Handbook To Higher Consciousness
Chapter 11
The Two Joyous Centers


Chapter 11

The Two Joyous Centers

In the previous chapter, we saw that the Security, Sensation and Power Centers of Consciousness cannot be depended upon to continuously enable you to feel that you are getting enough to be happy in life. One problem with the Security Center is that, with a little imagination, you can always find one more loophole in your security setup that must be plugged. And there is no end… The Sensation Center of Consciousness cannot work to produce happiness for you either because you will very likely become bored with anything that you do repetitively. You seek to solve the boredom trap by finding more and more variety, but this in its turn just brings another set of problems into your life. The Power Center of Consciousness will not work to produce happiness for you because your pushing, dominating and manipulating will stimulate similar actions from other people. Their defensive and offensive tactics then require you to be more dominating and forceful, but this only works for a short while until the people outside of you respond with even more force. What you expected to be a simple solution to a situation actually sets up the next round of problems in your life. When you see the unconscious dance in which you have been ensnarling yourself, you begin to realize that a higher Center of Consciousness is required to enable you to enjoy your life.

In the last chapter we learned that when our consciousness operates on the lower three Centers of Security, Sensation and Power, we can achieve great external success — but be a failure inside in terms of happiness. We are beginning to get somewhere in our journey toward awakening when our consciousness deals more and more with the drama of our lives from the point of view of the two joyous Centers — the Love Center and the Cornucopia Center.

The Fourth Center of Consciousness — The Love Center

The Fourth Center of Consciousness in the Living Love Way is called the Love Center. Love comes with the unconditional acceptance of everyone and everything around us. And how do we do this? When your consciousness lives in the Love Center, you instantly accept anything that anyone does or anything that happens — but the acceptance is only on an emotional basis. You’re still entitled to your preferences. A mother will love her child even though he upsets the quart of milk and it smashes on the kitchen floor. She prefers that the quart remain intact. But if it spills, that’s here and now. Why get emotionally upset and bother herself and the baby too?

How do you love everyone unconditionally so that you do not upset yourself — no matter what he does or says? You can do this only by transcending your security, sensation and power addictions — for it is only your emotional programming that disturbs you when the events outside do not conform with the programming that you have conditioned inside of you. As your addictions begin to melt away, you begin to experience everything and everyone around you in a different way. You view them not in terms of how they meet your addictive needs — for you are losing those needs — you just view them in terms of, Well, that’s what is — here and now. You realize that each individual has the need to be doing exactly what he or she is doing — here and now. You realize that everyone (including yourself) is creating a world in which one’s addictions are lived out. When you consciously notice the hollowness and suffering that these addictions cause, you achieve insights that help you get free from them.

You are in the Love Center when you accept everything people do as part of their journeys toward awakening. You know that if they are consciously on the path, they will similarly accept your moment-to-moment stuff — for this is what helps them grow, too. And if they are not consciously on the path and become angry, that’s their problem. As your addictions become upleveled to preferences, you begin to find that you can instantly accept what was previously unacceptable emotionally. After all, you really have no choice. Whatever is — IS!!! That’s where it’s at — right here and now. You might be able to change the situation one second, one minute, one hour, or one day from now. And by not getting irritated, you will be more effective in realizing your preferences.

As you learn to live more and more in the Love Center of Consciousness, you will begin to find that you are creating a new world in which your consciousness resides. People and conditions are no longer a threat to you — for no one can threaten your preferences. Others can only threaten your addictions. And you’re losing them fast. Soon your mind will create no others.

As your addictions are reprogrammed, you will find that your ego has less and less to do and your ego will activate the egos of other people less and less. Thus people begin to experience you as becoming purer as you give your ego less to do. This helps them become purer. Even though they may still be stuck in the lower three Centers, they find that they seldom get in touch with tense feelings when they are with you. They can begin to get a taste of what it is like to live in the more joyous Centers of Consciousness. They may come down when they are not with you, but you will have planted a seed of awakening.

When you live more and more in the Love Center of Consciousness, you will find that your blood circulation will improve — and your hands and feet may be warmer. Your blood vessels will no longer be tight and restricted so that you feel cold excessively and deeply. Your face and the back of your neck and head will stay especially warm and glowing. Your skin will experience cold but you will not feel cold inside. This is one of the beautiful physiological things that happens as you grow into higher consciousness. This greater openness of your circulatory system also affects your brain and other organs to make them function more effectively. Colds and illness become rare.

As you spend more and more time in the Fourth Center of Consciousness, you will find that you enjoy touching people more and more. Now that you are seldom paranoid you can enjoy the beautiful feelings of warmth and oneness that you can experience when you make contact not only through words, sight and sound, but also through your touch receptors. As you break through the illusion of duality and separation, you begin to realize that it was only your head that previously kept you from loving people unconditionally. It was not their actions as you had been conditioned to believe.

You begin to see with insight the worldly dramas of addictions that people are still playing out on the first three levels of consciousness and you feel compassion toward those who still are involved in the illusion of separateness. You know that the best way to help them is to work on yourself so that they can perceive (perhaps for the first time in their lives) the experience of unconditional love. They begin to say to themselves, Wow, here is someone who accepts me all the time — no matter what I do or say. Love doesn’t require you to get involved in their stuff, as they struggle through life seeking security, sensations and power. You just accept them because they are there — because they have a right to be there — and because where they are is perfect for their growth — and also yours.

Every experience you have of other people either leaves you peaceful and loving or it makes you aware of the remaining addictions to be reprogrammed. When someone does things that you previously found unacceptable but which you can now emotionally accept, you can say to yourself, Great! I’m getting on with it. Joe just checked me out and I passed the test of being free of that addiction. There is nothing wrong with letting your ego give you a little pat on the back because you are living more and more in the Love Center. You use your ego to constantly raise your Center of Consciousness. If Joe does something and you make yourself feel a bit uptight and alienated from him you can say to yourself, Joe is my teacher, because he is showing me an addiction that I should get rid of.

In the Fourth Center of Consciousness, you experience work as an expression of love and caring. Work is no longer performed unconsciously or mechanically with the feeling that one can fully enjoy life again when the job is done. You’ll increase your growth into higher consciousness by learning to flow energy into meeting the needs of others as though they were your own needs. To paraphrase an ancient saying, When I don’t know who I am, I serve everyone around me; when I do know who I am, I am one with everyone around me.

Selfless service is a beautiful way to get free of the three lower Centers of Consciousness. An ego grasping for security, sensation and power will always trade or barter energy for something that will best enhance its mirage-like lower consciousness situation. When you do only those tasks that are pleasant, unavoidable, or that enhance your security, sensation and power trip, you let your ego keep you trapped. Selfless service without thought of reward is a characteristic of the Fourth Center of Consciousness.

You are beginning to experience that living in a world of love is always enough. You know that your feelings of isolation, separation and paranoia are always artificially created by your emotional programming. You realize that although our bodies and minds are different, in the realm of Conscious-awareness all of us are the same.

And just as a mother loves her infant no matter what he does, you realize that as you grow into higher consciousness you can love everyone around you — regardless of what he or she says or does. Even if someone attacks you fiercely through words or even hits you, he is simply playing out his addictions. He is trying to get you to act differently so that his addictions will not trouble him when he interacts with you.

So no matter what happens, you experience everything as love. You finally arrive at the place where nothing that happens in the world around you knocks you out of the Love Center of Consciousness. You can emotionally accept everything. You can always return love no matter what a person does or says. And by doing this, you will be doing the most you can to help others transcend their addictions. If you remain loving even when they try to hurt you, they may begin to find that love place in themselves which they so want to experience — but which they don’t yet know how to find. Everything is either an effective or ineffective way of creating love, peace and oneness.

No matter how horrendous your acts may be, you always want to be understood and loved. So does everyone else. So just remember how we are trapped by our addictions. And then you will understand. And then you can unconditionally love everyone as an unfolding being.

Relationships that are held together by shoulds or shouldn’ts lose their spontaneous here-and-now vividness. Love cannot be a programmed addiction held together by fear or pressure. Real love blossoms and remains where there is no addiction — but instead a vibrant, totally here-and-now involvement. And the optimal future is always generated from the free-flowing, non-expectant present moment.

If you have current obligations, you acknowledge these and follow through with them. For when you begin your journey to higher consciousness, you start from where you are right now. When you ignore or avoid your obligations, you create a me-them attitude. This does not create a space for the harmonizing of energies into an us consciousness. And as you consciously relate to your obligations, you work them out by working on yourself. In the flowingly fulfill within an us space.

When you live in the Love Center of Consciousness and are relatively free of addictions, you will find that you can love everyone unconditionally. For it is your involvement that is conditional — not your love. You have only twenty-four hours in a day and your time will usually be spent with people who have similar preferences and with whom you enjoy doing things. When the deepest harmonizing of energies takes place between people, they enjoy just being together. It is not necessary to continually keep up a heavy drama of activities — you can just silently be with each other and totally enjoy being in each other’s space. You may do many things together — but the doing is never compulsive or contrived. You are able to experience a deep inner peace by simply being in each other’s presence. And you are able to love everyone around you, but you do not necessarily become involved in the dramas of everyone.

parade of preferences

When two people love from the Fourth Center of Consciousness, they do not experience the love they have for other people as detracting or threatening the love they share. They are not held together by a jealous, romantic model of love that constitutes an addiction that makes them vulnerable to suffering. They keep their consciousness in a state where they are totally involved — and yet totally non-addicted. They give each other total freedom and unconditional acceptance. They love and serve each other in a relatively egoless way. Equally for both of them, loving and serving yields the maximum of all the beautiful things that life can offer.

As you experience the peace, harmony and love that you are creating in your life, you begin to realize that all of the problems in the world will solve themselves when we four billion people on earth live in ways characterized by love and service. You know that every feeling that you have and every thought and communication you make, can add to the world total of loving energy that can in chain-fashion propagate itself forever.

The Fifth Center of Consciousness — The Cornucopia Center

As you live more and more in the Love Center of Consciousness, you will open yourself to more people and life situations. Instead of shying away from people and situations as you have done in the past, you now realize you have nothing to be afraid of. You will

begin to find friendships that you could never have found before. You will discover yourself exploring areas of life that you would never have experienced previously because of your security, sensation and power addictions. You now experience them in an open, relaxed way — rather than in a preconceived, judgemental way. You will be 1000% more open to various experiences that are available to you than when you were making choices based on the lower three Centers of Consciousness.

This openness is beginning to let you flow and experience life in an almost miraculous way. Since you are open, most life situations which were a problem to you now find beautiful solutions. Events are seen in terms of results and happenings instead of people’s supposed attitudes toward you. People who have things to teach you (but from whom you closed yourself off) can now come into your life. Since your ego has less and less work to do as the slave of your addictions, you are beginning to experience the whole spectrum of your here and now. Your perception has increased enormously. You now have higher predictability in your thinking. Because you have created a beautiful, peaceful world in which you now live, you are helping everyone around you find the beautiful, peaceful place inside. And you can accept help without feeling that an obligation is created.

You will begin to experience your life as one miraculous happening after another. But this transformation could have happened at any time in your life — because you have created it simply by your constantly increasing openness to people and things around you. You begin to see that the miracle was always there, but it took place in its own court — because you were too busy hassling yourself with your addictions and trying to manipulate people and things around you. Life is now offering you a Cornucopia or a Horn of Plenty.

And athe miracle of Cornucopia consciousness occurs because of three powerful factors that automatically aid you when you substantially reduce the number of addictions you are guarding:

  1. Since addictions waste your energy, you will now have a huge supply of energy to use as you prefer.
  2. Since addictions blind you, you will now have clear insight into what you should do or not do in various life situations.
  3. Since addictions separate you from others, you will now live in a loving energy field in which people love you and help you.

As you gain insight into the Cornucopia Center of Consciousness, you will begin to feel that you live in a friendly world that will always give you enough when you live in the higher Centers of Consciousness. You will also begin to deeply feel that you live in a perfect world. You will not feel it as perfect from the limited point of view of your instant happiness when you have addictive programming. But your world is perfect from the point of view of continually providing you with precisely the life experiences that you need for your overall development as a conscious being.

A paranoid person feels that everybody is trying to keep him from getting what he needs to be happy. The world is a giant conspiracy to hurt him. The Fifth Center of Consciousness represents the opposite of paranoia. In this Center you experience people and situations around you as part of a generous world that constantly offers you everything you need to be happy.

You will begin to live more and more in the Cornucopia Center when you experience deeper and deeper aspects of your world as a friendly, nurturing place. You feel at home everywhere.

Who could ask for more? And yet there is more as you grow toward the last two Centers of Consciousness.

Discovering the Secrets of Happiness: My Intimate Story by Ken Keyes, Jr. shares his process of consciousness growth in going beyond the Security, Sensation and Power Centers into the Love Center. See Appendix 5 for more information.

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