Becoming People of Substance

‘If everything is smooth sailing right from the beginning, we cannot become people of substance and character. By surmounting paining setbacks and obstacles, we can create a brilliant history of triumph that will shine forever. That is what makes life so exciting and enjoyable. In any field of endeavour, those who overcome hardships and grow as human beings are advancing towards success and victory in life.”
Daisaku Ikeda

Nothing can be closer to the truth than the above statement and it is something that we all know. We are all so aware that if our lives were just smooth sailing all the time, we would learn nothing. We all know that it is our adversity that builds substance and character. We all know that by surmounting these setbacks and obstacles that we can create a brilliant history of triumph that will shine forever. However, how many of us actually live what we know? How many of us actually take the difficult times and analyse them and actually find the positive aspects of those difficult times and understand that therein lies the lesson. And then more importantly, how many of us acknowledge the lesson and put it into action in our daily lives? For therein lies the answer.

Knowing something and actually putting what you know into action are two very different things. The key is to find a way to discern between the two for it is not what you know, but what you do, that makes all the difference in your life. It is planning and constantly working towards making your life better that brings joy and fulfilment, for there is nothing more uplifting than achieving something that you set out to do.

What better way to live your life than to plot out every important aspect of it. One would never go on a road trip without plotting out how one would get there. Yet so many of us wake every day and just do what we’ve always done. It never even occurs to us that we should be planning what we want and how we are going to get it. We look at high achievers and those who have so much with great envy and wonder how it is that they got what they have and got to where they are. Friends, they are the ones who plan, they are the ones who are able to see their bigger picture, and they are the ones who make sure that they get there. No-one is going to do it on your behalf. And that applies to absolutely everything.

Life is here for you to enjoy but if you haven’t planned what you want out of life, this is the year (whatever year it may be) to begin. The Seventh Ray is forcing people to stand up and take accountability for their lives. For the Seventh Ray is the ray of Order and Ceremony. One could almost say that it is a ‘no-nonsense’ Ray and so we’re all feeling the effects of ‘out with the old and in with the new’. And if we cannot plan our lives accordingly, we will find ourselves in constant turmoil and feelings of uncertainty.

Once again, understanding what is happening in the Universe and understanding what the guides have planned and in store for us, and then working with the Universe and the guides to carry out those plans, will bring about feelings of absolute contentment and a joy to be living at this time.

Remember that together we can do this. We are not meant to be alone and so together we encourage, uplift and embrace our challenges, knowing that our joint efforts and energies are much stronger and that a problem shared is a problem halved.

Constantly focus on creating change in your life. This is not really that easy for if it was, we would not see so much discontent, unhappiness, confusion and uncertainty. In order to create change, we need to change our reality through how we perceive our life and how much we become aware.

We change reality according to the way we see it, and we see reality according to the way we change it. Fundamental truth precedes experiences that are inherent within the structure of our mind. Truths that are imposed on our experience influence the nature of our experience. Human beings are metaphysical beings. Everything we experience as metaphysical beings is our own personal reality conceptualised from information transmitted through our physical senses. We think we are experiencing physical reality but everything out there is no more than light images of reality reconstructed in our mind. What we perceive and what is actually out there are two very different things. All of our experiences are light images of reality not false perceptions or delusions created in our mind. False perceptions or delusions come when we confuse our experiences of the world with physical reality. When the light of awareness becomes a conscious thought, the light from that thought is reflected through our perception. Awareness is the light that allows us to perceive the world and sometimes we mistake the light of awareness as only a subset of its true form in consciousness. Pure awareness has no specific description; it is the essential quality of being itself. Awareness allows consciousness to occur. It is the light by which experience is perceived. In essence, we are dynamic beings of light that in any given moment, inform the energy that flows through our physical bodies to imagine that we are the other things that are reflected back through our mind. Awareness reflects all that we perceive, including that which we call body which is only a mass of sensations or images in our mind. Our state of mind continually changes, but the awareness through which our state of mind is sensed, remains unmoved. Our natural sense of being somehow always remains the same, a presence that is not affected by the continuous transformation of our physical existence.

Our mind can decrease the flow of energy that creates our shifting mental patterns or it can increase the flow of energy that expands our state of consciousness. Physical reality can be reduced to three-dimensional diffraction patterns of light within human consciousness, making our mind a formless continuum separate from the body. This is where the intervening substance of conscious expression is transmitted or converted into impulses of vitality, attitude, energy and strength. This substance of conscious expression, defined as beyond a physical construct or material phenomenon, is more than just a by-product of purely physical processes. The main block that holds us back from accepting this type of understanding is our personal belief system which can deny our potential for change or separate us from knowing our true nature.

As we acquire new information, our perceptions or light-pattern-recognition abilities change to permit the development of our awareness (perception, imagery, emotion, etc.). This state of consciousness is necessary for us to select, choose, learn, remember or organise sophisticated and novel responses particularly those requiring planning, reflection or creativity.

Once our state of being begins to break free of its illusions through increased knowledge, it starts to live in complete unity and fulfilment knowing reality beyond a mental concept or vague series of images. It begins to experience the presence of something beyond itself that dwells in a place where there is no need to pursue more or be anything other than self, within the physical body. When does this happen? When we face the oneness of our existence and recognise there is no other joy that can exist except the joy of being an active part of the whole. This joy of oneness allows us to truthfully experience the freedom of our own individual existence.