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What
Is The Ascendant?
by
MSI
When we perceive the external world, we
are looking at our definitions of forms and objects, but not the
underlying Unified Field in which they appear. Similarly, our inner
world, feelings and thoughts clutter our awareness, but the awareness of
awareness itself is never known. The Ascendant is the space in which
things exist; it is the essence out of which everything is made:
thoughts, feelings, computers, my aunt Daisy.
This is not a void as some have
claimed, this is not an emptiness or negative reality. Rather, the
Ascendant is a positive state of fullness, of Infinite potential energy
out of which everything comes. Since the Ascendant underlies and
permeates everything in creation, it is called Omnipresent. Everything
comes from it and exists only because of it. Nothing can or does exist
in isolation. Everything is composed of the Ascendant, continually
flowing in and out of manifestation.
The Ascendant cannot be measured or
defined. We can assign a name to it, like Infinite or Unbounded or
Absolute, but these still imply it is something. Any name for the
Ascendant or belief about the Ascendant is not the experience of the
Ascendant. It is only when we abandon our insistence on attempting to
limit the Unlimited by assigning waking state concepts to it that the
Infinite light of the Primal World dawns within. Freed from mental
fabrications about the nature of Reality, awareness is experienced as
Absolute and identical with everything that is.
The Ascendant is without prior cause,
it is its own cause; it is ever-the-same, unchanging. Like water, it is
not altered regardless how much dirt is added to it: only the clarity of
it is shrouded while its essential nature remains the same. The
Ascendant is perfect stability—it is the Ground of all grounds. There
is no experience of duality in the Ascendant, there is no difference
between the self and the Self. There is no separation. Like a peak
experience while painting, writing or composing music, there is no
subject-object duality. There is no thought in the Ascendant, there is
no feeling, there is nothing other than Silence: Eternal,
self-sufficient.
The Ascendant is the Ultimate Reality
from which everything has come and in which everything continues to
exist forever. To experience this as our True Nature is enlightenment;
to remain ignorant of this means remaining caught by the boundaries of
illusion, life after life, caught on the wheel of samsara, of cyclic
change. Through Ascending, the Ascendant is experienced as our own
essential nature, as awareness of awareness itself, as pure Unlimited
consciousness. This is the experience of Infinite Freedom. This is
liberation from the boundaries of the ego. Since the Ascendant is the
Source of everything, recognizing that "I am That" means that
I recognize that I am All-pervasive. This is the state of Is-ness, free
from any and every duality, freed from the sense of My-ness or even
Am-ness. The Ascendant simply is. And That I am.
Even though the experience of the
Ascendant is impossible to define in words, it is a real experience. In
fact, the experience of the Ascendant is more real than any waking state
experience. The experience of the Unbounded is infinitely abstract and
yet infinitely concrete. Having once tasted this clearly, life cannot
remain the same. There is no previous behavior pattern, habit, judgment
or belief that can withstand the force of Unbounded Awareness, for the
Ascendant is the root of everything.
When the mind is experiencing the
silence of the Ascendant, there is no motion of thought. Like a
perfectly still pond untouched by the wind, there are no waves, no
ripples, no motion of any kind when the mind is opened to the experience
of the Ascendant. This state is measurable by the electroencephalograph:
coherence of brain waves is the objective measurement of the subjective
experience of Ascending.
The mind consumes vastly less energy
when it floats in the Ascendant; because of this, the body settles down
to its deepest possible state of rest. In the perfect state of Infinite
silence, there is no necessity for breath: the individual retains life
by recognizing that he or she is part of Universal Life, in no way
different or separate from Eternal existence. In other words, life
continues because life is the essence of the Ascendant. In this state,
no decay is possible, no illness, no death, no suffering, no pain
.
The Ascendant is the source of
everything. Nothing lies outside it; nothing is built of anything other
than it; nothing can exist for the smallest fraction of a moment outside
of it. It is the conscious part of consciousness; it is the part of
existence that exists. It is all that ever was, all that will ever be;
you with your human nervous system have by your birth been given the
ultimate gift—a machine that cannot only experience the Ascendant but
direct it in any way you choose.
You are actually already directing the
Ascendant all the time. But if your mind is not continually focussed on
one desire at a time, your mutually contradictory thoughts and desires
cancel each other out. Not entirely, of course, or else you would be a
catatonic schizophrenic—you would do nothing but sit and stare off
into space. Since you are reading this, it is safe to assume you are not
so self-contradictory that you are sailing in entirely useless circles
in the boat of your mind.
The mind in contact with the Ascendant
is like a perfectly still pool. Thoughts and desires are like stones
dropped into the pool. If one stone falls, perfectly concentric ripples
spread beautifully over the water and reach the far shore.If two stones
are dropped, there will be crests and valleys that cross over each
other, emphasizing some, cancelling others. If a whole handful of stones
hit the water at once, chaos is the result—there is no order left. The
reflection in the pond is broken into a myriad of imperfect shards. The
full moon can be sailing serenely above, but the pond will show only
frenetic motion.
On any sandy beach, the kind and
quality of the waves very much determine the shape of the sand. The kind
and quality of our thought waves very much determine the overall shape
of our minds. The ripples caused by our thoughts and desires produce
both immediate (surface) and long-term (underlying) effects. When the
pattern of thinking and desiring is chaotic, the result will necessarily
be abnormal experiences—mental, emotional or physical—and abnormal
behavior. The extent of the chaotic thinking directly determines the
extent of the disorder in life. When the pattern of thinking and
desiring is orderly, the result is health, happiness, joy, progress,
creativity, fulfillment.
This may be easy to grasp
intellectually regarding the individual life: if my thinking is
disordered, my actions and life will be disordered. But since the
Ascendant is the Source of everything, it is also true that my chaotic
thinking will react with all parts of the Universe at all times and all
places. Like salmon returning to their hatching grounds to spawn, there
are no accidents of fate, there are only our own thoughts returning to
their source in our individual minds.
There is quite literally no one to
blame, no one to condemn, no one to judge in any way whatsoever. My
desires have created my Universe, just for me; your desires have created
your Universe, just for you; the fact that so many of our Universes seem
so similar and seem to share many common features is a happy or a useful
coincidence that defines our common humanity. (Those whose individual
Universes are much out of synchrony with the majority of humanity tend
to end up in mental hospitals. Or prisons.) This implies that the best
cure for all disease, mental or physical, is the same—reconnecting the
individual mind consciously to the Ascendant.
The human mind is so infinitely
flexible that it can stretch in its experience from the most concrete to
the most abstract—from the physical reality experienced by our senses
to the abstract, internal reality of Consciousness itself.
The unifying thread of life is Love.
From the most abstract to the most concrete, at every level of
existence, at every level of experiencing, runs this slender thread. It
seems delicate, a fragile thing, easily lost or broken, but is not so.
It is more obdurate than granite; it can never be broken, never
diminished, never lost; and it is forever growing, primarily by being
given away. We cannot fall out of it, although sometimes we mistakenly
believe that we do. Rather, what happens when we feel that we have
fallen out of love is that our mutually contradictory projected desires
have made it impossible for our relationship to provide further growth.
This is the kindest and most accurate description.
For underlying all our desires—the
melange of contradictory impulses we drop into the still waters of the
Ascendant—there forever remains our original intention, crystalline,
flawless, pure, directing our being through situation after situation,
life after life, world after world. And what is that original intention?
It is to return to our Source. We are not and never will be at home
here; we will always feel that we are the dispossessed wanderers of
time. That, truly, we are. Like Pellinore of the Arthurian legends, we
have lost our kingdoms and queendoms and wander aimlessly about, slowly
rusting since our home has become invisible to us.
Yet is our exile self-imposed. We chose
to be here; we can choose to return whence we came whenever we so
desire. Nothing can stand between us and our re-union with our Source,
for we never truly left the Ascendant. We only thought we did; we have
travelled exceedingly far in our imaginations, but it is fantasy merely.
The Ascendant will wait patiently for us to remember, throughout all
Eternity if need be. For we are the Ascendant. No matter how long we
forget this simple fact, no matter how long we adamantly deny that this
is true or continue to build up false dreams and strange beliefs, the
Ascendant waits patiently for us.
There is no thought we can think, no
action we can perform, that will ever change this simple fact. The
Ascendant is the root of all that we are, it is the fullest expression
of all we shall ever be; it is the Source not only of us but of
everything everywhere at all times. Life, therefore, is extremely easy
to understand.
If this seems difficult to grasp, it
can only be because there is some part of it that has not been properly
understood. It can only be because there are still some dark areas of
our personalities that have not yet been addressed. How can we change
this? In any way that works!
Ascension is a systematic procedure for
re-educating the mind to free itself from judgment and condemnation.
This is a completely automatic process; once begun it continues much by
itself. The mind is similar to a phonograph record—there are grooves
in our brains, neuronal circuits, formed by repeated experiences and
thoughts. It is possible to retrain the mind so that the deepest grooves
are those that lead to expansion of consciousness, to liberation. The
mind just needs to learn how to take the correct angle, then the entire
process is perfectly natural. The older grooves are overshadowed and
eventually erased.
The natural state of the human mind is
enlightenment!
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