In a moment of crisis, would you say that you're easy-going? Are you wide-open and joyous to be with? Or, in a crisis, would you say you're about as tense as a human being could possibly be? Isn't that true? The more tense you are through resistance, the more negative you become. The more negative you become, the more resistance resists itself. And the more you resist yourself, the more tense you become. So you run left, you run right, you hate, you fight, you drink, you cuss. You do everything you can possibly do to escape the condition that you say has caught you and is pulling you down.
But if you're lucky, and you don't get caught in the bitterness trap, at a certain point, you've run everywhere you can, and nothing works. Then you have to do what? Just let it go. Because you realize, "I am absolutely powerless." In that moment, a collapse takes place, and suddenly you get it: "I see it!"
There is a direct relationship between the moment of the pinnacle of tension and the release of it that brings forth new eyes with which to see. Because in that instant where these tensions are relaxed, the release of the tension is the end of the fixation that the nature had with itself or was resisting in itself. And in the end of the fixation is the realization of a completely different set of energies that had always been present, only you were unconscious to it. In the relaxation, the fixation is not only over, but it allows for the advent of a relationship with something that was always and already present in you, even in the moment of tension.
And what is it that was always present in you even in the moment of tension that you had no attention to give to? The spirit of aspiration. The ascending spirit. Christ, Life, God, Love -- call it what you will. The ascending spirit is never not in you. But you're not present to its presence. And this we can prove for the purpose of delivering us into a new understanding of what any given moment holds as a possibility when a person is facing inwardly a crisis of any kind whatsoever.
Now, this takes some work. Have you ever had one of those moments where finally the tension just drops off because you can't do anything? And then, whether it's ten seconds, ten minutes, or ten days later, "That's the best thing that ever happened to me! I don't know why I thought I had to fight like that. It was nuts! Because I feel so much better now. I'm reborn!" And in a manner of speaking, you are. Because a contact has been made with this ascending spirit, and this ascending spirit is not different than the Source to which it ascends. It's an alignment. There's an exercise implied in this understanding, and we'll go over it now.
Because our attention is taken by this sleeping mind and riveted to whatever it is resisting, our sense of life is essentially given to us through the lens of a negative state of not wanting. As a result, we have almost no sense of anything going on outside of us. We are unable to externally consider another human being. Do you know why you can't consider other human beings? Because you're self-involved, caught up in one fashion or another of a fixation with being somehow trapped. And in that fixation, there is this constant tumult of feeling that everything's impinging on you, and you're being blinded.
Now, that means we have almost no voluntary sense of what it means to be ourselves. We have no voluntary awareness, attention to the whole of ourselves, because our attention is taken by this resistance and placed upon the resisted.
We have the capacity to voluntarily use our attention, our sensing of ourselves, to give it to what we want to give it to, when we want to give it to it, so that our attention, our awareness doesn't belong to that part of ourselves that just puts it where it does and then keeps that tension in place.
Instead, you can begin -- which is what the exercise is about -- a thousand times a day, whenever you can, to become aware of a tension within you. Reclaim your attention, and instead of being identified with the resistance to the tension and what the mind is blaming for it, reclaim your 'I', meaning become aware of the resistance to that tension, and deliberately release it.
Now listen carefully, because this is a very fine line. To release the tension doesn't mean that in the moment you do it, it's going away. When you relax from the tension, what you are releasing yourself from is the identification with the sensation. So in the moment of this tension, you become aware of the identification with it, and then deliberately relax from the tension before unconsciously identifying with it. And I tell you that if you do that properly, in sensing the whole of yourself, you will sense the ascending spirit that was blocked by your fixation with the descending spirit. In the relaxation of the fixation there is not only an integration that takes place, a true healing, but it also becomes possible for you to be aware of the ascending spirit, the little part of you that's always present, that wants to rise, that wants to ascend.
The beauty of what I'm telling you is that this is something you can use every second of your life. And if you ever actually catch a glimpse of this, if you actually have a moment where you're fully in the grip of this contraction -- this resistance and the tension it's producing -- and you actually catch that and deliberately relax yourself, release yourself from the identification with that tension, in that same second that you release yourself from the descending spirit, you'll be made aware of a little champagne bubble, a little interior movement inside of you going up.
Using your own life, the moments in it, for the process of discovery is to realize that there is a possibility of releasing yourself, but not from the condition. Before you can be released from an unwanted condition, you must be released from the father of that condition, which is a consciousness that is set against itself. And the consciousness that's set against itself is set against itself because it's divided. All it knows is tension and pizza. Tension and collapse. Tension and sex. Tension and drugs. Tension and pleasure. That's all it knows. But you can know something else if you wish it. Tension and relaxation are a circle. They're one thing. And in the middle of them, right through the heart of those opposites, is an ascending spirit. You have the tools. You have the understanding. It's up to you to use it.
