SELF STUDY

Monthly Focus ~ 

Skinning Your Knees on God by Hafiz

Little by little, you will turn into stars. Even then, my dear, you will only be a crawling infant, still skinning your knees on God. 

Little by little, you will turn into the whole sweet, amorous Universe in heat on a wild spring night, and become so free in a wonderful, secret and pure Love that flows from a conscious, one-pointed, infinite need for light. 

Even then, my dear, the Beloved will have fulfilled just a fraction, just a fraction! of a promise He wrote upon your heart. 

When your soul begins to ever bloom and laugh and spin in internal ecstasy – oh little by little, you will turn into God.

Full Excerpt ~ Brian Yeakey

We have a tour guide, the Spiritual Teacher or the Radiant Form. I like using the word Radiant Form better than Spiritual Teacher because to me that makes it truly all about the inner, not about the physical one. Oh, the physical one’s all right too, in my opinion. That’s supposed to get a laugh. Hahaha. Also, one of the ways that I not only look at this as an inner mountain, but I also look at this much like a Christmas tree. Isn’t it interesting? The Christmas tree up there at the peak and what’s often at the top of the Christmas tree? The star, right?

Well, it’s funny because that star has often been called the star of Bethlehem, the Soul Star; that’s our own soul. That’s the journey – we’re climbing a mountain (to the top of the mountain), or on the top of the tree, that star represents our own soul, our awakening. And that journey up is all the experiences we’re going to have and learn through that.

I like to look at a couple of other things here too, if you look at this as a tree. What does every tree have right through the middle of it? What do we call that? That’s right, the trunk. Of course, there’s the roots that come down, all of our attachments into the world, right? But that trunk right in the middle, that’s the straight and narrow pathway. And isn’t it interesting on this straight and narrow pathway, that trunk, it goes right on up? Some trunks, they get a little winding, curly. Well, yeah, that’s what actually happens. Such is life. It’s not just one straight path, it’s all over the place. Isn’t it interesting too, on the trunk, what comes out of the trunk? All these branches, right?

Well, all those branches that come out of the trunk, guess what those are? Those are all the experiences the soul is having as it goes into all these realms of consciousness, just like in the physical world, here are the roots or branches here as well. That’s our journey of having life experience. Heard of the phrases like “fruits of our labor”? Well, some trees produce fruit, right? So our actions, what we create, what we produce through our actions are the experiences. Often you hear the phrase, “we eat our karma”. 

Yeah, you’re going to kind of “eat the karma”, eat your own creations. In other words, you’re going to have those experiences that you create, that’s the eating of it. That’s the karma. But it’s by doing that, that’s how we have the experience to fulfill the journey. Once we do that, guess what? Well, then we just come right back in on the branch, right back to the trunk, right back to that inner straight and narrow, that place of centeredness, the place of neutrality from which all creation comes. All the experiences come out of that centered place of neutrality where pure Spirit resides.

And guess what? That trunk is that purple light. That’s the spiritual pathway. That purple light is a Radiant Form. So on this journey, when we move in meditation, we’re out here on one of the limbs, right? You feel like you’re hanging on the edge of life, out at the end of the limb, blowning in the wind. Don’t know if you’re going to fall off as bad fruit or whatever. 

So, what do we do? We meditate. We try to come back into the center to find (the stability, the strength, the solidness) because what is the trunk – the stability, the strength, the solidness. Branches break off but that trunk usually doesn’t break. It bends a lot but this is the trunk you can’t even cut down. So when we go into meditation, we’re coming in from the branches or out on the limb and back to center, to the trunk, that straight and narrow pathway.

Here’s the way this works, whether you’ve had these kinds of inner experiences or not, the way the journey works: as we begin to go inside and lift up in Spirit, the soul begins to transcend all the experiences below it. And guess what happens? We’ll go up and up and up and all of a sudden we’ll feel like we’re falling. Then we’ll go up and up and up and then we’ll feel like we’re falling. I’ve often called this two steps forward, one step back. The way I’ve experienced it from day one to this day – whenever I go into Spirit, I will often find myself traveling upwards, upwards, upwards, in Spirit towards that star, that great light, the sun.

That’s what we always want to go for – go for the Light and the Sound. And I’ll find myself moving towards it and towards it, and then all of a sudden, at some point, I find myself dropping. What happens when I drop? I’ll come down and then all of a sudden, I’ll go out, back onto the horizontal. Guess what I’m doing? Well, now I’ve lifted up in Spirit as high as I can go for that experience and then I’m coming back down and out to no matter what realm it is, whether it’s the physical realm, the astral realm, the causal, the mental, the etheric, the soul.

We come back down and out to have experience, life experience, the soul’s experience, no matter what realm of creation we’re on. We go back out on one of those branches having experience and once we’ve had the experience, sowed whatever seeds, then guess what happens? We go back inside, in and up again. We go up and up and then all of a sudden, once again we find ourselves, “Oh my God, I’m falling.” We fall but we realized we don’t fall all the way down. We just fall a little ways and then we go back out again. But what’s it feel like? Well, we have the falling sensation or the step backwards feel.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Haven’t you, your whole life, experienced a wonderful excitement, and joy moving forward and then all of a sudden it feels like everything falls flat. You feel like, “God, I feel like I just went back to where I was, like I’m not making any progress.” That’s the one step back. That’s the experience of falling. But all we’re doing is going to have more experience and as we have that experience, and then as we focus back inside on the Radiant Form, it pulls us back into that centered place and back up. We fall down, right? Fall down and out. We lift in and up, simple. The Christmas tree, or just a regular tree – I just say that (Christmas tree) because of the star on the top, that’s the journey. This is the simplicity of the journey. But you know I like to say with the Christmas tree, you know how they wrap it with lights, all the different lights on there? To me, each of those lights are fulfillment of the karmic experience, a lesson learned, enlightenment along this path to illumination. Does that make sense? Every experience, everything we learn, those are the lights that go off on the Christmas tree.

So, we keep lighting another light as we keep doing the journey, fulfilling our experience. Another light goes on, “ahhhhh enlightenment!” Then we get drawn back into the middle, lift up another level, go out another branch, put a few more lights on, light up a few more lights. When that’s done, we come back in. It’s simple: in and up, down and out; in and up, down and out; in and up, down and out; in and up, “God, am I ever going to get Home!?” In and up, down and out; in and up, down and out. “Ooooohhh, oh my God! There’s just one light now, not all these little lights!” One light, the Light of Soul.

That’s where we’re all going. If you’ve been initiated, or if you have written a letter of intention or intending to be initiated, you are doing this journey. You are answering that inner call.

It’s funny, at the bottom of a tree is usually what? It’s wider at the base, right? Even as we’re doing this inner journey, we seem to keep having these physical experiences and we feel like we keep getting dragged back down. Well, the branches are wider at the bottom, right? So it seems like there’s more lessons and it’s harder, it’s heavier.

Well, that’s often the experience here. But, the higher you go, the branches don’t go out so far. They come in more and more so it gets easier and easier, but there is still the experiences until we get to the very peak, the very top where there’s no more branches sticking out horizontally. So a tree is like the cross as well. The horizontal line is all those branches. The vertical one is that trunk that just goes up and down. So we’re always moving towards that star at the top.

That star at the top is the golden white light, the awakening to Soul. And that purple light or the blue, or even gold or white is that movement of Spirit out of the Realms of Spirit down through the soul, down through all the realms through that trunk. I’ll tell you what, right here at the bottom there’s always an anchor point. On every realm there’s anchor points. The Living Word made flesh is where it’s anchored in the Spiritual form of the Teacher physically. But then as we move up, we can see that Spiritual form on all the different levels. Even when we get here, right here under the soul star, when we wake up to the Soul, is where we will come face to face with God directly – face to face. Because in that Realm of Soul, God does take on an individualized form or appearance and there’s the recognition, and that’s the beginning where we, the soul, begin to now merge back into the true Oneness of God that’s beyond any form, beyond the Face. There’s no form, but in the beginning there is.

It’s amazing because when you come to that point and see the Lord, face to face, you will know, and then the face changes. There’s a face, often been referred to as the white hair, the beard like Santa Claus. Oh yeah! It’ll take on a form but then all of a sudden the face will change and you’ll start to see other faces. In those other faces, you will see the face of the Spiritual Teacher who initiated you because the Teacher is One with God. That’s how we recognize that. Then we discover, “oh my God, it’s true!” The Radiant Form of the Teacher, that Truth spiritually, really is One with God. It changes – their face, God’s face. God will use the face of the Teacher to always look towards that, because that will bring us into that Oneness with God directly, the star at the top of the tree.

So, listen to the voice, watch for the face. On the physical level it may not be so radiant, but believe me, in Spirit and especially in Soul, it will radiate the Light and the Sound. It is just amazing the Loving that you will see, and hear, and it fills you. You will know it through your experience.

So, on this journey of moving into that awakening of Soul, look, listen, feel, follow that tour guide, because that’s what’s going to awaken you, little by little, and walk with you to support you into finishing all the journey on the limbs, the branches, to go back and forth and back and forth, but yet, still higher and higher. The next time you feel like “two steps forward, one step back”. One step back is just fulfilling the experience, bringing the karmas more complete, learning the lessons. 

Then we just keep being drawn within. God will keep bringing us within, but then it’s up to us to respond and follow that inner call, to follow that inner pull to go within, to allow that to unfold. Not only to allow it, but to actually participate with it, to give it our Loving. I always like to say, “look, listen and feel”. In this level, we talk more about feelings, but in Spirit it’s really more experience because the Light fills you, the Love fills you. But our physical experience of that will be more of a feeling. You ever feel Spirit on the top of your head or feel it fill you? Well, that gives you a great idea.

But it’s even so much more on that inner journey when you don’t have the limitations, the physical boundaries in that way. 

Monthly Focus “going Home work” ~

1. Do 2.5 hours of daily meditation, and listen to the talk by Brian Yeakey titled: ACTION OF THE RADIANT FORM | 01/10/2010 
2. Listen to the guided meditation by Brian Yeakey titled: ACTION OF THE RADIANT FORM | 01/10/2010
3. Journal the following (daily): 

• Contemplate first the following statement by Brian:

God will keep bringing us within, but then it’s up to us to respond and follow that inner call, to follow that inner pull to go within, to allow that to unfold. Not only to allow it, but to actually participate with it, to give it our Loving. I always like to say, “look, listen and feel”.

• Journal your awarenesses: “God will keep bringing us within…” ask yourself: How am I responding and following that inner call, following that inner pull to go within, and allowing that to unfold?
• “God will keep bringing us within…” ask yourself: How am I allowing it and actually participating with it, to give it my Loving? How am I looking, listening and experiencing that inner pull from God to go within?

Setting Your Intention for Daily Meditation

Use your answers to the two questions above as a guide in how you can approach your daily meditation, and write your own statement of intention, daily, for your meditation.