Enlightenment v. Ascension

Just reposting this as is, from The 2012 Scenario. Amazing things are coming!

What is the Difference Between Enlightenment and Ascension?

2012 August 31

Posted by Steve Beckow

A listener of InLight Radio has asked to have the differences between Ascension and enlightenment clarified. Please allow me to do that here.

There is no difference per se between ascension as a generic process and enlightenment or illumination.

The Ascension we’re going through on Dec. 21, 2012 (or earlier) is an enlightenment. However it has some extra features about it that make it different from the generic process of enlightenment associated with it, that persuade me to call it “enlightenment plus” and I’ll get to those differences below.

By the same token there are many levels of enlightenment stretching all the way back to the final mergence with God. That comes to us so many lifetimes down the road that we have no conception of that event.

In just the Third-Dimensional range, there are at least four stages of enlightenment: (1) spiritual awakening, which occurs when the kundalini reaches the fourth-chakra, (2) savikalpa samadhi, when the kundalini reaches the sixth chakra, (3) Brahamjnana or God-Realization, seventh chakra, and (4) sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, spiritual heart or hridayam. We can have each of these enlightenment experiences and still remain in the Third Dimension.

But Ascension will mean that we leave the Third/Fourth Dimension of our physical and spirit lives and migrate to the Fifth Dimension. This is a difference between enlightenment per se and our present Ascension.

If we were on the spirit side of life, an ascension would involve the passage from one dimension to another. So when we pass from the Astral Plane (Fourth Dimension) to the Mental Plane (Fifth Dimension), we’re said to have ascended because we’ll shed our astral body for our mental body. But when we pass from the Middle Summerlands of the Astral Plane to the Higher Summerlands, we’re not said to have ascended because we retain our astral body.  Movement from one subplane to another does not involve ascension; movement from one plane or dimension to another does involve ascension.

That is why Shankara would say: “When all the five coverings are removed, the pure Atman [the Self or Christ] is revealed.” (1) By successive ascensions, we remove the five coverings or bodies associated with the previous plane or dimension until, well after the experience Shankara is referring to, all that is left is God Himself/Herself. We have uncovered or revealed God by successive ascensions.

In our Ascension on Dec. 21, 2012, we’ll ascend with the physical body, which is a first and new development in ascension. Because we will, we’ll need to raise the vibrations of that body gradually as it changes from carbon-based to crystalline-based so that it can exist in the higher vibrations of the Fifth Dimension. But in all ascensions on the spirit side of life, we would have simply shed the previous body.

But where our Ascension on 21/12/12 resembles all other ascensions is that we’ll pass from one plane or dimension to another; in this case, from the Third/Fourth Dimensions associated with our usual physical and spirit lives to the Fifth Dimension. So, because it represents a dimensional shift, we call it an ascension.

So, yes, it does involve a process of enlightenment. Whether that is the enlightenment associated with the seventh chakra, which is called Brahmajnana and does not result in a permanent heart opening or liberation from rebirth or the enlightenment associated with the spiritual heart or hridayam, known as sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, which does result in a permanent heart opening and liberation, I don’t know. I should probably ask Archangel Michael about that.

That’s my understanding. There’s no difference between Ascension and enlightenment in many respects. But our 21/12/12 Ascension is enlightenment plus, because in it we also get to take our physical bodies with us (renewed, of course), need not die, get to leave the Third Dimension for the Fifth (whereas in ordinary enlightenment we would not get to leave), etc.

Footnotes

(1) Shankara in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher lsherwood, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1975; c1947, 56. There are countless levels of enlightenment beyond the one Shankara is discussing here.

Meditation and found playing cards, Part One

I have, ever since the Sex and the City episode showing Carrie's new boyfriend Berger collecting playing cards he found on the street, been doing the same. Playing cards have a considerable graphic appeal, as well as the archetypal significance of the face cards. And the deck pattern-- the possibilities are endless. I have always been drawn to graphics--numbers~ letters~ geometric patterns. And I am a collector.....

I find it a curious thing that someone can lose a single playing card. Why just one card? At times I find a bunch scattered--that seems probable--and have even found a boxed deck--even more probable.

But it is the single ones--the scratched dirty mauled ones--that are most interesting. What does the appearance of a Jack of Clubs mean in one's life? Does finding a 2 of Hearts mean a love relationship is coming your way? I have thought that perhaps the universe was giving me a little message--but no message that I could surmise, came forth. Until today.

The Meditation

Today I meditated at lunch time. (I work alone). It was a guided meditation and it was deep and powerful. It actually brought me to tears several times. I reached a place of communion with what I have to describe as higher aspects of myself--one in a male form and one in female form. First the woman--with curly hair--and then the male, also with curls. As I approached them, I recognized them by feeling the overwhelmingly loving energy coming from them. First set of tears. The meditation guided you to be able to "climb" to that place whenever you needed to/wanted to and to take the light and love that you soaked up in that realm, back with you into your body and soul. Quite wondrous.

The next part of the meditation had you traveling to hang out with the ascended masters surrounding the planet in a ring or prism of light. I added my light to theirs and sent out love/light to those souls I saw below. I saw a vision of all the peoples of earth stopping what they were doing and looking up--rapt--a slow spreading of joy and release/unburdening. The planet was in quiet joyous awe. I saw my dad--so disillusioned with the world's corruption, smiling the clearest purest smile--released from that heaviness--my mom too--projecting her happiness through my father. Tears round two. My son even appeared--freed now from the pressures of life and able to compose music with real purpose. During the meditation my scalp tingled in several different spots, and I had waves of chills.WHEW!

The Cards

Wobbly, I left the office briefly feeling like I had not quite settled back into good old 3-d earth, when I came upon a smattering of playing cards in the parking lot next to the coffee shop. 10 cards in all I picked up. 

The turned over card is a Jack of Hearts.

I laid the cards out wondering what it meant. The three 2s caught my attention--I have been seeing 222 a lot in the last year or two. My high school jersey number was 22. And the number two figures prominently in my Human Design chart- particularly my Design sun location falls into gate 22 Line 2. This was getting interesting.

Then I decided to add the cards together giving the face cards the value of their natural progression J=11. The total is 64!! This rung me like a bell. Where to begin speaking of the significance of 64? 

On 64 

Wikipedia gives a good smattering. (Add 6 and 4 together you get 1 and 0--base 2 binary code--yes/no~ black/white~ on/off~yin/yang.)

There are 64 hexagrams in the I'Ching the oracular Book of Changes. The Hexagrams are symbols consisting of 6 lines--either broken or unbroken. The 6 lines of a hexagram are the sum of combining two trigrams. 

These eight trigrams were conceived as images of all that happens in heaven and on earth. At the same time, they were held to be in a state of continual transition, one changing into another, just as transition from one phenomenon to another is continually taking place in the physical world. Here we have the fundamental concept of the Book of Changes. The eight trigrams are symbols standing for changing transitional states; they are images that are constantly undergoing change. Attention centers not on things in their state of being -- as is chiefly the case in the Occident -- but upon their movements in change. The eight trigrams therefore are not representations of things as such but of their tendencies in movement. 

In Human Design--the 64 hexagrams became gates indicating the totality of genetic possibilities for human embodiment. Each gate has many (1080) sublevels and subdivisions providing for human differentiation. 

On 222

As it turns out, 222 is addressed within the hexagrams of the I'Ching. And also, of course in the Human Design system's Rave I'Ching.

The Rave I'Ching describes Gate 22 Line 2 this way:

Gate 22, Line 2

Charm school. The belief that style can mask nature. Sun exalted. The ability to successfully delude oneself and others. The possibility to attract others with an emotional style.
 
The I'Ching itself gives us this for Hexagram 22: 

GRACE has success.
In small matters
It is favorable to undertake something.

And for the second line:

Six in the second place means:
Lends grace to the beard on his chin.

The beard is not an independent thing; it moves only with the chin. The image therefore means that form is to be considered only as a result of attribute of content. The beard is a superfluous ornament. To devote care to it for its own sake, without regard for the inner content of which it is an ornament, would bespeak a certain vanity.

And an interpretation (and a useful website) here:

Take care to lend grace and dignity to small matters, while giving the weight of deep and careful consideration to matters of greater consequence. Though it should not be confused with true substance, an artistic flair can take one far in this world.

Hmmm. A message is taking form....

The Dragon

The cards I picked up turn out to be Bicycle Cards Dragon back design.

In Chinese astrology, 2012 is the year of the Dragon--a most auspicious year (as we know).

The Dragon is a legendary animal and it is symbol of the emperor in China. Since the Dragon is coated with mysterious color, Chinese consider that the dragon is unpredictable, untouchable and people cannot see its head and tail at the same time. Therefore, we can might see something unexpected happening in 2012.

A symbol of good fortune and intense power, this years dragon is the Water Dragon--water tempering the fire and creating a more balanced beast.

Stay tuned for Part Two--the interpretation.

The Soul's relationship to the Higher Self

I came across this video per a suggestion from Polona Somrak (Ascension Pioneers) on Facebook. There are two separate channelings (from July 30th, 2012) I believe--the first was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin brought forth by Dr. Richard Presser and the second half, by Carolyn Evers.

It is a most wonderfully explained phenomenon--how the Higher Self and Soul emerged from the Monad*, and how they interact. And what is our relationship as an embodied human being to our soul and higher self?

This video is well worth watching!

*The Monad is the totality of the soul as it was created by All That Is.

Multidimensional Creation

I just watched this short video from Graham Dewyea and it gives some wonderful advice about how to step into your creator shoes in these waxing days of human empowerment.

Please do pass this link along to your awakened friends. It is time we begin--with loving intention--to create a better world for ourselves and others.

I found Graham via InLight Radio's program An Hour With an Angel.  Graham produces this program, featuring Linda Dillon channeling Archangel Michael, Ashtar and others.

"from the Hole in the Universe on the right side of the heart"

This information speaks for itself--I can add nothing of note--except that I feel the words have divine inspiration. The author is Ute Posegga-Rudel and this is a link to Ute's blog: Messages from the realms of light


Dear Sisters, dear Brothers,

Ascension is one thing, Reality of what we Are, another.

Ascension suggests the idea, that we will be happier as soon as outer circumstances change, as soon as we experience as beings, identified with a body-mind, greater freedom and the end of “slavery” by those who have controlled us for Millenniums. Did they really, or did we allow to enslave ourselves?

Many say, they can’t wait anymore, they want to go “home”.

But what is home?

Is home a different place than this one here, which will then host a perhaps more refined body-mind? Is it another dimension, which looks different, “more” subtle, “more” perfect, “more” beautiful?

Is this what “makes”us happy? Can we really only be, Who we Are, by changing the environment?

The ancient teachings of enlightenment seem to be neglected and forgotten in these times where attention is on ascension, as if it would be about an escape, out of our situation, while there is a tendency to confirm to one another conditional “good-heartedness” as our best and foremost true essence.

I cannot help myself but ask deeper questions. Not only that but to explore and experience the truth of our being-ness on a radical level.

Yes, sometimes I feel that tiredness too, being in this world of endless repetitions of promises which are not kept. It is even now repeatedly pointed to the possibility that the powers that were, are still manipulating our timeline so that we seem to be captured in a loop-hole of finite time, appearing as infinite.

But then I remind myself that exactly this is the challenge to go beyond. What is shown to us through this is, how we identify ourselves with limitation, while we are unlimited beings, (not dimensional beings!) but eternal beings, beings of the Pure Radiance of Eternal Divine Consciousness and Love-Bliss-Light. How could it be that we then fall for the illusion of being incarcerated?

Is not earth so far a school to transcend this illusion and to remember who we really are, beyond any dimensionality? Did we not agree to forget, being a rule of this game of coming here?

And is it not, that we experience, what we believe is real? Is it not that we are here to learn about mind and go beyond?

I do not agree with the victim consciousness that blames the crazy controllers for all the misery we are experiencing! They only mirror our own believes and what we agreed to experience in this incarnation.

Ascension therefore is in the first place a growth in consciousness, and this can happen in every environment, even here and now, on still prison planet.

We can be free, we can experience the total freedom of our own True Nature, in the midst of all of this, and the more we do, the less can anything of this still odd world, touch us. Mainly, because it becomes less and less our reality.

I am not talking about a mindful experience of freedom, a kind of day-dreaming. This is about the literal experience of freedom, which is the freedom from the incarceration in the realms of mind, and which belongs to the domain of pure and mere feeling-awareness. It is not the conditional, even higher dimensional feeling we know in the middle station of the heart, in the middle of our chest. It is unconditional feeling-awareness, prior to this body-mind construct.

There is a portal in the right side of the heart to that Utter Freedom which is of a beauty and breath-taking purity that is far beyond any beauty of any dimension, low or high.

To enter this portal, requires to first withstand and endure the pains of the currencies of mind frequencies, which are like boomerangs returning to our own electrical brain, reflected back from the finite walls of the chambers of our imagined worlds, low or high! This is the painful struggle we must endure and observe, before we are able to enter this pristine and untouched realm of our own True Essence and Home!

We can enter this portal even in this prison world – and there is nothing to “ascend”, but it is the way “out”, the radical way out of any limitation we are dreaming, gross or subtle, and even causal ultimately.

Yes, our body-mind might be tired! But are we the body-mind? Do we want to do this to ourselves and please the controllers by making common cause with them? We don’t need to, not even now!

We cannot blame them, they are here to help us to go beyond our own limitations - by their sheer exaggeration. To find ourselves right here. Have there not been countless beings in all the eons of human life on earth that found the way out, inspite of this illusion?

And have all of a sudden, as we more closely understand the game, our spiritual muscles become weak as we consent now to blaming, attached to self-pity, while we are throwing the great spiritual tradition with its glorious and graceful secrets of liberation out of the window?

The Winds of Freshness and Eternity, the Happiness, blowing and flowering from there, where no mind is, from the Hole in the Universe on the right side of the heart, which is the Opening to our true Freedom, and Which is Source, - these Winds are always ready to sweep away all the false ideas and images we dream, while wandering the path of the search, in low worlds and in high worlds.

To wake up, there is no world like we know or imagine. There the dream in the dream ends. The Clarity is all-consuming there and it is only old habit to allow to be drawn back into the magic of the worlds. However, to know this Freedom makes us free, where ever we are, whatever the body-mind experiences, low or high. We must remember and not forget. It is there where True Love Shines.

With much love,

Ute