Conscious Participation

Conscious Participation is a state of being where we create our own Safety and Security by engaging and clearing fears that prevent effective connections with others. When we operate in Conscious Participation, we reflect the reality that “showing up” is 80% of what we accomplish. Our mutual presence and the creative understanding of ourselves allows us to meet others in ways that produce natural synergy. The ability to love ourselves allows us to love those with whom we co-create. This allows us to bring about the alignment necessary so that every experience becomes one that transcends self-perceived limitations. As a result of naturally releasing all attachments to possessions and ideas, we can create in an open community framework, which greatly expands our power to envision and manifest any reality we desire. It is this ability to be tuned in with the greater needs around us that provides a capacity to mobilize resources in new ways. This requires that we are able to create our own internal safety and security and increasingly are able to follow a path that is defined by our creative nature effectively manifested by our personality nature. In Conscious Participation, we not only unify the masculine and feminine, but we unify bottom personality expressions with the top creative expressions, so that our being is potent, inviting and expressive.

Everyone is invited to love the Creative Self, rather than Personality Self more completely. When we are able to be present with our experience and are not trying to control, manage or manipulate it, we create the framework for Conscious Participation. Our commitment to show up and engage the process, whatever it may be, is what makes Conscious Participation a transformative experience. Instead of hiding out or operating in a disconnected manner with others, let us learn how to be present with our creative nature in a way that invites others to create with us. This invitation is reflected in our ability to trust others and operate in a state of unity with our Self. Can we use this inner trust, unity and love to engage other consciously? What would we need to honor within our self to make this possible? How would we need to love our Self so that loving others was natural and unconditional? In what way would we need to honor, respect and esteem our Self so it is possible to mutually honor, respect and esteem others? In short, we would need to recognize the power and grace of our contribution to naturally uplift others. We also would require ways to uniquely connect to others based on which motives were natural resting places for them.

To start with, we need to meet others where they are which means imagine honoring their fears. Any attempt to change their fears or motives without their explicit agreement will likely create resistance. Let us recognize the value of our vulnerability to meet their vulnerability. Instead of seeing our vulnerability as a weakness, we can imagine it as a strength that connects us to others in their fears, so we can honor and experience their reality fully. Until we know their perspective from the inside out, we will have limited success in any mutual creative process. Our secret is our inherent compassion that supports us in being with them exactly as they are. This compassion reflects our ability to connect to every life as it is. This can lead others to want to expand their understanding their current motives, so it is possible to invite them into a deeper more conscious connection. Our natural desire to be present with them will eventually awaken them to larger opportunities. The best we can do is to operate in higher motives so by example, they will recognize what they may be missing. Their inquiry about why we seem happy, clear and non-reactive open up a discussion about how we could be more effective supporting each other by being conscious of our fears.

By discussing our fears in a way that do not limit or impact our behavior, thoughts or speech, can awaken them to ways of being present that would be freeing. Just the fact that we can laugh at the predicaments our motives create will create an expansion of our connection. When we share that it is possible to shift our ides of our self from predefined safety and security issues to transpersonal discussions about why our fears do not need to limit our experience, it could be a jolt. While this shock could expand our creative connection it could also introduce greater fears if they are not prepared for it. When they are ready to engage a relationship consciously by being aware of the 12 Motives, 12 Skills and 14 Compatibility Factor differences, they will be able and willing to talk about their experience in a detached observer mode, without being reactive. This detachment is critical in order to be uplifting or support them in being more conscious with us. Even if others are not ready, it is a great practice to see how much we can pay attention to the issues of others and be present to their pain. This develops compassion and a desire to serve others despite our own discomfort.

The three belief structures of Romance, Motives, and Love lose their power over us whenever we are present and able to operate from our creative nature. Beliefs only support and reinforce personality concerns. Beliefs are primarily used to offset Safety fears and, in this way, provide a form of artificial reassurance. Conscious Participation is both a commitment to show up and to engage others where they are. It requires that we be complete and understand ourselves enough so that we do not project our issues and fears on others. Instead, we need to be able to recognize that any fear is our fear, which requires us to take ownership of it in our communications with others. No longer do we need to distinguish our fears from their fears to make ourselves feel better. Rather, we engage each fear as if it were our own because, if it is in our experience, it is our fear in some way. This practice is also a unifying one because it does not emphasize our need for separateness to protect ourselves. Instead, we can be conscious of whatever fears come up and use them as opportunities to deepen our connection with others.

It is both effective and powerful to acknowledge fears as part of our unfolding process because fears create “processional effects,” meaning to precede something else. These processional effects happen because our fears modify and distort what we see, experience, and value. Acknowledging fears is critical to keep them from distorting what we see and how we engage each other. Otherwise, we will react to our partner in ways that are not accurate reflections of what our partner is doing. At the core of our conditioning is the desire to anticipate the behavior of others so we can effectively influence it. These expectations are driven by fears that may or may not exist. Either way, these fears effect our perceptions and keep us from taking appropriate risks in our growth. Instead we play it small and limit our expression when, in fact, what the Universe is requesting is just the opposite.

Of course, we justify acting in conditioned ways by believing we are protecting ourselves, when we are merely reinforcing the repression of our past. As long as we identify with our conditioning, we believe our personality perspective is who we are. This identification with our outer presentation or appearance prevents us from examining the full range of options and opportunities we have. To break out of these limited self-perceptions, we need learn how to question our path, particularly when it reinforces past perceptions of beliefs about who we have been. This means demonstrating that we can make uncomfortable or even repugnant choices because we can. Freeing ourselves from pre-established habitual patterns of activity is worthwhile. Awakening our Aliveness in this way gets our energy moving and directly engages us in the world.

When we engage our Aliveness, it reflects our Creative Self identity, where we are no longer lost in protecting ourselves from the unpleasant behavior of others. Being Alive awakens us to the deeper reality that we have no right to determine how others behave. We do have the choice to participate or not based on whether we appreciate their behavior or not. We also have the right to speak our Truth about what we would prefer or not. Hopefully, we can communicate this in a way that does not compel others to act in ways that would not be authentic for them. When we are in our Aliveness, operating as a Creative Being, we prefer others to be authentic with us. Any compromise they make in order to be with us limits their ability to participate with us. If is easy for us to be bored when others operate in conditioned ways and we feel unable to bring enough Aliveness to the interaction to awaken new possibilities for it.

With Universal Dominion, we learn to recognize our potential and the potential of others and simultaneously embrace both to create mutual autonomy. One processional effect of Universal Dominion is the ability to speak our Truth harmlessly without reactions being created in either party. It is our creative presence with our “self” that neutralizes our fears so they are not projected on our partner. This enables us to come into a space of stillness where, in effect, we operate in the eye of a larger vortex that enables us to see the many options we have and choose a course of action that reflects our highest being. In the space of inner serenity, we are able to unify our energy so it is available as needed. In the stillness of who we are we realize we can trust our self to be who we are beyond our outer presentation or form. We see all our ways of being as reflections of different aspects of who we are that demonstrate our true humanity. As a result, we are no longer willing or able to judge ourselves or others negatively.

It is paradoxical that the embodiment of our feminine transforms our potential into unexpected mastery in action. This is because healing the feminine requires an aspect of the masculine. For example, people who respect themselves and are able to embody the feminine naturally seek to build the respect of others with whom they interact by honoring how the potential of other is becoming actualized as they way of being. Mutual Respect evokes self-esteem in them that can be returned to us when they honor and acknowledge our self-esteem. In this way, the feminine is completed by an element of the masculine that brings it into balance within itself. We can see this graphically in the classic image of the Taoist philosophy where the opposite point of view is contained within the circle of the other (the white dot in the center of the arc of black). In this case, the spaciousness of the feminine finds its focus in the central appreciation of its knowing.

We embody our masculine by using our Creative Awareness, Co-Measurement, and commitment to unify our ideas with those of others so a greater wisdom can emerge. In this case, the structure and content of the masculine finds a deeper presence or self-acceptance that permits us to recognize the greater source of our knowing. Self-esteem evolves into Mutual Esteem as we start to build the esteem of others. When we do this with people who reflect the feminine, it will (as we previously discussed) create a response where mutual respect will be reflected back to us. What we are seeking in the feminine is to be effective in our interactions so we can see progress being made. This reflects the time orientation of the masculine that is only transcended when we are also able to embrace the feminine. Without the balancing of the masculine and feminine, full conscious participation cannot blossom. George Gurdjieff was a pioneer in spiritual methodology that reflected a greater masculine embodiment than a feminine one. This means it was more difficult for him to create equal, conscious participation with others in his moment-to-moment process.

Another more balanced spiritual leader was Gandhi. Though he initially embodied a greater feminine embodiment than the masculine, he awakened in others a greater response to the degree that he balanced the masculine and feminine within himself. This embodiment of the masculine and feminine must be done in simultaneously to maximize conscious participation. We need to be able to recognize our contribution and the contribution of others (honoring the masculine) and also to be able to be present with our potential and honor the potential of others (honoring the feminine) so all options and opportunities can be available to the process. Wherever we are withholding something from the process becomes the problem focus that consumes all our energy. In other words, the degree to which we are operating in a state of creative denial becomes the degree to which we create fears that we project into our situation, immensely complicating what is needed to produce creative results. When we operate within the comfort zone of our conditioning, the denial of the masculine (not honoring contribution) and feminine (not honoring potential) makes it much more difficult to be creative and fulfilled in our expression.

We need to bring these two sides of ourselves together in our hearts, which in historical spiritual terminology was called the “chalice”. The chalice, in different religious traditions, reflected the incomplete patterns, lessons, or karma that led us to take actions to complete and neutralize their energetic effects. This self-healing process metaphorically represents reconnecting to the Universe in a Whole way. We usually experience it as a creative passion that is met and experienced by us and others as creative flow with each other. In conscious relationships, this is experienced as connecting in common neutral ground as a separate space outside of our personal environment. In common neutral ground terminology, the energy of the heart is used to create a relationship space of imagination, visualization, and will. This is similar to the Christian tradition of the story of the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail, which was believed to be the chalice Jesus Christ used at the Last Supper, represented the sharing of his Life, Light, and Love energy with others as part of a conscious, creative renewal process. This has been rearticulated to mean the chalice that provided eternal life because the experience transcended our common understanding of space, time, and energy. We call this experience Conscious Participation because it allows us to go beyond our expectations and discover the mystery and mastery inherent in our Inner Creative Being.

Conscious Participation is usually associated with being of service to others and our self simultaneously. Many people believe service needs to be impersonal because making things personal brings fears and personality desires into the situation and thwarts our higher creative expression. While these concerns are valid, there is no way we can completely eliminate the personal from our interactions with others. Our language itself is dualistic in nature and personalizes everything. Therefore, we need to find a way to honor the personal so it does not interfere with the service we are trying to perform. We can do this by acknowledging our fears and personality desires and then focusing on how to best contribute to others while allowing the Universe to serve us in best way it knows. Ultimately, we need to learn to trust that our contributions will be acknowledged and valued in some way. This does not mean we will be paid or compensated in a way we think is commensurate with our contribution. Instead, it is more likely that some of the contributions we make will not bring material remuneration, but some of the others things we do may create inordinate support and remuneration. Conscious Participation requires us to try not to control how the Universe serves us, just as the Universe does not try to control how we serve it. This is a major benefit of Conscious Participation and reflects how everything needs to operate in a state of free will.

Conscious Participation is the simultaneous honoring of our embodied masculine and feminine permitting us to operate as a Co-Creator with Universal Intent. It is paradoxical that it requires us, on a personality level, to recognize and honor our own Truth before we can see how it relates to other more inclusive Truths. This is because we build our consciousness from the inside out and we limit our ability to be true to ourselves when we accept the beliefs of others over our own knowing or experience. Honoring our Truth on a personal level clarifies for us that it is important for others to honor their Truths and not compromise themselves. If they compromise themselves, it greatly limits the degree to which we can consciously interact with them. This is a major criteria in choosing friends, partners, and associates. The degree to which others can see themselves is directly proportional to the degree to which they meet us and see us where we are, provided we are as conscious as they.

The bottom line is that no one can operate outside their comfort zone when they are not aware of how their own fears and personality desires are interfering with their ability to be present with others. Fears and personality desires distract us from connecting openly and consciously with another person. When we are tired, frustrated, or irritated, our ability to participate consciously with others is greatly curtailed. The more overwhelmed we are, the more we contract and operate in ways that make us feel safe and secure. When this happens, our focus cannot be on others, but rather is caught up in trying to make our own situation bearable.

It is time now to recognize that we are only as present as our energy and circumstances allow. While we can learn to regenerate ourselves when we are stressed out, it is not a quick or easy process to shift from our conditioning to a self-affirming, free way of interacting with others.
It is a cyclic and evolutionary process where we need to accept that sometimes the possibility of Conscious Participation will emerge and allow for progress, while at other times things will naturally be more constrained. This is the nature of the growth of our consciousness – that by learning how to be present with ourselves we can learn how to channel our energy in uplifting ways. Every investment in ourselves allows us to make investments in participating with others. The reverse is not true – that is, when we seek to constantly participate without honoring our own energy and process, we ultimately collapse from sheer exhaustion. This reflects that consciousness “begins at home”. While some people may believe this is selfish, it is important for us to make ourselves a priority in our development process so that our service to others can be sustained. Another way of looking at this is that we need a little selfishness to be of the highest service to others.

When we are engaging others, it is also important to recognize when they need time to regenerate. Trying to match our cycles is the best way to facilitate Conscious Participation with others. In all intimate relationships, we need the natural ebb and flow of deepening ourselves in our own experience and then sharing it with our partner. This ebb and flow is the way of the world, as all things operate in cyclic patterns. Our growth can also be facilitated by cyclically shifting our attention and focus to people on different levels of conscious development. While we will find the best results with people who match our own degree of consciousness, having friends and associates for whom we must hold greater space because they are not as conscious is a great service which supports us in attracting others who are more conscious than we are.  Both of these augment and greatly enhance our growth process.

A mutual transmutation where everyone involved is awakened to a greater self-understanding, as a part of the process is the ultimate Communion experience of Conscious Participation. This advanced state of connection only occurs when there is a mutual honoring of the masculine and feminine within us. In other words, every participant in the process needs to be fully engaged in a Pioneering manner that fluidly and powerfully generates new ways of interacting in each moment. This requires complete trust and a commitment to unity for every participant. It is the hope and aspiration of humanity that we be able to use our consciousness as a technology for the transformation of the world. In the coming years, more and more people will awaken to the power of their Intent and be able to operate outside the comfort zone of their conditioning which will make this transformation a reality. Right now we are focusing on creating Spiritual Partnerships that will operate on this level.