7. Feelings

From the perspective of ordinary consciousness, it seems to us that our feelings (sensations, emotions, and soul experiences) depend on external circumstances: danger gives rise to fear, a harsh word brings offense, a mistake made brings guilt, meeting a beloved brings love, children’s “bad behavior” brings irritation, and so forth.

Yet from the perspective of the Creator’s Consciousness, everything is the opposite—within our consciousness there already exist subconscious (unconscious, automatically triggered) programs that activate particular feelings and emotions. They may be called patterns of feeling. And it is precisely these patterns of feeling that generate corresponding circumstances from the “quantum soup” (attracting them into our reality): fear generates dangers and threats, offense creates an offender, guilt creates mistakes, shame manifests proofs of Your insignificance, wrathfulness will find someone to rage at, hatred will find an enemy, and so on.

Feelings are primary, while external circumstances are secondary. Change Your feelings, and You will change Your reality.

This mechanism is intimately intertwined both with the mechanism of embodying our beliefs and with the physics of desires. Certain beliefs generate certain patterns of feelings, while other beliefs generate others. As we have already said, Faith in

an objective reality existing independently of us is fraught with experiencing a myriad of fears: the fear of death, the fear of life, the fear of judgment, the fear of mistakes, the fear of conflict, the fear of running out of money, the fear of falling ill, the fear of physical and emotional pain, the fear for tomorrow, the fear of change, the fear for one’s children and their future, the fear of new beginnings, the fear of fear itself…

As a result, all our desires concentrate around the wish to secure ourselves and our loved ones, to protect against all manner of fears and threats, which within the conditions of an “objective reality” is, by definition, impossible. And the more we attempt to defend ourselves (to earn more money, to gain more control, power over other people, and so forth), the more reasons we find for anxiety, while the scale of threats, on the contrary, expands. “The higher you fly, the harder you fall.”

Faith, however, that we ourselves create our reality with our consciousness inspires us, opening vast horizons for inspiration and creativity, interest in oneself, igniting the passion of seeking and exploring the Cause within oneself, of self-knowledge; it grants us the ability to learn to activate precisely those feelings we wish to experience, shifting the focus of our mind's attention from “external” thinking and analyzing outer events to observing inner states and practicing self-reflection. Faith that we are creators in every respect stimulates us to master ourselves, gradually weakening (and then completely disabling) the programs of reacting to external

stimuli, and conversely, acquiring the skills of conscious co-creation of our state—through the living word of Truth, in prayer, meditation, discipline of the mind, conscious observation, and the transfiguration of our feelings, up to the living experience of Unconditional Love and all Her shades: from a subtle inner tremor of the soul to Divine Grace and Oneness with all that is.

The Consciousness of the Creator grants us such freedom of creative self-expression and reveals such vistas of Supreme Delight through the conscious mastery of our state that our desires vie with one another, urging us to engage in this alone: to unfold our creative capacities and talents ever deeper and wider, to know ourselves, to master ever newer tools of conscious creation, and to expand the arsenal of consciousness-work tools, growing into an entire tree of Technologies of Consciousness—in truth, the Tree of Life, whose sweetest fruit becomes the Technology of Love. Why Technology? Because now we can initiate, co-create Love consciously, governing our own consciousness. There are key steps which, when taken, bring a guaranteed result. What is this, if not a technology?

Yes, this technology, the Technology of Love, requires that we first master a multitude of fundamentally new skills, the “fine motor skills of the Creator's consciousness”—to discipline our mind by shifting the focus of attention to feelings, to learn to govern our energetic

state by plugging leaks and increasing the flow of life energy, to maintain hygiene of consciousness, to consciously choose Faith in the perfection of everything taking place, reclaiming time and again the Responsibility of the Creator in all situations and all circumstances, to establish a steadfast inner dialogue with the Higher, timeless aspects of one’s Self (the Superconsciousness, the Unified Soul, the Unified Spirit, God the Father-Mother, Christ Consciousness, ancestor-gods and mentor-gods, with one’s Higher Self), to seek and find the Cause of everything happening only within oneself, to cultivate one’s talents daily guided by the compass of delight rather than obligations—in short, to learn to live by Joy rather than out of fear and debt (“and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”), and many, many other skills of consciousness, powerful and essential in their inner strength and efficacy yet light and effortless in inner feeling—in a word, wondrous and magnificent skills—and so all of this will take some time, thus do not be too harsh or demanding with Yourself on this path, for ultimately all is redeemed by access to the Higher Realities and the Supreme Delight native to our divine-human nature: Absolute, Unconditional, Eternal Love.

And most importantly in this Technology, the Technology of Love, is that we can create Love, in truth a Living Paradise, in the midst of any hell, and elevate any pain, suffering, and distress into their highest potential—ever-new

facets of our talents and shades of the boundless Rainbow of Divine Love.

Only gods can do this. And You and I shall learn this, My beloved friend.

It is in Your nature. One must simply desire it deeply and reclaim it. Reclaim Your path. Declare Your Divine Will to attain the freedom of the Spirit, the unfolding of Inner Truth, and the mastery of the skills of Absolute Unconditional Eternal Love!

Thus, feelings are primary, and external circumstances are secondary; the outer flow of events is merely a scenery wherein the patterns of feeling we have grown accustomed to unfold. Regarding the former spectrum of feelings (anger, offense, guilt, fear, shame, etc.), these patterns of feeling are often called emotional charges. These inner emotional charges are formed very early in a person’s life, during childhood and adolescence, as a result of emotional traumas experienced, and are cyclically reproduced in later life, stirring up in us the very same emotions over and over, yet perhaps with new people and in new life circumstances. The scenery changes, but the essence of the experiences remains the same—until a person begins to seek and acknowledge the cause of everything that happens within oneself and only within oneself—engaging in

self-reflection, self-knowledge, discovering these “charges” and “disarming” them.

And as that joke goes, “it will take five years of psychotherapy.” But with God, with the Architect of our consciousness, this path, the path of healing, takes mere minutes, even moments. It is for this very healing, transfiguration, and transformation of our consciousness that we need God. Not to constantly deal with negative consequences, but to eliminate the very cause. It is toward this, above all, that our prayer should be directed:

“Lord, our Father, teach us in all things and at all times, in all circumstances of life, to seek the cause in ourselves and only in ourselves—and having found it, to mend it,”—

prompts Archimandrite of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, Father Kirill (Pavlov), a contemporary saint and wonderworker. And the meaning of this “mending” is not to remake oneself, but, having accepted the Cause within oneself, having embraced the Creator's Responsibility for one's creations, to master oneself, to reclaim power unto oneself, and never again surrender it through one's Faith to external objects, external causes, external scenery, be they people or “objective circumstances.”

The good news—and the inspiring essence of this inner work—is that in the end we

discover that all our experience is perfect, and that even these primary “childhood emotional traumas,” or as psychologists say, “root episodes,” in which certain emotional charges were formed, were placed there by our own desire, were “planned” by us in advance, by our higher aspects, our Divine essence, as an experience of the soul necessary for its emergence and the attainment of wisdom. All this “lack of love in childhood” so often spoken of by psychologists was masterfully orchestrated so that, after passing through an nth number of repetitions of negative experience, finding no external solutions, we might turn inward and learn to generate Love, to co-create Her, ourselves, rather than running about with an outstretched hand, begging for love from others just as impoverished as we are—parents, partners, spouses, friends…

It is precisely out of the experience of our sensory living through powerlessness, fears, guilt, separation, suffering, and struggle—out of the experience of our spiritual poverty, shame for our own imperfection, enslavement to all manner of vices and addictions—that desires for the strengthening of spirit are born: desires to attain Supreme Power, Supreme Freedom, Supreme Will, Supreme Intelligence, Supreme Fearlessness, Supreme Delight, Unity, Wholeness, Harmony, and Love—all those qualities we attribute to God as the Highest Potential of our development. And as we now know, all desires are already fulfilled; the only matter was for these desires to be born and grow strong within us. Therefore

thank you for that to all our childhood traumas and to all the hardships we encountered on our life’s journey. And it was precisely our vivid sensory experience, especially the negative, that served to amplify these desires. Therefore, thank you also to all our “negative” feelings that compelled us to turn inward, to seek and to find (or rather, by our Faith to create) the Cause within ourselves. The Creator within ourselves. God in Self.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” says Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.

Poverty of spirit, once realized by us, gives birth to corresponding desires within us, desires by method of contradiction. On the other hand, the desires are already fulfilled. All that remains is to claim the result and embrace it fully, to embrace one's Highest Potential, calling Him by name. And right here we transition to the pinnacle of our consciousness, to our “roof.” Which, by the way, without such fundamental preparation regarding the conscious choice of one’s Faith, the acknowledgment and alignment of one’s desires, and the rewriting of feeling patterns—in short, without recognizing the fact that each of us (with our own consciousness) creates our reality oneself—could easily “slip” amidst the modern instability of surrounding reality, should the foundation of the edifice of our consciousness prove not strong enough. The foundation is laid, the walls are built, let us proceed to the roof…