Life: What can I get out of it? The following questions, and similar ones, crop up in general chitchat with your friends. Sometimes it’s, “What’s the point in it all?” or, “Should I ever be bothered with what it’s all about?” It’s like we somehow acknowledge a ‘spiritual’ or a ‘something greater’ side to us, but to fathom it out is too much trouble to bother with”.

This blog is an attempt to cast some light on these dilemmas, helpfully.

I was impressed recently when I was sent the following link. Click here if you want to see the miracles of space when a magnified camera kept its shutter open recently for 11 days, pointing at a piece of sky previously thought to contain nothing. The universe is so large; at least 100 billion galaxies. It’s unimaginable by the human mind. The distance across it is also unimaginable; millions of years travelling non-stop at over 180,000 mph.

So, when we try to get this all in perspective, it’s no wonder the question arises – “However did it all occur and where do I fit in?” The average healthy human being lasts less than 80 years. What is gained in a lifetime? A few experiences, perhaps. But, at the end of it, what about understanding why we’re here? And, why does everything else in the universe last out for millions of years? But, not us! Heck, is that fair? Is it alright? Should we just accept this weird phenomenon and die without knowing why, having gained absolutely nothing?

Answers: There are two reasons to be (what is perceived as) alive in your body. One reason is, already mentioned, to have experiences – you’re having them all the time. But that pales into insignificance compared with the second reason, which is to accept an opportunity, on offer to everyone. As far as I can see it’s the most fantastic opportunity-far greater than any other befalling us. It’s the opportunity to understand why you’re here, rather than to die confused, leaving no trace, after a few generations, that you were ever here.

Understanding why you’re here and what you’re doing / where you’re going is true knowledge. It’s the ONLY thing you can take with you when you leave; therefore it’s the only ‘gain’ possible.

What’s the point understanding why you’re here? As I’ve just said, the alternative is dying in ignorance of what the universe really is and why you were part of it. (If you’re happy to die in ignorance and can’t be bothered with any of this, you could leave this blog immediately).

The point in taking up the cudgel, so to speak, is to discover that our own hidden consciousness propels us and nothing else does. Not surprisingly, such a proposition reveals we are self-responsible for our own evolution. The benefits of this disclosure are enormous because the acceptance of self-evolution, which you can prove for yourself, (I mean prove, not guess or believe), has the benefit of providing short-cuts to surmounting all obstacles, including problems of any kind, including meeting your demise, when it comes, with great joy because you know your whole self.

If you don’t know your whole self by then, you can’t progress with your evolution; shackled, as you possibly are now, in pointless lives, getting nowhere at all until you do take on the self-propulsion demeanour. If you would like to accept the opportunity to understand more of this reasoning, read on. We will obviously need to ask the next question:

How do I get to truly understand my existence? The mind continuously chunters away, putting up a smokescreen to real knowledge, because it can’t see the wood for the trees. The mind focuses on solid matter, which self-imposes a three-dimensional outlook. Another way of saying this is that we limit ourselves, through our own choice, to three-dimensional consciousness. But – hang on a minute – mankind’s own scientific progress has detected we are eleven-dimensional. Can we use the other dimensions, which are here and now in every cell of our bodies and not in some airy-fairy spiritual world (as was thought in past eras of relative ignorance)? The answer to this is unequivocally YES.

I’m not asserting some guru-in-a-cave-talk here. Respected scientists such as Prof. Peter Higgs gave us the theory of certain bosons being ‘finer particles than matter, giving matter its mass’, which is now accepted science, proven by experiment. These particles are witnessed but cannot be seen or measured so they are in a different *dimension. They are a component support of all solid matter including, of course, our bodies. Accordingly, we are no longer limited to being solely reliant upon three dimensions, running around like demented idiots, operating as if material stuff is the only thing existent.

Good guys like Profs Brian Cox, Stephen Hawking (etc.) have come on TV to simplify all this, particularly our comprehension that atoms are not solid, but bound together so closely as to give the appearance of solid form. Thankfully, we don’t need anything further to convince us that all answers are contained within us. All we need is the key to access the finer (but more powerful) energies that are our birthright.

The access key is realisation. Realisation is the knowledge of our inner dimensions – the real knowledge rather than the sheets of scientific numbers – to prove for ourselves, in our own minds, “There it is, I have experienced my inner more refined self, in actual thoughts I understand.”

Realisation is nothing to be scared of. It’s simply discovery. Like a detective story where you couldn’t quite piece together how something happened. Then, at last, you get to the truth and it all fits together in a total understanding. It’s a dawning – a dawning that comes about when the last piece of the jigsaw is inserted, in the puzzle of life.

How can we get to Realisation? The only way I know is to still the mind. Various relaxation and yogic principles can help, including meditation. People who don’t practise meditation might think it’s something weird. But it’s not. Meditation doesn’t turn you into a hippie. What meditation does for you is to calm a mind that runs up unnecessary pathways most of the time (50,000 thoughts per day), by putting it aside for a few minutes.

The mind, uncontrolled, darts from object to object and invents images of past experiences and future projections. Most of it is rubbish. In doing this, there is no room for the finer levels of consciousness to get in. A barrier is formed, having the effect of blocking out the inner consciousness that’s there all the time and can transform us into a being of much greater focus and – accordingly – competence, confidence, fearlessness and happiness.

Having a still mind, you don’t lose anything. You gain multitudinous benefits. Not only do you worry less, improve your health, become more efficient and more loved, attract things you desire and stay young longer, but you come to know that life is a continuum, and not a few decades of a limited mind attached to a limited animal form. Mortality only applies to those billions of particles of almost nothing, not your whole being. Consequently you don’t worry about death either.

Gaining a still mind requires a little bit of effort. It’s no more effort than you put in already, probably less, but its effort directed in a certain way. It’s known as conscious effort. You have to put a few minutes aside each day. But even that is thoroughly enjoyable, so it’s not a burdensome effort. As you change yourself to a calmer, happier person using meditation, or whatever technique you choose, you change your outlook too. You begin to encompass the idea that you are propelling yourself through your evolution. This not only brings on a thoroughly satisfying feeling, it also helps you to become more ‘realised’.

Realisation comes by degree and not as one eureka moment. But there are glimpses of the fully realised state, and those glimpses bring about the knowledge of your whole existence. They leave you in no doubt. The glimpses usually come unexpectedly and not during meditation. Often it’s between sleep and the waking state, for a mind that’s extremely stilled. What these experiences leave you with – always – is:

• “I am that and not this, I am vastly greater than my little body and little mind”,
• “Only my whole self experiences my whole self – my mind cannot do that”,
• “My whole (pure consciousness) self is with me all the time, in greater abundance than my little three-dimensional self and closer than my eyelids are to my eyes, in every cell”,
• “Nothing happens in the three-dimensional sphere without the supporting subtle energy of the higher dimensions”,
• “All is one. There is no life & death or speed & time or separateness. Joy is permanent. I am all-encompassing”

Any degree of realisation is indescribably worthwhile. It gets you somewhere and it enables the puzzle of life to be solved – answering the question “What is life all about,” bringing a sense of permanence which is rarely, if ever, available to the unstilled mind.

Don’t get hooked up on the matter of *dimensions. They’re easy to understand. For clarity, I’ll be blogging this one soon. Meanwhile have a gander at Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle, on ‘purpose of life’. ©John Lamb 21.1.2014

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