Tag: Enlightenment

The Ego-Consciousness

On By Marjorie HilliardIn Articles and Excerpts, Energy Enlightenment Book Excerpts

(excerpt  from Energy Enlightenment – Do you know the way home, pages 51 – 58)

One afternoon I was working in my garden and all of a sudden these words started to pour into my head: 

What if Adam and Eve aren’t about the beginning of our existence?  What if Adam and Eve represent an alternate phase of existence, a time when the spiritual aspect was separate from the intellectual aspect of existence?  As divine beings who perfectly combined intellect and spirit, they lived in love, peace and perfect balance. In an effort to explore and experience mankind’s intellectual aspect, the being was separated into two—spiritual and intellectual. After experiencing life through the intellectual aspect, emotions such as fear and anger were realized. This resulted in an imbalanced and alone state of being. This imbalance and resulting negative emotions were uncomfortable and a desire to return to a loving, peaceful, perfect balanced aspect was felt.  So began our journey back home.

We attempted to regain the spiritual aspect by using our divine ability to manifest and we started to create material things which we thought would comfort us, help us to find our spiritual side. We thought the material things worked but found they were only illusions which could fade away as quickly as we manifested them so we manifested more and more always in an attempt to bring us back to love and happiness. After awhile we began to forget why we were creating material things and started to focus on gaining power through material gain.

What I learned from these words was that we made a conscious decision to live through our physical senses. I believe we simply have forgotten that we are also Divine, the essence of God, and it is now that part of us calling, asking to be a part of our lives again. It is the yearning we feel in the pit of our stomachs. We have surrendered to living and experiencing our lives through the physical body’s limited senses. I like to refer to the experience of living our lives through the limitations of our senses as the Ego Consciousness. When we are in our Ego Consciousness we are dependent on one or more of the five human senses to tell us what we are experiencing. This is very valuable in our growth and expansion but it becomes a huge danger if we fail to recognize our senses as tools and nothing more. When we are unaware, or when we simply allow our senses to dictate our experiences and perceptions, we are not able to see the truth. When we are unable to see the truth, a conflict occurs. This conflict results in judgments which lead to anger and fear. The anger and fear fuel our emotional senses and the circle is complete; the Ego Consciousness is no longer a tool but the dominate force within our lives. Don Miguel Ruiz has a wonderful passage in his book, The Voice of Knowledge (2004, pg.18-19), where he quotes his grandfather as saying, 

“You know, most people around the world believe that there is a great conflict in the universe, a conflict between good and evil.  Well, this is not true. It’s true that there is a conflict, but the conflict only exists in the human mind, not in the universe. It’s not true for the plants or the animals. It’s not true for the stars or the trees, or for the rest of nature. It’s only true for humans. And the conflict in the human mind is not really between good and evil. The real conflict in our mind is between the truth and what is not the truth, between the truth and lies. Good and evil are just the result of that conflict. The result of believing in the truth is goodness, love, happiness. When you live your life in truth, you feel good, and your life is wonderful. The result of believing in lies and defending those lies creates what you call evil; it creates fanaticism. Believing in lies creates all of the injustice, all of the violence and abuse, all of the suffering, not only in society but also in the individual. The universe is as simple as it is or it is not, but humans complicate everything.”

We have never really separated from God, it just feels that way when we choose to experience and perceive our lives through the Ego Consciousness. Our Higher Consciousness is still present within us. It just isn’t utilized as much as the Ego Consciousness. 

I have often been asked to explain how to know when you are thinking and experiencing life through the Ego Consciousness. The answer is simple, but truly living it is not. How can you tell whether you are living through your Ego Consciousness?  Ask yourself, “Is this how God would experience this?”  If you are having negative emotions and are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, scared, sad, or jealous, you are thinking and experiencing your life through Ego Consciousness. It is important to remember we are human and therefore will switch back and forth between the Ego Consciousness and Higher Consciousness. Just be aware and don’t beat yourself up or judge someone else if you see the Ego Consciousness taking the dominant role. 

There is a wonderful book written by Gary Renard called The Disappearance of the Universe that talks in great detail about life and death and where our true reality exists. Gary talks about our life and death as if it were a revolving door. As I read his book, I could picture myself sitting in a very comfortable, overstuffed chair with a large ottoman for my feet. In my lap is a big bowl of buttery popcorn and a huge plasma screen TV perched on the wall. The movie playing details the stories of my lives. I sit there watching each of my lives wondering when I am going to “get” that I never really separated from God. It is all an illusion. However, it is this current life where I throw up my hands and say, “Alright, I have had enough … show me the way home.”  It is a rather interesting perspective on the meaning of our lives and contains many clues to Energy Enlightenment. A quote from the book is:

“…you don’t have to change anybody’s mind and you don’t have to change your world. All you have to do is change your mind about the world…..”

-The Disappearance of the Universe written by Gary R. Renard, 2002, pg. 174

I think this is a really profound statement. It made me realize that if I stopped running around trying to change the world and simply focused just on me, the world WOULD change. I perceive the world as I experience it through my senses and not as it is through God. What if everybody took the personal responsibility to change only them self?  How incredible the shift would be. We strive to bring about peace and harmony yet haven’t realized it within ourselves. We expect others to give us what they do not own. It is not possible to give what you do not know you have. I cannot demand peace and happiness in others, but I can deliver it to myself. And by doing so I make a positive contribution to the world energy as a whole. My inner peace has to come BEFORE the outer peace can be achieved. An interesting paradigm shift. It is all about perspective, and I want to share God’s perspective. 

When I experience life through my five human senses, my Ego Consciousness, I see the world as limited. There is only so much money, food, power, happiness etc. to go around. I struggle for power and need others to see things the way I do for fear of being wrong. I found out that being controlled or controlling someone is nothing more than an illusion. As a Spiritual Being, I am the only one who can control what I think and how I feel. Once I completely understand this there will be no need to control anyone. I will become so at peace that the need to control anything in the world around me will become unnecessary……… 

 

Talking to My Angels

On By Marjorie HilliardIn Articles and Excerpts, Energy Enlightenment Book Excerpts

(excerpt from Energy Enlightenment.  Do you know the way home?  Chapter Six – Talking to My Angels, pages 97 – 104)

……I remember a particular guided meditation in which I was walking down a path and up to a large gate. In my meditation, the path was located in what looked like a very old, small and quaint village. The buildings were made of stone and the path was a dirt road traveling through the center of town. It was always warm and sunny and people stood around watching me walk down the dusty dirt path to a set of gigantic metal gates.

Door Handle

It was suggested in the meditation that I visualize myself jumping up to grab the door lock so that I could unlock the gate and enter the garden beyond. Each time I would see myself jumping as high as I could but not reaching the lock. This is where the meditation would end. I was stuck. It was an interesting meditation and one would wonder why I would follow a suggestion which never led to a successful conclusion. My only answer is that there was something about it that I did not see as a failure. And my inner guidance suggested I stay with it.

About the third or fourth time I walked this path, Jesus approached me and suggested that I expand my being and simply walk over the gate. Well, that wasn’t an idea I had thought of. I suppose my Angels were waiting to see if I would figure it out for myself, and when I didn’t they came forward to offer help.

Jesus has been my friend and mentor for years, and it was wonderful when His vibration came forward in this case to help me out. That was my first experience in playing with expansion of my being. It was delightful and very helpful! Thank you, Jesus! In another instance of using this same guided meditation, I was about to approach the gates and prepare to expand, and Jesus approached me again and asked whether I was curious as to what was on either side of the gate. Well, that question had never occurred to me. For a brief moment I laughed at how maybe I wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack. I thought about His question and followed as He directed me to the right side of the gate. To my surprise, the gates were simply an illusion that anything was blocking my path. What I saw to the right of the gates was another path that led around them with no difficulty. Once again, thank you, Jesus, for showing me the way.

I believe the purpose for my staying with the meditation was to recognize that the gates were an illusion. The gates simply represented the limitations I place on myself, and symbolized how easy it is to ignore the possibilities that are always available……….

Meditation is one of my favorite ways to talk with my Angels.  It often allows me an opportunity to satisfy the human need for visual confirmation while having a conversation with my Angels.  Most of the time, the conversation is unspoken which really removes a huge barrier that can be present when communicating with words.  Our spoken language is quite limited in capturing all the nuances of emotion and meaning.  When communicating with my Angels, I am better able to “feel” the messages as well as “hear” it in my mind.

Besides meditation, there are many ways to receive messages and guidance from Angels.  Sometimes you can actually hear a voice, other times it may be an inner voice, a knowing, a visual clue or a synchronicity.  I also find that my Angels will talk to me through books and, of course, in my dreams.

One thing I have found to be certain is that no matter what form divine messages and guidance are received in, those messages are always loving and make me feel good.  I completely trust my Angels and know they are here to guide me. They nurture and support me and would never say or suggest anything that is not loving and kind.  Admittedly I don’t always like what the Angels are saying, because the message may require me to take action or something I may not want to act upon.  For instance, my Angels recently suggested I avoid caffeine which means chocolate, my favorite food of all time.  The caffeine was clouding my ability to communicate with them…………………..

In contrast, when Ego Consciousness is speaking, I may often feel nervous, anxious, fearful, or judgmental.  The bottom line is, Angels don’t conceive of limitations or failure. They only know success, happiness, and joy. There is no competition or rivalry between them. Their goal is to support and guide. My Angels have never suggested I do anything that would harm me or others in any way. They are practical, firm, and can be quite funny……..

My Angels showed how they can be firm yet funny when my husband and I were returning our rental car when we were vacationing overseas. We had a choice of returning the car to the train station, which was downtown and close the hotel we would be staying in, or to the Rome airport. Everyone we knew had advised us against driving downtown in Rome, saying it was difficult and confusing. But, in spite of this advice, our preference was to go downtown to the train station, since it would mean a short 10 minute cab ride back to our hotel as opposed to a 45 minute ride back from the airport.

It was raining very heavily and driving was difficult. We decided to ask the Angels to stop the rain long enough for us to get to the airport car rental agency safely. Well, it DID stop raining. However, my husband and I started getting braver about driving in downtown Rome and just as we started to discuss changing our destination to the train station it immediately started to rain again. We both laughed and said, “okay, we will go to the airport as planned.” The rain stopped immediately and we arrived at the airport car rental agency safely. No sooner had we arrived than it began raining heavily again and stayed that way for most of the evening. Later we found out for ourselves just how difficult it would have been to attempt driving in downtown Rome. Going to the airport was a much better experience, certainly safer, and without question was the course recommended by our Angels!………

In the Beginning

On By Marjorie HilliardIn Articles and Excerpts, Energy Enlightenment Book Excerpts

(excerpt from Energy Enlightenment – Do you know the way home?  by Marjorie Hilliard, 2006, pg. 13-17)

………I spent the first forty-plus years of my life with a persistent feeling something just wasn’t right. I was sure I had forgotten something but just couldn’t quite figure out what it was.  Since you are reading this book it is very likely you know exactly what I am talking about.  It is kind of like going on a trip and wondering if you left the iron on, or if you remembered to turn off the sprinkler in the garden. We have all had that type of feeling: you know something is wrong but you just can’t quite put your finger on it.  I knew it was important for me to remember.  My joy depended on it somehow.  It was this kind of persistent feeling that urged me into the first phase of awakening: realization that there is more to my life than what I had been experiencing.  I wasn’t sure exactly what awakening meant at the time.  But I knew I wanted to find out.

One of the first things I found out is there are other ways to perceive my life.  It is like the burning building story.  If you place four different people at different corners of a burning building, you will get four different stories of how the building burned–which means we all have the ability to see our lives from various points of view.  This means we have choices.  The two different points of view I would like to discuss concern our Ego Consciousness and our Higher Consciousness.

Our Ego Consciousness consists of our human beliefs and perceptions as derived through a series of filters.  These filters include human emotions and attitudes.  It is our judgmental side.  When we observe our world through our Ego Consciousness, we judge things to be good or bad, safe or harmful, prosperous or poor.  I think you get the picture.  Our Ego Consciousness deals in duality.  For every positive there is a negative.  Beliefs and thoughts that originate from our Ego Consciousness tend to be fearful, negative, judgmental, critical, and so forth.  There is a statement in A Course in Miracles (Foundation for Inner Peace, 1975, p. 136) that talks about what it is like to perceive and experience our world through the Ego Consciousness:

Grace is the natural state of every Son of God.  When he is not in a state of grace, he is out of his natural environment and does not function well. 

Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment that he has made.  He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can

he adapt it to him.  There is no point in trying.  A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God.  That is the only environment in which

he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs.  It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is

beyond anything he can make.

As with anything, there are a number of ways one can interpret this saying.  My interpretation is that each of us creates our world through our Ego Consciousness perceptions and then we wonder why we’re so unhappy.  We try to fit into our world and we try to make our world fit us but neither way has a satisfactory outcome.  I believe in order to find true joy we need to perceive and experience our world through our Higher Consciousness.

When we see the world or ourselves through our Ego Consciousness we are unable to clearly see the absolute joy and beauty surrounding us. I like to visualize the Ego Consciousness as the seed pod that contains the beautiful creation within.  It has a purpose, but if the seed within never breaks through this barrier it will never experience its own beauty nor the absolute joy that exists in the world around it.

Higher Consciousness is a term used to describe your spiritual side.  It is another way of expressing the state of being you achieve when you view life through a higher connection to the Universe.  When you experience life through a higher connection, you become more aware of the abundant joy and beauty that already exists.  One way to experience this concept is through nature.  Nature knows no boundaries or lack of wealth.  It is non-judgmental, unlimited in abundance, and constantly expressing beauty.  Another good way to understand this concept better is to ask yourself a simple question; “How would God see or view this?”

The difference between the Ego Consciousness and the Higher Consciousness is this: duality does not exist in Higher Consciousness.  In your Higher Consciousness you are not creating your world as you do when living life through your Ego Consciousness.  You do not need to judge things as good or bad, safe or harmful, prosperous or poor.  You are simply removing your outer shell and observing the world that already is.

I decided, and am now convinced, the way home was through seeing and experiencing my world through my Higher Consciousness.  My task was to find a way to move out of fear-based thoughts and beliefs and into my Higher Consciousness.  This proved to be a very difficult task…………….