Stage 1 - Entanglement



Theme:

  • Deeply absorbed by emotions, events, activity
  • Subject to violent emotional storms


Duration:

  • unlimited

 


STAGE  1  presents us an unending chain of situations we are deeply involved in. Utterly captivated by activities we initiate and by events the world confronts us with, we feel an almost inescapable compulsion to react to these events.

    We spontaneously evaluate situations either as positive (good), if they bring us pleasure, - negative (bad), if they bring us distress, - or as irrelevant, if they don't trigger feelings.

    Typical for this stage are unexpected, abrupt swings from highly positive to intensely negative feelings - and vice versa.

    While in this stage we are deeply convinced to be in complete control of our life. But a closer and deeper look reveals a drastically different picture:

  • How often do we feel victimized by events we hardly are able to bear, let alone control?
  • How often are we really satisfied with our current situa­tion and by the things we do and feel - and how long does this satisfaction usually last?
  • How often do our emotions tumble us from highest happi­ness to deepest misery (and vice versa) in one single second without us having any influence on this process?
  • How often is our attention arbitrarily drifting from object to object against our will - like a butterfly in the wind?
  • How often do we become so deeply involved in one particular idea, emotion or event that we cease to notice almost all the world outside this dense envelope?
  • How often do we experience that any stability we worked so hard to achieve either breaks down in the end, - or solidifies our life so thoroughly that nothing is capable of moving us any more?


 

A Dense Cocoon Surrounds Us

[TOP]
We may feel perfectly normal, clear and in command in this environment, - but this is merely due to the fact that we neither know more gratifying and less arbitrary patterns of life nor even deem them possible.


We identify completely with the limited portion
of our conscious­ness we are familiar with.

   
    Hardly ever do we become aware that we live in a cocoon of dense emotions which e.g. manifests in form of the 'endless running commentary' with which our mind incessantly accompa­nies the banalities of daily life. We only need to recall our continuous inner comments on other drivers' styles when we steer our car. We only need to remember social meetings where we can hardly wait to talk of our own experiences - without ever hearing what others say.

    Intense shocks sometimes alert us to this condition, but we have no idea how to extract our attention from this almost hypnotic state. None of the goals we pursue on this level lead to the stable experience of higher stages.

    All convictions, opinions and viewpoint, all philosophies and belief systems we found our life on - irrespective if we deve­l­o­ped them on our own or accepted them from others - retain us on this stage. Even if presented with information that might lead out of this, we either are incapable of recognizing it, take it for false, reject it because it irritates us, or deem our current ideas far superior.


    Yet it is easy to find the way out of this stage. We only need to grasp growth-opportunities we previously rejected. We only need to courageously try out new avenues that make us break out of the known circle of our life. We only need to physically manifest all those ideas we only dreamt about so far.

    Without this sense of adventure we remain subjected to the inertia, the arbitrariness and the emotional chaos of Stage 1 till our life ends.



 

How to Shift to a Higher Stage

[TOP]
Would it be known how easy it is to permanently shift focus to higher stages, far more would go for it. EVERYONE has this ability.

    There is no precondition, no need for outside guidance or assistance, no special knowledge, abilities, locations or guru to seek out, no preparation other than playfully acting on this basic information. The more we progress, the more we discover how it works. Everything we'll ever need for this endeavor already is within us. 


This is how it works:

We all experience brief, intense moments in which our con­scious­ness all of a sudden shifts to a radically different mode of perception.

    These are moments of extraordinary clarity during which we wake up from the constant hustle-bustle that sur­rounds us. These moments are very brief, but highly agreeable and we usually also remember that we experienced them three to six weeks before as well.

    Nobody ever told us how to interpret these fleeting flashes, and so we rub our eyes, choose to ignore them and continue with our usual activities as if they never occurred.

    Yet these moments are very precious. They are brief, spon­ta­neous excursions of our consciousness into Stage 4. They give us a feeling how the extraordinary clarity of higher stages tastes like. They provide a reference how to identify future occurrences of this experience.

    How to make these moments more permanent?

    Simple -


OUR LIFE IS ONLY
WHERE OUR ATTENTION IS


    Whatever we focus on, that part of our life becomes vivid.

    We all know this mechanism well. When we think of a task we intensely dislike, or a person we deeply love, that focus easily engages our entire being.

    Exactly this same mechanism we can also use to deliberately activate higher functions of our awareness.

    Once we start directing attention towards our moments of awakening as they occur, the higher stage shifts to the forefront of our awareness - as does any other theme of life that gets attention.

    Merely DIRECTING ATTENTION opens the door to new modes of operation of our consciousness.

    This simple mechanism is entirely sufficient to stimulate hitherto unknown abilities within us.



 

Directly to Stage 4

[TOP]
In Stage 1 we spontaneously rise to a higher stage. These brief excur­sions occur naturally every three to six weeks; we don't need to stimulate them by any particular activity. The fre­quency and duration of these insights increase, once we direct attention towards them.

    Some may think to never have flash-insights. But often it is merely the label we assign these sudden 'bizarre' occur­rences that prevents us from recognizing them, - we don't even know what to call them. Since nobody ever talks about these instan­ces, we naturally assume that others also do not experience them. Therefore we too do not talk about them and thus neglect to accept them as part of our life.

    Yet everyone experiences these flashes. Give yourself two months to watch out for them, - to watch out for extra­ordi­nary, short-lived happenings in mind and perception. Being aware that moments like this occur, makes it far easier to identify them.

    When leaving Stage 1 (in our moments of extraordinary clarity), we directly experience Stage 4 without passing Stage 2 and 3.



 

Is It Dangerous To Shift Awareness ?

[TOP]
One of the greatest barriers to experiencing higher functions of our consciousness is worry that this might destabilize life as we know it.

    Now - EVERYTHING unfamiliar tends to trigger apprehension within us, whether it's a new job, an unfamiliar road, or the first approach to someone we fell in love with.

    Thus there's nothing unusual in feeling uneasy with activa­ting new functions of consciousness. We simply are unfamiliar with our higher abilities. We simply don't know where this process may lead us.

    Yet shifting awareness is an entirely normal experience:

  • Just remember being a child, and then consider what you are now, - didn't you enormously enlarge your inner and outer scope of life?

        From childhood onward our consciousness con­tinuously expanded to embrace ever broader compre­hen­sion. The child we once were couldn't even imagine the abili­ties we would command as an adult.

        And the child continues to exist within us; - its experi­ences constitute a small, but indispensable part of our present awareness.

  • Just remember falling asleep. As dreams start, our awareness drifts into a totally different mode. We sud­denly are able to fly, manifest things out of thin air, and expertly handle the most extraordinary abilities of ours, - all without a bit of anxiety.

        But - most important - when shifting into a dream, we never lose our identity, our feeling of 'I', our sense of who we are, and the feeling of acting sensibly within our current (dream-)context.



 

We NEVER Lose Our Identity

[TOP]
When we consciously shift focus to a higher mode, exactly the same thing happens. Our consciousness soon embraces the new state without us ever losing identity or our sense of 'I'.

    Higher dimensions of consciousness are innate to every­one. The higher we go, the more we activate these inborn abilities and the better we can steer our life. Our identity never dissolves in this process. On the contrary - it expands into the magnificent being we deeply sense within us.


    ( If you read this the first time, it is recommended to continue with STAGE 4 - First Clarity  now. Otherwise - )


Next: - STAGE 2 - Downfall


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