Touching The Higher Self

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Touching TheHigher Self

from the Lazaris bookThe Sacred Journeyby Jach Purselby Barber

One of the hallmarks of a pure trance channel — Edgar Cayce and Jane being prime examples — seems to be both surprise and reluctance. Rather than choosing to cultivate this experience, they themselves are chosen by the entities who wish to speak through them.Jach Pursel, who channels a nonphysical entity called "Lazaris," thought he had fallen asleep when Lazaris first came through, and it took him several years to become comfortable with this development in his life. But since he accepted his role, the information he channels from Lazaris has been stunning. And the Lazaris personality, with its heavy ish brogue, comes through with love, warmth, wit, and wisdom.As with all true channels, the information Lazaris gives us is often something we have not heard before. For example, he offers a wealth of new teachings on the use of crystals. I also have found the Lazaris guided meditations (on tape) to be both effective and truly engaging.Of especial value is his series of meditations for making contact with the Higher Self. When Lazaris dictated The Sacred Journey: You and Your Higher Self, the resulting book became a best seller. After 15 years and many printings, it remains so to this day.

Preparation for Your Journey

Lazaris suggests that before we try to contact the Higher Self we spend some time on Seven Steps of working on the everyday Self. And the first step, he says, is Love.Acknowledging that this need to learn Love — especially love of self — will be received by many as a cliché he quips, "Well, we suppose we could say the Sacred Journey begins with covering your body with mustard and ketchup. That would satisfy your ego — you certainly have not heard that before! [but we] are not here to entertain your negative ego. ... The truth is a cliché because it is the truth."Lazaris says that Love is both a feeling and a state of consciusness, a skill that you can learn and explore. "Love is also an ideal. It is a state of awareness, a state of being or consciousness that you are always seeking. Though you will never fully embrace the totality of Love, in your search, while you stretch and reach, you become more and more of the ideal you pursue. You become more and more the very Love you seek."

The other preliminary steps to being ready for communion with the Higher Self are:

2. Letting Go of the Past,

3. Elegance,

4. Gratitude,

5. Aliveness,

6. Active Resources, and — lastly —

7. truly believing that there is a Higher Self.Letting Go of the Past (realizing that there is no time and that your earlier selves still live within you) means finally giving your hurt child or bewildered adolescent all the love and support that is missing — and then just letting go. "If you insist upon replaying the past — if you insist upon trying to do it over and over until you get it right — until you are vindicated, then realize that the price is that you will not find the Sacred Journey."Elegance means conducting your spiritual life in an ordered and purposeful way, rather than going about it in a slapdash, catch-as-catch can manner, or paying attention to your journey only when you're in trouble. It means "creating the maximum benefit with the minimum expenditure of energy."By Gratitude, Lazaris means not merely remembering to be thankful, but spontaneously cultivating thankfulness and joy as your state of consciousness. "Gratitude," he says, "is a powerful tool. If you will allow yourself to feel grateful, your processing and programming can work immeasurably better. ... As you feel grateful for what you have, you start having more things about which to feel that gratitude."Aliveness, which begins with Love, involves also Trust, Enthusiasm, and Expectancy. When we create, when we visualize that which we seek, it will be there. In one way, we should go to God the way we go the store, expecting our good to simply be there and looking forward to it with enthusiasm and expectancy.

Our Active Resources are choices, decisions, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. These are the tools with which we create our world, and we must keep them sharpened. "Belief precedes reality," Lazaris says. "Your intellect can accept that. However, until you own it on an emotional level, until you own it in every cell of your body, until it becomes a part of your breath, metaphysics and spirituality will only be a theory to you."We can read books and seek help in all of these steps. The last one, however — believing that you have a Higher Self — is a personal undertaking. "The day science 'proves' God is the day you lose God. God/Goddess/All That Is will never be proved. ... You must decide on your own whether or not there is a Higher Self."

Three Stages of Your Journey

The Sacred Journey offers three meditations for making the kind of connection with the Higher Self that we all seek, where we can speak together, play together, laugh together, and — most of all — love together.The meditations are long and extremely detailed. Lazaris asks us to do the first one at least three times, and more if nessarcy, until we know within ourselves that it is time to go through the Gateway that leads to the second phase of the Sacred Journey. If we cheat, who are we cheating?The second meditation takes us through the Gateway to a mystical land, through a special temple, and beyond to a Doorway of Light through which we may travel to merge with the energy of our Higher Self. This meditation is to be done at least seven times. And we should do it even more often if necessary. The goal is to truly feel at one with this energy of the Higher Self and can come to it with awe and rejoicing.In the third meditation, we meet our Higher Self in form — a Being with whom we can play, give and receive gifts, and talk at whatever length we desire about the things that concern us as humans on the physical plane. We do this one over and over (but at least three times) until we are ready for the Touch: the moment when we reach out and actually feel our Higher Self clasping us by the hand.After completing this entire series of meditations, Lazaris says, we may then contact our Higher Self "in less elaborate ways."I've done these meditations, and cannot recommend them more. If you truly wish to experience the love, compassion, and wisdom of your Higher Self and are willing to take the time to move through these meditations with the deep respect and attention they require, you may find yourself one day receiving the quality of answers from within that you have sought for so long.

The Meditations

The meditations are beautiful and poetic. They are also quite long, and require study. For purposes of this article, we will describe each one in abbreviated form. If you wish to have the entire text, it is available for download in eBook form at Lazaris.com.For all the meditations, you begin by finding a comfortable position, either sitting up or lying down, and doing whatever you do to become relaxed, then doing the count-down. "With each descending number, instruct yourself to go deeper, to become more at ease, to relax more, to feel comfortable and safe. Instruct yourself with words that matter to you."

Opening the Gate

Count down slowly from 7 to 1, and find yourself in an ancient forest. It is almost sunset. As you walk through this forest, notice every detail you can think of, from gnarled branches to spongy forest floor, and feel yourself a part of the forest. "Involve all your senses. Notice the colors and shapes. ... Feel yourself lifting one foot ... hear the flutter of birds aflight and the scatter of animals afoot."

As sunset turns to darkness, discover a path and follow wherever it leads — moving branches aside if necessary, noticing, exploring — until you find yourself in a small clearing with a campfire at its center. Sit by the fire and enjoy the fire's warmth and light, with the starry sky above. Then notice that there is a Gateway on the far side of the clearing and, on the ground before it, four gift-wrapped packages and an old, beatup garbage can.

Get up now, go toward the Gateway, and pick up the first package, unwrapping it to find a lidded box. Lift the lid and take out the robe spun of light. It is a robe of love, light, laughter, and ease. Put it on, and feel the Love. Think of your Higher Self, somewhere out there out, who loves you. Feel loved.

Now open the second package. There will be a package of photographs from your past that you want to release. Look at them, then consign them to the fire. Next, you will find an Elixir of Elegance, which you drink, a cornucopia-shaped Gourd of Gratitude, which is to be poured over yourself, an Atomizer of Aliveness, which you use to spritz yourself — and, finally, a treasure chest. It contains the raw materials of creating: thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, decisions, choices. It overflows with desire, imagination, and expectation.

The next box you will find contains a little model bridge. It is the bridge to believing in your Higher Self — the one you have to walk yourself.

The final box is the gift of knowing whatever it is that you are resisting that is preventing you from being One with your Higher Self. Who are you blaming? What makes you feel self-pity or self-righteousness. What part of the past are you still attached to? What guarantees are you seeking before you commit to loving yourself? Open the box and see what you find. Whatever it is, throw it into the garbage can!

Now, go to the Gateway, open the Gate (how easy is it to open the Gate?) and step through to the other side. There's a country road or pathway that leads somewhere. It's where your Sacred Journey will begin.

When you are ready, count yourself out of the meditation, from 1 to 7.

This meditation prepares you for the Sacred Journey. Whether it's time to go on to the second meditation or not depends upon what you find in the last box. But Lazaris advises that you do it at least three times, no matter what your "negative ego" is saying.

The Doorway Home

After the relaxation steps, count down slowly from 10 to 1 (not 7 this time). Set the image of yourself standing before the closed Gate. The firelight is behind you. Stars gleam above. Hear the sounds of the forest, feel the wetness of the dew. When you are ready, push open the Gate and step through onto the country road. Your Sacred Journey has begun.

It's dawn. The road ahead is lined with trees. There's a brook to the left. On a hill to the right, an old man is burning leaves. Smell the leaves, see the smoke. Walk for a ways and look back. In the roadway there is gravel of pity, boulders of stubbornness, potholes of struggle, guilt, pain. Now look forward, to what you are becoming, on the way to meet your Higher Self.

As you walk, you come to a covered bridge, like those they have in New England. Inside, it's damp, dark, and cool, with the smell of wood. Quiet. You can hear your own breathing. Hear footsteps. Fear! Someone is following you! No. Those footsteps are your own. Joy.

On the other side of the bridge, a circular temple glistens in the late-afternoon sunlight. You leave the road and walk to the temple through the grass. Notice the doorway (ornate? rough-hewn?), and enter. Inside, there are floor-to-ceiling books, chairs, study tables, and high windows with the last of the day's light coming through. In the center burns an eternal flame. This is the Temple of All Knowing. Walk quickly to the flame and sit, giving yourself time to just be with yourself. You've been here before. Remember. Think about finally contacting your Higher Self, what that means for you. Open your mind and heart. When you are ready...

Get up and walk to the small, simple door at the back of the Temple. Open it and step outside. It's dark now, a starry, starry night. There are two hills, a low one close by, and higher one behind it. You see a streak of light flash across the sky and land on the second hilltop. Walk over the first hill, down into the vale, and up the second hill. As you do, the light on the second hilltop becomes a huge, geometric shape of light. It is the Way Shower. It is the Doorway Home (the artwork for this article, from the book's cover, is an artist's interpretation of this scene). Beside the Doorway stands a gentle Old Man who is filled with love. He is something like a guardian angel. He has always been there with you. Greet the Old Man, and feel the love between you. He's there now to help you.

To go through the Doorway Home, it is necessary to offer a gift. Ask the light what gift it wants. Listen for what it requests. But do not give the gift! First, you MUST turn to the Old Man and ask permission. If the Old Man says no, do not give that gift. Instead, ask again. You must keep asking until a gift is requested that the Old Man will permit. This Old Man knows what is true and what is "negative ego." He will prevent you from going through this Doorway before you are ready. If you cannot come up with a gift during this meditation, end it here and try again later.

When the Old Man says yes, give the requested gift, and the light will open for you. Enter the light, and walk or float through the tunnel of light. You are traveling to the Edge of Eternity, through all Time and Space. The love of your guides and angels is here. You arrive at the brink of your Higher Self in the form of a majestic sphere of love and light, a sphere that stretches up and down as far as you can imagine. Feel your vulnerability, awe, and love as you await entry into the energetic space of your Higher Self. Do not hurry this step. Do not enter the sphere until those feelings are totally real for you. This is the most important part of this meditation. You must feel it, or it's not time yet. If you can feel awe, vulnerability, and love — if you can feel the fullness of gratitude at the opportunity of meeting your Higher Self in this way — then you are ready to enter the sphere of light. If not, again, end the meditation and try again another time.

When you are ready, enter the sphere of light and experience what it is like to be One with your Higher Self. Say, "I love you," and hear the answer, in words, colors, as a tone, or as waves of emotion: "I love you, more than you will know." Talk to your Higher Self of love, intimacy, caring, laughing. Touch and be touched.

When you are ready, leave the sphere of light, move back through the tunnel of light, and back to the Old Man, who is waiting. Count yourself out of the meditation (from 1 to 10), and with eyes open, take a deep breath and exhale sharply, repeating this until you are thoroughly grounded in the physical.

In the last meditation you met your Higher Self as an energy, and blended with that energy. After doing this meditation at least seven times, giving your gifts at the Doorway, fully feeling all of the awe, vulnerability, and love at being with your Higher Self, it is time to meet your Higher Self "personified."

Love's Theme: The Touch

This time, after relaxing, you will count down from 23 to 1, repeating as you count, "I love myself, I am letting go of the past, my life is elegant, I feel grateful," and so on, reviewing the Seven Steps. At 1, you are at the flame in the Temple. Repeat all the steps from the previous meditation, including the gift process. But when you enter the tunnel of light, instead of going straight through, you will find another direction to follow that seems both misty and intriguing. This path flows, curving up and down, left and right. At its end, you find yourself in a meadow on a starry night. Say, "Tonight, I meet my Higher Self. Tonight, we touch. Tonight, we love. It is so."

At the edge of the meadow, a tiny light appears. Walk toward it. As you do, it grows until it is as tall as you are. This light is all the nonphysical beings who watch you and help you. This light is beside you as you walk along and come to a Gate, the same Gate that was at the clearing in the ancient forest. But as you swing the Gate wide, you find that on the other side there is a mystical, magical, ancient garden.

Explore the garden in the same way you did the ancient forest. There are trees, cobblestones, vines, waterfalls, ponds, flowers of every hue. Use all your senses. Take your time.

Now notice that in the center of this garden there is a Tree, an incredibly beautiful Tree, more moving and beautiful than anything you have ever imagined. It is God/Goddess/All That Is in the form of a tree. Let your companion of light lead you to the Tree. Sit down among the gnarled roots and become comfortable. Rest for a while.

Sense that there is someone else on the other side of that Tree, leaning against it as you are. It is your Higher Self. Keep repeating to yourself, "I am worthy, I am willing, I deserve love." Slowly put your hand, palm down, on the ground at your side, then reach back around the Tree. Your Higher Self is on one side, you are on the other, and your hand is palm down on the side that separates you. Quoting from the book now:

Feel the roots upon which your hand rests. Feel the dirt and any grass that is there. Feel the warmth of your hand firmly resting on the ground.Then you notice. Someone has just placed their hand on top of yours! Someone has just put their hand on top — right on top of your hand! YOU CAN FEEL IT. YOU CAN FEEL IT.Flesh against flesh, you can feel it. You can feel it. Slowly rotate your hand so your palm touches their palm. You are holding hands.SQUEEZE. GENTLY SQUEEZE! ... and the other hand squeezes back! It is real. It is real. Let it be real!Turn around the Tree to discover each other. [in some cases, your Higher Self will be the same sex as you are, in some cases not.] Look at your Higher Self. Say "Hello."

Become acquainted with your Higher Self. The Higher Self will give you a gift. Accept it. Let your Higher Self ask you for a gift, which may be literal or a symbolic object, and give this gift. Now get up and dance with your Higher Self. Smile. Laugh. Love. Then talk. Share your dreams. Talk about the things you want to learn, the limitations you are overcoming, the future you are creating. Let your Higher Self share with you.

Hear your Higher Self call you by name, and call it by name. The name may be the same as yours, or it may be different. Ask until you have the name. If it does not come at first, wait. It will come.

When you are ready, count yourself out of the meditation and say good-bye to your Higher Self. Eyes open, inhale gently and breathe out sharply until you feel grounded.

When you have fully contacted your Higher Self, you will feel totally loved. Perhaps for the first time, you will know that you are loved and worthy. What do you do now?Well, you can continue to work with your Higher Self, just as you did in the meditation (although you will not necessarily need to go through all the steps any more after the first three times). When you do receive information, make sure you don't just just believe everything the Higher Self says unless you absolutely know you have cleared out your negative ego and all negative thinking.With your Higher Self's assistance, keep working on the Seven Steps. As Lazaris says:"The old Eastern tale asks: 'What does the woodcutter do after he has gone to the mountaintop and found enlightenment?' The answer: 'He cuts wood.' "After you have made contact with your Higher Self, Lazaris says, "You live your life."