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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

How can a blind man learn to see?

If the true self is like the sun covered
by thick clouds, how can the light of
consciousness manifest? How can those
in detention ever come to sacred awareness?

return to the main-page article on "Hell" 

"They know not what they do"

Jesus prayed for his enemies, acknowledging: "They know not what they do"!

Those who are completely unconscious spiritually - which is to say, controlled by the False Self - live in mental darkness, a form of insanity which infuses every thought and action with an element of self.

Caught in this world of illusion and distortion, as Jesus said, "They know not what they do". And if we apply this lack of capacity to the hapless in the Dark Realms, we must ask the question, how will they ever come to the Light?

If every thought is tainted with egoism, how will they ever see clearly enough to "know what they should do"?

I believe that Eckhart Tolle perceives the answer, one that is borne out and supported in the afterlife testimonies.

The following is an excerpt from his "New Earth":

Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. For most people it is not an event but a process they undergo. Even those rare beings who experience a sudden, dramatic, and seemingly irreversible awakening will still go through a process in which the new state of consciousness gradually flows into and transforms everything they do and so becomes integrated into their lives.

Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life. Awareness takes over from thinking. Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of awareness. Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence. Another word for it is Presence; consciousness without thought.

The initiation of the awakening process is an act of grace. You cannot make it happen nor can you prepare yourself for it or accumulate credits towards it. There isn't a tidy sequence of logical steps that leads toward it, although the mind would love that. You don't have to become worthy first. It may come to the sinner before it comes to the saint, but not necessarily.

There is nothing you can do about awakening. Whatever you do will be the ego trying to add awakening or enlightenment to itself as its most prized possession and thereby making itself more important and bigger. Instead of awakening, you add the concept of awakening to your mind, or the mental image of what an awakened or enlightened person is like, and then try to live up to that image. Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living - another unconscious role the ego plays.

Only the first awakening, the first glimpse of consciousness without thought, happens by grace, without any doing on your part. Once it has done so, it cannot be reversed, although it can be delayed by the ego.

There is good reason, a practical reason, why millions of Spirit-helpers work in the Dark Realms. They labor in altruistic service, under very difficult conditions -- obviously, garnering no respect, incurring daily abuse from the Hannibal Lectors of that sordid world -- by offering encouragement, a word of comfort, as they are allowed to administer as per the willingness of their charges.

people need to be rescued from the dark realms, or they would never get out

And it appears to be the case that the efforts of the Spirit Guides become that initial spark of "grace," a "first awakening, the first glimpse of consciousness" - without which initiating effort those who have perverted themselves with selfishness -- a state of "they know not what they do" -- would remain in their suffering... forever.

This "suffering forever" is what Jesus warned against in his "unpardonable sin" teaching. Some people have so perverted themselves that they themselves cannot forgive themselves, and it is this abject despair which would keep them in dark detention forever - but for the encouraging words of Spirit Guides who help these wayward to gather enough courage and self-respect to live and to face life again.