# The Path of Cosmic Consciousness ![rw-book-cover](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81lsXEqPloL._SY160.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Jeff Carreira]] - Full Title: The Path of Cosmic Consciousness - Category: #books ## Highlights - difference between understanding and true knowing. ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=140)) - Tags: [[orange]] - When we understand something we understand it in words. We can describe it and explain it. To say it more technically, understanding is something that happens in symbols that are used as signs for real things. The problem is that the symbols we use to signify real things are not the things they signify. A sign that says “restaurant” is not a place where you can eat. The sign stands for the place where you can eat. To understand or experience something implies that you know what the words in the sign stand for in reality. ([Location 149](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=149)) - Tags: [[orange]] - In our laziness, we say, this is a cat, when what we really mean is this is a thing that I signify with the word cat. The artist René Margitte made this point graphically clear in a painting depicting a pipe that had the words, this is not a pipe, written under it. The painting was a representation of a pipe just like the word pipe is a representation of a pipe, but neither the painting nor the word is an actual pipe. Unfortunately for convenience sake we forget that we speak in signs and assume that we are exchanging realities, as I have already stated, for so many of the things we would speak about that works very well. ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=167)) - Tags: [[orange]] - directly. Coleridge had a particularly beautiful and intriguing way of describing the nature of reason. He used phrases like a “seeing light” and talked about an “enlightening eye” that contains “a power that sees by its own light.” He also uses the phrase “universal light” in his descriptions of our capacity for direct knowing and I believe that cosmic consciousness is direct contact with exactly the universal seeing light that he described. ([Location 206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=206)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Note: Vedic projection of light to assume shape in re nature of sight pillow sofa - reality was not an unconscious expanse of space, reality was a conscious field. Anything that arose in that field was immediately known, and here we would be better to think in terms of the ancient word gnosis, a deep and direct knowing of things. This is not a form of knowing that is deduced or derived through logic. It is an immediate perception. You could say an intuition. ([Location 213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=213)) - Tags: [[orange]] - “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” With this phrase she asserts that there is nothing in a name that changes what it names. In other words, what we call something has no effect on what it is. ([Location 286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=286)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Note: Harmonics of alum hongsau say not - In terms of intention, imagine that the divine desperately wants to offer you transformative openings. ([Location 439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=439)) - This unavoidable paradox must be embraced. In order to be open and receptive to the miracle you so passionately desire, you must actively release all of your efforts to attain it while at the same time being willing to make whatever effort is necessary to do this. There are three essential ways that we can cultivate intention in ourselves, through practice, contemplation, and study. ([Location 455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=455)) - The beginning and end of spiritual life is surrender. Surrender means letting go of all effort, however, paradoxically for most of us, it takes a lot of effort to come to a place where we are finally willing to make no effort at all. ([Location 465](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=465)) - Note: Surrender to walking sfit daily - The possibility of a human future in which everyone is living from the direct recognition that we are all one is what broke Edward Carpenter’s heart wide open and became the driving vision for all of the work he would engage with throughout his entire life. ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=474)) - Note: Bhakti of simplicity of atman=atman=brahman with astral backpacks - What Carpenter received from Whitman’s poetry was not information, or even knowledge in any common sense. It wasn’t even an appreciation of the aesthetic beauty of the work. No, it was something much deeper than all of these that touched him. In spiritual language the mysterious contact that can occur between a book and a reader is sometimes called transmission. It is a mysterious process of energetic osmosis through which the experience of the poet is infused into the experience of the reader. ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=512)) - Remember that we spoke about the spiritual path unfolding through successive stages of intention, initiation, and surrender. ([Location 548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=548)) - What was unmistakable to me was that each passage no matter what it said brought my attention back to the center of my own soul. ([Location 575](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=575)) - Abrams points out that languages utilizing alphabets had the unanticipated negative impact of separating us from direct contact with the world around us. He feels that this is one of the factors that has led our species to be able to create so much damage to our natural environment without realizing that we are hurting ourselves in the process. ([Location 808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=808)) - In his next book, Becoming Animal, Abrams shares a revelation. He seems to have realized that we flew off into realms of abstraction to develop all of the magnificent powers and capacities that can be found there, not to destroy our world, but to bring those gifts back to the world. It was necessary that we would fly off into abstraction and develop all of the powers that we could there, but now it is time for us to return to Earth and to bring the powers back to her. These powers were never meant for us, we simply needed to develop them, they were meant for the world and now we must return them. I am personally very moved by the vision that Abrams presents in his second book, and it is my firm conviction that the attainment of cosmic consciousness is how we can return those powers of abstraction back to Earth, and ultimately to the cosmos. ([Location 829](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=829)) - To me the jury is still out as to what this will all mean in the end. The worst case scenario is the annihilation of all life on our planet, rendering the entire human experiment a useless exercise in self aggrandizement. The best case scenario, the one that I personally am holding out for, is that it all leads to a leap in consciousness in which the creative power of abstract thinking stops being used exclusively for the benefit of just one species and starts being utilized on behalf of the planet and ultimately the cosmos. ([Location 858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=858)) - The recognition that we are not our self-concept, is the fulcrum around which spiritual enlightenment pivots. We are not a self-concept, we are that which perceives the self concept. This recognition is the door that opens us to the possibility of cosmic consciousness. The path to profound spiritual transformation necessitates relaxing our habitual and often obsessive engagement with our self-concept and forgetting about ourselves. ([Location 898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=898)) - An important part of your preparation for cosmic consciousness is believing without doubt that cosmic consciousness is real, that it is possible for you to attain, and that you can prepare for it in ways that will invite it into your life. ([Location 1058](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1058)) - In fact, each of them creates the other in a strange loop of causality. ([Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1256)) - book, please contemplate the possibility that it was not you waking up to a higher state of consciousness, it was the source of consciousness itself gaining access to your mind and body and seeing itself through a human being. ([Location 1292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1292)) - To further clarify what we mean by cosmic consciousness I want to state that there are two ways that it can be experienced. One is as a direct recognition of the all-encompassing oneness of the cosmos as seen from the vantage point of our three-dimensional self and its three-dimensional consciousness. The other way is the direct recognition that I am the consciousness of the cosmos - the source of universal awareness. In the first case a self-conscious human being recognizes something about the universe. In the second case, the universe awakens to its own existence. This distinction, as we will explore in the next chapter, is recognized in the Hindu tradition as two different levels of awakening. The first we could say is the recognition that All Is One, the second is the recognition that I Am That. ([Location 1515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1515)) - If cosmic consciousness is an inevitable growth, like becoming an adult is inevitable for a child, then we don’t need to worry about it because it is coming regardless of what we do. ([Location 1612](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1612)) - Offering our spiritual life as an act of service helps release our attention from the grip of the ego. We are relinquishing any sense of personal attainment or future achievement and entering into the sacredness of immediate fulfillment. We are full to the brim with life as it is. We no longer need to seek anything more, even spiritual experiences, because we already have all that we need. ([Location 2021](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2021)) - There is so much need in the world. We do not have to choose how to serve. It is not up to us. We live in sacred surrender and when we are called to serve we do, happily and gratefully. ([Location 2026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2026)) - clarity, passion, sensitivity, service, surrender, and love, represent some kind of progression. They are not steps that occur sequentially, and they are not rungs on a ladder that you climb. It would be better to think of them as flavors in a soup. You need all the flavors present to create the right taste of the soup. When all these elements are alive in your life they will work on you. They will open you in ways you cannot imagine. You will steep in them like a tea, and they will reveal the deeper dimensions of your being. ([Location 2064](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2064)) - In 1868 Edward Carpenter read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and received a transmission of a new way of being that ignited an inner revelation. In Ceylon, over twenty years later his cosmic prayers were answered and he experienced a completion to his initiating experience. He saw and experienced a miraculous possibility for human life. He called it cosmic consciousness and described it in writing. In articulating his experience he was recasting the traditional Eastern goal of enlightenment for a modern Western audience. ([Location 2087](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2087)) - Note: Similar to me - transmission as kindling to full awareness of life of universe, - When we sit in meditation we are content with just being. No matter what arises in our consciousness, we are content and at peace. We are not meditating so that cosmic consciousness will dawn on us, we are meditating as an act of devotion. Through our complete surrender we are demonstrating perfect faith and trust. We know that she is giving us everything we need right now and we are grateful for all of it. When we study and contemplate higher dimensional ideas we are not doing it to learn and accumulate knowledge. We are not seeking for the secret that will unlock the door to the higher mysteries. We are demonstrating our love through our insatiable curiosity to know her in all the ways that she can be authentically expressed. Our life as a whole is offered to the higher dimensions that exist just beyond the surface of the ordinary world around us. We do not offer our life as a cosmic prayer as a means to achieving answers or having experiences, but if we are sincere in our offering you can be certain that she will respond. ([Location 2136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2136)) - I woke up that morning to the realization that I was that part of the Earth that was reaching toward the light, and I was also the light of divinity shining into the Earth and calling it toward higher dimensions of being. I was involving and evolving. It was stunning. ([Location 2160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2160)) ## New highlights added January 16, 2024 at 7:30 AM - Transmission is a part of every spiritual path. It is the mysterious sharing of an understanding that cannot be contained in words. ([Location 521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=521)) ## New highlights added February 2, 2024 at 11:35 PM - Cosmic consciousness, which is the subject of this book, emerges from a deep recognition of the oneness of the cosmos. ([Location 725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=725)) - the most important insight that we can gain from it is the recognition that our experience of consciousness is not the only possible experience of consciousness. In a profoundly fundamental way our experience of experiencing can change. ([Location 984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=984)) - You are the source of consciousness after all. The members of this species think that they are the source of their own consciousness. They believe it is being generated within them, probably in their brains. They believe they are separate living entities, completely isolated from one another and from you, the source of all consciousness. This mistaken identity propagates through generations until something miraculous happens. Some of the self-conscious beings look inside with enough focus and humility to begin to open to an unimaginable possibility. They look inward and they see you, their true source. They suddenly know that they are one with you. They see that their consciousness is all coming from the same source, you. They have awakened from the dream of isolation and separation into the reality of unity and oneness. But at this same moment, at the same time that the first individuals looked inside to find their own source, something happened to you as well. Suddenly you were not just seeing their awakening from the outside. Suddenly, in a rush of energetic flow, you found yourself, the very source of universal consciousness, experiencing through them. You could see through their eyes, could think using their mind, feel with their heart. You, the source of consciousness, was finally having a lived, manifest, human experience. You had created a universe and you had found your way inside. These individuals, the ones who had awakened to the reality of you, the ones who you were now flowing through, these individuals were different. They were seeing things in a completely new way, thinking things that were not possible to think before, and doing things that would previously have been unimaginable. And as they embraced this new way of being more and more deeply the distinction between the individual awareness and the universal source of awareness began to disappear and these seemingly isolated beings began to realize that they were you. ([Location 1142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1142)) - Tags: [[pink]] - There is an awakening of cosmic consciousness happening. It is not happening in individuals, although it is experienced by individuals. It is an awakening in consciousness. What we will see as we continue our inquiry is that it might be more useful to think of cosmic consciousness as the cosmos awakening to itself through you, rather than you awakening to your cosmic being. Both of those interpretations are true, but they unlock different potentials within us and so they must both be embraced and worked with. ([Location 1218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1218)) - We can think of cosmic consciousness as an experience that we have, but if we do, it easily becomes all about us. I don’t believe that way of thinking unlocks the deeper potentials of the experience. I believe that it is more powerful to realize that the universe itself is waking up through you. When you experience that cosmic being, maybe it is not you experiencing your cosmic self, maybe it is the cosmos, which is also you, waking up to its own existence. In that exalted state of universal grandeur, we realize that we are the cosmos. I am that. If you have had even a glimpse of cosmic consciousness, or if you have one while reading this book, please contemplate the possibility that it was not you waking up to a higher state of consciousness, it was the source of consciousness itself gaining access to your mind and body and seeing itself through a human being. ([Location 1287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1287)) - Note: Divine surrender to current of dream nomind rightness - The experience of my life as being lived from and by a higher source and riding at the very edge of evolution was one of the deepest and most profound revelations that has shaped who I am and what I do. ([Location 1370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1370)) ## New highlights added February 4, 2024 at 11:40 AM - What I have learned over the years is that for all this to be possible we must live in such a way that we feel the possibility of a miracle always immediately alive around us. We must also be constantly inviting that miracle to occur, and finally be ready to give ourselves to it when it comes. If we are living in a way that includes all of these elements then we will be doing all that can be done. The rest is up to grace, karma, and divinity. ([Location 1777](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1777)) - My former teacher insisted that you want to go all the way. In the context that we are exploring that means all the way to a totally surrendered life of universal being. ([Location 1802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1802)) - In his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, the Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky offered a powerful and simple way to imagine how the awakening of consciousness evolves. He asks us to imagine a triangle. The triangle is full of people and it represents a culture which is traveling upward into new frontiers of consciousness. At the very tip are the most advanced visionaries. There is hardly anyone at that height. The few that are there are seeing possibilities that have never been seen before. The power of their vision and their articulation of it in art attracts those that are just below them and draws them upward. Those at that next highest level then communicate their vision of possibility to those just below them. Each next layer of individuals communicates new possibilities to those below and the attractive power of the new possibilities at every level moves the entire triangle of humanity upward. ([Location 1806](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1806)) - we are both an individual and a universal self. ([Location 1851](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1851)) ## New highlights added July 6, 2024 at 11:37 AM - When we understand something, we understand it in words. We can describe it and explain it. To say it more technically, understanding is something that happens in symbols that are used as signs for real things. The problem is that the symbols we use to signify real things are not the things they signify. A sign that says “restaurant” is not a place where you can eat. The sign stands for the place where you can eat. To understand or experience something implies that you know what the words in the sign stand for in reality. ([Location 159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=159)) - Tags: [[orange]] - In our laziness, we say, this is a cat, when what we really mean is this is a thing that I signify with the word cat. The artist René Magritte made this point graphically clear in a painting depicting a pipe that had the words, this is not a pipe, written under it. The painting was a representation of a pipe just like the word pipe is a representation of a pipe, but neither the painting nor the word is an actual pipe. Unfortunately, for convenience’s sake, we forget that we speak in signs, and we assume that we are exchanging realities. As I have already stated, this works very well for many of the things we speak about. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=177)) - Tags: [[orange]] - directly. Coleridge had a particularly beautiful and intriguing way of describing the nature of what he called reason. He used phrases like a “seeing light” and talked about an “enlightening eye” that contains “a power that sees by its own light.” He also uses the phrase “universal light” in his descriptions of our capacity for direct knowing, and I believe cosmic consciousness is direct contact with exactly the universal seeing light that he described. ([Location 219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=219)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Note: Vedic projection of light to assume shape in re nature of sight pillow sofa - reality was not an unconscious expanse of space; reality was a conscious field. Anything that arose in that field was immediately known, and here we would do better to think in terms of the ancient word gnosis, a deep and direct knowing of things. This is not a form of knowing that is deduced or derived through logic. It is an immediate perception. You could say an intuition. ([Location 225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=225)) - Tags: [[orange]] - This unavoidable paradox must be embraced. In order to be open and receptive to the miracle you so passionately desire, you must actively release all of your efforts to attain it, while at the same time being willing to make whatever effort is necessary to do this. There are three essential ways that we can cultivate intention in ourselves: through practice, contemplation, and study. ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=474)) - The possibility of a human future in which everyone is living from the direct recognition that we are all one is what broke Edward Carpenter’s heart wide open and became the driving vision for all the work he would engage with throughout his entire life. ([Location 494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=494)) - Note: Bhakti of simplicity of atman=atman=brahman with astral backpacks - What Carpenter received from Whitman’s poetry was not information, or even knowledge in any common sense. It wasn’t even an appreciation of the aesthetic beauty of the work. No, it was something much deeper that touched him. In spiritual language, the mysterious contact that can occur between a book and a reader is sometimes called transmission. It is a mysterious process of energetic osmosis through which the experience of the poet is infused into the experience of the reader. ([Location 532](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=532)) - What was unmistakable to me was that each passage, no matter what it said, brought my attention back to the center of my own soul. ([Location 597](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=597)) - In his next book, Becoming Animal, Abrams shares a revelation. He seems to have realized that we flew off into realms of abstraction to develop all the magnificent powers and capacities that can be found there, not to destroy our world, but to bring those gifts back to the world. It was necessary that we would fly off into abstraction and develop all the powers that we could there, but now it is time for us to return to Earth and to bring the powers back to her. These powers were never meant for us, we simply needed to develop them, they were meant for the world and now we must return them. I am personally very moved by the vision that Abrams presents in his second book, and it is my firm conviction that the attainment of cosmic consciousness is how we can return those powers of abstraction back to Earth, and ultimately to the cosmos. ([Location 859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=859)) - To me the jury is still out as to what this will all mean in the end. The worst-case scenario is the annihilation of all life on our planet, rendering the entire human experiment a useless exercise in self-aggrandizement. The best-case scenario, the one that I personally am holding out for, is that it all leads to a leap in consciousness in which the creative power of abstract thinking stops being used exclusively for the benefit of just one species and starts being utilized on behalf of the planet and ultimately the cosmos. ([Location 889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=889)) - The recognition that we are not our self-concept, is the fulcrum around which spiritual enlightenment pivots. We are not a self-concept; we are that which perceives the self-concept. This recognition is the door that opens us to the possibility of cosmic consciousness. The path to profound spiritual transformation necessitates relaxing our habitual and often obsessive engagement with our self-concept, and forgetting about ourselves. ([Location 929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=929)) - the most important insight that we can gain from it is the recognition that our experience of consciousness is not the only possible experience of consciousness. In a profoundly fundamental way, our experience of experiencing can change. ([Location 1018](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1018)) - You are the source of consciousness, after all. The members of this species think that they are the source of their own consciousness. They believe it is being generated within them, probably in their brains. They believe they are separate living entities, completely isolated from one another and from you, the source of all consciousness. This mistaken identity propagates through generations until something miraculous happens. Some of the self-conscious beings look inside with enough focus and humility to begin to open to an unimaginable possibility. They look inward and they see you, their true source. They suddenly know that they are one with you. They see that their consciousness is all coming from the same source, you. They have awakened from the dream of isolation and separation into the reality of unity and oneness. But at this same moment, while the first individuals looked inside to find their own source, something happened to you as well. Suddenly you were not just seeing their awakening from the outside. Suddenly, in a rush of energetic flow, you found yourself, the very source of universal consciousness, experiencing through them. You could see through their eyes, could think using their mind, feel with their heart. You, the source of consciousness, were finally having a lived, manifest, human experience. You had created a universe and you had found your way inside. These individuals, the ones who had awakened to the reality of you, the ones who you were now flowing through, these individuals were different. They were seeing things in a completely new way, thinking things that were not possible to think before, and doing things that would previously have been unimaginable. And as they more and more deeply embraced this new way of being, the distinction between the individual awareness and the universal source of awareness began to disappear and these seemingly isolated beings began to realize that they were you. ([Location 1180](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1180)) - Tags: [[pink]] - An awakening of cosmic consciousness is happening. It is not happening in individuals, although it is experienced by individuals. It is an awakening in consciousness. What we will see as we continue our inquiry is that it might be more useful to think of cosmic consciousness as the cosmos awakening to itself through you, rather than you awakening to your cosmic being. Both of those interpretations are true, but they unlock different potentials within us and so they must both be embraced and worked with. ([Location 1259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1259)) - We can think of cosmic consciousness as an experience that we have, but if we do, it easily becomes all about us. I believe that way of thinking fails to unlock some of the deeper potentials of the experience. I believe it is more powerful to realize that the universe itself is waking up through you. When you experience that cosmic being, maybe it is not you experiencing your cosmic self, maybe it is the cosmos, which is also you, waking up to its own existence. In that exalted state of universal grandeur, we realize that we are the cosmos. I am that. If you have had even a glimpse of cosmic consciousness, or if you have one while reading this book, please contemplate the possibility that it was not you waking up to a higher state of consciousness, it was the source of consciousness itself gaining access to your mind and body and seeing itself through a human being. ([Location 1330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1330)) - Note: Divine surrender to current of dream nomind rightness - To further clarify what we mean by cosmic consciousness, I want to state that there are two ways it can be experienced. One is as a direct recognition of the all-encompassing oneness of the cosmos as seen from the vantage point of our three-dimensional self and its three-dimensional consciousness. The other way is the direct recognition that I am the consciousness of the cosmos - the source of universal awareness. In the first case, a self-conscious human being recognizes something about the universe. In the second case, the universe awakens to its own existence. This distinction, as we will explore in the next chapter, is recognized in the Hindu tradition as two different levels of awakening. The first we could say is the recognition that All Is One, the second is the recognition that I Am That. ([Location 1564](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=1564)) - There is so much need in the world. We do not have to choose how to serve. It is not up to us. We live in sacred surrender and when we are called to serve, we do, happily and gratefully. ([Location 2089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2089)) - clarity, passion, sensitivity, service, surrender, and love, represent some kind of progression. They are not steps that occur sequentially, and they are not rungs on a ladder that you climb. It would be better to think of them as flavors in a soup. You need all the flavors present to create the right taste of the soup. When all these elements are alive in your life, they will work on you. They will open you in ways you cannot imagine. You will steep in them like a tea, and they will reveal the deeper dimensions of your being. ([Location 2127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2127)) - In 1868, Edward Carpenter read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and received a transmission of a new way of being that ignited an inner revelation. In Ceylon, over twenty years later, his cosmic prayers were answered and he experienced a completion to his initiating experience. He saw and experienced a miraculous possibility for human life. He called it cosmic consciousness and described it in writing. In articulating his experience, he was recasting the traditional Eastern goal of enlightenment for a modern Western audience. ([Location 2152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2152)) - Note: Similar to me - transmission as kindling to full awareness of life of universe, - When we sit in meditation, we are content with just being. No matter what arises in our consciousness, we are content and at peace. We are not meditating so that cosmic consciousness will dawn on us, we are meditating as an act of devotion. Through our complete surrender, we are demonstrating perfect faith and trust. We know that she is giving us everything we need right now and we are grateful for all of it. When we study and contemplate higher dimensional ideas, we are not doing it to learn and accumulate knowledge. We are not seeking for the secret that will unlock the door to the higher mysteries. We are demonstrating our love through our insatiable curiosity to know her in all the ways that she can be authentically expressed. Our life as a whole is offered to the higher dimensions that exist just beyond the surface of the ordinary world around us. We do not offer our life as a cosmic prayer as a means to achieving answers or having experiences, but if we are sincere in our offering, you can be certain that she will respond. ([Location 2204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BNW65HG5&location=2204))