Our fear-based conditioning develops our ego consciousness. This is our identification with our relative mind’s memories, defenses, negative thoughts and feelings. It operates like a computer software program always scanning present situations for past results or projecting fears into the future. This level of our mind and body consciousness proceeds from a sense of lack and separation from wholeness. As long as we maintain any level of the fear consciousness, we inhibit our full capacity to intend, love, and create. The ego conditioning always carries a degree of the darkness.
Our true self is our heart-based consciousness of good desire, love, light, joy, and peace. Being in the heart is living in the now. When we are within the heart, the fear-based mind programs of past situations or the constant evaluation of fears projected forward cease their activity. The heart is the center of intention where we create from good thought and feeling of what just “is.”
As we pursue the journey of transformation, we gain increasing moments where we enter the heart and the ordinary mind does not interfere. However, it is still a battle of shifting strengths between the intensity of light that we can hold in our hearts and the powerful fears that have been conditioned within the mind. Can these fear-based mind programs be entirely uninstalled like software? And if “yes,” what is the process of change and transformation that accomplishes this whole new consciousness and way of being?
In the prologue of the Gospel of John, he says that “the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). This is our new being in Christ where our consciousness is always in the light of the Divine energy within the heart. This infinite nondual energy is then expressed throughout all our dimensions of heart, mind, and body. In this consciousness, the darkness is no more-“he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
For us in our present journey, the dispelling of the darkness is a process, not an instantaneous shift. As our intentional consciousness becomes the norm, we will not have the long persistent effort of transformation. But at present, transformation usually takes place over time through a continual strengthening of the capacity to be in the present moment of Divine light regardless of the current sensory obstacles and past experience.
It can be viewed as the paradoxical dilemma of what comes first, the chicken or the egg. We need to open to a greater intensity of Divine light and energy in order to overcome the darkness, but our ego mind programs act as a drag to letting the light in. Thus, the journey is like a continual process of lessening the darkness and increasing the light. Here, we practice prayer, meditation, self-observation, and making conscious the unconscious fear conditioning.
The process of transformation is experienced as a resolving polarity. We must gain greater awareness of our fears, thoughts, emotions, and actions that emanate from the ego consciousness. As the unconscious fears, negative beliefs, and negative emotions are brought into awareness, we must also hold our developing heart-based consciousness. We are strenghthening the heart consciousness to open to greater intensities of light and love. When in the heart, “perfect love casts out fear” (cf. 1 John 4:1).
As we are learning to live in the heart, we begin to alternate, or oscillate between the heart consciousness of love and the ego consciousness of fear until the increasing light dissolves the polarity. In his work of Somatic Experiencing, Peter Levine describes alternating between a trauma vortex and a healing vortex. This is another way of communicating the light and darkness polarity. The journey requires persistent practice because the fear-based consciousness restricts our openess to generate enough light to completely cease the operation of the ego consciousness. As we become more aware, we oscillate between the ego conditioning and the heart consciousness at faster and faster speeds until we simultaneously hold the core of fear in the fullness of Divine light.
For thousands of years of history and what we understand of our prehistory, humans have had a consciousness of fear along with the creativity of love. This has been our experience in this dimension of the physical universe under the duality of the knowledge of good and evil. David Sereda in his book Singularity talks about overcoming the inertia that exists within consciousness, our bodies, and physical matter. In the light of Divine love, there is no resistance of time and space. Therefore, there is no fear, conflict, or separation within the unity of the heart.
When our undefended fears are brought to full awareness with the full consciousness of the strength of the Divine light in our heart, the darkness disappears. Step by step the many aspects of the fear-based ego consciousness are brought to awareness in our increasing light of the heart. The intention of our transformation is to realize the complete cessation of the fear consciousness to become the true self in Divine unity that is infinte love and creativity. Jesus says, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:3).