Stage 4 - First Clarity



Theme:

  • Directing our THOUGHTS towards freedom
  • First clear insight how reality works

Duration:

  • PHASE 1 - 1 sec to max. 48 min
  • PHASE 2 - limited duration
  • PHASE 3 - unlimited duration

 


Our first experience of  STAGE  4  feels as if we suddenly wake up from a deep day-dream the hustle-bustle of life permanently weaves around our awareness.

    These are brief, delightful flashes of clarity, during which our focus spontaneously shifts to the world OUTSIDE the dense hypnotic envelope of STAGE 1.

    During these flashes we momentarily experience the FIRST PHASE of STAGE 4.

    Unfortunately these flashes are highly fleeting. After a brief second we lose our grip on this level and fall back to the familiar worry- and desire-driven cocoon of STAGE 1.



 

How to Stabilize This Fleeting Experience

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Nobody ever told us how to interpret these fleeting flashes. So we usually rub our eyes, choose to ignore them and continue with our regular activities as if they never happened.

    As long as we keep ignoring these moments of awakening they will continue to be fleeting and only leave a vague memory.

    Yet once we start to focus on these insights as they occur, they soon lose their transitory character. They first expand to several seconds, then to minutes.

    Eventually we exceed the maximum time we can stay in this first phase and automatically advance to PHASE 2. This usually happens three to six months after we began to direct attention towards these flashes of awakening.



 

STAGE 4 - PHASE 2 - Getting Used to Clarity

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In this second phase all cravings, dreads, preoccupations and prejudices that trapped us on lower stages gradually cease to engage our attention. As we stop refueling these yearnings with energy and attention, - they consequently stop influencing us. This automatically lengthens the periods during which we are free from the hypnotic envelope that dulls us on STAGE 1.


Sporadic Setbacks
Yet some desires and dreads still linger on within us. Once they activate, they pull us down to STAGE 1. We thus lose our newfound clarity from time to time.

    We then easily forget the clarity of STAGE 4 or think it irrelevant, and get fully entangled in ceaseless action and overwhelming emotions again. This entanglement may last for long periods.

    Yet we have the power to shorten or to prevent this renewed preoccupation. As we get pulled back to STAGE 1, we now begin to perceive the strange indecision and ambivalence of STAGE 3. If at this time we make a conscious effort to regain the clarity of STAGE 4, we create a momentum that ultimately will shift our focus permanently to STAGE 4 - irrespective whether each single effort is successful or not.

    Eventually our interest in the hypnotic density of the lower stages dissolves completely and we enter the third phase of STAGE 4.



 

STAGE 4 - PHASE 3 - Stability

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Once we reach this stable phase of STAGE 4, we are forever free of the hypnotic envelope that so many times compulsively turned our life into undesired, uncomfortable directions. Now none of the dense emotions of STAGE 1 attract us strongly enough to make us lose our clarity of perception.

    Any remaining attachment to the dense themes of STAGE 1, 2 or 3 dissipate in this third phase without manifesting much of an effect.

    From now on we NEVER AGAIN fall down to Stage 1 to 3. 



The Gradual Dawning of PHASE 3
No special experience marks our transition from PHASE 2 to PHASE 3. Since we already experienced long stretches of inner clarity towards the end of PHASE 2, we barely notice that we entirely ceased to fall back to STAGE 1.

    Yet during this almost imperceptible transition our impartial self within awakens, the 'silver lining of awareness at the horizon of our consciousness never goes out again' - from now on inner clarity stays with us forever.

    The more we listen to this awakening part of ourselves, and the more we transform our new insights into action, the faster we progress to higher stages.



One Year to the Stability of PHASE 3

Most people reach this stable phase in ten to twelve months. How long it takes in one specific case depends on the strength of the desire to explore higher levels and how much energy we invest to really experience this.



 

The Static Character of STAGE 4

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The stable third phase of STAGE 4 is highly static. Here we get easily trapped in a complacency that blocks all access to higher levels.

    This often manifests
  • as smug, self-satisfied contentment with the continuity with which we seem to grow
  • as the stubborn conviction that we are progressing well on our path to real sovereignty
  • as a preference for ritual and (spiritual) techniques instead of investing energy in gaining real understanding
  • as a tendency to lean back in a supposedly 'detached' way and to observe, - rather than actively shaping our life along the new possibilities at our disposal now and facing the corresponding (possibly uncomfortable) challenges
  • as a reluctance to define real higher goals for us, and
  • as an adherence to well-known, established paths instead of actively and intelligently confronting inner and outer conflicts

Yet in reality all this is stagnancy. What is lacking are the sweeping breakthroughs, the dynamic opening of higher stages, the distinct transition to superior dimensions of our being.

    We know precisely what emotions and activities we need to change to progress further, yet we DECLINE to transfer these insights into ACTION. - And this exactly holds us back.

    Without raising this extra energy, we never gain STAGE 5.



 

Practical Tips

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  • Directing attention towards flash-insights means to observe them with special alertness while they occur, - and to value them as genuine insights into STAGE 4.

  • This soon causes the contrast between our flashes of STAGE 4 and the hypnotic envelope of STAGE 1 to become less pronounced. We get a feeling as if our insights become weaker and occur less often.

        Yet this is what really happens: - Our focus is shifting into a higher mode of operation and begins to accept this as its normal state. Once we get used to our new clarity, the contrast between STAGE 1 and 4 diminishes.

        When this begins to happen, we thus shouldn't continue to expect the 'ecstatic' feeling that up to now accompanied our insights into STAGE 4, but to shift focus to the clarity of the higher stage instead.

  • From STAGE 4 onwards violent emotions like rage, arrogance, greed etc. are unable to overwhelm us completely. Yet at times their lesser intensities still considerably narrow our vision of life.

  • Though we experience a pronouncedly different mode of functioning, we still doubt from time to time whether higher perception exists at all. - Simply ignore this doubt.



 

How to Proceed to STAGE 5

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ACTIVITY is the key that opens access to further (broader) regions. The leaden stagnation of the third phase of STAGE 4 breaks up automatically when we act on our insights of what needs changing.



Next: - STAGE 5 - First Focused Activities


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