Our vessel is too small

 

A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2007 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

 
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Our vessel is too small
Ego - The vessel our current mind creates is too small
Creating a sufficiently large vessel
Escaping the confines of the ego

In any creative endeavor, what we think and believe can be seen as seen as creating a vessel or container to hold and/or carry certain types and kinds of experiences. It is mind which creates the vessel and it is mind which ultimately fills the vessel

For the human physical experience, we actually use two vessels - our body and our ego. The body is created by the transcendental mind for the purpose of having the experiences we incarnated to have to fulfill the intention for our life. The other vessel is our ego. It is constructed by our enculturated mind and the experiences we have in our current life and what we have come to think and believe about ourselves, our life and Creation.

What needs to be understood is our body, the vessel created by our transcendental mind, is more than adequate for all that we will face in life to have the experiences we incarnated to have. However, we need to listen to our intuitive guidance, body wisdom and the awareness within the body to guide us. The vessel created by our enculturated mind, the ego, is too small to fully comprehend both the intention for our life and how it is possible that we create both our experiences and the reality we experiences. Quite simply, our ego is came into existence as a result of what our transcendental mind created and does not have the minimum set of experience to understand what our transcendental mind created or why. As a result our enculturated mind and the vessel it creates will always limit us as to what is possible in our life.

Ego - The vessel our current mind creates is too small (Top)

As we grow, discover, and explore ourselves in the world, we construct an image of who and what we are. We each form a perspective of who we are and how the world works. Most call this structure the ego. The ego as such is neither good nor bad, it is just part of the process that consciousness uses to experience the nature of reality.

This image is based on several different but real experiences. It is based on the experiences we have, what we learn through our own explorations, what we assimilate through our observation of others (especially our early primary care givers and how they act in the world), and what we come to believe based on what we are told by others (especially those in positions of authority in our life). What we believe and how we believe, namely our belief structure, creates a vessel which acts as a mold or cast for the creation of the experiences that we have. This image then becomes the "vessel" that contains or directs the flow of our creative life energy. It becomes the blueprint or "switch arrangement" that directs our creative life energy and allows this energy to flow, or not flow, into any give aspect or area of our life. Our vessel are the patterns of our life and our consciousness. We need to interrupt and disrupt those patterns to find out who we really are.

For the purposes of this analogy, imagine this vessel is a large ceramic or plaster type vessel that can hold a large volume and has several different pipes or exit flow paths of a variety of sizes that allow the contents of the vessel to flow out somewhat similar to the utters of a cow. For our purposes, the volume of the vessel represents our available creative life energy that nourishes and sustains our creative endeavors where each pipe, and the size of each pipe, are what allows the flow of this creative life energy to any one aspect of the reality we create. The more pipes, the more aspects we create in our life If we can nourish all that we have created, without draining the entire contents of the vessel, things will grow and flourish in our life. If however, we have insufficient flow through any pipe, we are draining our vessel and the aspect or aspects of our life that receive insufficient flow will slowly wither and maybe even die.

This vessel is constructed by what we believe and how we believe. Our life runs (flows) by what we believe and how we believe it. As we change our beliefs we can change the size of our vessel and/or any one or more of the exit flow paths.

The ego we develop and its attachment to the body is a natural part of the process of being in a physical body. From the earliest age we begin to understand that our hands and feet are connect to our body whereas our toys our not. We understand that there are some things that cause us pain and others do not. We move towards that which is pleasurable and away form that which causes us pain and in the process we develop habits that can literally and figuratively transcend our life. We come to an understanding of what "I" need to live while in the physical world and what "I" want. To live in the world, we each learn a way to survive. We learn to get what we physically need and what we need to live is often unique to the environment in which we grow and experience life. To live in the northern most latitudes requires some things that are quite different than living in the Amazon jungle or a tropical island. Similarly, growing up in a large extended family is much different than growing up with a single parent.

If we contain the expression of our life within beliefs and life works pretty much the way we expect, then we never really question who and what we are and we never wonder if there is anything more to life. We will be relatively happy with things. It is only when part of our world begins to crumble and life does not flow the way we wish that we begin to question what we believe. It is then we act to fix or patch that portion of our beliefs that seemingly do not work. Accident, illness, disease, death of a loved one, financial loses, and other "set backs" in life (those that are counter to our idea of success and/or what we want) are the typical events that cause us to go into ourselves and question ourselves and our beliefs that have been challenged by the events we are experiencing.

Unless this vessel of who we think we are is large enough to contain who we really are, all the experiences we have, and the reason we would allow ourselves to have the experiences that we do, the vessel will crack letting our creative life energy leak out into unwanted flow paths robbing us our creative power. Patching the vessel with a new or different set of beliefs to "fix" where we are losing our power and creative abilities will not necessarily "fix" the leak. Patching does not necessarily address the cause of the problem and if the cause is not addressed it will only reappear in another way at another time. Whenever we believe we no longer have control over an aspect or an experience of our life, and fail to fully understand that we created the experience we are having, we give away some of our creative power and creative ability to that external event, person or thing. If we don’t go back and take our power back, we will continue to allow our creative life energy to drain.

Because the physical needs are so strong, some of the ways we learn to survive actually deny the truth of our being that is trying to express itself. We each have physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs. Any of these needs that are denied and go unfulfilled are a crack or a flaw in the vessel that we construct to carry us safely though life. Unless we build a vessel that can totally encompass the depth and breadth of who and what we are, and meet all our needs rather than one dominated by our physical world, any vessel we build will shatter when we try to live our passion and fully express ourselves.

Our problem is that when we shatter our vessel, rather than rebuilding a new vessel that can encompass what we deny about ourselves, we attempt to repair the one we created and piece it back together. Our mind has learned to protect the body in order to survive and we have learned to repair the damage we do to the body in remarkable ways. Because our mind has become so closely identified with the body and preoccupied with the body, it works to protect the ego it has created in the same way for mind thinks that the ego can die just like the body and must survive at all costs. However, the ego is only the way the unique consciousness that the our awareness has defined itself for the human physical experience. Neither our awareness nor the ego can die. All that can die is our definition of the ego or rather how we define ourselves can die. Yet our mind strives to protect the ego we have created at all cost, even at the expense of the life of the body. The ego becomes a liability in experiencing the fullness of being.

However, to understand who we really are, what we believe about who we are and how we think reality works will always bee too small. Whatever vessel we construct is too small and will be too small. Creation is infinite and we are an infinite consciousness within that Creation.

To try and contain that Creation in any from other than being an embodiment of Creation will be too small. To truly express who and what we are we will need to give up any image of ourselves. We must break the mold or the cast. We must look at what stand between us and the edge of our being. We need to look at what are our limits and boundaries that define us whatever the case may be for us to move forward. We must shatter these limits and barriers.

The role we accepted to play in your current incarnation is much large than we can imagine and we possess much greater abilities to play that role that we think we have. However, we, as all of us, learn to find a comfortable zone of acceptability within civilization no matter how bizarre or "on the fringe" of society we live. We become involved with an attachment to the information and knowledge of the world in which we live rather than pursing the passion which lies within the intention for our life. With a growing emphasis on the world as we grow from childhood there is a gradual disintegration of our inner knowledge and awareness. We lose our unique identity to fit in. We become involved in the male or female identity of our body and the role our care givers create for us.

One may rebel in adolescence or at some other time in life but most often when we rebel, we are not following the intention behind our life but rather we rebel in response to what has been imposed on us. We develop an male or female ego structure and lose touch with the true androgynous state of our being. We are neither male or female but rather a creator experiencing their creation. It is only our vehicle for a physical experience that is male or female. In becoming seduced by the role and identity we gain in life in living in the world and learning to survive in the world of knowledge and information we lose our inner awareness. We live from the limited identity of our mind and literally and figuratively devolve ourselves from the infinite being we are. That is why it is essential we must be willing to step out of mind and listen to their intuitive guidance and body wisdom for it is not limited to the constraints of what mind believes and thinks. They are capable of taking us beyond mind and although we may not be able to explain what we experience, we will know the feel and the feelings we have can lead us where mind cannot go.

We are a being of infinite consciousness. Our consciousness spans the entire range of reality. Although most of it is nonconscious and we may not be consciously aware of all the interconnections, we are fully capable of consciously living in the fullness of the oneness of All That Is. If we consciously fully live and embrace the passion of our being, we will live within that oneness. Yes, we are the creator of the reality we see and experience before us.

However, each and every other points of consciousness are the creators of their reality. What we all experience is the summation or joint manifestation of all our desires. Living in the oneness does not mean we will be all knowing, have unlimited power to control and influence others or that we will not be limited by our physical body. Rather it means we are capable of focusing our attention and awareness to create any experience we choose while in a physical body. We will be capable of transcending any barrier that stands in our way. We will see how the external world mirrors our internal world and as we embrace that passion within our being it will manifest itself externally. We will come to see what we need to do within ourselves to change the external world.

Creating a sufficiently large vessel (Top)

To do all of this we need to create a vessel large enough to contain this infinite being. There are several ways to do this and they are given in the order of easiest to hardest if we live from the heart and hardest to easiest if we live from the mind and ego.

One is to create an identity that cannot be fulfilled in the span of a human lifetime. Such an identity is to contemplate and live in oneness and seek to change the world we experience from that oneness. This is to see all of Creation and our body as the direct reflection and manifestation of our being. It is to know that anything we do not like in the world or in our life is a reflected within ourselves. We only need to ask ourselves what we need to become to change the world we see and experience and then do it. This activity will be more than sufficient to humble us and keep us so busy doing what we need to do with our life that we will not be trouble by our ego.

A second way is to step out of mind and surrender to the passion within our being. It is to use the inner satisfaction of our heart that never runs dray and follow this passion as our internal compass. It is to allow body wisdom and our intuitive guidance on to lead our life. Here we have to be out of the ego using mind and its processes to keep us safe and secure in the world as we pursue our passion.

A third way is to choose a view of the self that is dynamic and constantly expanding such that we are continually exploring and transcending who we have been. It is making "not doing" a way of life. Not doing is doing other than who and what we think we are To constantly expand ourselves is to continually change the limits and barriers we have to continually grow past ourselves. This way would be most reflected in an occupation or way of life where we are constantly changing the role we play and what we do. Or, we routine change our occupation and do something different.

A fourth way is to live our life much the way we have come to live it but allow natural processes to shatter ourselves and our identity every few years. It is about recreating ourselves in a new way. We can use the natural processes of life to do this if we are aware of how they change our life and our identity. For example, there is childhood and schooling, adolescence and finding an adult identity, living independently as an adult, marriage and/or partnership with another, child rearing, for some, divorce and/or some other types of partnership change, job changes, children leaving the nest, retirement, illness and/or accident, life set backs of any type and other similar natural life processes. If we become aware of the transitions we can use them to shatter and release our past identity and make ourselves over again with a greater awareness of the process.

Traditionally rituals and ceremonies would help one to do this and mark these transitions. However, one also needs to make the appropriate internal changes in addition to outward changes and actions. Awareness and mindfulness of how one thinks and what we believe will allow us to make the necessary internal changes. Habits of the past are very strong. Unless we become mindful and aware to see our patterns and our habits we will fall into the trap of habits that carry over from the past into the present and all these natural life processes will be of little benefit to transformation.

What clearly needs to be understood is we incarnated in the physical plane for a reason. We have all that we need to play that role and we will be lead to the experiences that we need to fulfill that role. If we come to believe we are only our physical experience and we are our physical body we severely limit ourselves and deny the essence of our own being. If we deny the essence of our being how can we find it if we deny its existence? To begin to understand the true depth and breath of our own being we need to step out of our thinking and judging mind and contemplate who we are. We need to learn to let our creative living process reflected as the passion in our heart and the knowings provide by our intuitive guidance and body wisdom guide us through life.

Escaping the confines of the ego (Top)

To see how the universe really works from whatever perspective we have, we have to step out of that perspective and give it up. There are only two ways that seem to exist where we can keep a perspective that allows us to see how the universe works without getting stuck in an ego.

One is to live "out of mind" relying solely on our intuitive guidance and body wisdom. This way of living will cause us to look very much as the proverbial fool and naive in the eyes of the world. In this way of living, will see a "magic" that is indescribable. In this way of living, we can think and believe whatever we wish about Creation but we live and act in the world totally from our intuitive guidance and body wisdom. In this way of living, we can be guaranteed our mind will continually judge and doubt the wisdom of acting on our intuitive guidance and body wisdom. In living out of mind, we will always wonder if we are crazy until our mind comes to the realization that it is not anywhere near as wise as our intuitive guidance and body wisdom.

The second way is to hold the perspective that we are the creator of our body and the entire world as it is. Although this perspective may be hard to accept, it is not untrue based on the way energy physically manifests. In this view, we know that if we wish to change anything in the world, we must first change ourselves within and let it ripple out into physical manifestation in the outer world. In this view our mind will again consider ourselves crazy for thinking this way until it learns and sees for itself how this actually works. It time, our mind may even come to understand how consciousness creates as it does.

Although both these perspectives can be considered views of ego, they are so opposed to living and serving the ego such that we don’t become trapped in the ego. The ego is not served in either of these views for we are again and again required to act in a seemingly irrational way as judged by the mind.

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