What is the Second Coming?
Our special theme says, “The Second Coming ends the lessons that the Holy Spirit teaches, making way for the Last Judgment, in which learning ends in one last summary that will extend beyond itself, and reaches up to God.”
Our last special theme, “What is the Real World?” shared the same teaching. Spiritual intuition leads us across a bridge that leads from the false self to truth. When we have reached the end of the bridge, spiritual intuition’s job is complete. God takes the final step to pull us into Itself. In today’s excerpt from our special theme, that step is called “The Last Judgment.” (We will look more at the “Last Judgment” later, because that is our next special theme.)
We’ve talked about the third stage of spiritual awakening as merging. This is the phase of disregarding the apparent personal will by following spiritual intuition until no separate will can be said to exist anymore. When merging is complete, there is realization of only one consciousness and one will. This is a highly awakened state where one is not tempted by the ego anymore. One lives a fully harmonious life that is centered in the still-point of God. This is the Second Coming. In NTI, it is called the fourth stage of awakening. However, it is not the last step in awakening. One step remains, which is God’s final step.
Here is how the final step is described in NTI 1 Corinthians:
The one that seems to be in the fourth stage is but a symbol of the truth that is. So this one must pass away also. But in its passing, you pass from a final illusion of beauty to Beauty that cannot be contained in illusion. You pass from form, which reflects Light, to Light, which shines into form.
Using the Four Principles of God as a symbol, this is awakening from the Second Principle, consciousness, to the First Principle, Source, which is ultimate truth.
Conflicting wishes cannot be my will.
Today’s lesson is focused on the third stage of the spiritual path, merging. However, this lesson is also useful to you if you are in the purification stage.
If merging is your primary focus now, use today’s lesson to increase your desire for surrender and your sincerity in that practice. Read today’s lesson in its entirety and with heart at least five times today. Let it give you a boost in enthusiasm. Also, practice surrender throughout the day.
If purification is your primary focus now, spend today noticing the thinking in the mind. Notice that your thinking does not have one goal. In one moment it prefers one solution to a specific problem, and in the next moment it criticizes that solution and prefers another. As The Teachings of Inner Ramana says:
The mind is not constant. The concerns of the mind for one day may be completely different than the concerns for another. If all of the concerns for one day are written down, it may be seen that concerns and imagined solutions conflict with one another, so that no true peace can be found with the mind. The solution of concerns creates new concerns. And so again, there is no peace with the mind.
This is why one must step away from the mind to find peace. Peace cannot be found with the mind.
Stepping away from the mind is as simple as losing interest in it. When the mind chatters, it chatters because you are listening. As you lose interest in what it has to say, because you know its answers are not your answers, the chattering of mind shall fade away.
Each time you notice the chaos of mind today, remove attention from thinking and place it with your willingness to lose interest in the mind, and then repeat today’s lesson, “Conflicting wishes cannot be my will.”
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