Category: Thoughts & quotes from Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. & Susan Hawkins

The person who is involved in spiritual work is always looking at what is occurring in life, seeing it as the teacher, as the grist for the mill. What is happening represents that which is being worked on, so an acute catastrophe would just be a continuation of the process that is going on anyway. As a result, the person who is intensely involved in spiritual work would then see it as a golden opportunity, painful and regretful perhaps, but one of great benefit. The essential nature of spiritual work is to remain focused on what arises from instant to instant and become aware of ‘what’ is experiencing and where it is being experienced.

… Out of this experience comes an ever greater willingness to rely on that inner Presence, with less and less reliance on the small self. Less frequently, then, does the person look to the small self to handle life’s problems, as there is a progressive willingness to surrender to one’s higher Self. The progressive loss of identification with the small self and the increasing identification with the Presence, along with the willingness to surrender life and all of its aspects to the will of God, become the very core of the person’s spiritual exercise and experience.

The acute catastrophic experience is a key learning opportunity that teaches us to go to the very core, to the very essence of the experience, to see what it is and handle it at the level of experiencing within the energy field of consciousness itself. There is the willingness to surrender and to let go of wanting to change what happened ‘out there’. There is the letting go of wanting to control by thinking about it and trying to handle it with the intellect and the emotions. There is the willingness to surrender to the essence of the experience without calling it anything, or labeling it, or putting names on it. There is the willingness to handle the energy field of it and go directly to the inner experience. The surrender to the inner experience is the open doorway to the experience of something greater than the small personal self.

From Healing and Recovery p. 258-259

Q: Is it the all-pervasiveness of attachment that is the obstacle, no matter where one starts self-inquiry?

A: All serious inquiry eventually uncovers the obstacles to realizing the Self.  To examine attachment or its corollary, aversion, is a time-saver; it is ubiquitous, pervasive, and the core element of every obstacle.  We can look at it and ask what is the intention of attachment.  There is an illusion or fantasy associated with all of them–security, survival, success, pleasure, and so on. That pervasive quality of attachment has an origin or root that can be uncovered.  The mind is attached to or identifies with what it values, including its hopes, dreams, and illusions.

Attachment is a very peculiar quality of the ego.  It can be totally undone in all its pervasive and multitudinous forms of clinging by simply letting go of one’s faith in it or belief in its value as a reality.  This one giant step is a confrontation to being unaware of one’s attachments.  The attachment to ‘self’ or ‘me’ or ‘I’ is a basic trap.  One can seek out its fantasy value–the self gets attached to what it values.  We note that attachment requires and is sustained by an energy and an intention.  The mind is attached to the very process of attachment itself as a survival tool.  Letting go of the ego is based on the willingness to surrender attachment to it as a substitute for God and just another illusion.

From I: Reality and Subjectivity, ch. 18,  “No Mind”, pg. 422-423

Q. What does it mean to be a victim?
A. To be a victim, is to be a victim of the ego.

The ego gets a grim pleasure and satisfaction from suffering and all the nonintegrous levels of pride, anger, desire, guilt, shame, and grief. The secret pleasure of suffering is addictive. Many people devote their whole life to it and encourage others to follow suit. To stop this mechanism, the pleasure of the payoff has to be identified and willingly surrendered to God. Out of shame, the ego blocks out conscious awareness of its machinations, especially the secretiveness of the game of ‘victim’.

… That is the secret about secrets. The payoff is a gain of a pleasurably satisfying reward. The ego has learned to be very clever in order to survive. It is capable of resorting to any lengths or ruse of self-deception and camouflage. The world we witness is merely the drama of the collective egos acting out on the perceptual stage of form and time.

From I: Reality and Subjectivity p. 244-245