what are we, or who are we, or how are we, without mental clutter.
The Spirit say we should practice practice this.
They make me remember a phrase and I think- it’s from Hindu mysticism the phrase “Sat Chit Ananda” which means “Pure Bliss Awareness” and that that is actually our true nature, and our true destiny – pure Pure Bliss Awareness.
The Spirits are making the point that we are so caught up in our lives with people and activities and consumption and relationships that we forget about the state of pure awareness which is described or written about so much in eastern Spiritual traditions. “Sat Chit Ananda” or “Pure Bliss Awareness” and that we’re missing out on this absolutely fundamental characteristic of existence.
I get the understanding that when they showed me the jungle that was full of trees and plants, and climate and temperature and “things”, they were showing me a symbol of our everyday awareness that is overwhelmed with content.
And when they showed me that stark dry pan which was almost empty, it was like looking at virtually nothing – a symbol of “Pure Bliss Awareness”.
They’re saying that to have a practice of awareness of nothingness, or emptiness, would be very beneficial. It would put us more in touch with our true nature and they’re saying that when we look up at the sky at night we see things in space like stars and galaxies, but we should be also be aware as much as we can, of the vastness of emptiness.
There is much more of nothing than there is of something.
Our attention usually goes to look at the beautiful stars, but just as important in our consciousness is simple awareness without awareness of objects.
The Spirits say this should just be a good meditation topic – emptiness.
And again they give me a reminder of something that’s often said in eastern Spiritual traditions of just sitting quietly, not doing anything, and letting ones awareness become empty. There’s something very beneficial about experiencing an empty awareness, and they remind me of the saying that’s fairly well known, from the Bible (Psalm46:10), of the phrase “be still and know that I am God”
That it’s in stillness that we are present to the Divine, and that we should absolutely practice this.
I think this is the fundamental message here – we should give ourselves this opportunity of stillness ,and in stillness we are closer to our true nature of “Sat Chit Ananda” or “Pure Bliss Awareness”.
But most of us, most of the time, run away from stillness.
We don’t like it. We cant tolerate it. The Spirits say that again space is a good analogy, because you’ve got this vast emptiness and then you have the jewels of the stars and theyre saying that it’s in the context of emptiness that the jewels stand out.
This is all fairly poetic and symbolic, and they say find or experience your own inner stillness.
They say find and experience that inner stillness, even when we actually are quite occupied so even in the context of Earthly everyday business with all the things around us, and all the interactions and activities, to still not lose track of our inner stillness. We can manage the busyness which is often overwhelming, by being much more connected to our own inner stillness.
And we should practice and cultivate the skill of being able to quite quickly and efficiently contact our own inner stillness.
The Spirit that has been with me all the time says I should climb onto its back.
And this is exciting, and I wonder where we’re going to next. I become aware of my excitement and that there’s a little bit of inner drama as I anticipate riding on the Spirits back, and so I now understand that even in this context here, riding on the back of the Spirit, I am being given the lesson of not losing connection with inner stillness.
A big failing of humanity is our tendency for drama, and our love for drama, and it doesn’t serve any constructive purpose.
So we’re going back and we’ve flown through the jungle, and we’re flying over that dry pan that I saw in the beginning.
And all the while the message is being repeated of “stay in touch with Stillness”.
I think that’s the overarching message or recommendation to all of us “stay in touch with inner stillness” and there’s a proviso of ideally “no matter what” – “stay in touch with inner stillness no matter what”.
Now we’re back at the clearing in the Upper World and I’m going to go back to the beam and return to the Middle World.
And a reminder again comes to me of be alert or be vigilant to when we are letting our consciousness go into drama.
The Spirit flies off and I’m at the beam and it’s perfect timing as the drums have changed to the call-back rhythm, and I start going down the beam, down this thread returning to the Middle World. Going down and down and I find myself back at the place on the mountain from which I started.
I thank the Spirits for this profound Journey.