The Real Secret of Harmonious Living

To a varied degree, most people have recognized that their individual life is made up of fluctuating periods of success, illness or lack of harmony and unhappiness interspersed with longer or shorter periods of dissatisfaction. Because it is an experience so many people share, it is regarded as normal or the best we can get given our personal circumstances or due to the world’s troubles and so-called evils.
    Perhaps you have found this writing because you have pondered long and seriously why life should be so unsatisfactory for so many and what it is all about. Perhaps you have spent many years in spiritual study with a teacher or in a particular discipline. Maybe it is because you have a drive and passion within you to find the factor in your life that will restore you to your birthright of harmony, joy and peace, knowing that the goal of establishing peace on earth and good begins with you taking responsibility to raise your individual consciousness. But one thing is so: it is your level of consciousness right now that will be the factor in understanding these words. 

States and Stages of Consciousness
    There are material and mental states and stages of consciousness that have in common a dependence on and a reaction to the external world of form based on what we experience through our five senses. This interpretation leads to thoughts of separation, vulnerability, fear, fragmentation and dualities, such as good and bad. As a result, we try to use some power – material power, such as medicines and treatments, or mental power, such as positive thinking or manipulation – to get rid of lack, limitation and sin, and to acquire those things which we want and believe will give us happiness: health, money, companionship, a house, employment, and so forth. But the real secret to harmonious living is the development of a realized higher dimensional consciousness in which fear and anxiety disappear. In this state, life becomes meaningful with fulfillment as its keynote. It comes from relinquishing our dependence on the external world of form and the necessity of striving. Instead, we place our faith and confidence in something greater than human concepts, including our concepts of "God"; in turn, we are lifted above any and every obstacle. This "something greater" is being receptive and responsive to the experience of the Invisible All, or the concept-free God, and its flow through us as us.
    The human level of living puts its faith in forms of good; however, when our consciousness is lifted, we can make use of what is in the world, enjoying the forms, while our reliance is not on demonstrating form but rather on the substance of the form. In other words, our goal becomes the demonstration of what creates the form – the cause, which is the Invisible All as our consciousness.
    We can understand this by considering the body. In and of itself the body has no power or intelligence, and is not responsible for its actions. For example, a hand, left to itself, would remain right where it is until something causes it to move. That something is what we call “I” and it determines how the hand will be used. The hand cannot determine in and of itself how it will be used, for it exists as an effect or as a form and it responds to direction. This idea can be applied to other parts of the body and we begin to see that there is a consciousness that formed the body in the beginning, and there is a consciousness that sustains and maintains it. It is not two consciousness’ but differing stages of consciousness which determine the effect on the body. The Invisible principle gives us dominion through consciousness, and it is this consciousness, which is the creative principle of our body – the body’s maintaining and sustaining principle.
    Once we catch this principle we have caught the entire principle of life or living. Literally, within us is the law of life: the substance, the activity, the intelligent direction of life is within us. If we prove this in one direction, we prove it is so in every direction.
    It is like proving seven times seven is forty-nine, whether it involves apples, people or planets. This law is within us, and if realized, we will have no difficulty in proving it in the health of our body and in all the relationships of life. The whole secret lies in the understanding of consciousness and in its realization, rather than its intellectual knowledge of the fact.
    So we might ask: How do we avail ourselves of all the Invisible All-Consciousness is – beyond the limitations of the human mind? How can it become our individual experience? The answer is similar to that found in the field of music… The principle of music is absolute. If however, we fail to understand its principle and the sounds produced turn into a jumble of discordant noises, we do not rail against the principle; we apply ourselves more diligently to practicing the principle until we become proficient in its application. So it must be in our Divine experience. It is… here… right now! But this principle is available only in proportion to our realization and willingness to accept the discipline that is necessary for the attainment of this Mind. 

The New Life by Grace
    As we are, in truth, spiritual beings, our work is to become lifted into that higher state of consciousness – beyond the human experience in which there is no disease, no unhappiness, no lack, and no limitation. Our attention is not centred on watching for the demonstration or the results. There are processes that must take place before the fruit comes through, and there is no way of evading or hurrying those processes. The change to watch for, if any watching is to be done, is to observe what change of consciousness is taking place in our own self. Are our ideals higher? Is our mode of life something of a more pure nature with discernment instead of judgment? Do we have more integrity? Do we have less fear? What transformation is taking place? Are we trying to work on problems or raising our state of consciousness?
    It is common for most students, in the early study of conscious-raising, to have in mind primarily the overcoming of the discords and inharmonies in their human experience and the attainment of harmony in the form of good health, more abundant supply, happier relationships, and other satisfying human experiences. At that stage of unfoldment it is not usually recognized that this is merely a desire to exchange the bad things of human experience for the good in human experience. Nor is it apparent to most students that even if physical health and economic abundance are attained, they are still subject to the fluctuations of a dual reality – boom or depression, success or failure, war or peace, etc. In other words they remain in the human level of experience.
    However, at some point, it dawns in our consciousness that something is missing and there must be something more than this oscillating back and forth between happiness and unhappiness. It comes to our attention, in the words of Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. And so our search takes a different turn. We are now seeking the higher dimensional Consciousness: the Invisible All principle.
    Students ordinarily believe that if they attain a flash of light or a momentary sense of God’s presence, they are automatically freed from the entire round of human experiences, but this perception eventually wears off when they find they are still not lifted above the world. Sometimes, because students believe in such emotional highs or releases, they will seek out events or practices to recreate the “feel good” experience again and again, secretly hoping that this will be the one that “does it” for them. But the true release from the human world can only come when a breaking away from concepts is achieved: concepts about the physical sense of body, the material sense of supply, the human sense of relationship: with ourselves, with others and with God.
    We must let go of concepts of a rewarding and withholding separate God. Oftentimes, we are so immersed in God-concepts that we spend time thinking or talking about them – with anger or frustration or with pleasure, depending on the concepts; so much so they become mere talk. For instance, talking about a massive waterfall with its thundering water and grandeur is an interesting subject for conversation, but when one has finished talking about it, one has not yet experienced it, and it still remains nothing but an idea or picture in the mind, and a very inadequate picture when compared with reality.
    It is the same with the Invisible All: As long as we are thinking, reading and talking about it, it is still just an idea in thought but not in experience. It is when we are finished with the talking, the thinking and the reading, and we are in a moment of inner stillness that the experience comes. Then we understand what it means not to live by the law of human life, but by Grace.
    Students of the Simple Direct Path to Fifth Dimensional Consciousness know it will require diligent practice and faithful adherence to the principles of truth to attain the revelation of the higher-dimensional consciousness, but when Grace touches us, we do not take thought for our life, and yet wonderful things come to us. If we need employment, It leads to our employment; if we need a home, It leads us to what appears as our home; if we need supply, It releases it in one way or another; if we need friendships or family or if we need somebody to do something for us, It performs all of that for us: Not by seeking supply separate and apart from seeking the Invisible All-Consciousness, and not trying use it as if it was a servant. We cannot use the Invisible All or Truth, but it can use us. It can manifest itself in you and through you.
    To live in this state of awareness means returning to it throughout the day so as to re-establish ourselves in the inner peace. Then Grace flows to us and in turn flows out from us to bless others, always without effort, without strife and without struggles. So it is the simple direct path is an unfoldment – not the path “to” something; rather, it is the path we choose to walk – now.

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