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The Leap—Are You Ready to Live a New Reality?
By Constance Kellough
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There are people who study spirituality, self-help, and personal growth for years—decades, even. They will tell you how difficult it is to become a truly conscious, awakened, enlightened person.
In contrast to this, I propose that consciousness is a reality anyone can enter at any moment.
The leap into enlightenment is in fact easy to make. That’s because it’s natural to us to live from an enlightened consciousness. It’s the way we really are, and we’ve simply lost sight of it.
The key is stillness—though stillness isn’t just sitting still, like a teacher might make a classroom of students sit still.
Stillness isn’t mere silence. It’s an intense awareness of our inner Presence. However, silence can be helpful in assisting us to more easily and quickly access our inner stillness.
So, how do we still our mind? By placing our attention on the present moment. A state of calmness arises in us when we do this.
However, there’s a vital qualification to what it means to “place” our attention on the present moment. It’s important not to “effort” in order to bring our attention into the present moment. A still mind isn’t a forced mind. It’s a
mind at ease. Any effort to stay in the now comes from thinking about what we need to do, and thinking isn’t stillness.
Paying attention to the present moment is also the opposite of concentration. Concentration is an exercise of thought. It requires a tight mental focus. By its nature it isolates and restricts. We can’t enter stillness by
concentrating. Paying attention to the present moment is more of a full-body experience. There is spaciousness about it.
Spirituality is often thought of as almost an escape from the physical body. In contrast, I advocate getting connected to the physical realm in a profoundly deep way. That’s because spirituality isn’t about an afterlife,
but about this life.
That’s not to say that this life is all there is—far from it. But spirituality is the immersion of ourselves in life without any holding back, precisely because we can afford to give ourselves wholly to life since we are grounded in
eternity. Each moment becomes meaningful as an expression of eternity, and not as a sort of prelude to the main act.
When we live from inner stillness, everything we do—from fixing breakfast to enjoying a conversation or planting a garden—is the main act. As the Zen masters say, before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after
enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
So, if enlightenment is about living each moment fully, how does this affect a person’s relationship with a significant other, for instance?
With a divorce rate running around 50%, what we are seeing is a failure to connect. People don’t connect because they aren’t present. They are lost in their repetitive thoughts, caught up in a whirlwind of emotional reactivity.
They’re just not “with” each other, even when they are side by side.
When we become present, we approach everything from divine Presence. If two people are coming from Presence, they are going to see beyond the physical form with its trials and tribulations. They are going to connect heart-to-heart.
In the pure light of Presence, the difficulties we face as couples in daily life simply become situations for our Inner Knower, which is the Holy Spirit—our essential being—to guide us through.
And that’s where stillness comes in. When we are inwardly still, we get in touch with our own essence. How good it feels to be who we truly are! Once we are in touch with the life within, we come to realize this same life
force is within everybody. We all share in the same animating Presence.
By spending time in stillness, cultivating awareness of our Inner Knower, our entire life becomes a flow of conscious living, free of all “efforting.”
© Copyright 2009
Constance Kellough, President and Publisher, Namaste Publishing, www.namastepublishing.com.
All Rights Reserved.
Constance Kellough, an English Literature instructor, management consultant, publisher, and now author, has been a pioneer in bringing
resolution to challenges and conflicts by honoring the unquestionable
value of each individual. The insights she now shares with us in THE
LEAP began developing as a young teacher of disadvantaged high school
students and continued through bringing people together in the
business world to accomplish breakthroughs in behavior and novel
solutions to persistent problems. Marrying former experiences and
skills with publishing spiritual, metaphysical and self-help books
provided Constance with an opportunity to deepen her spirituality and
awareness of our spiritual potential.
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