Transformation
If you are interested in becoming a truly mature human being, you must conduct yourself according to the highest values you know, all the time. It is part of being a mature human being to put in the effort of conducting yourself thusly. If you believe that the integration of your realization should just happen by itself or that it should be easy, you are not understanding what life is all about and you are behaving like an infant. To become a gracious, generous, respectful, loving, kind, and clear human being, you have to work at it. It is not going to simply happen. God is not going to do it for you. You have to put effort into it, minute by minute; otherwise you will not transform.
Diamond Heart Book IV, p. 49 • discuss »
Diamond Heart Book IV, p. 49 • discuss »
Until we directly experience spiritual transformation, we do not truly understand that this transformation involves such radical changes in our experience of ourselves and our world that it is not a matter of becoming a transformed individual; we recognize, rather, that the reality that is realized is something that cannot be limited by such notions as "individual" and "world." The very principles and categories of experience that we take to be incontrovertible truths are transformed. What goes through a radical transformation is specifically our view of what truly exists, and the mode of this existence. In other words, spiritual liberation is a matter of one's experience and perception moving to another dimension of existence that has its own perspective, and further, of this dimension becoming the centre and foundation of experience.
Facets of Unity • discuss »
Facets of Unity • discuss »
Searching for understanding, trying to seek out or resolve issues, pursuing states and trying to grasp them—all these activities are built on a lack of clarity about what understanding is. We often think that understanding is information in our minds. You may have information in your mind, but that is not what I call understanding. True understanding has to do with transformation. If there is no transformation at the moment of understanding, then there is no real understanding. Without transformation, understanding is just a mental activity, part of the seeking activity.
True understanding that arises on its own is simply your own essence touching your mind, or being in contact with the situation. The actual contact of Being with any situation, or with any part of your mind, is understanding. Insight or understanding are nothing but your being eating your experience, metabolizing it, including your inner experience. This is the process of transformation itself. Being comes into contact with a part of your personality, or with an experience, and in that contact between Being and that part of the personality or the experience, the experience or part of personality is absorbed into Being. That absorption is not just a mental thing, it is a real experience of transformation, a metamorphosis. And this metamorphosis, which is itself understanding, never leads to weakness, deficiency, or impoverishment. It always leads to greater capacity, greater strength, and greater maturity. what is maturity, if not the complete absorption and metabolization of your experience?
Diamond Heart Book IV, p. 28 • discuss »
Diamond Heart Book IV, p. 28 • discuss »
The transformation through which the inner journey takes the soul is not a change of her character, but a self-realization of true nature. This means one's field of consciousness ceases to be configured by ego structures, and becomes completely permeable to essential presence. One's identity ceases to be determined by one's history and becomes simple abiding in true nature. One's identity shifts dimensions, leaving that of historical content and abiding in timeless presence.
Inner Journey Home, p. 193 • discuss »
Inner Journey Home, p. 193 • discuss »
Our sense of self is transformed when it attains its essential nature, the ontological presence that is pure Being. No amount of psychological growth work is sufficient to bring this about because the psychological realm, as it is known in ordinary experience, is a distorted and incomplete experience of our interiority, since it is out of contact with Being. Psychological observation and processing are necessary for the work of transformation, but if this transformation is to become truly spiritual, we need access to the dimension of Being. Human beings typically live in a state of arrested development in which the psychological domain rules our consciousness. Reaching the fullness of our potential entails resuming our development, which leads beyond the psychological to the realm of Being or spirit.
Facets of Unity • discuss »
Facets of Unity • discuss »
A point does come during the inner journey when our transformation is so profound that we are unrecognizable to ourselves. It’s not that we don’t recognize what is happening; it’s that we realize that what is happening is not familiar. This can be disconcerting, but it is also freeing. We are no longer an extension of how we felt, what we did, how we behaved. Sometimes the change is so fundamental that we don’t just feel like a different person—we don’t remember ourselves as a person at all! We experience ourselves as just a mass of light that has taken the shape of a person for a while. There is an indescribable freedom when you can say, “I recognize my original nature . . . this timeless light.”
The Unfolding Now, p. 170 • discuss »
The Unfolding Now, p. 170 • discuss »
Transformation does not occur in a progression from the past to the present to the future, which is how we usually think of it and experience it.
The change, instead, is more of an outflow: The forms just appear, they arise out of nowhere. The source of our experience is not the past as our mind understands it, but some mysterious immediacy of the moment. So the movement is from no form to the presence of form, from nothing to something, and it is instantaneous. Our eyes see a constancy of forms, but our actual experience is of an ever-fresh arising of those forms in an unfolding now. And perceived changes are simply the patterns in the outflowing of the forms. When we experience things as an outflow in this way—as consciousness continuously flowing out and bringing forth different forms of experience—then the sense of time is gone.
The Unfolding Now, p. 175 • discuss »
The Unfolding Now, p. 175 • discuss »
And if you go further, you realize that you are connected with and in fact are
everything. That's what we call universal consciousness. You are the universe. The universe is a robe that you wear. The whole universe is the Logos, the word. The universe is a beautiful harmony of everything as one being in constant transformation, one being in a constant state of resurrection. Even further you realize that you are the mystery from which all that comes. You can perceive the whole show, not just your personal show but the whole cosmic show, as something emerging and happening now. Not only do you emerge and transform, but the whole universe emerges and transforms. That state of transformation and change includes life and death and everything in between. All of this wonder is revealed through knowing who you are.
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 214 • discuss »
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 214 • discuss »
Discuss Transformation
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