Handbook To Higher Consciousness
Chapter 7
Interacting with Others


Chapter 7

Interacting With Others

Flowing — not manipulation — is the way of higher consciousness. Flowing means moving with the forces around us — being in tune with the vibrations of the people and things in our environment. Flowing enables us to find the love, beauty and peace that we are missing in our lives. But flowing is impossible based on the models of how to be happy that we learned in our childhood, for we cannot flow or harmonize when we are the slaves of our addictions. Our addictions force us to manipulate ourselves — and others. As adults whose minds and bodies have completed their structural growth, we have the potential of flowing in the river of our lives in a beautiful, loving way.

Seventh Pathway

I open myself genuinely to all people by being willing to fully communicate my deepest feelings, since hiding in any degree keeps me stuck in my illusion of separateness from other people.

As you begin to uplevel all of your addictions to the status of preferences (or eliminate them entirely), you will discover that you no longer have anything to hide from other people. It then feels good to be able to communicate with each person exactly what you are experiencing. As you grow into higher consciousness through eliminating your addictions, you will be able to drop all deceptive, subject-object manipulation in the games you have been playing — the money game, the security game, the male-female game, the prestige game, the power game, the knowledge game, the expert game, etc. These can be beautiful games to play when you play them consciously and lovingly, but they generate suffering and unhappiness when you play them addictively.

When you are not completely open and truthful to all people — when you are trying to hide a part of your inner feelings — you continue the illusion of separateness from others. Hasn’t everyone been caught up in the addictions for security, sensation and power? Are you under the illusion that you have desires and feelings that are so horrible that others will be shocked? Or are we really all one? Deep inside, all of us have experienced this self-imposed suffering and isolation that keeps us from being peaceful and loving — even though we may not have perceived it as self-imposed. We have all been in similar predicaments at one time or another in our lives.

One of the ways out of this wall of isolation is to communicate, Well, here I am. This is what my addictions are making me feel here and now. I accept myself (including my addictions) as being on an unfolding journey toward a peaceful, loving state of higher consciousness.

When you’re around someone who is experiencing fairly continuous states of higher consciousness, you can be sure that he or she will unconditionally accept you exactly where you are now — for he or she has travelled over the same road and prefers to help you. You can grow fastest and enjoy the trip most (even though your remaining addictions make it a bit rocky sometimes) if you can relax and just communicate fully.

It feels so good to be able to just open up and let people see all of you. You’ll be amazed at how quickly they can then cut through their drama and accept you without the phony masks and rôle s with which you previously identified. You have every right to feel exactly as you feel. If others are bothered, that’s their problem. You’re their teacher giving them experiences they need to reprogram their addictions — just as they are your teacher enabling you to find your addictions.

When you consistently use the Pathways, you do not have to scream, viciously attack, or otherwise unduly threaten another person in order to communicate your deepest feelings. You don’t need to lay judgements on people or prove them wrong. You just talk about your own consciousness. Instead of, You are horrible and I don’t want to ever see you again, you can say, You’ve put me in touch with one of my addictions and right now I feel so angry at you I don’t want to be with you. When you just talk about your own consciousness, you give both yourself and the other person a better chance to work through the addictive programming that produces the illusion of separateness.

The Ninth Pathway suggests that you give yourself a short period of time to work through the emotion caused by your addiction. But if you are at the beginning of your consciousness growth, you may find it more important to communicate quickly so that your relationships are always up front. Remember, hiding separates; openness unites.

As you grow into higher consciousness, you will become aware of the many ways in which you have been involved in complex rôle playing, with hidden shoulds and shouldn’ts that create complicated patterns of demanding and expectation. You can work effectively toward the "us" space when you genuinely and openly communicate your feelings and reveal the security, sensation and power dance that you have been doing. You will find that you can usually cut through these ensnaring dramas by expressing your preferences clearly to yourself and others. You will realize that open communication of your innermost feelings helps your ego (and the egos of other people) to get free of addictive programming which in the long run only produces unhappiness and alienation.

Eighth Pathway

I feel with loving compassion the problems of others without getting caught up emotionally in their predicaments that are offering them messages they need for their growth.

All your emotional problems are created by your addictions. Your growth into higher consciousness consists of becoming free of these traps. When you interact with people who are still involved in this automatic computer-like emotional programming, it is important that you learn to feel their problems with loving compassion, hut without getting caught up emotionally in their predicaments. Compassionate understanding — yes; pity and commiseration — no.

Compassion means that when you empathize with the predicaments of other people, you silently send out the vibration, "Yes, I know. I’ve been there too. It’s OK to feel the way you do — however, try to see that it’s all drama. Life always has its tigers — and we do what we can about them. But above all, let’s be sure to continuously enjoy the strawberries.There are always enough strawberries to enjoy our here and now if we don’t put all of our attention on the tigers!

Compassion means that you understand the duality and separation they are creating in themselves by rejecting what is here and now in their lives — but you do not get caught up in their poignant drama. Compassion means that you realize that you can do the most for other people when you stay centered and high and loving whenever you are around them for they are playing out their addictions, suffering because of them and hopefully picking up the messages life is offering them. Compassion means that you love and serve them from a clear love space and not from a compulsiveness or guilt motivated by your remaining security, sensation and power addictions.

You learn not to give gifts that you cannot emotionally afford to give. When you resent helping someone, this creates obligations, duality and separation. You cannot psychologically afford to give such help and the recipient cannot afford to receive it. The price in personal distance and separation is too high if you give to avoid a feeling of guilt or from a should or ought motivation.

When you help someone because of a feeling of obligation or dray rather than free-flowing love, you may find yourself resenting lire person for needing your help. These negative feelings can prevent you from being sensitive to his or her real here-and-now needs and doing or saying what would really be helpful. Very often just being in a loving space with a person as you listen to him or her is more helpful than any advice you could give.

When you can help someone with a feeling of love and oneness — you just do it because it feels good to you. When you feel oneness with another, there is no giver or receiver — there’s just us here. It’s like one hand washing another. You are just letting energy flow through you.

When you are with someone who is trapped in the suffering caused by addictions, you use this as an opportunity to work on your consciousness. The greatest thing you can do for others is to remain happy and loving when you are with them. You do not get caught up as a supporting actor no matter how tragic the rôle they are playing in the drama of their life. It’s their thing to play this rôle . They probably chose this rôle (either consciously or unconsciously) and are clinging to it. The best way to give them a chance to free themselves from their addictive trap is for you to avoid getting caught up emotionally in the stuff that they are taking so seriously. They are not that stuff with which they are identifying. Behind all that, here we are.

As the Law of Higher Consciousness suggests, the game is to Love Everyone Unconditionally — Including Yourself. As you begin to increase the number of people for whom you feel unconditional love, you will be aware of the many security, sensation and power dramas that each of them is busily playing out. You realize that you cannot, in practice, have enough time and energy to love everyone you meet if you have a bleeding heart response to the heap of problems people are creating in their lives.

Your life works best when you love, serve and flow your loving energy — not from a lower consciousness motivation of I am helping you, or I will save you, but simply from the awareness that the universe gave this energy to me and it feels good to pass it along. As you become more conscious, your energy will increase. And also, as you become more conscious, less of it will be drained by your own security, sensation and power addictions. You will then liberate a continuous stream of energy which will flow into loving and serving people around you.

Ninth Pathway

I act freely when I am tuned in, centered and loving, but if possible I avoid acting when I am emotionally upset and depriving myself of the wisdom that flows from love and expanded consciousness.

When you are emotionally upset, you energize the addictive patterns of other people who are also caught in the lower levels of consciousness. They will mirror your uptightness and will not be tuned in, perceptive and able to fully understand what you are trying to tell them. They will reflect your inner conflicts, for you will trigger their addictions — and this will interfere with effective communication. The things you do or say when you have stirred up your emotions and the emotions of other people will be handled in a way that is destructive of peace, love and oneness. You may be able to pull a power trip to make something happen — but it will not feel right to all concerned. And the future consequences of your actions will cause greater future conflicts.

Bad vibrations, like the measles, are contagious. Every time you interact with anger, resentment, or fear, you add a little rein-Ion cement to the addictions from which we wish to be liberated. You know the story of the man who bawled out his friend and the blend went home and fought with his wife, who spanked her child, who then kicked the cat.

Now let’s turn it around — for good vibrations are also catching. Let’s be the man who complimented his friend and the friend went home and kissed his wife, who was so extra loving to her child that he gave the cat some milk without even being asked!

To avoid adding to the total sum of the bad vibrations in the maid, unless you are in physical danger, wait until you are tuned centered and loving before you act. Then your perception and wisdom may lead you to choose a more effective course of action. lint even if you do the same thing that you originally intended to do, it now has a better chance of success because the conscious-h we/ of everyone concerned is elevated. Instead of acting out a Mama of addictions, you are, here and now, communicating as a tuned-in human being telling what you feel and what you prefer.

The Seventh Pathway and the Ninth Pathway put you in an interesting predicament. The Seventh Pathway tells you to communicate your deepest feelings and the Ninth Pathway says for you to withhold your communication, if possible, until you are perceptive, centered and loving. What this means is that you are always ready to be completely open and to communicate with people, but if you are caught in the grip of a disturbing emotion, you give yourself a little time to work on your addiction — rather than acting out the fight-or-flight feeling you have triggered.

A part of your growth into higher consciousness will be associated with how perceptively you handle these two Pathways. You can use the Ninth Pathway to hide — or you can use it to delay your responses to people long enough to give the other Pathways an opportunity to rescue you from the negative emotions you have triggered. Always remember that you cannot put off for long your making an up-front communication of your deepest feelings if you wish to be conscious, perceptive and loving. Unexpressed feelings act like a cancer in your brain that malignantly spreads — warping your perceptions and bringing you alienation and suffering. You thus learn to use the Seventh and Ninth Pathways to create more and more aliveness and beauty in all of your relationships with other people.

Prescriptions for Happiness by Ken Keyes, Jr. gives three simple techniques to bring more insight and love with other people: Ask for what you want — but don’t demand it; accept whatever happens — for now; and turn up your love — even if you don’t gut what you want. For more information, see Appendix 5.
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