Thoughts & quotes from Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. & Susan Hawkins – Page 88

The Source of Happiness

Q: “What is the most useful information to know? Is there a major key understanding?

A: Resistance subsides when there is a clear understanding that what is being surrendered is not of intrinsic value but is instead imagined to be of value solely because of the juice or payoff the ego extracts from that position. The principle of willingness need only be applied to the ego’s payoff and not to the object or condition desired.

One can ask oneself the question, Is this worth giving up God for? Thus, ego positionality has a price, which is where the willingness should be addressed. Each positionality is based on the presumption that its fulfillment will bring happiness. Thus, nothing is really valued aside from the illusion that it will bring that about…

Q: What is the critical central focus of the ego, i.e., its critical factor?

A: The ego is focused on one point, the experiencer, which is programmed to seek pleasure and survival through gain. It views happiness as something one acquires, possesses, and incorporates. Therefore, the experiencer is programmed to ‘get’. The experiencer’s function is to get pleasure and possess it. It is not concerned with the soul unless it fortuitously becomes spiritually oriented. Then its goals shift, and it discovers that the source of pleasure is completely within. When it is discovered that the source of ongoing pleasure is the Self, and not the self, the result is independence from the world. Gratification of the ego’s desires is within the linear domain. True happiness arises from the nonlinear. With relinquishment of dependence on the experiencer for pleasure and happiness, one discovers that the source of happiness is one’s own existence, and the realization of the Self is happiness itself.”

From Discovery of the Presence of God p.118-120

Freedom

Freedom is the opportunity to fashion one’s own destiny and learn the inherent spiritual truths that are essential. For merit or demerit to occur, the choices have to be made in a state of belief and experience that they are ‘real’. Thus, even illusion subserves spiritual growth for it seems real at the time.

Human life thus subserves the spirit. The world is less painful to witness if it is appreciated as the ultimate school whereby we earn salvation and serve each other by our own lives.”

From I: Reality and Subjectivity p. 81

The Story of Truth

The story of Truth has been told repeatedly throughout the ages, but it bears telling again. Into the void-like space created by the ego’s realization that in actuality it knows nothing suddenly flows the love of God, like a dam that has been opened. It is as though Divinity had been waiting all these millennia for this final moment. In a moment of serene ecstasy, one is home at last. The Real is so overwhelmingly, obviously, and totally present that it seems incredulous that belief in any other kind of ‘reality’ is even possible. It is like some strange kind of forgetting, like the story of the Hindu god who willed himself to be a cow and then forgot that he had done it and had to be rescued by another of the gods.

Sometimes the ego misidentifies itself more specifically as the personality. It thinks, “I am such-and-such a person.” And it says, “Well, that’s who I am.” From this illusion arises the fear that one will lose one’s personality if the ego is relinquished. This is feared as the death of ‘who I am’.

By internal observation, one can differentiate that the personality is a system of learned responses and the persona is not the real ‘I’. The real ‘I’ lies behind and beyond it. One is the witness of that personality, and there is no reason one has to identify with it at all.

From “The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing is Hidden” Chapter 6: The Resolution of the Ego, pp. 131-32

The Exposure to High Truth

Q: What is the benefit of learning teachings that seem incomprehensible at the time?

A: They only seem obscure to the intellect. They plant the seed, and the aspirant’s spiritual aura incorporates the transmitted energy field of the teacher’s aura. Certain information is transformational in itself. Exposure to high truth initiates a yearning in the psyche. The Buddha made that observation when he said that once a person has heard of enlightened truth, he will never be satisfied with anything less, even though it takes innumerable lifetimes to attain it.

Q: What characteristics facilitate comprehension and transformation?

A: Dedication, devotion, faith, prayer, surrender, and inspiration. When the barriers are relinquished, Truth reveals itself spontaneously.

From I: Reality and Subjectivity, ch. 7, pg. 205-206

Life is a Precious Gift

When one has chosen the spiritual pathway, the question arises of how to proceed through ordinary human life now that one has a different overall motivation. … the degree to which one values one’s own life determines the answer. Those who see it as a precious gift do not wish to waste it on that which is trivial and transitory, for the demise of the physical body as an inevitable certainty. The pleasures of life can be accepted as a gift while rejecting becoming attached to them.

… the inner process is primarily one of de-energizing illusions rather than one of acquiring new information. Awareness is predominantly revealing in nature rather than a private acquisition. The Self is already aware of Reality and does not need to learn more about it.”

From Discovery of the Presence of God p. 213-214