Continued from Part 1…
The second part of the “how” is then to do the practices, to actually make some form of wisdom practice or spiritual practice or consciousness practice an essential part of my life. It could be a form of meditation, a form of sacred dance, a form of introspection or contemplation, the study of sacred text, the engagement in significant nature mysticism, or prayer to engage the personal face of essence (what we might call the second face of God, the personal face of All-That-Is, that knows my name and holds me through prayer). All of these practices, engaged regularly, and made part of your life stream, day after day, begin to open up the space, much like going to the gym and working out. Exercising the body builds physical muscles. The way I build the muscles of the Eye of the Spirit is to engage in practice at the level of Spirit.
So at the body level, we call that the gross realm – not gross as in yucky, but gross as in the physical incarnate realm. Then the next realm is the subtle realm, which is no less real, which is the realm of subtle energies. So the emotion of love is a subtle energy. Excitement is a subtle energy. The feeling of delight is a subtle energy. So at the level of subtle energy, what I need to do is to practice. I need to practice at the level of Spirit, and all the practices I just listed are practices that develop spiritual intelligence.
So that’s the second part of the “how.” The “how” is to engage in committed, regular practice and allow that practice to transform you. Ethical practice is essential. To develop a sense of ethical mindfulness, to transcend narrow small Self for Other – all of this is part of practice.
So there are two parts to the “how.” One is setting intention, and the second is committed practice. These two “hows” need to become part of the essential birthright education of every human being. That’s how we democratize enlightenment, meaning this is no longer the province of merely the elite. That’s what democracy means. Democracy means the king is no longer the only Unique Self. In the old world there was one Unique Self who was the king. What we’re now saying is, no, actually, just like we’ve moved to self-governance, we’ve also moved to an expansion of the right and the obligation and the possibility of moving from Separate Self to True Self, to Unique Self. That movement becomes part of the raison d’être, the very purpose of existence of every human being, and to begin to inject that potentia, that potential into the source code of consciousness. That is the movement towards the Democratization of Enlightenment.