1 - To Understand Life |
CHALLENGE :
- To really understand what life is all about, and how to handle it efficiently
- To know how to achieve objectives the fastest possible way
- To become wise
- To get orientation in the vast mass of current data
RANGE :
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At life's crucial crossroads emotions often pull us fiercely in one direction while reasons urge us to choose the exact opposite. Both paths look equally enticing or disastrous, dreary, strange and unknown to us. This is the time when we crave real orientation, real insight, real know-how what we're supposed to do with this world, how we're supposed to act.
We sense that there's a purpose, that there are answers to these questions, that someone would exist who knows. But we are unsure where to look for this information, don't even know exactly what we're searching for.
Well, - 'who knows?' is easy to answer. In all this huge world there's one person who has all the answers, and only one person we'd also trust enough to accept them - and that is WE OURSELVES. All other sources we distrust, suspect hidden motives, and know that they won't take responsibility for their advice.
Yet deep within ourselves is everything we ever want to know. Within ourselves we carry a vast ocean of knowledge, of wisdom, of comprehension that opens unknown breadths of life. Deep within ourselves we find answers that convince us.
This knowledge is with us now. We were born with it. The door is open - we can access it at any time we want.
How to Access This Untapped Wisdom
Now - we are trained to believe that knowledge is separate from us, something we need to gain laboriously through study, research, experience or deliberation.
Yet real understanding, real wisdom has nothing to do with learning, or thinking, or with obtaining certain information.
We experience this at times of exams, when to our horror everything we studied months or years suddenly blanks from our mind. Then it gets through to us that merely cramming data into memory doesn't create comprehension. The mass of data stored in books and other media is at best raw material. At worst it gives us an illusion of knowing that forestalls all efforts to go for real comprehension.
We open our treasure-trove of wisdom not by any current learning method, nor by accumulating formal data, but by expanding our ability to understand, - by shifting attention to broader levels of comprehension.
| So far - so good. If it's that easy, why aren't we all enlightened, why don't we use this method all the time?
Well - there's one mechanism that blinds us to this kind of expansion: It's our tendency to accept only those insights and information that fit our ideas how this world works - and to reject everything else.
Out of the billions of stimuli that constantly bombard our senses and mind, we reject everything that does not suit our ideas. We subconsciously blank out everything beyond what we deem possible.
Take the idea of a limited flat earth. For centuries it blocked the discovery of new continents (America, Australia). The narrow circle drawn around the known lands forestalled all thoughts that something else might even exist.
Yet exactly these types of concepts are active in us NOW. And in precisely the same way they prevent the discovery of the unknown continents within us.
Our mental filters prevent that even a tendency towards something new arises in the first place. They stop us from perceiving entire parts of reality, - parts that certainly exist, but never reach our attention.
To become aware of these restrictive ideas
and to discard them
is the first part of the challenge.
To open our mind for new concepts
and to explore them in our life is the second part.
| Opening ourselves to new concepts is far harder than we think. It does not mean to kindly listen to new ideas, consider them sympathetically and then - like a benevolent judge - decide whether to accept them or not.
To open ourselves to new ideas and concepts means
- to not instantly oppose new, uncomfortable ideas - before they even have a chance to influence us
- to swallow our pride when someone we deem beneath our status presents a better idea than we had
- to overcome the complacency that makes us cling to outdated concepts - and then to discard these concepts
- even if all this takes energy, makes us feel uncomfortable, and requires a complete re-thinking of our world.
It's Easy to Find the Starting Points
Whenever (new) concepts or ideas provoke strong passionate feelings within us - irritation, anger, repulsion, spite, or the passionate, aggressive defense of our entrenched ideas, - then it is worth the effort to examine these (new) ideas more closely. Exactly these passionate emotions chain us to old concepts, - and thus bar us from experiencing anything new.
And even if giving up opinions and positions we resolutely committed ourselves to may hurt our pride and makes us feel awkward or embarrassed, this process unfailingly guides us to ever deeper answers, - it is the path that leads outside the narrow circle of our known life.
It's NOT relevant to prove that we are right.
What's relevant is TO ADVANCE.
We never access deeper levels of insight if we expect or demand that these new levels agree with old concepts we are familiar with.
The Moment We Gain Access
we experience sudden, intense understanding. With crystal clarity we recognize what blocked our consciousness just seconds ago. It feels as if we step into the light, are finally able to see. Vast freedom floods our heart, - we are electrified by insights eluding us before.
No physical condition changed, yet our outlook is completely altered. We make out new paths, detect new meanings, cast dread and worry from our heart. A sense of future expansion rises within us, - and an excited certainty that further, deeper insights will also be revealed.
This type of inner comprehension requires no prior knowledge, no special training or ritual. It rises naturally as we remove the inner blocks that barred us from perceiving it. Once we stop clinging to restrictive concepts, comprehension automatically expands.
The answers we get from within are highly personal. Everyone perceives his life's themes in an entirely individual, original way. Thus insights can hardly ever be generalized or cast into rules that may apply to all. What is enlightening to one person may make others only shrug.
| Our Intuitive Channel | [TOP] |
Now - we are programmed to accept as 'real', as relevant only what we perceive with our senses, - we deeply suspect knowledge arising from within.
We distrust insights that bypass accepted, time-honored paths like schools or books, or were not certified by 'higher' authorities like science, religion etc.
And we take us for logical beings who think and plan and analyze before we commit ourselves to action. Intuition is something we wouldn't use to steer our life with.
Yet our life is far less rational than we believe. In daily life we use fantastic mechanisms we hardly ever are aware of: - With lightning speed we judge extremely complex, multi-layered situations for which intellectual analysis would be by far too slow. We handle this ability with dreamlike certainty, though mostly entirely unaware how complex this really is.
A simple example: We want to cross a street. A car approaches that intersects our intended path. In one brief moment - before we either step onto the road or not - we judge the totality of the situation in all its multiplicity.
We register the car's speed, width of the street and the driver's leeway to avoid us. We take in visibility, road condition and if the car's velocity would be too fast for all these factors.
We assess our strength to safely reach the other side - and also our capacity to speed up should we have misjudged. We consider whether we need to cross before the car, i.e. how far we may be pressed by time, - an assessment that opens even more intricate psychological dimensions.
All this and much more we take in within the fraction of a second, weigh it against each other and decide with lightning speed and dreamlike surety. Certainly - some get it wrong, - but we definitely succeeded in reaching here and now, and this tells us how expertly we operate this nearly supernatural ability.
So - since we already use this fast, intuitive channel with great proficiency, why not do it more consciously? - Why not using our inner knowledge with the same confidence, speed and precision with which we cross a street, adjust our tactics in a heated discussion, and handle a multitude of other complex situations.
| What Meaning We See in Life Depends on What Stage We Currently Focus On | [TOP] |
STAGE 1
almost always presents us one single, highly personal motive as the main theme towards which we orient our life - career, providing for old age, increase of status, gaining the love of another person, building a house etc.
In STAGE 2 to 8
we recognize more and more that our character is built by us experiencing a whole variety of themes.
In STAGE 9 to 13
we depart from themes that are limited by individual perception and turn our awareness towards far broader comprehension.
In STAGE 14
we shed our last individually focused orientation - to recognize (beyond this stage) that our personality is far more majestic than the entirety of this currently perceived universe.
| - Direct ATTENTION towards your flash-insights !
This is THE central method to stabilize access to inner wisdom.
As trivial as this may sound, as important it is.
Without directing attention towards new, unknown experiences, we'll never leave the limits of our current life.
- Accept your insights as YOUR VERY OWN ACHIEVEMENT!
All insight we have is entirely our own. No teacher or guru, no religion or philosophy may ever claim to have caused it.
All our insights originate only within ourselves, - from our strife and effort to remove barriers that blocked our perception, - from our courage with which we reach for deeper levels. No outside agency or person can ever bring about this our very own personal comprehension.
So give yourself the credit you deserve. Don't attribute your growing wisdom to any outside agency.
Never think that you are small and that all greatness in your life just has to come from somewhere else.
- Opening your inner treasure-trove is an intuitive process. Don't interrupt it by analyzing it while it happens.
To analyze new experiences certainly has value, but do it after you fully explored your insights.
- The longer inner perception lasts, the clearer and deeper gets our comprehension. We intensify our access
- by acting on our insights
- by concluding restrictive themes of life
- by breaking away from people who steal our energy or divert attention towards trivial issues
- by getting rid of objects whose maintenance costs too much time or effort etc.
- Deeper insight may also get triggered
- by shocks, accidents, deep disappointments, intense love, great pain etc. which shake us from our hypnotic envelope. - This often presents a radically new perspective on life's real purpose.
- when we meet people who focus on higher stages.
Next: - CHALLENGE 2 - Error / Confusion
Author: Hermann Kuhn
Book-Title: 'Unlimited Horizons'
ISBN: 978-3-9811466-9-1
Copyright 2008 Crosswind Publishing, Wunstorf, Germany
Available in pdf-format at DOWNLOADS
www.unlimited-horizons.de
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